I don't define success as a creator by views or money anymore. I define it by two things I can actually control: whether I'm having fun, and whether what I make helps somebody. The views come from the algorithm, the platform and other people, and they change constantly.
I've been a creator for 14 years. At one point I was one of the top Facebook partners, and I made over $100,000 in 2021 across Facebook, YouTube and Twitch. On paper the metrics were great, but most days I felt stressed and constantly under attack, like I was never good enough.
My first written version of this was why I love being a "failure" on YouTube, from August 2024. My original channel had 269,000 subscribers and my latest video had 52 views. I was publishing four videos a day across eight channels and making about $2,000 a month or less in ad revenue. My point then was that enough is the real target. With my wife's job as an attorney covering the bills, more views did not make me happier.
In June 2026 I wrote four more posts on the same question. The lesson in how I measure success as a YouTuber without views or money is that my real intention has always been to help somebody have a better day, learn something or feel something. But I kept measuring that with views, tips, ad revenue and sponsorships, which made a goal of service self-centered. It pushed me to chase whatever the algorithm wanted, even when it left me feeling spent. I'm sober in Alcoholics Anonymous for almost 11 years, so I have nothing to take the edge off. My rule now is that success is feeling good, and I start from there.
Why getting what you want can wreck you tested that rule against my own history. In May 2009 I hooked up with a dispatcher I worked with as a police officer. Six months later I had lost my job, moved home to Mississippi, and she had a restraining order against me. Yet I was happier at home playing Modern Warfare 2 eight hours a day than I had been with the life I'd chased. Lasting happiness, I've come to think, comes from asking how my actions affect other people.
Have fun first as a creator and accept the views you get makes the rule practical. The test I use is whether I'd do it for free if nobody watched. I learned that the hard way on Udemy. I had fun making courses, then I decided to become the top Udemy instructor in the world, the fun went out of it, and I ended up getting banned. Fun is also a moving target, so I can't build a business around one niche I happen to enjoy right now. My wife's steady job and benefits are what let me focus on the fun instead of the paycheck.
Focus on your true fans, not views, money, or minutes watched turns the rule into a metric. Now I ask how my most loyal fans, like Superman Crypto and Lisa Ladybug, would feel about a stream. I've had videos with millions of views where I don't know that I got even one of my top fans out of them. Numbers can be faked with bots, so I'd rather track the people who keep showing up.
Read in order, the five posts show how my thinking changed. In 2024 I was comfortable being small, with enough as the target. In 2026 I asked whether I need to grow at all. The June posts sharpened the rules into an order: fun first, the people already watching next, and numbers last.
Below you'll find all five posts in full, starting with the 2024 original and then the four from June 2026. If you want to see how this plays out on a channel, views are not income covers what small channels actually get paid for. If you'd like me to look at your own channel with this lens, you can get a personal video review at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- How I Measure Success as a YouTuber Without Views or Money (June 17, 2026)
- Why Getting What You Want Can Wreck You (June 17, 2026)
- Have Fun First as a Creator and Accept the Views You Get (June 17, 2026)
- Focus on Your True Fans, Not Views, Money, or Minutes Watched (June 17, 2026)
- Why I Love Being a "Failure" on YouTube (August 1, 2024)
How I Measure Success as a YouTuber Without Views or Money
From my video published June 17, 2026.
I've been a content creator online for 14 years, and one of the hardest things for me has been figuring out how to define success without depending on money, views, and minutes watched to tell me what kind of success I'm having. I finally cracked that in a way I can clearly explain today, because this has literally been the hardest question for me as a content creator.
I've always looked at it this way: my primary intention as a YouTuber and as a Twitch streamer is to get out there and help somebody have a better day, help somebody learn something, teach something, help somebody feel something. And the way I've always defined whether I'm achieving that intention is by how many views I'm getting, how many live viewers I have on a live stream, how many members I have on YouTube, how much money people are tipping, how much ad revenue I'm getting, how much people are paying to schedule calls, and how much I'm getting in sponsorships.
The trap of measuring service with self-centered metrics
In all of this, the trap I've kept getting into is that because I'm measuring whether I'm helping other people, I'm using a metric that is also self-centered. What keeps happening to me is that I show up thinking my primary intention is to serve others, to make somebody else's day better, to give somebody else quality information. But then the way I'm measuring whether I'm doing that tricks me right back into being self-centered. I think of the line from Scarface: he's a pig, he wants more than he needs.
Here's what I've come to believe. When I'm really helping others, I feel good. I feel balanced. I feel centered. To me that's because of something bigger, the way we're all connected telepathically and energetically. But the challenge is when I'm judging whether I'm helping others by looking at views and money, and then I start optimizing what I'm creating for views and money.
What I've found is that if I optimize for views and money, if I adjust my titles, if I adjust my content just to want the most views and money in the short term, all I need to do is grind out crypto videos about altcoins that I don't think are a good investment. If I make videos about those altcoins, that will, in the short term, get me the most views and the most money. That, to me, has been the absolute biggest trap as a content creator: the metrics. I think I'm showing up to help other people, but my emotions indicate that I'm mostly self-centered in the extreme. All I'm thinking about is how many views I get and how much money I make. And if I'm not getting views and not making money, then forget helping other people. That's the unfortunate reality I've seen.
