The journey to becoming a full-time tech YouTuber E56 (Jarrod Farncomb)

In this week's episode we had the pleasure of talking with Canberra-based YouTuber, hardware reviewer, and all-around tech guru, Jarrod Farncomb. Jarrod started his YouTube journey just over five years ago as a creative side hobby, and now has amassed 230k subscribers across all of his accounts. In 2019, he decided to quit his job in IT in order to pursue content creation full-time and hasn’t looked back since. As you can imagine, Jarrod’s has a lot of great insights into the best tactics for getting your YouTube career started, picking your content type,  as well as how to sustainably grow your audience. Our guest also lifts back the curtain on how YouTubers monetise their content in 2020 as ad revenue becomes less lucrative for content creators. The show then concludes with Jarrod discussing his humble beginnings and how he has evolved as a YouTuber over the past five years.

 

What we talk about

• Jarrod’s journey to becoming a fulltime YouTuber 
• How to monetise your content
• Tips for starting out on YouTube and how to grow your audience

Links from this episode

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2Rzju32yQPkQ7oIhmeuLwg (Jarrod’s channel on YouTube)

https://twitter.com/JarrodsTech (Jarrod on Twitter)

https://www.facebook.com/jarrodstech (Jarrod on Facebook)

 

Find us elsewhere

https://futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe Website)

https://www.instagram.com/futuretri.be/ (Future Tribe on Instagram)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/germainemuller/ (Germaine on LinkedIn)

https://www.instagram.com/germa_ne/ (Germaine on Instagram)

https://futuretheory.com.au/ (Futuretheory Website) 

 

Transcript 

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

 

