Changing Your Niche on YouTube

So after consuming hours upon hours of content from these creators, I realized that most of these info filled videos didn’t show the entire process of teaching English (from the job search, application, interview, flying to Korea) from start to finish. So I thought to myself, “Why don’t I document my journey and let people see the whole process from beginning to end?” I had very little experience with a camera and YouTube, so I decided to simply introduce who I was and what I intended to do on my channel through my first video. I took out my iPhone 6, leaned it against my computer as a stand, and recorded my first video.

After editing the video with iMovie (which came free with my MacBook), I uploaded the video! That day was July 26th, 2017. I remember getting around 10 or 15 views in the first 24 hours and getting a comment from a teacher that was already teaching in Korea at the time. At that point, I was hooked. I wanted to commit to documenting my journey.

As a result of my newfound commitment and hobby, I decided to spend $800 at my local Best Buy on my first “expensive” camera, the Canon G7x mk II. I had no idea how to use it, but I knew that a lot of vloggers raved about it as their camera of choice. Over the next few months, I would document my whole process of teaching English in Korea primarily through “talking heads” or vlogs. I grew my following to a few hundred as I began to attract others that were interested in teaching English in Korea. This is when I started to understand the power of choosing a YouTube niche and attracting the right audience.

That being said, I realized that I wanted to not only create content documenting my teaching journey, but to also create content about different aspects of Korean culture, considering my half-Korean heritage. So I decided to share my story about my experiences being half-Black and half-Korean and uploaded that video in October of 2017. This was my first “viral” video, at least in my mind, as it gained tens of thousands of views within the first few weeks, giving me a boost from 200 subs to 2,000 within a few weeks. This pumped me up and further reinforced my commitment to taking my channel seriously and focusing on building the right audience and growing my channel.

I finally had some momentum. After all, I had been consistent in uploading at least once a week at that point. As I was thinking about strategy on how I could maximize the momentum of my current video success, I decided to create a follow-up video to my half-Black, half-Korean video, making a creative “mini-doc” recap of my story in a compelling way. I just had a feeling that if I crafted the story in the right way, it would do well. I uploaded the video in January 2018 and it immediately took off, creating my first viral video. Within the first few weeks, I broke several hundred thousand and broke 10,000 subscribers. This video would eventually become my first 1 Million views video.

Up to this point, I had been accepted into a English teaching program in Korea, upgraded my filming gear set up to increase my production quality, and I was preparing to move to South Korea. After arriving to Korea in February 2018, I hit the ground running with my full-time teaching job, but also my full-time YouTube “hobby” (as I wasn’t making a full-time living through YouTube). I had built an audience that was interested in not only teaching English in Korea, but Korean culture and I was in the perfect place to create the right content.

I had a pretty consistent growth (with some ups and downs) while focusing on creating my niche content. Towards the end of 2019, I made the decision to slightly shift the direction of the channel, still keeping the main focus on Korean culture and my experiences, but I invited my girlfriend to be a part of the channel permanently as she is also half-Korean. The channel started to include more content about our relationship as an interracial couple, both of us also being half-Korean.

This new shift in the channel has been a blast for us because it has been much more fun creating content with someone who shares a similar passion for story-telling and sharing culture. So now, I’ve shifted away from talking about teaching English in Korea and we shifted towards creating content around our relationship, being half-Korean, Korean culture, and creative cinematic stories.

This journey hasn’t been easy. I’ve had some really exciting moments, especially within the first two years, as I’ve been able to see some videos take off and my audience grow. But it has also been a grind of consistently uploading, figuring out what content works for my channel, and striking a balance between creating content for the audience vs. creating content that I want to create!

One of the biggest lessons I learned was to simply keep creating and keep uploading. I have been on YouTube long enough to experience several shifts in how the algorithm promotes videos and long enough to know that momentum comes and goes. I needed to keep reminding myself of why I’m doing YouTube and keep that at the forefront of my mind, or else it would be easy to give up.

What is your WHY factor that keeps you going?

For me, YouTube is a platform where I can share my filmmaking talents with the world, create a portfolio that can open up doors outside of YouTube, and continue to inspire and educate others who are interested in different aspects of Korean culture. That’s what keeps me going.

Also, as someone who loves to keep memories in the forms of videos and photos, I love the fact that I have my very own memory book of videos that document what I was doing and what I was thinking at any given moment.

If you could give a brand new creator one piece of advice, what would that be?

Study other YouTube creators, especially those in your particular niche. Examine the channels and videos of the channels that are successful as well as those that may not have the same level of success. Figure out what makes those channels successful and find ways that you can implement that in your content creation plan. You don’t always have to re-invent the wheel, but just find ways to implement what works for other channels and make it your own.

How have you grown as a creator from your first few videos up until now?

Yes, I’ve been fortunate enough to see growth from 0 to 57,000 subs in my 3 years on the platform. I’ve also became better at talking to the camera, shooting and editing videos, and interacting with my audience.

What channels inspire you and why?

I’m inspired by and learn from Filmmakers on the YouTube platform: Brandon Li, Danny Gevirtz, The Wandering DP, Peter McKinnon