I see so many other people tricked into this, and I'm even starting to be able to hear it when people talk. Do you really want to help other people, or do you really want to be special and famous and just print money for yourself at home? I ask because I've done that.
Winning on the metrics while feeling like crap
There's been a battle in me between the metrics saying I'm getting so many viewers and the honesty of admitting I feel like crap. When I was live streaming Warzone on Facebook, I was one of the top Facebook partners, getting millions and millions of views. I was very well known. I made over $100,000 in 2021 playing video games on Facebook, uploading videos to YouTube, live streaming to Twitch, and so on. So externally, all the metrics were going great. But internally, most days I felt stressed. It wasn't good enough. I felt constantly under attack. And every day I'd think: is this the best I can do for other people? I felt like I wasn't delivering real value.
I've been struggling for years to figure all this out, and today it all just came together and made sense. Why was I playing Call of Duty Warzone? Because the algorithm was pushing that the most. If I played other games, the algorithm wasn't pushing them. Even if I wanted to play other games, even if it might have been more helpful for other people for me to play different games or to not even play games at all, I played Call of Duty Warzone almost every day because that's what the algorithm wanted to push. And why did the algorithm want to push that? Because that's what the audience was addicted to watching.
But what I noticed is that a lot of times what the algorithm's pushing, and what the audience is feeding off of, often leaves me feeling horrible. When I create something that I really need to say, something with a strong message behind it, something that's good for me to create because I need to learn it, something that's truly different, that's a different experience entirely. This is not meant for a general audience. This is meant for YouTubers who are not self-centered.
I have to say, as a content creator, there are a lot of us who are very self-centered. Our mouths will say it's about helping other people, but when you watch our emotions and our actions, it's all about serving the algorithm and making ourselves as famous and as rich as possible.
Why feeling bad eventually sabotaged everything
I can only handle feeling bad so much. I'm sober in Alcoholics Anonymous almost 11 years, so I don't have anything to take the edge off. What I've noticed in the past is that a bunch of times when I've been doing great getting money and great getting views, I've sabotaged it in one way or another. Sometimes it was with a great idea. Sometimes it was with a blatantly, obviously bad idea. But often it was just running my mouth from a place of criticism and not feeling good enough. I'd put that out there, and eventually I'd get canceled, or go off the algorithm, or delete my channels, or stop creating content.
The common theme among all of that is this: no amount of views and no amount of money will leave me feeling good, but feeling good eliminates the need for any amount of views or money.
Defining success as feeling good
So today, what I'm obsessed with, and what I really want to communicate in my videos, is the love and care I have for each of you as a viewer. But I have to start from a place of feeling good and refuse to optimize for views or for money. This is probably not a video that has that shallow, grab-everybody's-attention energy. This isn't the one little trick you do to trick the YouTube algorithm. But this is something that could really change one YouTuber's mindset or one Twitch streamer's mindset.
The content I'm most proud of, out of the tens of thousands of videos I've created, is the things that were created with a pure intention to help somebody else. My Alcoholics Anonymous speaker meeting. Playing a video game and just having fun with my friends and having a great round. Creating content like this that takes a lot of learning I've earned the hard way by wasting a lot of time, and then collapsing it into one simple, easy-to-understand idea: success is feeling good. Feeling good in the sense that what I'm creating is making a difference in my life and that it might be useful for other people.
So how do I define feeling good? Well, I have to know what it feels like to feel good, and I need to pay attention to how what I'm creating impacts what I'm feeling. When I played those Warzone streams, lots of days I made lots of money and got lots of views, but I felt bad after the live stream. I felt spent. I felt drained. Even when everything went great, a lot of times I felt kind of disgusted or used afterward. Whereas when I create something with the pure intention of service for others, I feel awesome afterward and I can't wait to do more.
You also can't force the creating and the feeling good. Yesterday, for example, I didn't have anything I wanted to share, but I did want to go to the Apple store and get a new phone and a new laptop, so that's what I did. If you want to go deeper on this mindset shift, I share a lot more of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
Success, to me, is feeling good. And I'm setting this as a very clear intention: going forward, I will stick to defining success as feeling good. The views and the money are not up to me.
Why Getting What You Want Can Wreck You
From my video published June 17, 2026.
Yesterday I filmed eight, nine, ten videos, and that felt really good to be able to catch up on my work. I read thousands of messages, gave away a bunch of money on open chat, and made music. Having the time to really catch up on my work was awesome. What's nice about being a YouTuber is that I have the flexibility, so if I've got a bunch of time, I can essentially do a couple of days of work, if not more, all at once.
I'm grateful that my crypto channel just made its highest views yesterday that it's made in at least a month. I put videos out that people seem to be enjoying and that are helpful. It's amazing how simple things are sometimes, and how you'll get the exact advice you're looking for. For example, I was on one of my calls with SixFigs. I did three crypto videos with SixFigs recently. He said that he had met BitBoy Crypto in person and asked him, what's the secret to YouTube success? BitBoy said you just have to grind out videos, like several videos a day. As soon as I heard that, I knew how true it was.