[00:00:00] Germaine: [00:00:00] Hello, future tribe on this week's episode, I am joined by Jarrod Farncomb. A YouTuber, or,  how would you describe yourself? Jarrod? 
[00:00:09] Jarrod: [00:00:09] Yeah, I guess tech YouTuber is what everyone tends to.
[00:00:13] Refer to me as, 
[00:00:14] Germaine: [00:00:14] yeah. Well, and truly tech YouTuber, you released your first video about five years ago. And now you're up to what, 214,000 subscribers, on your channel. So that's, that's pretty solid. And you've got a second channel as well that you started recently. Is that right? 
[00:00:29] Jarrod: [00:00:29] Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
[00:00:30] Been going for five years and, yeah, I just started a second channel couple of months ago, just to kind of experiment with some new kinds of content. 
[00:00:39] Germaine: [00:00:39] And what's the second channel 
[00:00:41] Jarrod: [00:00:41] called it's just Jarrod's laptops. So similar to the main channel, which is Jarrod's Tech. 
[00:00:46] Germaine: [00:00:46] yeah,
[00:00:50] but it's, but it's pretty cool. You're sort of creating this, , actually hold on. You, you were aware of Linus tech tips, right? 
[00:00:56] Jarrod: [00:00:56] Yeah, of course. 
[00:00:57] Germaine: [00:00:57] Is it inspired by you know, first name [00:01:00] and then last name has sort of the category sort of approach or was it just something that you came up with independent of that.
[00:01:07] Jarrod: [00:01:07] Yeah. So, I mean, I definitely did spend a while thinking about how I wanted to do it, whether I just wanted to go like random catchy name or actually put part of my name behind it. And yeah, I did see some other channels like that and I thought, you know, that sounds pretty good. I'll put my name in it and stand behind the thing rather than just be some random.
[00:01:26] Name? That means whatever. Like, that's just, that's just what I chose. Could've gone either way 
[00:01:31] Germaine: [00:01:31] though 
[00:01:32] Yeah, I mean, but it's, I think, you know, over the last few years, it's it's, um, Probably being a pretty wise decision. I know you didn't put a lot thought behind it, but I think the way things are transpiring now, um, there's a lot of, um, a lot of, I guess, power behind sort of being an independent YouTube or an independent personality, especially when, you know, People can just get paid to do stuff.
[00:01:56] So I think having your name there, yes. It's only your first name, [00:02:00] but, um, that adds a bit of, um, credibility to you that you're sort of putting your name out there and saying, you know, when I, when I give you my thoughts, um, it is, it is me. It's not just this faceless entity that can take money from, you know, questionable sources to say certain things.
[00:02:17] Jarrod: [00:02:17] Yeah, exactly. Sorry. Essentially it becomes the brand, I suppose. 
[00:02:21] Germaine: [00:02:21] Yeah, yeah. As an individual as well. Now, when did you start? So you started YouTube five years ago. was that like a full time thing or are you experimenting back then? 
[00:02:31]Jarrod: [00:02:31] Uh, yes. So basically the way it started is kind of interesting, I was just lying in bed one night and I couldn't sleep.
[00:02:37] And it was like three in the morning and I'd been there for hours and I was just thinking like, wouldn't it be fun to like create some videos or something? Cause I've been watching a lot of other channels out there. And I thought, you know, I could do that. That's that doesn't seem that hard. I mean, it was a bit harder than I thought at the time, but story.
[00:02:55] Yeah. So I pretty much got out of bed that night and just. Made the channel. [00:03:00] And I think I made the first video a few days after that. It was just like a basic tutorial for how to do something in Linux which, you know, the channel isn't really about. But yeah, that's, that's how it got started just five years ago.
[00:03:13] Couldn't sleep, which lead to the point where I just had to get up and do something and, uh, yeah. I thought at that time though, it was just, uh, I tried to do one video a week for the first, probably first two or three years. It was maybe one a week. There were a few breaks in there in between where I just wouldn't do anything for a few months, but yeah, it's definitely part time, at least in the beginning.
[00:03:33]moved into full time. it was March, 2019, I believe. So I've been a bit over, year now 
[00:03:41] Germaine: [00:03:41] Right. Wow. So how old were you when you, so five years ago? How old are you. 
[00:03:46] Jarrod: [00:03:46] Uh, yeah, it would have, yeah, it would have been 25 back then. Cause I'm 30 today. 
[00:03:50] Germaine: [00:03:50] 30 today. Okay. And so you started that, were you working in a similar field, like in a techie field at the time or?
[00:03:59] Jarrod: [00:03:59] Yeah. [00:04:00] So I've always worked in tech to some degree. So five years ago, I think when, where I was working, then I think I was still working in, uh, as a CIS admin. So systems administrator, so like managing servers and computers and that type of thing. And then shortly after that, I started to move to, penetration testing.
[00:04:19] So like essentially hacking websites and you know, that type of stuff, which was pretty fun. But yeah, just doing the videos on the sides I found, I just found more interest in that over time. 
[00:04:31] Germaine: [00:04:31] Yeah. So you're, you're a Canberra boy or what, where are you? Where are you? I mean, you're in Canberra now, right?
[00:04:38] Jarrod: [00:04:38] Yeah, sir. I'm originally from Darwin, but I've, I've lived here since 2003, I think just after the Bush fires. So that's how long I've been here. 
[00:04:48] Germaine: [00:04:48] So basically a Canberra , boy. 
[00:04:50] Jarrod: [00:04:50] Yeah. 
[00:04:52] Germaine: [00:04:52] Awesome. And then going through school, did you study. Sort of take IT. Or was that, was that just something that you fell into your [00:05:00] post-school 
[00:05:01] Jarrod: [00:05:01] Yeah so I tried to do pretty much.
[00:05:04] As many IT classes as I could. So I pick much whatever I could just max out that limit and everything else, just nowhere near as interested in. So yeah. And we tried to do a focus on that, even though a lot of the classes back then, what particularly not interesting, or, you know, like some of them were just really boring things like, you know, learn Microsoft Excel and word processing and that type of thing.
[00:05:29] But I found that more interesting than like English and you know, that type of stuff. 
[00:05:34] Germaine: [00:05:34] Yeah. Yeah. I still remember. We used to work on Excel and, you know, we had to come up with, a way of like generating drawers. Using Excel and it was cool, but you know, it's, it's, it's quite different now use Excel day in, day out, but nowhere near to that capacity, because there's just dedicated software to do that and dedicated ways to do that.
[00:05:54] So I think, I mean, naturally it shifts a lot, but I think in the last sort of. 10 [00:06:00] 15 years it's shifted even more than more than we would have expected, especially with sort of the rise of rise of SAS. And then, um, more, more sort of, uh, tech, tech adjacent stuff, or it adjacent stuff like you do on YouTube.
[00:06:13] Now you were talking about doing sort of penetration testing. Um, I'm sure at the time you were sort of seeing the, of the importance of cyber security and, that would have been, you know, a lot of. A lot of potential there for you, whether it's, you know, not, not that everything's about money, but there would have been potential to make a solid amount of money.
[00:06:33] If you were able to actually at a relatively young age to build out more expertise and then move out and start consulting. Did that ever sort of come up or did you do that for a little while while running the YouTube channel? 
[00:06:47] Jarrod: [00:06:47] Yeah. So I definitely considered that. So there is for sure, a lot of money in the security field, as you say, it's definitely expanding, the place where I worked.
[00:06:57] It was rapidly growing, still growing at the [00:07:00] moment from what I've heard from some old colleagues. So yeah, definitely a lot of money to be made there, but I guess what happened for me was a. Eventually the income I was making on the side from YouTube kinda, you know, it became on par with what I was earning there.
[00:07:17] And. I wasn't, I didn't really have a good work life balance at that time. So, you know, it'd be staying up till like two, three, 4:00 AM and waking up, going to work, get home pretty much work on videos, you know, it wasn't really sustainable. So once the kind of, I was kind of getting the same amount of money from both sides.
[00:07:36]well, it was my partner. She talked me into, she basically said, you know, you shouldn't, you should leave your job and just do the one that you, you really want her. And yeah, I really wanted to do the videos. It was just, personally more interesting. I mean, I really do like, security is interesting, but. Yeah, the bit just making the videos.
[00:07:53] I think that was the part that would be fuller. And you know, I've been doing it for a year, no regrets at all. It's been great. So 
[00:07:58] Germaine: [00:07:58] yeah. Can [00:08:00] we touch on that income side of things now? I know you, I'm not sure if YouTube doesn't like, uh, YouTube is sharing the sort of. Numbers or whether YouTube is just, don't like sharing their own numbers and I'm not going to necessarily ask you to, you know, roll that your tax return, but give us an idea of like, I mean, how would you make money YouTube for the people who don't really, I don't really get that.
[00:08:23] I know there are different facets, but how, how did you sort of start to monetize that, that field? 
[00:08:29] Jarrod: [00:08:29] Hopefully I can explain it because I still have difficulty explaining it to my parents. I think they don't really understand what I do, but, uh, yeah, it's probably, um, about half of the income comes from YouTube ads.
