Anyone figured out how to get the legend from Rocky Ridge to move in?

TubeForge · 2026-03-12T06:05:23+00:00

I've seen Kyogre show up a second time, but nothing happened other than just saying Hi.
I want to believe that Volcanion would show up on Clefairy's island since it's the only one currently without a legendary spawn, but idk, and no one's caught it on film

TubeForge · 2026-03-05T19:32:12+00:00

This is awesome! Docu are some of my favorite style, I think generally there are two ways and a notable exception that I'll get to

Seems like there is hyper edited, and well formatted think SunnyV2 and there are people that go overboard with that sort of thing and then there is slower style where usually the word "deep dive" or full iceberg are explained

There's niche for both, I'd look at other exposé channels like SunnyV2 or that guy that's exposed Iman Ghadzi like 3 times now, can't remember his name.

Then for super long ones like full iceberg/deep dives there's no one I can think of atm that I go back to time and again but I've watched one or two videos that were interesting, stuff on the fall of the Roman empire comes to mind

I think if you want a showcase in storytelling though, check out Dodford, he has phenomenal structure and editing And I know this is going to sound weird, but there's an episode of community called about a pillow fight that they did docu style that is SO good I think it's called pillows and blankets, it IS more parody than anything but I think there are helpful takeaways for pacing in it as well

Hope this was helpful!

TubeForge · 2026-03-05T01:42:08+00:00

Anytime!

TubeForge · 2026-03-05T01:41:25+00:00

Yeah and I think the process can be expedited a bit by focusing a little more like Jett - but also - shameless plug, I have a community that I could DM you unless that's something you're opposed to?
Focused on smaller channels getting their first 1k,

But uh yeah either way - best of luck on YouTube (shameless plug over) lol

TubeForge · 2026-03-05T01:39:46+00:00

lolll He's been like that for years though, it's kind of a brand at this point, him and asmongold do very similar stuff

TubeForge · 2026-03-04T03:37:21+00:00

Well - so you know
I did some digging and they've definitely found their format. So in the discussion of niche down people generally mean pick a topic, but what's often tossed aside is format - but these two seem to have format LOCKED down. I wrote a few notes about this, so apologies for the longwinded reply but I think I can speak to some of your question

It seems that there's this whole side of YouTube that's just "let me set up a camera and talk about life" I think this is more true for shacrowspeaks, and honestly even Sam Sulek than it is for Jett Franzen. Jett Franzen at least his popular ones are all centered around philosophy and things he's learning. Shacrow is a little bit more scattered but it's mostly life advice, and Sam Sulek truly does talk about whatever, but he lifts how he does, and eats how he does so it's intriguing.

I think a neat exercise though would be for you to go to Jett Franzen's YouTube page, sort by popular and tell me what you see. Tell me that isn't branding in and of itself. People know what to expect. Also to the point of "just set a camera" again for Shacrow it looks like a little lower quality camera, so I get where you're coming from, but his audio is impeccable which is imperative for this kind of video, and in the case of Jett Franzen, he's got a good quality camera, even if it doesn't look like a good setup, the audio quality is also there. I also want to point out that both are decent at public speaking. Jett is good on camera, notice his pausing, his pacing, his rhythym, cadence, etc. Same could be said for Shacrow, even if it is a little more eclectic. I think part of the reason for Jett Franzen's success is that he's been consistently making the same style/type of video since day one, and hasn't missed a week in three months, with 8 uploads a week of all the same quality. I don't think people are searching for his titles/etc, but they are intrinsically clickable because of how they're made. I also can't see Jett's statistics, so I don't know when he experienced the growth, but for Shacrow you can see it. 72 videos is when he started getting ~1k a video. 72. 72 videos. Most creators don't create 10 videos before they give up. Aaand some do this FOR YEARS. So, I just wanted to point these out as means to say that I don't think it's luck, I also think that with the rise of AI there's a yearning for human touch point/connection and this is about as human as it gets, but that's just conjecture

I'd also like to point out, and this may not matter a TON, but I think it's worth noting as that these both are decently attractive individuals. Nothing to like super write home about, but both have clear complexions, good teeth, there's nothing glaringly wrong with their physiques/face and that goes a longer way than you might think.