Quantity beats chasing the perfect video
What's frustrating is trying to do one video a day, or less than that, and trying to make it perfect. Then, if you don't get the title, the thumbnail, and all of that correct, it bombs. Now, it depends on your niche. If you're Mr. Beast and you're trying to make extremely sensational videos, then yeah, maybe doing one a week or less makes sense. But if you're doing news kind of content where people just want to hear what's new all the time, then it's a straight-up quantity approach.
I'm really happy with the changes I've made recently and all the things I've tested. I feel like I'm in a great comfort zone, or a great spot, just doing three videos of ten minutes or less a day on my crypto channel, and then a vlog and a music video. I made a couple of songs yesterday, and I listened back to the dance track I made, song number 300, and I thought, wow, this is actually pretty good. That's amazing considering how little I know at this point.
I'm grateful for any day I can really enjoy my work, because there are some days I don't like it that much. I'm grateful when I can get a system in place that feels like it's really working. I'm getting what I want, the viewers are getting what they want, and we're all, in theory, becoming more educated or better in the process.
A day to myself
I had so much time yesterday because my daughter went over to a friend's house in the morning and then to a sleepover in the afternoon. My wife took my son to play at Playgrounds of Tampa, and then he went with Laura and her family to his cousin's gymnastics competition. So I really enjoyed a day to myself yesterday to just film videos.
I also played basketball again. I got 63 three-pointers in just a little over 30 minutes, almost exactly 30 minutes, just banging down three-pointers. Man, it's so satisfying to be able to take a ball and throw it through a hoop that's ten feet in the air. I don't know exactly how far away a three-point shot is, but it's so satisfying. All these toxic stories people tell about getting older and your body falling apart, and yet my body has never shot three-pointers this good, ever. I've never been able to hit this many three-pointers before.
Count the makes, disregard the misses
What I can say is that my strategy of counting every three-pointer I hit and basically disregarding the ones I miss is extremely effective. I show up, I make the effort, and I count the results. I'm looking at applying that same simple idea to as many areas as possible. For example, with my crypto videos, if I'm just doing one video a day, I get kind of obsessed about how many views it got and all that. But if I do three videos a day and focus on just executing a few simple ideas quickly and then putting them out there, it works better. It's not up to me how many views a video gets. It's up to me to show up, put in the effort, and try to package that effort in a way that is good for others.
I'm obsessed on YouTube too with getting search results and browse results, because one of the ideal ways to get discovered on YouTube is to get found in search. That said, I also wonder why I care about growing at all on YouTube. I have more open chat comments than I can read most days. I don't even read my YouTube comments. Do I really need to grow? At this point, if I just sustain, everything's great. And if I'm right about ICP, I'm going to be debt-free pretty soon, have tons of passive income, and I'm going to be totally set.
Am I really ready to be totally set?
Am I really ready to be totally set? A lot of us think we'd love to get out of the struggle, that we'd love to have money and not have to work. You know what's surprising? A lot of times when you get what you want, it kind of destroys your whole reality, which can first lead to dysphoria and confusion. Often there's euphoria first, like, yes, I got it. I've had that a lot. I've gotten exactly what I wanted.
For example, there was the dispatcher at work when I was a police officer who was, in my experience at the time, a perfect ten, gorgeous and fun. As soon as I hooked up with her, two days later I was absolutely in the depths of misery. Because if you have an idea in your head that you're unhappy because you don't have something, that you're unhappy because you're broke, because you're single, because you're unhealthy, what happens when you get that thing and you're still unhappy? What happens when I'm going to work two days after hooking up with the dispatcher, thinking, now I've really done it, now my whole reality is going to fall apart? I remember looking at a traffic light on the way to work two days after, feeling like my whole reality was on the verge of coming apart.
That's exactly what happened. The whole reality I'd been working on building up for years, getting what I wanted, brought everything down. It brought down my job as a police officer and the place I was living. I hooked up with the dispatcher in May 2009, and six months later, in October, I'd moved home with my parents in Mississippi. I'd quit my job as a police officer, and the dispatcher had a restraining order against me, after a lot of drunken behavior and lying to the police department and things like that. I'd worked since 2005 to set up that whole reality and to get myself a place I loved to live. I had a place almost rent-free because I was the police officer for the little apartment complex. I had a job, one of the best-paying police jobs in Columbia. And I had the girl I wanted. All the unhappiness that had been held back by the thought that if I could just get this really hot girl to love me, everything would be great in my life.
I was happier with my destroyed reality
Six months after that, my whole reality was wrecked. I was at home with my parents, playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 eight hours a day and going to the gym. You know what? I was happier. I was happier six months later, after having gotten what I wanted and then everything came down. I was happier with my destroyed reality, starting all over again with a whole new set of things.