[00:08:45] So basically. Someone watches your video and they're served an ad and you make money based on that up. So with the tech audience, I think the amount of money that you generally make is lower compared to other fields, because a lot of people are [00:09:00] tech savvy and they use tools like ad block. So that kind of does hurt a bit compared to, you know, if I was doing something a bit more mainstream, But, uh, yeah, so it's mostly based on, uh, ad views.
[00:09:10] There is a little bit with a YouTube premium because YouTube, uh, they sell, you know, like a service where you pay monthly and you don't get ads. So I think people that do that. the creators that they watch end up getting a bigger cut compared to what you would get by ads. So that's, that's a part of it as well, but outside of YouTube, the other 50% is probably just Amazon affiliate programs.
[00:09:34] So basically if I'm looking at a product and you know, I want to show people where they can buy that or see further reviews for instance. And I link to that on Amazon. If someone buys up there. Then you get a small, um, a cut out of that. It's only, it depends on the category, but it's usually like a couple of percent or something.
[00:09:52] So yeah, it really varies based on what the item is. And yeah, if you find 
[00:09:57] Germaine: [00:09:57] that, that adds up, obviously as, as [00:10:00] more people buy, obviously they're just. Keep stacking. And I guess it's just like Youtube  watching YouTube and the money off YouTube ads. It, the beauty there is that you can scale it up and it won't necessarily take up more of your time to scale that up.
[00:10:12]because, once he started getting more views, like it doesn't cost you time for, you know, 200,000 views versus a million views. And I guess that's where you've gotta put in the work at the front end. And then off the back end, you can start to sort of, as your catalog builds up, you can start to generate.
[00:10:27] More and more views, and hopefully more and more income. 
[00:10:31] Jarrod: [00:10:31] Yeah, exactly. So a lot of the stuff I'll like a lot of the videos I create, a lot of them are, I guess, slow burners in a sense. So you put one up initially the views might not do too great, but you know, over two years that really does add up. And if you're putting out multiple a week over the course of a few years, yeah, it does add up.
[00:10:51] Germaine: [00:10:51] Now I want to, I want to get down into the numbers a bit more. Um, and I don't want to sort of your comfort levels. I'm happy with the sort of ranges, but, [00:11:00] now to say your you're doing this full time, are we, are we talking, you know, either side of a hundred K a year sort of income levels, are we talking lower higher?
[00:11:12] Just to give an idea of, YouTube as a, as a full time thing? What's the potential there? 
[00:11:18] Jarrod: [00:11:18] Yeah, I'm definitely above a hundred as possible. That's for sure. 
[00:11:23] Germaine: [00:11:23] Yeah. Okay. and that's just so, and so I guess you're doing it by yourself at the moment. There's no, no other team behind you. 
[00:11:31] Jarrod: [00:11:31] Yeah. At the moment, but at what I've got so much stuff here that it's, I'm kind of the main bottleneck in getting things out faster.
[00:11:39] So yeah. As a. As something that I would need to do in order to start growing at this point, I think might be to look into hiring, possibly some kind of assistant, something like that because yeah, my time becomes the main limitation. Once I get sent all these different products, I just currently do so much in a day.
[00:11:56] Germaine: [00:11:56] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to scale up that you then need to be more than just [00:12:00] Jared sort of working on the videos. so is it, is it a bit of a matter of, I guess, saving up to take that gamble, to then sort of take that next step up, to hiring someone, do you think, or what's, what's sort of, what's that tipping point for you?
[00:12:15] Jarrod: [00:12:15] Yeah, that's a, that's a tough one, so. I definitely, I think the tipping point has already been hit in terms of how much time I spend. I just haven't really looked into how much it would cost on the, I suppose, financial side or. Where the work would be done for instance, because at the moment I just do all the work at my house.
[00:12:33] Like, am I going to have someone come over to my place? Or am I going to have to go and get office space? And, you know, what's the cost associated with that? how far is it gonna have to be where like, we'll have to do your daily travel. So there's just all these different factors that I haven't really looked too much into yet.
[00:12:48] Germaine: [00:12:48] Are you thinking about it as a, as a business long term? Or are you still sort of, not in a negative way, but sort of thinking of it as a, as a fun thing that you're doing, that that earns an income as well? [00:13:00] Which what sort of mindset are you in at the moment? 
[00:13:03] Jarrod: [00:13:03] Yeah, I think at the moment it's more, you know, passion slash hobby that just happens to pay the bills.
[00:13:10] But at the same time, I, I do also like the idea of expanding yeah. And making it become more of a business. But at the same time, I think I would just have to be careful how that works because I've seen channels do that. And what happens is, you know, they offload the work to other people and then you just kind of feel that the, I guess, What the audience was originally, therefore changes over time and it becomes something else, you know, that might be good.
[00:13:37] Might be bad. So it just depends on how you go about it. I think. 
[00:13:41] Germaine: [00:13:41] Yeah, and I think some channels do it better than others. I've I'm, I'm, I've got YouTube premium. I'm an avid YouTube watcher. Always, you know, I'm about two years ago invested into equipment that I told myself I'm going to, you know, then used to shoot YouTube videos.
[00:13:57] Never got around to it because my, um, [00:14:00] job of sort of running the business and, um, all that just takes up too much time. But looking at the different YouTubers out there. I mean, you know, say unbox therapy and then there's Austin Evans, and then there's Linus tech tips. Um, these are all and say MKBHD as well, sort of throwing them in there.
[00:14:15] I think I've sort of named the, the big four, out there. and I, definitely get that point of like, I think on box therapy, for example, sometimes it does a lot of videos that. I just, just, I mean, just in my opinion, it's just a video for the sake of videos. similar to sort of Austin Evans, where I think, I mean, liners tech tips, they've, he's obviously really scaled it up, started by himself and I think one other person and scaled it up.
[00:14:41] So, I guess you've got a few blueprints to follow or. Or at least to look at and then sort of mimic, is that something that you're doing and I guess as a broader question as well, how much do you keep an eye on other YouTube channels and sort of what YouTube is doing when you're deciding on videos?
[00:14:59] Jarrod: [00:14:59] Yeah. So I [00:15:00] definitely watch a lot of other YouTube channels possibly too much. Like I'm subscribed to a lot of channels. I watch a lot of videos. I comment a lot on them. And then people always like, Oh my God, you're everywhere. So maybe I should. 
[00:15:14] Germaine: [00:15:14] I noticed that everywhere every time, every time I'm, I mean, I'm a subscriber, and you watch your videos before I make buying decisions.
[00:15:22]and, but yeah, you're on, you're commenting on every, which is, I mean, it's a smart marketing strategy as far as I'm concerned. I don't, I don't know if that's necessarily the number one reason you do it for, but, you know, I think that's a very smart approach. but sorry, I cut you off. 
[00:15:36] Jarrod: [00:15:36] No worries.
[00:15:37] Honestly, I think it's just. Fun to engage in the community. Like a lot of the posts are mostly just, you know, say something funny in the video and make a joke about it. That kind of thing. It's just a bit of fun. Um, yeah. so with those other channels that I watch, I think Linus in particular has probably done.
[00:15:53] One of the better jobs in terms of, I suppose not really changing over time. I mean, that [00:16:00] channel does a video a day, so obviously too, right? Yeah. Sometimes. So obviously like, They have teams of people, you know, testing out all these things and writing the scripts and doing the editing and all that. I think it's at the point where, you know, a line is probably just steps in front of the camera, you know, record says bit and then moves on to the next thing.
[00:16:19] So I dunno if I would want to turn into that level of, I guess, video creation machine. I'd still want to be doing a lot of the actual stuff myself, because I just find that part of it. Interesting. Although I do like all of it. So, you know, video editing, using the camera with that type of thing. So I think I would always have to be involved just in the different pots to some degree just because I like doing it.
[00:16:41] Germaine: [00:16:41] Yeah. I think you're, you're, it's pretty evident to me that you're doing it for the fun of it. and you know, it's not that line of, for example, from Linus tech tips, isn't doing it for the fun of it. But, I think he's crossed across that threshold into like business owner and then doing it as part of a, a business.
[00:16:59] A purpose. I [00:17:00] mean, I imagine this schedule being basically like go, you know, featuring in this video, then go to this other set feature in that video, like they've got three to five sets, they've got three different YouTube channels. So, for those of you who aren't YouTube as Linus tech tips is probably one of the bigger, I mean, I think they've had 10 million subscribers on their channel, from what I can tell 15 to 20 staff, at least, Mike.
