Today I want to tell you what I've learned in 2022, especially when it comes to being a content creator online and sharing online. I've learned a bunch of valuable lessons. It's been an uncomfortable year at certain points as a content creator. I've felt very successful at various points, and I've felt very lost and confused, and I considered more than ever quitting doing all my online content creation. So I think you'll find it very helpful to absorb these lessons with me. This will answer some questions you might have about my strategies going forward. If you're a YouTuber, a streamer, or a podcaster like I am, I think you'll love this.
One of the lessons I've learned is to make my show in a way where everything works really well together — where I'm playing a game that people actually want to watch, on a platform that has organic growth and no algorithm. I've got a business system now that's better than ever. If you want to follow along with how I think through all of this, I keep the conversation going inside the Jerry Banfield Family, where I share the strategy behind every move in real time.
Lesson 1: Build where there's no algorithm to fight
I've learned the value of focusing on a platform like Twitch where I don't have to deal with an algorithm. The algorithm does allow for huge growth opportunities on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok — these platforms do give you huge growth potential. But you pay the price on these platforms by being a slave to the algorithm. You have to keep creating content all the time for the algorithm. And if you try to deviate from the algorithm, you can lose everything very easily, as I've found.
It's not even by controversy or anything. Literally, I would have thousands of people watching my Warzone streams in 2021. I would play a different game and it would go down to like 50 or 100 total views, compared to maybe 50,000 on a Warzone stream. And back then I would have more views than I do now. I went from being a top streamer to almost nothing simply by changing games, which is the same lesson I learned going from a small streamer to a top Facebook gaming partner to demonetized.
I've been a creator online for 10 years, so I've been doing this a long time. I'm more experienced than the vast majority of people you probably watch online, and I've learned some really valuable lessons in my 10th year. So if I could put the number one lesson, it's to focus somewhere you can create where you don't have to worry about an algorithm, and where there's a high-level, consistent experience. That's why I focused on my Twitch channel, because on Twitch I don't have to worry about an algorithm. If you follow me, you get notifications, and they work, and they're consistent. Yes, there's an algorithm for discovery on Twitch, but if you're following me on Twitch, there's not an algorithm between us.
Lesson 2: Play a game that's actually in demand
People ask me whether you can actually make money playing the game, and yes, you can actually make money playing Gods Unchained — there's a ton of potential in it. That's one of the lessons I've learned: to pick a game that has the best long-term potential, that has a very compelling reason to play it, where the developers engage with a viewership community.
It's well worth the time and energy and effort, if you're a gaming streamer, to put your time and effort into finding the very best game you can possibly play. I put a ton of time and effort into finding the best game for me to play, because if you play the wrong game as a creator, you're just totally wasting your time. I played Hades for a couple of weeks — like 50 or 100 hours in the game — and there were just enough people streaming it already that there were hardly any new viewers in my stream.
If you're going to be a creator, you should play a game in a place that is worth it. You should play a game in a place where people actually are interested in watching that game, and where the game is in demand. What you don't want to do is play a game while there's not much of a community for it. Sometimes the only way you can find out for sure is just to test a bunch of different games. So that's what I did — I tested a ton of different games. Gods Unchained is the hottest game in the world that I've found, by far, out of hundreds of games on Twitch. That to me indicates it's worth my time. It's very worth my time to play a game that is in demand as a streamer, where the developer is very engaged. I found Gods Unchained because they sponsored two of my live streams. That's how I discovered it.
So number one is build in a place like Twitch where there's not an algorithm to deal with, and the second big thing to do is play a game that has growth built in, where it's very easy to grow from there. These are the same kinds of hard-won lessons I unpacked in lessons from multistreaming 1,069 hours so you don't have to, and a lot of it comes down to something simple: have fun first as a creator and accept the views you get. If you want the full breakdown of how I grow channels, I put my best material in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
Lesson 3: Stay out of conversational potholes
This year I've learned the value of focusing my conversation topics. I've struggled with keeping my conversation topics focused a lot in the past, and I've had my conversation topics all over the place. I would just talk about anything, anytime. I've learned to really consider the audience as much as possible, and to avoid unnecessary problems with things that people are just triggered on. It's just easier and makes more sense to stay out of hot-topic areas, because what's more effective is to just go around that area.
