In this issue, I’d like to highlight one of the channels that inspired me to make the leap and upload my own content. Last week was some statistics stuff, so this week is some Youtube insights.
Unexpected Inspiration
Late last year, I started to watch a channel called Fireship. Fireship is a channel dedicated to code tutorials for web development and artificial intelligence. I have no idea why I was recommended this channel because I don’t do either of these things, but for some reason, I was so hooked on his videos.
Fireship stood out to me for several reasons:
the channel is faceless
most of the videos are static images or gifs
I almost have no idea what he is talking about in most of his videos, and yet, I still heavily binged his videos.
Conventional advice about Youtube tells you that you should:
show your face
have dynamic content
attract a crowd that is into what you’re talking about
In other words, Fireship showed me that a channel could be successful despite flying in the face of typical advice.
To be fair, the bullet points I listed about Fireship are not the reason that I ultimately subscribed. Fireship is funny, and he has multiple formats that are all interesting in their own ways. As I consumed more and more of his content, I knew in my heart that the content that I would want to make would be similar.
And to be completely frank, lots of my earlier contents were remixed versions of content he had created. I was initially hooked by his “100 Seconds Of…” videos for different Javascript libraries, and these inspired my initial set of Pocket Stat videos. My first big video, 100+ Statistics Concepts You Should Know, is a direct remix of Fireship’s concept listicles on computer science and web development.
I’m not ashamed that my ideas weren’t original; I was taking a proven concept and putting my own spin on things. And this helped to build my channel in the early days, where you really have to fight to get the attention of your initial viewers.
I eventually found my own voice and have deviated from Fireship’s content style, but I’ll never forget what Fireship did for me. His channel acted as a model for the content I wanted to create. It is hard to figure out who your crowd is early on, so getting a shortcut to a video idea is always welcome. Fireship is just one of many channels that I draw inspiration from; to name a few, I look to Quanta Magazine, Veritasium and 3Brown1Blue as model channels to aspire to be like.
Eventually, I’d like to start making my own statistics and probability courses like Fireship too. I’ve grown more confident in my teaching abilities though my videos, and I’d like to diversify my income sources. I know that I’ll also see how he does it as well, even if I have no interest in learning web development.
Moral of the story: Pick a channel or two that you can look to as a model for what you do. Pick models who represent what you want to be in the vast Youtube community.
That’s it for this week, I’ll see you in the next one.
Christian
😵💫 What am I working on right now?
Working on a video about power and sample size calculations
🧐 What am I enjoying right now?
Books — Last week, I was listening to Supercommunicators (affiliate), but the newest Cal Newport book just dropped: Slow Productivity (affiliate). Cal has been a huge inspiration to the channel and my philosophy towards making content. I base many of my systems off of his guidance, and the channel is better for it. Check it out!
Shows — Brooklyn Nine-Nine just dropped on Netflix, so that’s what I’m on currently.
📺 Recent videos
What haunts statisticians at night — a video explaining the problem that plagues statistical analysis: the confounder. Confounders get in the way of figuring out causal effects, and I explain why they’re a problem. Also, it’s my first ever sponsored video!