[00:17:24] Proper. I think they've got probably two people working on just collaborations with other brands and how they, you know, sort of managing that. And they do, different festivals and things like that as well, or well conference or whatever you call it, the expert. now that's obviously a cross, like they've, they've crossed so many boundaries.
[00:17:42] Like they have their own merge, things like that as well. How do you make decisions around sort of the YouTube channel going past just YouTube videos for yourself, like merchandise, doing sort of, I mean, at the moment you can't do off screen, like in person events cause of [00:18:00] coronavirus, but have you thought about those things and sort of looked at those things as in the future, like sort of opportunities or how, how do you look at that?
[00:18:10] Jarrod: [00:18:10] Yeah. I think thinking about like what I could do to expand things in the future, like that, I guess more on the business type of side, you know, I guess most people just resort to much, and I have nothing against that. Like maybe I'll do something like that in the future, but at the same time, I kind of liked the idea of, I suppose, a more tangible and useful product.
[00:18:31] I'm just not really sure what I would be able to do for that. I mean, I mostly review laptops. So you might think, Oh, maybe you should like team up with some company and sell some kind of laptop. That's, you know, like got all the stuff you like and that you can actually stand behind and recommend. And, you know, I think that, well, it has its own positives and negatives things like, you know, it's hard to, it would be hard to review other laptops and then.
[00:18:58] You know, come in and be like, Oh, [00:19:00] I've got this other thing that you can buy that's better. So I think that's going to be a fine line between that if I did go down that route, but, uh, yeah, otherwise just being, I've been trying to have a think about what I could do actually offer value rather than just, you know, say slap a logo on a shirt, that type of thing.
[00:19:21] I haven't really come up with anything yet, but it's definitely something that I am thinking about. 
[00:19:25] Germaine: [00:19:25] Yeah. I mean, it's yeah. Could turn into sort of the unbox therapy and later case sort of debacle in terms of picking what you've got to do next. You do next. I mean, I can't believe that they are generic.
[00:19:38] I believe that that whole thing happened. So you've gotta be, be wise about it. Cause I think, YouTube specially, n be quite, yeah. Fecal sort of, space,  the best of times. so no, totally understand that. Now let's talk about, the videos that you put out. So you review laptops, is that, that that's about all that you do at the moment?
[00:19:59] Is that [00:20:00] right? 
[00:20:01] Jarrod: [00:20:01] The it's the main thing that I focus on, it's probably what started getting the traction five years ago. But I do other things as well. Like just more general tech stuff, like desktop PCs, graphics, card, CPU, comparisons, that type of thing. That's mostly because those are things that I'm personally interested in.
[00:20:22] So when I watch other tech channels, I do watch up electron laptop channels. But, mostly I probably myself am more interested in the desktop side. So I try to do, I try to make some videos, you know, just based on that, because I'm interested in it and those videos don't perform as well, typically as the laptop content.
[00:20:40] Cause I suppose that's what the audience is there for. But you know, I think you've got to do your, like something for yourself rather than just only making the stuff that people are there for.
[00:20:50]Germaine: [00:20:50] Yeah. And then there's probably an element of, I think laptop sales would greatly outstrip desktop sales, especially in the consumer market.
[00:20:57] Um, and that's [00:21:00] not looking at any stats, so I might be completely wrong, but that would sort of be what I, what I expect the numbers to look like. So, I think it would make sense that more people would watch laptop videos as well. Talking about these people. your based in Canberra, most people don't know where Canberra is.
[00:21:15] Don't even know how to pronounce Canberra. and then as a, as a bigger picture we're based in, your based in Australia, so say 20, 25 million people, where do you, where do you find most of your viewers coming from? Is it the U S is that no surprise there or. 
[00:21:33] Jarrod: [00:21:33] Yeah so Australia makes up like three to 4% of my views.
[00:21:37] So it is actually on the lowest side. It's it's quite 
[00:21:40] low. I wasn't restricting that. 
[00:21:42] Yeah. It's always interesting because, a lot of companies don't have a presence in Australia, so, you know, I might have to reach out to like a team in the U S or somewhere else. And they'll just say, Oh, sorry, you're not in our region, so we can't help you.
[00:21:55] And they just leave it at that. And it's like, or they just think, you know, you're [00:22:00] in Australia. So you're in the Australian viewers and it's like, well, that's not the case. It's a global audience. The US is definitely number one. 
[00:22:08] Germaine: [00:22:08] What sort of, if you don't mind me asking what sort of view and numbers do you get across all your videos in a, in a given month?
[00:22:15]Jarrod: [00:22:15] So for the last couple of months, I think I was doing 4 million per month, but it has gone down a little bit. I think there was a, uh, rise with a lot of channels over the last few months, as a lot of people have been stuck at home. So I think a little more people being, be watching YouTube, but I think some countries might be returning to normal.
[00:22:35] Not really sure, but yeah, the views have started going down recently. But yeah, the last few months, um, that was definitely a bit of a Slack. 
[00:22:44] Germaine: [00:22:44] It sort of spiked up with COVID becoming a more serious thing. Would you say, is that yeah. 
[00:22:51] Jarrod: [00:22:51] Yeah. I think that's, that's fair to say because in previous years, um, I don't think there's been that much of a boost early on in the year.
[00:23:00] [00:22:59] Normally a lot of the viewership happens later in the year because that's a lot of sales in the U S like there's, I think black Friday in November and Christmas. And, you know, all that sort of stuff. And then in sort of January timeframe, there's a lot less going on. So fewer people are actually looking to buy products.
[00:23:18] So, you know, reviews, less interesting, I suppose. 
[00:23:21] Germaine: [00:23:21] Yeah. So what's like, what, what were your December view views like, like closer to 3 million or, or not that not, you know, 75% of the formula. Like, are we talking a huge variance there? 
[00:23:35] Jarrod: [00:23:35] I can't recall off the top of my head, I want to say somewhere around maybe 2 million, like it was on its way up.
[00:23:42] Yeah. So it was going up. It was definitely trending up. And then normally early 2020, you know, it probably would have started going down a bit and then. A few months in the opposite happened. It started going up. I can't complain too much about that. 
[00:23:56] Germaine: [00:23:56] Yeah, definitely. I mean, YouTube, I think is one of those [00:24:00] spaces that have really done well, going through Corona virus, I've seen, like you said, the number of videos being pushed out, in some cases to the detriment of quality, but in a lot of cases, not, not the case.
[00:24:12]so YouTube sort of has survived now talking about YouTube. as, as a YouTube sort of publishing videos, how do you have any tips for people who either want to get started on YouTube or, create a presence on YouTube? What, what, what would you say? I mean, your early days, was it really just about putting out quality content and then just slowly building that up?
[00:24:36] Or were there big, things that you did that created positive trends or things that you did that created sort of negative trends? 
[00:24:44]Jarrod: [00:24:44] Yeah. So I've never had any videos like go viral or anything like that. So it's just been constant steady growth. And I think the key to that over the longterm is really just to stick with it and be consistent.
[00:24:57] And with YouTube in particular, I think [00:25:00] they really prefer you to sorta niche down. So like find an area that you know, a lot about and make videos on that. So for example, if I just only went into laptops, I could probably make the channel do battle. But as I mentioned before, you know, I like doing all these different types of things, but yet if you just focus on one area,  I think YouTube will know, they'll know you as the person for that particular sort of content.
[00:25:27] So when someone's searching that they'll be more likely to surface your videos to them. And it will understand that the audience is after that type of thing. And then it'll find other people who are also interested in that type of thing. Then my watch similar channels, and then start promoting the videos out to them.
[00:25:41] So I think. Getting started to begin with. I'd recommend just being consistent, picking something you're interested in and that other people are interested in. So you definitely be what you want to make stuff that people will get value from. And, yeah, those are probably the main things. 
[00:25:58] Germaine: [00:25:58] How did you find your [00:26:00] videos style?
[00:26:00] Because I would say that you do have a very distinct approach to, to your videos, at least, most of the ones that I've seen, have you like to do sort of a voiceover nice shots stats on the screen, things like that. how did you find that? Oh, was it a lot of research or was it sort of. Pumping out content and again, sort of, just, you know, doing more, ended up with more, more good work for lack of a better word.
[00:26:26] Jarrod: [00:26:26] Yeah, so I think in the early days back when I started. I wasn't as keen, being on camera. I mean, that's changed now. You get used to it, but at the same time, that's, I guess what I've become used to doing. So a lot of my videos will be just voiceover and then I'll film some nice shots to put over the top of that.