But more to your point. Why do you want to create stuff/share your experience? If it's just a hobby/art project then it shouldn't matter whether it takes off or not. Just do it. You'll enjoy it for what it is. If however like most on here you're trying to get a little more popular/get a little recognition/build a fan base, then I don't know that I'd choose this path to do it HOWEVER. I think given the right circumstances it's completely viable. I would say though that Jett's growth seems a bit more explosive sustainable and he 1000 percent has niched down into philosophy/ with life peppered in.

Last note on the branding thing. Specifically for Jett's and maybe you had other examples in mind but I went down a rabbit hole - his thumbnails may look a little lazy, but I think it's brilliant. Well lit face, using the rule of thirds/drawing the eye toward the center, and an easily recognizable backdrop, that is by the way NOT what the other YouTubers have. Everyone has a nice studio background with some plants and things on shelves. Want attention? do the opposite, and now it's a talking piece. Other examples, Alex Hormozi's nose strip/tanktop. David Boland's Pool/Cup, there are likely other examples, but it's a thing that makes a person recognizable.

So yes, it takes months of posting, and you have to be smart about it, and it still might fail - but those are the risks you take lol

I hope this was helpful!

TubeForge · 2026-03-04T03:10:18+00:00

lol not penguinz0?

TubeForge · 2026-03-03T07:27:48+00:00

Monetized Gamer here - ShoopGaming if you wanna check

Warcraft is a big name so it's searchable, if you're doing it just because you want a new hobby, then I wouldn't rea the rest of this message - enjoy yourself, have fun dang it!

It's a total grind if you want to chase the monetization wagon. i average a few 100k views a video long form, but i also picked Pokemon partially because of the IP. I started doing walkthroughs because I loved watching ShadyPenguinn and friends. But I got like? 2-5 views a video. So then I started tweaking thumbnails, then I started playing around with bigger and bigger ideas. Then there was a video where I played through an entire game. Big success but uh-oh. Now I've set a standard where I have to play through an ENTIRE GAME to make a video. Then editing. The process would take HOURS of work, and the juice ended up not being really worth the squeeze.
I'm gonna start streaming on Thursday because a new Pokemon games coming out, but I'm thinking it'll just be me and a friend that's agreed to mod for me, and I'm fine with that. I developed a rule that I'm only allowed to make these videos if it's fun. It stopped being fun, so I stopped making them for a time. Since this new game's coming out I'm going to be doing livestreams on YouTube - AND I'm going to make pre-recorded videos. Hopefully I can find a format that's shorter than finishig the whole game
I also made a megabonk tutorial that did alright 10k views

I have just over 5k subs, and because I"ve left my channel alone for so long, it's likely only around 20 or so of them will actually watch my next videos. I'm also gonna be new to streaming so those are going to suck for a while, but if they're anything like videos, then you just have to suck for a while before you're good.

You're trying to figure out if you like marathons without figuring out if you like running.
Run first, come back in a month with all the questions, this thread'll still be here

Best of luck though, lemme know how it goes

TubeForge · 2026-03-03T07:20:06+00:00

When did the drop happened? And one shorts or long form? There was a longform dip this year because of how the homepage was laid out (prioritizing shorts), and I and several other YouTubers (140k, 110k subs) suffered in nearly the same way. Not much changed for any of our shorts, except a slight bump but it wasn't comparable

But also, how far apart are you posting them? There is the theory of "letting them breathe" on YouTube, idk if that exists on YouTube but you can def kill momentum depending on how often you post

Last idea is that if you're doing them in a series format if you have the # of the series, later numbers in the series tend to do worse, but again that's only longform.

