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. If you want that kind of direct access, asking me questions one-on-one and getting on weekly calls, you can join me inside the Jerry Banfield Family, and we'll figure your channel out together.