[00:26:45] And my view of it personally is that, you know, if I want to find information on a product, I want to, I want to look at that product and I want to see things about it. So why should 90% of the video be my face telling you about it? When I can just show you what I'm talking about. 
[00:26:59] Germaine: [00:26:59] Hmm. [00:27:00] I, I wholeheartedly agree.
[00:27:02] I think I've found myself more and more about two or three months ago, I bought a new laptop. And what I was looking for was were videos that showed me the product from every angle that the angles that you can't witness. In, like press photos, cause most press photos, stick to, you know, fairly standard, just like two or three angles.
[00:27:22]and, and I think that's another reason why a lot of the viewers like what you do and you also get down into the nitty gritty, which I guess  it's a double edged sword, right? Cause one, you're not, you can't necessarily get into the nitty gritty and then maintain sort of those surface level, , moms and dads, so to speak who watch videos.
[00:27:40], but then he can't stay surface level. Cause I mean, I think a lot of people are surfaced. They want, then there's no necessary. There's not a lot of value that you can provide. So was it quite intentional that you were going to go in and sort of. Really make the videos that you want. , you want to see.
[00:27:57] Jarrod: [00:27:57] Yeah. So exactly you hit the nail on the head that [00:28:00] perfectly. So that is somewhere something that I've wanted to focus the channel on is just trying to provide as much detailed information as I can, as if I was about to go and spend thousands of my own dollars on this damn thing. What would I want to know about what do I care about?
[00:28:14] So to do that, a lot of the video does sort of, I suppose, come off as more of an information dump. So there's just a lot of details and a lot of data from different testing, which takes days to complete. So some people do find that interesting, but yeah, there are definitely others that, you know, that aren't.
[00:28:31] Either don't care or they just, they don't understand without learning a lot more, additional information that they don't have time to figure out, or they're just, you know, they don't, they're not interested in that. So that's why I started the second channel is the main idea behind that was to be more, I suppose, just not as in depth, more sort of quick and to the point, I guess, So there are a lot of those other big channels you mentioned before.
[00:28:58] I think a lot of that [00:29:00] type of content misses out the details that I aim to provide. So that's what the second channel is attempting to sort of fill. So I do all the detailed testing on the main channel, and then once I know everything there is to know about it, in theory, I can go and make the second video on the other channel and just kind of do more of a summarized look at it.
[00:29:21] Germaine: [00:29:21] Yeah. Yeah. And so that second channel what's been growth and traction, like, and your experience, like when it comes to the second channel, has, I would assume it's been much quicker. 
[00:29:31] Jarrod: [00:29:31] Yes, so I put a few videos up before I actually like publicly announced it just to kind of see what would happen. So from the start I could have just been like, Hey, new channel, come in and check it out.
[00:29:44] And you know, maybe that would have been. not cheating, I guess, would have just been taking advantage what I've already built up. But I was curious to see what would happen, you know, if I was. Kind of approaching this as if I was starting from scratch. And a lot of people did see the channel name and it had my [00:30:00] name in it combined with laptops.
[00:30:01] So they kind of figured out pretty quickly that it was me. And I guess they hear my voice and maybe that's pretty unique. 
[00:30:07] Germaine: [00:30:07] I was one of those people. Okay. It just popped up in the recommendations. I was like, It did it, did he, I actually thought you changed your channel name originally. So I clicked and I was like, I mean, fair enough.
[00:30:18] Cause I'd watch a lot of laptop videos. I was like, okay, he's just nailing down a bit more. , but, but yeah, as it turns out, you, you were just creating a second channel. Cause I think when short circuit was created by Linus media group, , I think I might be wrong, but they were one of the quickest channels to get to, I think it was like 5 million subs without a single video, something crazy like that.
[00:30:38] Or maybe a million. 
[00:30:41] Jarrod: [00:30:41] They went up real fast. I can't remember. Cause a few people have done new channels lately. I remember one of them said something like, you know, we're not posting a video until we hit X amount of subscribers. So it kind of encourages the existing viewer base to move over. But I, yeah, I wanted to see what would happen before that.
[00:30:55] So I did eventually do that and. You know, obviously [00:31:00] things had a big uptick since then, but yeah, initially those first few videos that I did, they did pretty well because I think as mentioned before, , YouTube is pretty good at recommending content. Once it knows, like what sort of videos you're doing.
[00:31:14] So once I'd done two or three laptop videos, you know, it's probably like, Hey, this is a laptop channel. We're gonna go suggest these videos to other people that have seen other laptop videos. So a lot of the videos on that channel will actually coming from. , Recommendations and suggested, whereas the older main channel gets most of the views from such.
[00:31:34] So people just like typing into Google or in YouTube, you know, product XYZ, Revere. So it was kind of a different source of those views, which I found quite interesting. So that was a little fun experiment. 
[00:31:46] Germaine: [00:31:46] Yeah. What does a Jarrod's laptops sit at the second channel? How many subscribers on there now? 
[00:31:52] Jarrod: [00:31:52] I think it's 14,000.
[00:31:54] I'm not sure about the views. It's a bit up and down because. A lot of [00:32:00] people came in within like the last few weeks, once I publicly announced it. 
[00:32:05] Germaine: [00:32:05] Yeah. Have you sort of, is it fair to say that I'm guessing that if, if a lot of the views to that channel come from recommended and things like that, that, the subscribers to views ratio is a bit more disproportionate,  is that sort of, I mean, you haven't looked at the numbers, I would assume, but is that fair to say, do you know? 
[00:32:27] Jarrod: [00:32:27] So I haven't really compared them, but I'm more inclined to think that people are more likely to, I guess subscribe will stick around once they, from what, when they come in from a recommendation or a featured video or something like that.
[00:32:41] I think with such a lot of people are just, they want it or something. And then looking for an answer to that question. So they watch the content and they get what they want and, you know, they might just, they might just leave. But I think once something's suggested and you know, if it's more than just, you know, [00:33:00] products, whatever review and it's like, the approach is different rather than titling it, like a review, you make it more.
[00:33:08] I guess interesting and enticing, I guess I'm more like a, like a, a story, I suppose you want them to watch the video and, you know, rather than just saying all this information and daughter and stuff. You know, I guess I'm taking them on a journey, so to speak with the experience, if that makes sense. 
[00:33:31] Germaine: [00:33:31] Yeah.
[00:33:31] Yeah. So sort of like, you know, like this, you know, Dell's new laptop gets away too hot or, HBS laptop is probably the best in enlighten. You sort of click into it and you sort of go go into it, not just for the information dump, but more for what's Jarrett Jarrett's experience. Been with that 
[00:33:47] Jarrod: [00:33:47] device.
[00:33:48] That's. Yeah, exactly. And I think going that way, I'm assuming more people would probably be more likely to, you know, think, Hey, this is interesting. I want to, I want to hear more about this and subscribe compared to [00:34:00] just, you know, searching for product. Okay. I found out what I want, you know, moving on. 
[00:34:06] Germaine: [00:34:06] Yeah, so, and I guess what you're doing here is also then diversifying, your channels through which you get, well, no pun intended, but diversifying your channels by creating more channels.
[00:34:17] It's great anymore. YouTube channels. I couldn't help the dad joke, but, does YouTube then show you on the backend? Where your views are coming from, either in terms of numbers or specific pages, like you talked about recommended you talk about Google search, YouTube search, does it break it down for you?
[00:34:33] Jarrod: [00:34:33] Yeah. It gives you a percentage of like four or five different categories and, you know, one of them such ones recommended, cover and what the others are, but those are the main ones. And, yeah, I noticed they were basically inverted between the two channels. So it does seem that the two different approaches result in that being a bit different.
[00:34:51] Germaine: [00:34:51] Yeah. That's, that's amazing. I mean, YouTube is heavily algorithm driven. yeah. You just look at the pure stats of how many of YouTube videos are published and how many [00:35:00] minutes or minutes of videos published and you sort of go, it has to be, you know, AI algorithm powered because there's just so many videos being pushed out there.
[00:35:10] Let's rewind a little bit and go back to, Early days. When do you remember when you made your first dollar off YouTube? Was that 
[00:35:17] Jarrod: [00:35:17] a, I really remember the first money from a YouTube. I remember it was probably something like I made, you know, like 20 bucks or something like that. That was probably deposited into my account.