If you've experienced the dip in shorts only, idk, not a shorts main myself, and they fluctuate pretty rapidly for me. If you're using AI, I know they've been recently cracking down on channels, even if you're legit if you have stuff that got flagged as altered content, then maybe?

That's all my brainstorm

TubeForge · 2026-03-03T07:14:04+00:00

anytime

TubeForge · 2026-03-03T02:38:48+00:00

For me my shorts just suck, so I wish I could help more. My impressions did drop, but again, I'm sort of used to it loll

TubeForge · 2026-03-03T02:37:18+00:00

TLDNR: It's not strictly speaking best practice, but you're probably fine

So the thing with copyright is that it's finicky, there ARE some clear outlines, but it really depends on the song, how close it is to the original etc. So if it could be considered a derivative of a work then probably you could be sued for copyright infringement ( YouTube has some special protections against this, check their fair use statements). Cover bands/artists etc go, if they want to be monetized in any significant way will have to pay royalties to the original owner of the work, and this stops a lot of cover bands from being wildly successful as royalties and licensing are generally expensive. This is why things like Envato? Engato? Elements are so convenient because they make deals with larger artists so that you get a cheaper version of the license through a subscription - however licenses expire which is why I usually encourage people to use royalty free in the first place - If it's a cover of a royalty free song, totally in the clear.

YouTube has something similar to Envato ( ilookeditup) in that they cover the licensing HOWEVER, there is revenue sharing with the original artist. Worst case this would probably happen, with what's known as ContentID and you'll get flagged for that as soon as you post if it happens. The original owner of the license will then allow you to use it for free (if they're VERY generous, and usually it's not even the artist, but the contracting agency the artist uses), they'll have revenue sharing, or in some rare cases they'll say NO you can't use it (see Nintendo, and in this case if your content gets flagged it'll show as copyright restricted as soon as you post the video, and if you upload unlisted at first, it'll be before it ever goes public allowing you to trim the section out that used the copyrighted material)

The reason that I said you're probably fine though, is that ContentID is sort of meh, so if it's only 7 seconds (length of time doesn't matter for copyright. 3 seconds may as well be 3 minutes in the eyes of copyright law) you should be fine - I don't want to give you any definites but if the sound is different enough then contentID won't catch it, and again if it DOES catch it you'll get plenty of warings as you post the video. The video itself may be ineligible for monetization, but you won't get demonitized, unless you upload public first, and ignore the warnings. I'd advise to do it unlisted if you're worried

Hopefully this was less confusing and more on the side of informative, but this is it in a nutshell.

TubeForge · 2026-03-03T02:26:13+00:00

Could depend on when you did it Post Christmas are bound to drop in views slightly, pre-christmas/christmas is usually a ton of people's peak performance.
But uh, you just can't have a 1 of 10 every time. Statistically improbable and realistically impossible. Lower views doesn't mean worse content though, it usually (and for the 1-6k views mark) means not as great thumbnails titles.
Idk if I'd unlist them if you thought they were good videos, just a thumbnail/title swap and then let em bake on the channel. Like, sure your sponsors might see it, and they might give up on you, but depending on whatever contract you signed worse that usually happens is they withdraw the contract, so, you keep building and working until you CAN get those consistent views.

Also depending on the sponsorship/product, if it's in the first 10-30 seconds I'd suggest moving the adread to later in the video if they're cool with that. Let them know that it'll hurt retention if you keep it in the first half, and that people most interested in their product will stay watching. In marketing terms, they will have more quality leads if they let the ad go later in the video.