Lots of times when I've gotten what I wanted as a YouTuber or a content creator, when I've gone viral, when everybody's talking about me and money's coming in, I've been shockingly unhappy, just thinking, is this all there is? So I find it amazing today when I can actually sustain being happy and satisfied over time. I've wondered, what is the difference between sustaining happiness over time and getting something you want that makes you miserable?
To me, it's the effect my actions are having on other people. When I was getting drunk and being insane as a police officer, the effect my actions were having on myself and other people, especially with my drinking, was chaotic and rough. When I'm making YouTube videos, I'm showing up as a husband, taking care of my relationship, my kids, and my house. When I'm making YouTube videos that help other people learn what I've learned with crypto investing and what I've learned in my life, then I'm happy and satisfied.
So to me, it seems the secret to real happiness and satisfaction is asking how my actions are impacting other people. If I can get what I want while giving other people what they want, then I'm truly satisfied and happy. That's a lot harder to set up, but I'm grateful that now that's where my target is: how can I serve everybody else while having the things I want and the things I enjoy? If you want to see more of how I work through this kind of thing, I share a lot of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
So for the rest of the day, my plan is to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting shortly. AA meetings have been a big part of having a satisfying, happy life and reprogramming my mind. I also went to yoga for the first time in five days. I don't usually take that long off, and it felt really good. I'm so grateful to have this to share with you today.
Have Fun First as a Creator and Accept the Views You Get
From my video published June 17, 2026.
The one non-negotiable: put fun first
If you're a YouTuber or a content creator, the one non-negotiable for me is putting fun first. Where almost all of us go wrong as content creators, and where I've consistently gone most wrong in 14 years, is putting views and money first. I know you'll tell yourself, "Well, Jerry, if I don't have views, then I can't have money, and I'll have to work a real job or something." My answer is this: if you want money, then don't depend on YouTube or content creation to give it to you.
I talked to my brother about this. He has a real job. It pays well. He looks at what I do and says it sucks. You don't get a regular paycheck. Sure, you have some great months and make way more than he does, but a lot of months you don't make much at all. You don't have benefits. You can get canceled or fall off the algorithm. You have no job security. Being a content creator is something that, in my experience, you should do as a labor of love, because there's nothing you'd rather do. And if you want to do it as an amateur or a hobby, then don't even worry about your views.
The way I look at it is that I want to make videos that are good for me to make, that are fun for me to make, that I'm a better person for having made. Right now I'm playing Call of Duty Warzone. This is fun. I'm trying to get my first win. This is my 25th game. I've gotten second. I've gotten third several times. I've gotten fourth. I finally figured out a setting so I don't have to deal with cheaters, but now I'm getting sweats in these games who are actually playing instead of all bots. To me, though, I can't go wrong if I'm having fun. Because if I'm having fun, at least I didn't waste my day. At least if I'm having fun, I'm not losing anything.
The dumbest thing I've seen in content
The dumbest thing I've seen in my time creating content is when you take all this time to make something you didn't even enjoy, because you were just trying to get views and money, and then you didn't get the views and you didn't get the money. Or you take something that was fun and you make it not fun. That's what I've done really consistently. Yeah, I'll have fun playing a little Call of Duty Warzone, but after I win one solo Warzone game, I probably won't be having fun anymore. I'll be like, whatever, I'll go do something else.
But what I've done most often is start off having fun doing something, like on Udemy. I was having fun creating online courses. It was a great learning experience. I was having a good time. Then I started making a little money, and I said, "Alright, I'm going to create Udemy courses full-time now, and I'm going to be the top Udemy instructor in the world." And then I stopped having fun. It was just a grind. It was a grind every day. I've got to get more views. I've got to get more money. And I ended up getting banned. I believe that if I had just had fun on Udemy, focused on making a course once a month, not sweated how much money I was making, just taken the money and been thankful for it, then things would have gone great.
What happens when you prioritize views and money is that a lot of you are going to lie to yourself, too. You're going to say, "I'm not about the views. I'm not about the money. I'm all about my community." That's nonsense if you look at your views and feel bad when you have a down month, or if you feel validation based on how many views you got. If that's happening, then you are about the views and you are about the money. This has been the hardest thing for me to learn.
Fun is a guaranteed win
So show up and have fun first and foremost, because if you have fun, it's a guaranteed win. It doesn't matter if anybody watches the video. If nobody watches a video, if nobody reads your post, but it was fun, then it's worth doing. It's worth doing for free, and it's worth doing for no views. But my challenge has been that I'll do something for fun, then I start getting paid, and then the thing I was doing for fun stops being fun once I try to optimize it.
There are a lot of things you'll be able to do that are fun to do a little bit. Playing Call of Duty Warzone is fun for a little bit. But you know what? I don't want to do this full-time. I do not want to play Warzone every single day. Yet I kept putting myself in positions where I felt like I had to. I kept boxing myself in, telling myself, "Well, all I do is make Udemy courses," or "All I do is play Warzone," or "All I do is make crypto videos." Over and over again as a content creator, I've repeatedly made things not fun. To me, that's the worst thing you can do with something that has no job security and doesn't give you the benefits of a regular job: make it not fun.