[00:35:28] But I remember the first Amazon check I got, because with Amazon, they have a threshold that you have to hit before you actually get paid. I don't think that's the case with YouTube. So if you know, you have like five bucks, they'll just deposit it. But I w so with Amazon, it's a hundred us dollars to get the check and the way U S check works, they have to physically mail it over to Australia.
[00:35:49] Then I have to take it to the bank and it costs me a $25 fee, which I didn't realize at the time. So I lost basically a quarter, [00:36:00] but then there's the, the crazy bit is they have to physically mail it back to the U S. Which is just ridiculous. So the whole process takes like 30 or 40 days. 
[00:36:09] Germaine: [00:36:09] Wow. Wow. And I assume, yeah, that just cause, cause you have to wait to be paid out off Amazon affiliate as well.
[00:36:17] So you're looking at really, quite a, like, I mean, if you were to do bad, let's say this month, you won't feel those effects for, for a few weeks, at least. 
[00:36:27] Jarrod: [00:36:27] Yeah. It's definitely staggered. But what I've done to kind of, I guess, counter that. We had payment system is a, you can set what the threshold is. So I can just put the threshold as something high enough such that I only get the check every three months or so, because I only get the money every three months or so it's less of a, a big deal if one month, you know, it does worse than the others.
[00:36:49] Germaine: [00:36:49] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you've nicely, Sort of gone into what I want to talk about, which was the, the, I guess fragility around number of views or, [00:37:00] or I guess the potential for there to be it, for it to be quite fragile because, if you don't, you know, Both your sources of income, very, driven on say views and number of purchases made off affiliate links.
[00:37:13]how have you counted that? Have you found it to be fairly stable? over the, over the last few years, what are your experiences on that? 
[00:37:23] Jarrod: [00:37:23] Yeah, so that's one of the main reasons why it took me, I guess, longer than it should have before I started working on the channel full time, because it was a bit of an unknown.
[00:37:32] Like, you know, you always say about people complaining like, Oh, the YouTube algorithm it's destroyed our business and stuff like that. But what I've found is in my own experience, if. Things start going bad. Usually it's your fault. Like you need to look at what you're doing. Maybe the content just sucks.
[00:37:50] Like, you know, you might be inclined to think everything I'm doing is great because I've put so much time into it, but you need to think about it from the viewers perspective [00:38:00] and what they're watching. Like at the moment, you know, as I mentioned before, I've noticed things going down as I suppose, current issues of eased in some areas.
[00:38:09] And, you know, I say my stats go down. I don't think, Oh no, it's my fault. I'm doing terrible. You know, I think, okay, what's going on in the world? Why is this likely to be happening? How much do I expect it to go down is going to return to where it was before. That's probably the case. So you don't really need to panic, just keep on going.
[00:38:27] Germaine: [00:38:27] Yeah, yeah. Sort of just allow for that seasonality. I mean, business, in that sense, you've got to think of, think of it like a business or a business person. Right  and not be so sort of, I know some people who they have a good month and then they spend a lot more money that month and then they have a bad month and they've spent money like they spent the previous month.
[00:38:45] And I guess you've just gotta be a bit more careful around, around that as well. but do you get those stats in terms of your income? You get that monthly or is it fairly easy to check in on how you're doing? 
[00:38:58]Jarrod: [00:38:58] Yeah. So the YouTube stats [00:39:00] update, like after they're only like a day or two behind, so the feet, the feedback is pretty real time.
[00:39:05] It doesn't really take long at all. I think Amazon is a couple days behind as well, so it's not too bad. 
[00:39:12] Germaine: [00:39:12] Yeah. Yeah. That's that's handy. Um, Oh, yeah, I got it. I'm talking about products now. How do you, how do you get products to review? I assume originally just, it's just stuff that you bought that you reviewed.
[00:39:25] Jarrod: [00:39:25] Yes, that's exactly how I started, basically, just if I had something in my house and it was tech related, I made a video on it and I took the approach of understanding that everything that I made, you know, for the first year, or maybe even up to three years would just suck. And, you know, I've looked, I knew that I would look back at it later and just cringe at it and that's the case.
[00:39:46] But I think it's important to understand that the things you make early on, they might be, they're probably just going to suck because the only way to actually get the experience and get that all is to, you know, get in there and do it. So I just took whatever I [00:40:00] had and just started making videos, uh, after a few months, I did my first laptop video, which was on my laptop that I was issued through my job.
[00:40:09] So it was a work laptop and cause I didn't personally have an updated laptop. So I just, I used what I had, even though it was, you know, it wasn't mine. I didn't buy that. It was just my company's, whatever I did that review and it did. Okay. And that laptop was purchased through a local company here in Australia.
[00:40:28] So I thought. Hey, I'll reach out to them. See if they're interested in sending me something else. And if so, I can do another video and that'd be cool. So I sent them an email and then like a week later they got back to me and said, Oh, Hey, we checked out your video. Yeah, it looks great. When it came to sun, you send you a laptop and basically just went from there.
[00:40:48]what happened was over time, you just build up the, I suppose, content library and. You know, you can reach out to other companies and you say basically the same thing you go [00:41:00] and you say, Hey, this is what I do. This is an example of my previous work. Would you be interested in sending me products so that I can make some videos on most of the times companies have been receptive to that and they reply and you know, they're happy to help you and send out stuff.
[00:41:15]Some companies just don't reply at all. So, you know, just move on. So it is, other companies just started reaching out to me, which happens more and more as you get bigger, which, you know, I kind of expected. Um, so yeah, I think at the start, it's just been a case of, uh, do what you have, try and reach out to people.
[00:41:33]hope you get lucky. but really eventually will, if you just keep working on it and then as you get bigger, people will approach you. 
[00:41:41] Germaine: [00:41:41] And like you said anyway, . Even if you don't have the nicest of products, that's personally yours, there's nothing stopping you from borrowing your parents' phones or laptops, or because it doesn't, it doesn't matter.
[00:41:53] Right. In this instance who owns it. I I'm fairly sure legally, they wouldn't even have a right to not have a video [00:42:00] made about their laptop. Like it's not like it's a personal private thing. so there's sort of nothing stopping you from doing that. And yeah. Let's talk quickly about Gaea as, as an extension of that, because, I guess I'm trying to hit on some of the comments or some of the reasons why people can give as to why they can't make a out on YouTube.
[00:42:19] Cause the next thing is, Oh, okay. So you've solved my problem about what I have to review. Now I need, you know, an RX 100 and I don't have $1,500 and I need a nice mic and lights. How did you start on that front? And what do you use these days? 
[00:42:37] Jarrod: [00:42:37] Yes, our I'm a firm believer of, you know, the gear doesn't make the content, your skill level.
[00:42:44] So you could probably start just using like a fire. And I think a lot of those phones have pretty good cameras and pretty good microphones. I mean, farming's a designed so that you can talk into them. So I think a lot of people already have really what they need. I mean, the quality might not be [00:43:00] super impressive, but I do know our, a laptop review channel in the US.
[00:43:06] And they do everything on their phone. When I found out I was just blown away. I mean, I think it's an iPhone, so it's still pretty good camera, but still the fact that when he revealed that it just kind of shocked me. I was like, Oh wow. Like I had no idea. It just looked so much better. His channel name is Bob of all trades.
[00:43:21] Germaine: [00:43:21] Yeah. Right. For some reason I thought, I thought it would be, he does awesome reviews of, like the electronics mag 15 stuff like that. 
[00:43:29] Jarrod: [00:43:29] Yeah. Yeah. There's another one that goes super into depth. 
[00:43:32] Germaine: [00:43:32] Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's another one who also makes videos, the videos that he wants to see on YouTube. and you know, I, I think you guys.
[00:43:42] Quite match quite closely. I mean, you, you reviewed the aftershock, vapor 15, which is what I ended up buying anyway, which is why I know so much about bubble bubble of all trades. I'm just fan going a little bit over here. So just ignore me there about laptops and YouTube, but yeah. Sorry. Let's let's [00:44:00] continue what you were saying about, I guess yeah.
[00:44:01] The gear not mattering so much as much as the content. 
[00:44:05] Jarrod: [00:44:05] Yeah. So. I bought initially a DSLR camera and, you know, I could have gotten something a bit cheaper than that. I think it was like maybe a thousand dollars. I just started with the kit lens that came with it. Um, but my plan was, you know, I want to kind of invest in this because I want to, like, I plan on.