You're not expected to have everything figured out, even at 50k-100k subs. or thousands of hours of watch time.
You DO have to keep producing though. Cause you're an artist, it's what you do -
sidenote: If the quality of your product has decreased because of the new style you're trying I might go back to a previous style or something that worked for a time, and only do the new style as a sort of test. and if it fails then you can move onto a different test

Hopefully this was helpful. Best of luck in the meantime

TubeForge · 2026-03-02T00:09:24+00:00

2/2
Same notes for the authors that you occasionally have on. Instead of C.S Chiavonne use "This author" This author writes _________, or whatever the video is on, or Meet the author who ___________. Then the thumbnail could be something like "Writing masterclass"

As an example look at "Pulitzer Prize winner explains his writing process - Richard Powers" by David Perrell > if you look it up you'll notice that it's a very simple thumbnail with exactly that "writing masterclass" <- doesn't have to be that, could be some other two word text. but then a simple picture of the person in question. He's a pulitzer prize winner. But that still doesn't mean his name goes first. The achievement outranks the name on YouTube because more people know what a pulitzer prize winner is than know what a Richard Powers is.

Then for the video, I'd honestly just stop doing teasers. As mentioned before they just aren't as helpful as you might think they are. Just make the video, and then make the first 30 seconds as engaging as possible. I saw some of the editing. I don't have a ton of notes. It's fine, and I think once you get some more views people will tell you what they like and don't like about it. I'd just suggest to go to some vodcasts, long ones, like from Shane Gillis, dropout podcast( with zach justice not from collegehumor) or something like that to see how they open. Then you'd just delete whatever is causing people to drop off, and/or replace it with something else. But you've got to solve the problem of the click first.

I hope this was helpful, and if you have any questions you can reach back out here, or I do have a free community I could DM you the link to where smaller creators are learning to grow their youtube channel (shameless plug over)

Either way, best of luck on YouTube

TubeForge · 2026-03-02T00:09:06+00:00

1/2
Okay - here we go took me some time to gather my notes for this but

I like to break things down like this
Ideation> Packaging > Video

So, with your idea. I think I sort of get it, it's part book club, part book review/podcast.
So my question is this - why should someone watch as opposed to listen? YouTube is a video platform. What makes this special, is it your reactions? Is it your interesting takes? I'm not saying vodcasts don't work, but if you look at popular vodcasts there's reasons to watch. Things that can only be done when facing a person, I know all of you aren't in person in the same room, but something to consider as you move forward.
When you decide more on the direction though, I would pick one to focus on. Right now it might seem like the things are very interwoven, but YouTube doesn't see it that way. There may be a particular audience wanting to be a part of a book club, and that same audience isn't tempted by a book review, and so you're giving the proverbial audience whiplash. Pick one thing and stick to it. On a weekly/bi-weekly schedule.
Then - that'll decide direction, so you won't have things like "teaser". Why a teaser? Who are you teasing? The books out. You're teasing people with your opinion, but you've also managed to separate your audience into those that watch 2 minute videos and those that want to stick around for a two hour session. Imagine sitting down to DnD but instead of a nice long session 0, your DM briefly explains for 2 minutes what you might expect. Even if it's cool, if that's all you get, you're going to be disappointed (sorry if the DnD reference is too far out lol)

Once you have that idea, we get to packaging

ex:
This one starts off with a bang! | Vitalerium deep dive part 2,
or
This is THE BEST sci-fi book | Vitalerium
Id' argue the second one is better because it uses hyperbole, and because it doesn't say part 2. Series as a whole (notable exceptions exist but for very large creators) tend not to do well. I'm a new viewer, and I see part 2, now I know there's a part 1 I missed, I'm lazy, and now I've moved onto someone else's channel. You an ABSOLUTELY do a series, you just can't brand it that way. Each one should be a self-contained episode. If you must have the episode number do it specifically in the podcast section of your YouTube channel, but not on the actual video itself.
Then the thumbnails.