Most of the people giving you advice aren't having fun
Here's the problem: a lot of the people giving you advice aren't having fun either. A lot of the people with the most views and the most money aren't having fun. That's where you go wrong trying to emulate people who aren't having fun, who tell you that you should do this and you should do that because they're so "successful." To me, if you're not having fun, you're not successful. If you're out here making videos, just grinding out views, and you're not having fun, then you're not successful in my book. Anyone who is just out here stressed out making videos, feeling like they have to show up every day, with no room to grow or learn, has lost it. A lot of the content creators with the most views and money are not having fun. The fun has left their videos. It's been a long time since some of them had fun.
You can tell when somebody is having fun versus when they're not. In my experience, you'll consistently get really good results when you're actually having fun, because having fun has this amazing energy that really attracts people. If you start refusing to watch content creators who aren't having fun, you'll notice that a lot of the people you watch aren't having fun. They may get views. They may be making money. But they stopped having fun a long time ago.
How do you know if you're having fun?
How do you tell if you're having fun? To me, the test is: would you do it for free if nobody watched? If you'd do it for free with nobody watching, you're having fun. But if you're only doing it because you feel like you have to, then you're not having fun anymore. You have a job, but your job has no job security. In that sense, you're a complete failure. You're out here doing content, and for me, where I've consistently gone wrong is that I stopped having fun and became all about the money and the views. So I really am making this primarily for myself today.
That's another way you can check whether you're having fun: are you making videos for yourself? Are you making videos because there's something you want to remember? Or are you making videos because you feel you need to tell somebody else something? The online environment isn't a great place to even communicate with other people. There's so much crap. There are so many people out here cheating. There are bots pushing content. There are narratives getting pushed by platforms. This is not a good environment to be in if you're naive enough to think, "Well, I'm just helping other people, I'm making the world a better place." From another point of view, you're just being a slave to the AI tech god. That's all you're doing.
But if you have fun being in here, in this environment, if this brings you joy, that changes everything. And how do you know you have joy? You know it because you want to keep showing up no matter how many people watch, no matter how much people criticize you, no matter how irrelevant you've become. You'll know you're having fun when you keep showing up no matter what. You may need to get tested on this. But for me, I never want to forget what I've learned about how important it is to have fun. I never want to stop having fun doing this, because I've spent so much of my time creating content and not having fun.
Fun is a moving target
Back in 2021, I was having fun playing Call of Duty Warzone. The fun I was having attracted people to watch me. But once I won a few games, I stopped having fun. Because what's really fun for me is often learning something new, going after a new challenge. Trying to win that first game of Warzone, which is exactly what I'm doing right now, is fun. But once I win that first game, the fun will often go out of it. "Alright, whatever, I won my first game of Warzone. I'm good now. On to the next thing."
What's tricky with fun is that it's a moving target. What's fun today may not be fun tomorrow. What's fun tomorrow may not be fun the next day. You may not even realize ahead of time what's going to be fun for you on a given day. That's why it's hard. For me, I'll be having so much fun doing something one day, and the next day I'm like, "I can't stand this boring stuff anymore." It's frustrating, because you can't set up your business as a content creator assuming that what's fun is, say, making Warzone videos. What happens when that stops being fun? Almost everybody creating content these days has set it up so they have to niche down. And in my experience, niching, in most cases, guarantees that you stop having fun.
Why we grow when we chase something new
Most of us, at a soul level, want to expand and want to grow. And usually, trying something new and chasing a new challenge is how you grow and how you expand. Doing the same thing every single day is how you get bored and burnt out. So many of us as content creators only want to maximize our views and our money, and what happens is we end up just doing content all the time, only for the views and the money. And no surprise, we get burnt out.
The other day I got so down about content creation and everything. I caught myself thinking, man, I'm such a terrible creator, I'm so unsuccessful. But then I asked myself: why do you think you're not successful? It's because I was judging my success off of views and money instead of fun. And here's the thing I've come to believe: other people are always going to control the views and the money. That's a simple but powerful realization.
You only really control whether you're having fun
The deeper problem is that other people control the money and the views. You don't control the algorithm. You don't control the platform. You don't control other people. All you can really control is whether or not you're having fun. And the way to have fun is to control what you do and what environment you put yourself into.
When I keep doing things just because I'm afraid of falling off, or because I tell myself I need to pay these bills, that's when it stops being fun. In my experience, the ideal setup as a creator is to partner with somebody who has a real job in real life. The reason that helps so much is it allows you to actually have fun. What's hard is when you're trying to make it on your own as a creator, because most of the time the money is poor. I've said it enough times now: the money is poor most of the time. So you almost need to stop thinking about it entirely.
Set your life up so you don't need it to pay
My wife has a real job. Because of that, we can be a team. She makes the steady money, she has the benefits, and then I'm out here creating content. So if you can, just partner up. What worked for me is leaning into the idea that this might not make any money at all. If this makes no money, how can I set my life up to account for that? How can I arrange my life so that I don't have to make any money from it? Because then you can really focus on the fun.