[00:44:27] Going into it for a few years and I did, so I guess that worked out, but yeah, definitely don't need to stop that big or anything. I still do have that camera and I did use it for a couple of years before upgrading to something that did 4k. Yeah, they're pretty reasonably priced options these days, even if you did want to get a camera as for all the rest of the gear, I think this usually surprises people to find out, but the lighting and microphone that I got five years ago is still what I use today.
[00:44:56] So I still use the same just blue Yeti microphone, which is [00:45:00] like 150 bucks or something. So again, it's not super cheap or anything, but like that's lasted five years and it's generally considered, you know, entry to mid range level microphone, but that's really all you need. 
[00:45:13] Germaine: [00:45:13] Yeah. Yeah. And in terms of DSLR, did you start with a 680 or six 50 or something?
[00:45:18] Uh, what was 
[00:45:18] the Canon? 70 D 
[00:45:20] seven 70 day. Nice with like an 18 to 35 or 
[00:45:23] Jarrod: [00:45:23] I can't remember whatever the stock lens was eventually just 
[00:45:27] Germaine: [00:45:27] a kit lens. 
[00:45:28] Jarrod: [00:45:28] Yeah. Started with, I started with that and then the first ones I bought was the, , the Sigma 18 to 35. I think that's what you just said, right? 
[00:45:35] Germaine: [00:45:35] Yes. Yes. So you never, never bought a nifty 50, 50 mil shape.
[00:45:41] Jarrod: [00:45:41] Yeah, I did buy one of those cheaper 50 mill ones, but I only used it like a couple of times. I think it was only like $40 or something and it was an older model. It's just, wasn't great. Like the, when you put it in order to focus and have the microphone on, you can like physically hear it clicking away 
[00:45:57] Germaine: [00:45:57] the focus hunting.
[00:45:58] Yeah. [00:46:00] Yeah. And then you move to a four K cameras. So what's that like a Panasonic GH four or 
[00:46:04] something? 
[00:46:05] Jarrod: [00:46:05] Or I got the GH five. Oh, okay. 
[00:46:08] Germaine: [00:46:08] Right. I mean, those are still fairly or four, which file. I'm not sure how much that sells for, but I think the judge for used to go for about 1500 from memory. 
[00:46:18]Jarrod: [00:46:18] , I think the GH5  is around 2000 Australian dollars at the moment, but I think, you know, prices have gone up lately cause us Stoller, the changing with COVID and all that.
[00:46:28] So it might be a bit different, but I was able to reuse that original lens that I got. So I'm still using the same lens on the camera. So I've had that lens for like four years now. Yeah, I need to use it because unless I drop. It does no really. There's no real reason to change 
[00:46:43] Germaine: [00:46:43] any change over, I guess it's an example of when you can just spend a little bit more, um, and get something that will last much longer and then just make wise decisions when it comes to what you need and what you don't need.
[00:46:57] Jarrod: [00:46:57] Yeah. So I think if I was starting out [00:47:00] again, I'd probably pick something, I guess, a bit more mid range. Make sure I actually. Like using it, like making the content, because like you say, you don't want to buy something and then not use it. So I think starting with what you have is a good option. And then once, once you get a feel for it and you know that you like it investing a bit more money into the tools.
[00:47:19]so, you know, you can up that production quality a bit, I think is a good move. 
[00:47:23] Germaine: [00:47:23] Yeah. what are you, what are your plans sort of moving forward for the channel? We've, we've touched on things a little bit, but do you have any, any bigger plans over the next three to six months? 
[00:47:34]Jarrod: [00:47:34] Not really. Just focusing on working on the things that I get sent.
[00:47:39] So at the moment I've got just a ridiculous queue of like laptops lined up. So just that's just nonstop work. It's a bit easier because of a there's less events. So was traveling. I mean, It's it's unfortunate what's happening, but at the same time it does, you know, I don't have to go to like, uh, Computex [00:48:00] was supposed to be, I think, in June.
[00:48:02] So I would have been there for a week 
[00:48:03] Germaine: [00:48:03] and that's in Taiwan . Is that right?
[00:48:05] Jarrod: [00:48:05] Yeah. Taiwan. So you learned to fly, flying 
[00:48:07] to combat? Yeah. 
[00:48:08] Yeah. I would've gone then, um, this year I went last year for the first time and it was awesome, but yeah, that's like a week that just you're gone for pretty much. And that happens usually a couple of times a year.
[00:48:20] Germaine: [00:48:20] Yeah. Yeah. So you've been able to sort of say a bit of time there. When, when you fly, do you fly by yourself and create all the, all the content by yourself? Or do you usually try and take someone like your partner or someone else? 
[00:48:31] Jarrod: [00:48:31] Yeah. I just go by myself because, well, honestly I think so I've discussed, I've discussed this with my partner before, like if we went together, I would just spend the whole time working, so we wouldn't really get to do much together anyway.
[00:48:45] So might as well just make it a work trip. 
[00:48:48]Germaine: [00:48:48] There's sort of no point, they just feel sort of neglected and bored versus, what you'd be having a crazy amount of fun. And I guess you don't want to it's it's work and you can geek out. And, I [00:49:00] definitely get that, you know, I, I get that when I go down to the shops and I want to look at.
[00:49:04] Sort of laptops, but no one else around me cares for it, but I just want to check out, you know, what's, what's the latest. So, but it's, it's also, it sounds like you're just doing something that you really love and you really enjoy. and it just happens to be a way for you to also earn an income and pay the bills, which is, really cool.
[00:49:21] Did you ever think you'd be doing this like at the start? 
[00:49:26] Jarrod: [00:49:26] Uh, definitely not. 
[00:49:28] Germaine: [00:49:28] Yeah. Like 
[00:49:29] Jarrod: [00:49:29] when I started, I just remember thinking, Oh, it'd be cool. If I could do like a video a week and some people watched it, then that'd be, that'd be nice. Come, it's come a while away since then.
[00:49:40]Germaine: [00:49:40] I mean YouTube anyway is still like a new sort of career.
[00:49:45] Right.  even, even five years ago, like that would have still been very much early days now. Now I think people it's starting to get established and people buying Ferrari's and Lamborghini's off of their YouTube money, but, , even five years ago, it was [00:50:00] much, much earlier days than that. So, , That's awesome.
[00:50:02] It's really cool that you've been able to do this, and you I'm surprised that you haven't had a, sort of a, a single video go viral because, You're doing like you're subscribing numbers up pretty solid. I mean, you know, if, if the population of Canberra is 400,000, so you've got 200,000 subscribers, that's a, that's a pretty big number and that's that's yeah, pretty, pretty solid.
[00:50:24] Are you, are you surprised that there hasn't been anything gone or any video has gone viral or is it just the nature of this type of content you put out, do you think? 
[00:50:33] Jarrod: [00:50:33] Yeah, it doesn't really surprise me. I think it's like you saying the nature of the content, like a lot of it is designed to be. technical in depth information.
[00:50:41] And, you know, I don't really see a wide appeal for that. Although that said, I did have my first video or pass a million views in the last month, which I didn't see coming, I just looked at the videos and some of them from most of you to at least viewed. And I saw the one was like 990,000. I was like, Oh wow, it's [00:51:00] actually going to hit 
[00:51:00] the video.
[00:51:00] Was that about 
[00:51:01] a, it was a graphics comparisons or just two laptops. 16, 60 TEI compared to 2060. So basically, one level of hardware versus the next level up. 
[00:51:14] Germaine: [00:51:14] That's a decision that I continue to struggle with. So I would have probably been half of those views. 
[00:51:21] Jarrod: [00:51:21] I think that's. Is also what initially, helped the channel grow when I got those first review units from the local Australian company, you know, as I said before, like three to 4% of the views are from Australia.
[00:51:35] So there's not going to be that many people interested in a laptop that's marketed in Australia. So what I did. without hardware that I had was I would use it for things that people would be interested in or comparisons in particular. I found it performed quite well. So just comparing like CPS graphics, in different games, that type of stuff.
[00:51:54] And, yeah, it seems that that holds true given that was the first video that ever hit a million views on the 
[00:52:00] [00:51:59] Germaine: [00:51:59] channel. Yeah. And I must say you've been pretty smart about that as well. I mean, you are, I assume you're talking about metal box. and um, they use chassies from a big manufacturer. I think you've been really smart about making sure that those videos can be discovered because there's like companies like.
[00:52:17] Clever, et cetera, that use the same chassis or, well, it's a clever chassis, I think, but there are the companies I use that chassis. So you've, I don't know if it was intentional sort of adding those key words, speaking to inter videos that, so that people who are looking for this same laptop, essentially from other regions of the world, discover your videos.
[00:52:37] And I mean, the, the, the, the comparisons hold true anyway.  was that a, quite an intentional thing? 
[00:52:45] Jarrod: [00:52:45] Yeah, definitely. So a lot of companies around the world do resell the same thing, but then what happens is because different companies are selling them. They give them different names. So when people search for your product a, that they might not find it because [00:53:00] someone else might be listing that is product B.