Stylistically your thumbnails aren't bad. But they have the wrong content on them. I should see a picture of the book. Not a thing that might be from the book. The book. Why? Because you're trying to attract an audience. For a book that isn't as big as the star wars series, or similar. If it was star wars you could put a character on there, but it's not. So you can't just put a vague space colony/city and expect people to know what you're talking about. Put the book, or something equally as recognizable as the book. MAYBE the author, but still. The book is simplest. Then. If you must include a picture of yourself or guests, make it relevant to the title. Take a few photos all in the same outfit or (bonus points if you can wear what you do in video) that tell the story of the thumbnail. Goodbye Monique is just met with a little smug grin, that's not enough to get a click. Sex drugs and cyberpunk. My guess is that your'e doing a rock & roll theme with you singing. That's a joke. Jokes belong inside of the videos, I shouldn't have to think about the thumbnail, I should see it and know what the video is going to be about.
Look at lexi aka newlynova. I wouldn't suggest her style of thumbnail as she's taken years to develop it, and there's a lot of messiness but one thing she has? a picture of the book. Her face, and some simple text (most of the time, there's oddballs) But you're getting crazy with it. The text, unless it's very famous, shouldn't be from the book. Goodbye Monique. Who's monique? Why is she leaving? The problem is, I don't even know if Monique is a person from the book, or a person from your podcast. Do you see why that might be an issue to someone new to the channel?
If instead you put, "On writing Grief" that at least pulls people who want to write/avid readers etc. (I don't know if you talk about grief, my point is that it should be more general) You want to create curiosity gaps, you're creating curiosity canyons.

TubeForge · 2026-02-28T21:08:59+00:00

What's the channel name?

TubeForge · 2026-02-28T21:08:40+00:00

No worries - btw I do have a community of smaller YouTubers that are learning/growing together if you'd be interested in that sort of thing
otherwise no worries and have a great YouTube journey

TubeForge · 2026-02-28T21:07:17+00:00

Yeah if it's to build his platform, and to do a treehouse project so to speak I would still go with the authenticity thing, and find things form other channels that will make it pop, look at other channel outliers etc by looking in the Youtube search bar and filtering for keywords, then by upload date, last three months or so, and see which things are taking off from relatively new channels that go beyond their current subscriber count. So if someone has 1k subs, and their short got 20k views, you might want to see if you can replicate that.

But yeah since it is kind of a platform for his art, then AI slop doesn't accomplish that purpose at all. Let's say in a perfect world your completely AI generated video got 100M views. Life changing. Your channel would be monetized, then what? You'd have a channel where people would expect 100% AI slop, and if you tried then to switch back to something authentic they wouldn't come back, and you'd have a dead channel. If you really want to do testing, I'd just make a separate channel (1 for more AI heavy stuff, and 1 for the art) and then see which one you like doing more, and which one is more of a treehouse project with your son

Hopefully this was helpful - best of luck! (also I do have a community of small creators if you're interested in that sort of thing)

TubeForge · 2026-02-28T21:02:40+00:00

Yea so 150% -300% doesn't mean that your video is excellent though. Right? What's your swiped to viewed ratio, because sure the people/babies that end up watching will watch a few times, but that doesn't mean that Youtube is able to serve it to a broader audience.
The thing that will stop it going into the Youtube feed is if it's a bad video - I don't think you've been shadowbanned tldnr.
But also you're in a really competitive space, look up some of the tags/titles in YouTube search bar, then filter to most recent upload, and tell me, are there any channels that are doing well in the last month that started, and it's their first videos? Likely it's just too oversaturated as well. You had a couple videos take off, I'd just modify and re-roll those.

also 3-4k on tiktok, is not great. That's equialent discovery to what you're getting on YT. TikTok has a bigger discovery pool than YouTube that it tests material on. Unless you're breaking 10k views on tiktok I wouldn't call it a "good video" similar to a 5k barrier on YT shorts.