It's hard, because you often need to constantly pivot. I'm amazed at how fast what is fun for me changes. I'm all into Warzone today, and I wouldn't be surprised if I win one game today and then tomorrow I'm completely done with Warzone, or I'm playing even more of it. That's the kind of flexibility you have to be thinking with. If you want to go deeper on this approach to creating and building a life around it, I share more of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
I'm really grateful to have this to share with you today. Take it easy.
Focus on Your True Fans, Not Views, Money, or Minutes Watched
From my video published June 17, 2026.
One mistake out of the many I've made on YouTube over the last decade, and on Twitch too, is thinking about quantity. I kept asking myself what the masses would just pour into my live stream for. What I've done today that's helped me is to flip that around and think about my top fans instead, the people who love Jerry Banfield. What am I going to be able to do that drives the top Jerry Banfield fans nuts? What is going to get them really excited? What are they going to absolutely love? What is the best show I can put on? What is the best I can give to my very top fans?
I know you've heard the idea of a thousand true fans, but in my experience we get distracted always trying to go after those thousand fans instead of focusing on the ones who are already here. Two of the very top fans on my streams are Superman Crypto and Lisa Ladybug. What I've done a lot in the past is think, well, how do I get all kinds of people who don't even know me into my stream? But instead, what if I thought about how to make something that drives Lisa nuts, or that Superman just has to watch?
Today Lisa came in while I was live on YouTube and dropped 25 gift subs and a $20 super chat, plus a gift sub over on Twitch. Lisa is really excited to see some Warzone again. I've been struggling with this so much, to stop thinking quantity and start thinking quality. And the thing is, this is so easy, because your top viewers are going to talk to you. Your top viewers are going to tell you, hey, I like this, or hey, I don't like this. Not that you should always be a slave to your top viewers, but ideally you want to laser in on the people who really care about your content and figure out what absolutely drives them nuts in the best way.
Make something for the people already watching
I want to make sure I'm making this today, so I remember it for five years, for ten years. I want to make something that someone like Superman or Lisa sees and goes, nice, I'm so happy to see this, this is awesome, this makes my day, this is fun to watch, this is why I followed you. I've had people follow me for years and I've not made one single thing they wanted to watch in all that time. Then I go around trying to get new people to follow me. Why do you need new people to follow you when you already have people following you?
You want to make lasting impressions and deeper relationships. Even if fewer people watch a particular thing, the real question is, what am I going to do today that builds a lasting relationship? This really applies to live streamers. With video viewers you're often not going to get as much engagement, but the principle still holds.
The one metric that actually matters
One of the things I've been trying to hone in on recently is what the single metric is that I should pay attention to. What is the metric that matters? Because when I stay glued to my studio dashboard looking at views, looking at followers, looking at how much money I made on a particular stream, I've just constantly been confused. The algorithm is very fickle. What the masses like changes all the time, and I don't want to go around chasing the masses every day. I want to make stuff that is fun for me. I want to make stuff that stands out. And I want to make stuff that the people who follow me forever are going to be really happy to see.
The way you get to that, in my experience, is to change to a qualitative approach. Did my most loyal, most engaged, most active followers enjoy this video or this live stream? Did they get really excited about it? Because that's what matters. I've had videos that got millions of views, and I don't know that I got even one Lisa or one Superman out of all of them.
At first this is tough, because you don't have anybody to give you feedback. But when I started out, I had my friends and my family watching. When you first start out on YouTube, it's actually kind of easier. It's like, okay, what video am I going to make that's going to make my friend laugh? I don't ever want to get away from thinking like that on YouTube again. I don't ever want to fall back into what I've been doing, where it's all about the numbers. The numbers can be faked easily with bots. The platforms are pushing certain narratives all the time. I want to always laser in on YouTube and Twitch and ask, when I go live and my followers see I'm playing Warzone, how are they going to feel?
It's definitely different for different people, too. Some of my followers, all they want to see is ICP live. For those followers, I can just put a video up and they'll be satisfied. But for live stream, this is different. So today I'm mainly talking to myself. I'm just telling myself, please remember this, please don't forget this. To me, this is one of the most important things to remember about being a live streamer especially, but also a content creator on YouTube. If you want to go deeper on the mindset and tactics behind this, I've gathered more of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
Why I Love Being a "Failure" on YouTube
From my video published August 1, 2024.
I'm Jerry Banfield, and I'm a total failure on YouTube. Look at my channel: 269,000 subscribers. Look at my last video: 52 views. Ten out of ten. I've been on YouTube since 2011, and I love being at what you would think of as a total failure on YouTube. Why? Because there's no pressure. I'm free to create. I'm free to play. I'm free to have fun.
And yes, even though this original channel I made is all but dead, I do have some other channels. I have a crypto channel. I have a music production channel. My crypto channel does get decent views; I get a few thousand views a video on my crypto videos. I have eight YouTube channels, so I do have some other channels that actually have some traction. I have a creator channel where I talk about YouTube, and that's where this comes from. But a lot of people look at me, especially at my original channel, and say, you're a total failure.