I'm not even going to give any topic in particular, because people get so unconscious and irrational on certain topics that the only reasonable thing to do is just avoid that topic completely. I've waded into a lot of tough topics online, but I've seen there's almost no reason to do that. Why bother wading into a difficult topic — a topic where people are irrational, unreasonable, where people just throw out canned opinions based on things they've heard online? Why even put yourself in that position? The only logical thing to do is just stay out of it.
The parable of the hole
There's a good analogy for this, one of those little spiritual proverb kind of things you hear. Here's a little parable with a similar analogy. The parable goes like this. It's an analogy of life, told from first person.
I was walking down the street one day, and I fell into a hole. The hole was really deep and dark, and it took me a long time to get out of the hole. I finally got out of the hole and made it back home. The next day, I'm walking down the street and I fall into a deep, dark hole. This time, I get out of it a little bit quicker, and I go, you know, I got out of it a little bit quicker. The next day, I came back and I fell back in that same hole. But this time, I got out of it much faster, because I'd fallen in that hole many times before — I knew exactly how to get out of that hole.
The day after this, I slipped in the hole and almost immediately got out of it, because I knew exactly how to reach for help. The day after that, I walked down the street and I fell into the hole again, and climbed directly out of it. The next day, I walked right by that hole on that same street. I almost fell into it, but I walked by that hole and didn't get into it. Then the next day, I walked down a different street.
You can see it. At some point, you just realize: I'm going to just not go down that street. I can get to where I'm going without going in that hole again.
So I fell into some big holes in the last year online — areas where people are triggered. I would prefer to let somebody else trigger you, or I'll trigger you generically. So I'm going to stay out of those holes, those areas, from now on. If I kind of accidentally wander into one, and didn't really mean to get into that hole, all right, that's one thing — I can live with that, I can deal with that. But if I can avoid throwing myself into a hole, or some dumb situation, or some dumb conversation, then we're going to do that. We're definitely going to do that.
Why I stopped swearing
From now on, I'll give you an example: swearing. I tried swearing at various points in my life. I have cursed a lot. And swearing is one of those kind of stupid holes that you can fall in. Yeah, it can be funny — I had some funny streams where I said the F word hundreds of times, and it was interesting. But then you get all this judgment and criticism from people. Some people get completely turned off and won't watch anymore.
Then I watched my own stream one day, and I'm like, why? Why am I swearing like this? This is completely unnecessary for me to just be swearing like this constantly. Why am I doing this? And then a lady told me one day that she loved the message I had to share, but that when I cursed, she could barely hear the message — she couldn't hear the message when I was swearing. I'm like, wow, that's a really powerful example.
So it's so much easier. Why curse? There's almost nothing to gain from cursing. It's not like you get a bunch of extra followers and big rounds of applause and you get treated better because of your cursing. There's very little to gain from cursing, and there's everything to lose. So on YouTube now, I try to avoid cursing. There's a whole section on YouTube ads, and I can always just put "no" there, and then I don't have my videos affected for monetization because I said the F word 50 times in a video.
The three lessons in one line
So that's what I've learned in 2022. The main three lessons I've learned are: build on a platform where there's no algorithm, play a game that's in demand, and stay out of potholes conversationally — just go around that topic. Whatever extra attention might come from delving into a difficult topic is not only not worth it, it's undesirable.
If these lessons resonate with you and you want to go deeper, I share everything I'm learning as a creator — the strategies, the mistakes, and the wins — inside the Jerry Banfield Family, and I keep posting my newest creator videos in my YouTube Coaching playlist.