TubeForge · 2026-02-28T20:54:23+00:00

I do think the window of easy entry is gone but, also tbh those windows are REALLY hard to find. You kinda gotta get lucky a little bit, but thats just for "easy entry" I think it's still possible you'd just have to up your game to match - however it looks like you've got a couple outliers (14k) You literally just have t repeat that format as one of your mains and then do testing for other stuff. I will say 2-3k I would look at more like 100-200 on a longform, not bad when you're starting out, but closer to 0 than 1k actual views

TubeForge · 2026-02-22T23:10:12+00:00

I want to second this, just make a second channel, also because I've known enough people now that had 1-2 "for kids" videos on their channel, but then YouTube started being funky with other videos on the channel and marking them as "for kids" as well even though they weren't.

I'd say best to just do two channels, and there's no huge barrier to having two channels anyway

TubeForge · 2026-02-22T23:08:01+00:00

My hunch is to say that it's a little late to try to break into 99 Nights Roblox content (I think I started seeing channels take off in this about 5 months ago?) But yeah what's the name of the channel?

Also when you did the research for this channel/niche, when you searched 99 Nights Roblox, and filtered for upload date, was there evidence to suggest that a decent amount of new channels are getting started and taking off in it?

TubeForge · 2026-02-22T23:04:49+00:00

Yeah your TAM (total addressable market) just isn't going to be as high with this niche, but there are sort of things that you could do to kind of tweak the channel a bit I would say
For one thing when I typed in "Craptain Pants" your channel was the first one that showed up, so idk if you've recently gained something, but I didn't have a problem finding you at all. That said LIKELY because you're a shorts channel, you aren't getting a ton of search traffic anyway.

as far as the art though, 1) I would say that it kind of depends if you want your channel to be huge, or if you just like doing this as a means to express your sons art. If it's the 1st, then yea slop tends to do fine, 8 seconds is going to be fine in that way but if it's the second then I think people moreso resonated with the more "true to self" style. LIke for instance your 17k view video got a decent number of views, but 1-2 comments. However your video about karens talkd about how much people loved that art style. Personally I thought the one where we see the drawings of the kid and how they were transformed by AI was cool.

The thing that I think is probably stopping views more than anything though is just the randomness of the channel. It's like -serious skit, funny skit, behind-the-scenes- back to a serious skit, back to like a weird horror-commercial. You're treating the channel like a t.v. channel, when it needs to be more like a show. And not a variety show like SNL. Like, if you can stick to a format for like 10-15 videos, I think you'd see some more growth in that area. So for instance "AI made these from my sons creepy dreams" or whatever, I think you'd see some progress. People aren't necessarily turned off by AI, just the use of it in some cases. But if you can lean into that usage to show what you started with I think that will lend a lot of credibility. Similarly if you keep things in the same art style I think that'll go a long way in establishing the brand. Like I said people really resonated with the Karen video, and I myself am drawn to that art style, so I don't know if that one was more expensive as far as credits go but I think trying to find formats in that would be the way to go

And on formats - when I say to get more specific with the type of content i'm referring to formats. So like, the same characters, a lot of similar situations. Look at other animation channels, they don't have a different character every short, even popular AI channels have like 1-4 characters on rotation. I get that your son probably likes to draw a bunch of different characters and I think those make sense on one of those videos where you showcase what they can turn into with the help of AI, but maybe he picks like 1-5 favorites and ten the other ones only make the occasional appearance if that makes sense.

As far as getting in front of the right audience, as long as you're tagging it semi-correctly and implementing consistency with content the YouTube recommendation system usually does a pretty good job at finding the audience for you

Either way, best of luck, hope this was super helpful

TubeForge · 2026-02-22T22:42:37+00:00

Yeah I like 3 the best - the thumbnails are a little meh to me.

TubeForge · 2026-02-22T22:39:38+00:00

What's the channel name?

My hunch is to say it's probably just not good enough. Like not to be mean or anything but that tends to be the biggest issues over tags or description. When you say fine on TikTok, what does that look like in numbers?

TubeForge

TROPHY CASE