Good morning and welcome to the hundreds of new subscribers who joined following the release of Colin and Samir’s YouTube channel insights. ICYMI, you can see their revenue and Shorts performance here.

–Hannah Doyle

From 10x Subscriber Growth to Zero

YouTuber Kevin Paffrath, known as Meet Kevin, shares stock market trading advice to his nearly 2 million followers.

In a recent Wall Street Journal podcast, he told reporters that he made $22 million last year from his social channels. However, when the stock market started to go south at the end of last year, his followership and business went down with it.

Here’s a short timeline of the cautionary tale:

2010: Kevin started covering real estate and general financial advice on YouTube. When the meme stock saga emerged in January 2021 with GameStop and AMC, Kevin joined the viral conversation and pivoted to stock market content.

February 2021: Kevin’s stock market videos began to go viral, as well as other videos on financial transformation such as How to Retire in 7 Years and How I turned $10,500 into $210,000 at Age 19 (In 90 days). Through spring of 2021 he added over 400,000 subscribers, and by the end of August he was up to 1.7 million followers.

As his audience grew, so did the amount of money he was making. Soon he made $22 million dollars between ad revenue, sponsorship fees, and financial courses. He even put down a $300,000 deposit on a private jet because of how well things were going.

September 2021: By the fall, the stock market was starting to slow. And in the mainstream economy inflation was rising, supply chains broke down, and there were labor shortages. Kevin’s content changed tone—he briefly ran for governor of California, and shared his economic worries, warning others to sell their stocks, as he sold off 99% of his holdings.

October 2021: In response, his followers pushed back. He started to lose subscribers and get negative comments calling him “paper hands”, which is slang for investors who sell and don’t have the guts to ride out an economic downturn.

Today he sells real estate and continues to upload to YouTube on a regular basis, covering the stock market as well as housing and general finance advice. Over the last two months, his follower count has halted, he lost the private jet deposit, and he projects less money to come in this year due to the lack of growth in viewership.

Our Take

Most creators experienced explosive growth over the past two years, but probably none more than finance creators. As the economic downturn hit, Kevin’s value prop changed from inspiration to caution, which went against the positive financial transformation his audience came for.

Kevin’s story shows that like all businesses, creators need to be diversified and prepared to endure the twists and turns that running a small business brings. How do you think the recession will impact creators? Join our conversation on Twitter.

Yes Theory Starts Fresh

This past weekend, the travel and lifestyle creators released a video reflecting on their channel and plans for the future, revealing that the majority of the team, including Thomas Brag, Ammar Kandil, Thomas Dajer, and Cam Peddle, have left America to live closer to their respective homes, including France and Australia.

Over the last year, Yes Theory has gone through content and structural changes. Co-founder Matt Dajer left YouTube, the remaining team started experimenting with viral video deep dives, a cooking channel, and began production on a documentary. Throughout they were struggling to find content that aligned what they wanted to do and what their audience wanted.

“In these past couple years of experimentation, our channel may have seemed erratic,” Brag said. “We weren’t sure which ideas we truly wanted to do ourselves and which ideas we were doing because we internalized our audience’s expectations.”

Yes Theory plans to share more large-scale adventures with their 7 million subscribers, and use their newer Seek Discomfort channel, with over 600,000 subscribers, to build upon the youthful adventures that brought their main channel to prominence. “We’re in an open chapter in our shared book of Yes Theory and in our personal ones pondering what these next pages will look like and grateful that many of you are still here interacting with each other, believing in us and keeping our dream alive.”

Our Take

Being a creator is mostly about creating with your audience, not for it. Yes Theory has embodied this through their channel, their growing Facebook group, and their Discord, bringing their community along through new changes and circumstances. Together they've created an ideology that will exist within their strong community and content, regardless of the faces that bring the adventures.

Sponsored by Jellysmack

This Creator Passed 2M Followers by Owning the Craft of Doll Making

Christian, better known as HeXtian, is a 31-year-old Filipino American artist that captured the internet’s attention with his eye-catching videos of his passion: doll making.

HeXtian puts a modern twist on the craft by creating dolls inspired by pop culture icons like Lizzo, Taylor Swift, and Jessica Rabbit.

To expand their audience beyond YouTube, HeXtian partnered with Jellysmack through the Creator Program with the goal of sharing their content inventory with Facebook audiences. With 700,000 page likes and 15 months spent on Facebook’s top 10 Kids Entertainment and Animation pages in the United States, the partnership has been an incredible success.

Read more about HeXtian’s story on Jellysmack’s blog, Creator Post.

Joma Tech to Create Dramedy Film Series

The backer behind the movie Crazy Rich Asians, Peter Luo, signed crypto and satire YouTuber Joma Tech to produce a slate of upcoming series and films. The first being a dark comedy about the start of Bitcoin and the identity of its founder Satoshi.

Just six months ago Joma Tech quit his job at Google to create full-time, and took a risk pivoting from general tech to crypto-based content with his Vaxxed Doggo project, which sold out less than a minute after launch.

Our Take

Industries that lack storytelling are ripe for creators—web3, with all its complexities, is one of them. Because Joma Tech cultivated a loyal community with millions of views, when the time arose for a major film financier to enter the web3 space, he was first on the call sheet. Creators looking for opportunities should look to other complex industries in need of good storytelling.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Airrack is hiring an e-commerce brand manager.

• TikTok publishes a new guide to working with creators.

• Diving YouTuber Brandon Jordan signs a TV deal.

• Spreadshop is helping college athletes build their personal brands in the NIL era.*

• Gordon Ramsay will join MrBeast in his Willy Wonka chocolate factory recreation video.

• Journalist Taylor Lorenz breaks down how she covers creators.

• Max Fosh hits 1 million subscribers.

*This is sponsored advertising content.