Look at what "success" did to Mr. Beast
If you want to let this idea sink in further, let's talk about Mr. Beast, who's on the hot seat for a minute. Mr. Beast can't go anywhere in the world without getting swarmed. Every little thing Mr. Beast ever has done is under a microscope. Mr. Beast has effectively ruined any normal life he can have by being so, quote, successful on YouTube.
You know what I love about being a failure on YouTube? I can go anywhere. I've been recognized in person before, but generally I can go be a regular person anywhere, and then I can come in here and hang out with my community, and I get enough money.
"Enough" is the whole point
A lot of people would say: you've been on YouTube since 2011, you made over 5,000 videos, and you're making a few thousand dollars a month in ad revenue. Total failure. Total flop. Well, it's enough for me. I need to pay my bills, combined with my wife's full-time job as an attorney. It's enough to pay my bills. It's enough to do what I love. It's enough to help people.
A lot of the people that you would think of as successful on YouTube because of how many views they're getting, they have lives I would not want. I only spend maybe two or three hours a day, on average, doing everything as a creator online. That includes filming videos. I'm publishing four videos a day across eight different channels, and it only takes me two or three hours a day of real time to film and upload all of them.
Some might think, wow, you're publishing four videos a day, and right now I make maybe $2,000 or less a month in ad revenue. And I don't have any sponsorships. I've had sponsorships in the past; I got paid like $25,000 this year on one sponsorship, and I've gotten tips and things like that. But I don't have any sponsorships right now, because I'm totally free.
The more successful you get, the more trapped you feel
The more, quote, successful you get... I've been one of the top Facebook partners. My original channel was blowing up at one point. It wasn't always this dead. But being where I am now gives me total freedom. I used to hate being a failure on YouTube. I used to relentlessly think it would be so much better if I just could be a success. But the more successful my channel has tended to be, the more I've tended to hate it, because the more successful you get, the more people want stuff from you.
Hardly anybody is wanting stuff from me today, and that's nice. When my channel was blowing up, you get so many people who are unhappy with you, too, because the bigger you get, the more people want you to do certain things, and the more you don't do those things, the more people go around hating on you and being upset. I'm at a point where people don't often make videos about me, which is great. With Mr. Beast, someone's making a video every five minutes about him right now, and lots of them are nasty.
At the points when I've had the most attention, on my YouTube channel and as a creator on Facebook, I've been viral multiple times, and it was a bad experience. It is consistently a bad experience. Sure, it was ego-flattering to have thousands of people watching my live stream on Facebook. It was ego-flattering when I made the Twitch homepage and got all those followers pouring in. It was ego-flattering when views went off on TikTok and videos went viral on YouTube, bringing in hundreds and hundreds of viewers. It was ego-flattering, but it was also stressful.
The way I do YouTube, I am free. I'm free today to make what I care about. I'm free to make music that can just be any old thing. The more you get followers and money, the more you will often feel trapped. Some of the times I've gone viral, it's because I was feeling very trapped and I looked for a solution out. When I was going nuts on Facebook gaming, I'd play Goldeneye for a couple of hours and get a million views on the video, make thousands in ad revenue, tons of new subscribers, and then I'd play another retro game and that would go off too. It didn't satisfy me.
If this doesn't satisfy me today, no number ever will
What I found is there's no level of viewership that matters if this doesn't satisfy me today. If 50,000 impressions on every single new music video I put out on my original channel isn't enough, nothing ever will be enough. And the key thing is, many of the people who even have some of the largest channels are still not satisfied. How sad is that?
One day I realized real success on YouTube is being satisfied with what I've got. Now, a lot of you might look at this and say: you're losing subs, your videos are ten out of ten, your click-through rate is in the dumpster. This is good enough. That's 52 people who chose to listen to my latest freestyle. That's great. On other channels, four people watch a video I made talking about streamer success tips; 28 people watch this one. Today I get a few hundred views on a channel that normally doesn't get as much, and I actually feel great about it. I used to feel crappy getting only a few thousand views on a League of Legends video. Now I have all these channels and I'm having fun growing all these little channels. I'm having fun seeing what people like to watch.
Why being a small YouTuber is actually awesome
I actually love being a small YouTuber, because anyone can be a big, successful YouTuber. It's almost easier. You pretty much get put into this box. You get told what to do. The more, quote, successful you get, the more other people start controlling you. When you get enough subscribers on YouTube, you get a handler, aka a partner manager. When my channel was really blowing up, I had a partner channel manager. The bigger you get, the more scrutiny every little thing you do and say gets.
Being a small YouTuber is awesome. You can get away with all kinds of crazy stuff. Because my channel was often small over the last few years, I said all kinds of crazy stuff and I got away with it. One video did get caught by the algorithm. I deleted all those videos and decided, okay, I'm going to stick to the terms and conditions if I'm going to keep using this platform. And if I don't want to use this platform, I'll go somewhere else. But I had a lot of stuff I said all over the place that, because I wasn't as big on YouTube, didn't matter. This is part of why I think being a big YouTuber is not fun the way people imagine it is.