[00:53:02] So yeah, I do try to find out what all the, the big companies around the world are calling it. And I try and. You're say that this is what it is because it is technically the same thing in a lot of cases. So I think that's the best way of, I guess getting more interested in it, more people finding it.
[00:53:20] Sorry. If I'm putting. The amount of time I am to it. If I'm putting the amount of time in to test this out, I want the most people to see it. And in order to do that, uh, I think it makes sense to kind of explain, Hey, this is the same laptop. It's just going to a bit of a different name because it's from a different part of the world, but, you know, It's got everything you want.
[00:53:40] So this is the video that you want to watch. 
[00:53:43] Germaine: [00:53:43] It's a good way of sort of getting, you know, not in a way of bashing a product to death, but getting a diverse range of videos of, of a singular purchase or in this case, a singular device as well. Now the last one, before we get into the top 12, um, how long does it take for you to shoot edit?
[00:54:00] [00:54:00] Um, do you script videos? How long does that whole process take? Let's say for a, for a laptop review. 
[00:54:06] Jarrod: [00:54:06] It's hard to say, because I am pretty much almost always doing multiple at once. So I think always I have two going at a time. I try to do three because I find with doing three at once. I can split the time up very well because there's basically three main tasks that eat up all the time.
[00:54:26] So one of those would be like testing the battery life, you know, and I just have to leave it there for a day, essentially. Another one would be testing, uh, games. So I test games out and see how well they perform. So that takes about a day to complete. And then I also do ends up thermal testing that takes about half a day.
[00:54:43] So, you know, I'll have all these different things running at the same time and just all these different products will be up to different stages in the test cycle. But I guess if I was just spending all my time on one thing, I could probably. Spend, you know, like maybe three or [00:55:00] four, 15 hour days, and I'd have a pretty good understanding of it.
[00:55:04] But yeah, like I say, in that time, a lot of that, a lot of that time would be wasted. Just, you know, if the battery is doing a battery test, you know, I can't do anything sometimes we'll work on something else. So I think it makes sense to kind of into leave a lot of different parts and get stuff going at different times, which does get a bit confusing when you've got so many things going on.
[00:55:22] So I just try to keep a bunch of. Detailed notes of where I'm at 
[00:55:27] Germaine: [00:55:27] and then you, so you collect all that information and then you, and then next step is scripting after you, when you can sort of look at all the information you've collected. Cool. 
[00:55:36] Jarrod: [00:55:36] That's sort of what I. Initially do is so I'm boxing machine.
[00:55:41] And I try to do like 90% of the filming because as soon as I touch it, it's just going to be covenant fingerprints and you want it to look nice. So I'll do a bunch of the filming initially, and then I'll do the testing and then there's a lot of data entry involved. So I've got to put stuff into Excel.
[00:55:56]I do have a lot of like graphs and stuff, or do you [00:56:00] premade, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time. Just go put the data in. And see how it compares with others. And then yeah, I script the video and that's, that's pretty easy these days, because basically what I do is I've just got a template for the different videos that I make.
[00:56:17] Because again, I don't think there's any point in reinventing the wheel. Like, is there any point going into this laptop review and changing the structure every time? Cause I feel like that's just more work. If I've got something that people can understand and I think flows well. I think it makes sense just to, you know, use that template and then just change the, e different parts, which are specific to the machine that I'm looking at.
[00:56:40] Germaine: [00:56:40] Yeah. Plus I guess people can then just, they just know where to expect, what sort of information, you know, whether the thermals a last or build qualities first, whatever it may be. So you've sort of optimize things down a little bit so that you're not, you're, you're being intelligent with that, so that your, your use of time, et cetera, as sort of intelligent as [00:57:00] well.
[00:57:00] Um, awesome, good stuff. Um, where can people find out more about you. 
[00:57:05] Jarrod: [00:57:05] Yeah, just don't YouTube, such for Jarrod's Tech or Jarrod's laptops should come up there and hold on. 
[00:57:11] Germaine: [00:57:11] Video is awesome. You ready for the top 12? 
[00:57:14] Jarrod: [00:57:14] Uh, yeah. 
[00:57:16] Germaine: [00:57:16] Thanks. Sorry. I sprung this on you last, last minute as always, but let's see how you go.
[00:57:22] So, um, anyway, any books, top three books or podcasts that you recommend, 
[00:57:28] Jarrod: [00:57:28] So, I don't listen to many podcasts myself as mentioned. I watch a lot of YouTube videos. Although I feel like there's a lot of overlap these days because, you know, you can just listen to the audio. You don't necessarily need to watch the video.
[00:57:40]that said probably I watch a lot of, Gary V videos. So yeah, he does what, like interviews with like business people. And I guess he technically does have a podcast, but yeah, I find, I find that content pretty interesting. That's just one though so. I guess [00:58:00] I listened to a lot of, tech ones as well.
[00:58:02] I guess most popular one that people would be familiar with is one is  Linus tech tips as discussed early on, that, or the when show every week, which is basically just like music 
[00:58:12] Germaine: [00:58:12] on a Saturday afternoon. Just Chuck that on. 
[00:58:15] Jarrod: [00:58:15] Yeah. So I've, I've probably listened to every episode of that since like the last, how long would it be?
[00:58:22] It's a while before I started the channels are probably been listening to that for six or seven years. Um, yeah, that's probably probably the main 
[00:58:29] Germaine: [00:58:29] ones. Yeah. Awesome. top three software tools that you can't live without. What do you use day in, day 
[00:58:34] Jarrod: [00:58:34] out? Does Spotify account. I need that music. Yeah. 
[00:58:39] Germaine: [00:58:39] Yeah, of course.
[00:58:42] Spotify. Anything else? 
[00:58:43] Jarrod: [00:58:43] Uh, it's it's funny. Cause I only really started using it like in the last few months I used to just, I used to just like either listen to music on YouTube or I'd have the files locally, but Oh man, Spotify just takes it to a new level. What's suggested me so many new songs I never would have found.
[00:58:58] It's great. It's [00:59:00] awesome. I hate saying this, but I feel like I couldn't live without Excel because it's double edged sword, but yet, like it's all my graph stone. Otherwise we'll keep it simple and I'll go with notepad. I just, that's what I used to take all my notes. It's a bit of a mess and I could probably find something better, but I'll just dump everything in a text file.
[00:59:24] Germaine: [00:59:24] I mean, you just need Google Keep or Google docs and Google sheets. I don't know if you're a Google guy. We run on G suite over here and I am just, I mean, my Google keep is a mess, but, um, you, if you, if you ever think about, you know, swapping to the Google Google side of the world, um, that's the way, yeah, I would say 
[00:59:43] Jarrod: [00:59:43] I do actually use Google docs for all the scripting, but yeah, for notes, just notepad, but yeah, Google docs is awesome because when I travel.
[00:59:51] A lot of times, like if someone asks me a question, they're like, Oh, what did you think about this particular thing on this video from like two years [01:00:00] ago, I can just look at the script and see exactly what I would've said. So it does save a lot of 
[01:00:03] Germaine: [01:00:03] time. Yeah. That's awesome. Um, are there any mantras you try and live by, or you just try and follow 
[01:00:12] Jarrod: [01:00:12] a think?
[01:00:15] The one that comes to mind is probably no sacrifice, no victory. 
[01:00:19]Germaine: [01:00:19] Love it that's very, uh, like Viking Raiders of you. 
[01:00:23] Jarrod: [01:00:23] I do listen to a lot of Viking metal. 
[01:00:26] Germaine: [01:00:26] There you go. I didn't know that that was a thing. Top three people you follow or study and why at Gary V? 
[01:00:34] Jarrod: [01:00:34] Yeah. It's definitely got some good advice.
[01:00:36] Um, 
[01:00:37] Germaine: [01:00:37] line of Sebastian. 
[01:00:39] Jarrod: [01:00:39] Oh, I don't want to say like, cause 
[01:00:41] Germaine: [01:00:41] I dunno, 
[01:00:41] Jarrod: [01:00:41] like I do watch a lot of their content and they. Yeah. I don't know. There's a lot of, a lot of tech guys out there I could easily, I could easily pick. So I feel like that might be a bit, a bit of a cop out. 
[01:00:54] Germaine: [01:00:54] And anyone else out of the tech, tech sphere then?
[01:00:58] Jarrod: [01:00:58] Yeah, we'll go with, Peter [01:01:00] McKinnon. So I'll watch a lot of like photography and videography stuff. Cause I'm always looking to improve, like how I make my videos and yeah, he makes a lot of videos and has a lot of good tips, video creation. So I'll find those very useful. 
[01:01:14] Germaine: [01:01:14] Awesome. well, any, any parting words before we wrap this episode 
[01:01:18] up?
[01:01:20]Jarrod: [01:01:20] yeah. If anyone is like interested in finding out more about creating a YouTube channel, like, I'm definitely happy to answer any questions like on Twitter or email, whatever. Awesome. 
[01:01:31] Germaine: [01:01:31] Thanks. Where can we find you on Twitter by the way? What's your, 
[01:01:34] yeah, it's just Jarrod's tech on Twitter as well. So same username, pretty much on every platform.
[01:01:40] Love it. Love it. Awesome. Thanks for your time, Jared. 
[01:01:43] Jarrod: [01:01:43] Yeah, thanks for having me.