andrew huangs 5 tenets of video ideas
Introduction
Andrew Huang recently released a video titled, "The diagram that got me a million followers". In the video, he outlined the five categories that he evaluated his ideas on to determine which ideas got to become videos. Essentially, ideas that fulfilled at least 4 out of 5 categories were selected. The purpose of this process was to narrow ideas down to the ones that would be most successful aka get him followers.
I was thinking that if I wanted to take becoming a content creator seriously, it wouldn't hurt to buy in to the process a little and try to think about how I would apply each of these categories. The categories I will be discussing are: what makes money, what's trending, what's worked well before, what I'm good at, and what I want to do.
What Makes Money
I actually don't even know how to answer this. If I think about the things that would actually get me paid, its probably monetizing youtube videos and getting twitch subs right? So the ideas would either have to get me twitch subs or enough views for me to actually get paid. With that in mind, I can probably divide my youtube/twitch content ideas further.
Youtube videos geared for more people will be more "monetizable" than specific videos. So an example might be a history of Hades speedrunning video where it's geared towards a wider audience. Meanwhile, a really specific video on beowulf mechanics would probably be too niche. I would probably make that video anyways tho.
What's Trending
For the trending category, I have two ideas on how I would approach it. The first is obviously whatever fotm game is in. As of writing, example of those games are palworld and lethal company. The second is whatever video format is trending at the moment. This one is kind of less obvious, but an example might be when it felt like tier lists were everywhere. Maybe they never went away and I just started consuming other content. Either way, if there's an uptick in a specific form of gaming content, I would probably count that as trending.
What's Worked Well Before
I think an element of this category is similar to what's trending. It would be worth considering what kind of videos other people have done and found success with. Then we perform a classic yoink and twist.
In terms of personal content that has done well, it really is just limited to random short videos that people randomly watch. I think what this really means is that if I'm just gonna make a bunch of gaming content, spamming clips is truly the most viable strat.
What I'm Good At
This category are probably ideas that I am able to comfortably execute. I don't think this rules out new activities but it may be in a medium or area that I am comfortable/familiar with. An easy example might be trying a new game. There's no guarantee that I will be good at the game. However, playing games is something that I am generally familiar with so it's not such a wildcard. I think stuff Im generally passionate about might also make me feel comfortable enough to create content around.
Generally speaking, these topics will probably include gaming, music, and nuclear (sorta?). There's a deep sense of irony that the topic I spent my undergraduate on is the one I feel least qualified to talk about. Some more passion based topics might be kpop, general improvement stuff (selfhelpcore LOL), and probably whatever hobby I'm into at the moment.
What I Want To Do
I think on stream I want to just game hard, host cool events, and do fun activities. I think these are when I enjoy streaming the most. Streaming is such a nebulous thing for me and I think I hate it most when I'm trying to be someone I'm not. I certainly think it's worth trying out new things to determine for myself whether or not I like it. At the end of the day though, I'm not doing anything I don't like.
In terms of youtube, I think I really just wanna make gaming videos, gaming-adjacent, and self-improvement. These are the topic areas I'm the most down for. Honestly if I could, I would like to fill my entire youtube channel with those cliché "how-to improve xyz" and "this is how I xyz'd in timespan here" LOL. OH! Also I wanna make video essays. If only I didn't suck at making videos and essays =(
References
The diagram that got me a million followers
tangent
As I wrote this, I just realized that we're basically building an evaluation matrix to evaluate designs. The only reason I'm realizing this is because I'm supposed to be making an evaluation matrix for my project at school as part of the engineering design process LOL. Now I'm just wondering what else can I steal from the engineering design process. Also, now that we're on that train of thought, what else should I add to the evaluation matrix? I was toying with the category of "viability" aka how viable is the idea aka how easily can I execute the idea. We'll have to circle back to this.