My life as a "failure" versus Mr. Beast's life
Now, you might argue that I'm a total failure on YouTube based on all the experience I have, and that I've been on YouTube as long as Mr. Beast. But which of us has a life that you would actually enjoy more? My life as a YouTube failure, I would bet, is on most days much better than Mr. Beast's life. I get eight or nine hours of sleep a night. I get hours a day to spend with my kids. There's no pressure. If I don't do a video, there are some people who wish I had, but there's no pressure. It's very relaxed.
I have time to go do yoga. I have time to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, time to play tennis, time to go on a date with my wife. I can go anywhere with my wife, and very rarely does anybody notice me. Very rarely does anybody treat me differently. You don't realize what a gift that is until it goes away. Mr. Beast can't go to the grocery store without getting mobbed, and that leads to a very isolated, stressful life. I've watched some of his videos talking about how stressful it is and the hours he works. I've watched a lot of YouTubers talk about what they do, and most of them who are getting all those views are putting in three, four, five times as much time into YouTube as I am. Sure, some of them are getting ten, twenty, a hundred times the amount of views I'm getting. But once you have enough money and enough viewers, nothing else matters. Too many viewers is never enough viewers. Some of them are just grinding and making themselves miserable and sacrificing their health for what? I'm not doing that.
I'm proud of how I do YouTube
I'm proud of how I do YouTube. I'm proud that I keep posting. I'm proud that I keep posting to my channel here, and I'm proud that I keep watching. If you'd have told me 13 years ago that I was going to get $10 in a month from the YouTube channel I'd worked so hard to grow, I might have cried. When this channel was blown up, if you'd told me that a year from now, five years from now, I'd get ten bucks in ad revenue, I might have quit YouTube completely and deleted the channel. But you know what? Being a failure on YouTube is actually awesome.
I know a lot of people do think I look successful on YouTube with my different channels and all the viewership I get, and I recognize that. My crypto channel has got millions of views. It has tens of thousands of subscribers. Any video I put out gets thousands of views. Some of my videos move markets sometimes; you'll instantly have a coin double in price. So I realize there's a narrative out there that I'm successful. But to me, the best way to be successful on YouTube is to be kind of a regular old YouTuber. I get my paychecks. I have a regular life. And it's really nice. If you want to see how I think about measuring this for yourself, that's the heart of how I measure success as a YouTuber without views or money.
I keep grinding out four crypto-and-everything-else videos a day spread across these eight channels. With all that I've learned on YouTube, I expect I'll continue to make more money and grow my viewership. I imagine I'll be a Twitch partner one day. I love the community we have there. Having a smaller community is often much more satisfying than a bigger community. I've had live streams where the chat just constantly moves and I can barely keep up with it. When I can read every comment and connect with every viewer, that actually feels better to me. The deeper version of all of this is something I keep working through in my YouTube Coaching playlist, where I talk through the creator mindset video by video.
Lean into the joy of being a "failure"
So I encourage you: lean into the joy of being a failure on YouTube. Lean into judging yourself by how much fun you have and how much value you give to people, rather than by how many views you get. Because there are a lot of YouTube videos that are worthless. They get a lot of views, but they're worthless. And there are some YouTube videos, like some of these freestyles I play, that help people laugh. Helping people laugh is something really valuable you can do. If I helped one or two people have a real laugh today, that might have been more useful than having thousands of people watch a crypto video, which I try to slip some laughs into as well.
Most of the popular channels on YouTube are not doing any good that I can see. They are literally scraping people's time and giving people nothing in return. And that's normal. I'll throw Mr. Beast under the bus here. In a lot of his videos he's putting people in uncomfortable, nasty, annoying situations and then making them look ridiculous by offering money. A lot of his videos are blatant clickbait. I've watched some and thought, wow, I just straight up wasted my time; that video taught me nothing. And these videos get hundreds of millions of views. Yes, there are some Mr. Beast videos like that first one, where he gave money to a homeless guy. That was pretty cool. But a lot of the views even Mr. Beast gets are off of stuff that looks gross to me. I could do stuff like that. I don't want to. It's gross, and other people have called that out.
So lean into being what you might think of as a failure, and set a different kind of success. I know myself as a success on YouTube. Many people look at me and think what a failure I am, and have said exactly that in the comments. I appreciate all of you loving and supporting me here. This whole way of seeing it lines up with why I believe criticism is a sign of success you can mostly ignore.
The one thing I wish I'd done sooner
If you want to think differently about being a creator, this is for you. I've got a lot of valuable ideas, like the idea that one YouTube video is enough. The thing I'm really good at on YouTube, and at success in anything, is doing a lot in a relatively short amount of time. Give me two hours of real time and I'll film four videos a day.
What I wish I'd done earlier in my journey is gotten a YouTube coach. I have a YouTube coach now myself. I've coached other people to much greater success than you'd see on my channel, people who have more subscribers than I do and who have made millions of dollars off of YouTube. I've coached a lot of people into more success than I have.