Hey everyone, I'm back with another interview (you can check out previous ones in my profile).

My goal is to learn + write about how people grew successful YouTube channels with actionable insights for people looking to start their own. So far I'm on 4 interviews with more coming soon!

In this interview, I talk to Jon from Asianometry about how he went from 0 -> 270K subscribers and $5K/month (from ads and Patreon) in 5 years. The journey was full of lessons you'll find useful!

Channel name and link - Asianometry
Niche - History, Technology, Science
Subscribers - ~270K
Watch time - 3.3M (monthly)
Revenue - $3-5K/month (from AdSense & Patreon)
Videos published - 316
Starting date (of first video) - 10th May 2017
Employees - 0 (solo)

I worked in Silicon Valley after graduating from college. After 10 years, I got tired of it and moved to Taiwan.

Asianometry started off as a travel blog/channel (though you can’t see the videos anymore). The first videos were on travel, hiking and landmarks, not geopolitics.

After 4-5 videos, no-one cared and I got like 10-15 views. I realized that if I wanted to last, I needed to make this enjoyable. So, I decided to make videos on topics I was interested in.

At the time I was a history buff so I wanted to do videos on World War II and the Chinese Civil War.

I was very low budget (and still am) as I like to keep overheads low.

• MacBook Air

• Blue Snowball (that my ex-vlogger sister gave me)

• iMovie (or even iMovie on my iPhone)

I’d post once every 2 weeks when working in cafes.

When I just got started, I didn't realize just how rough making China/Taiwan-related videos would be

There was either frequent abuse, low-quality spam in the comments or little to no engagement at all.

Asianometry is a product of my passion for learning and sharing what I learn in an engaging manner. That’s what kept me going despite the abuse, spam and low engagement.

My first 10 subscribers came from friends and family. I just posted about my channel on my personal Facebook account to let friends/family know I'm doing "this vlogging thing". They all subscribed to stay updated on my journey.

After a year of experimenting with travel and obscure history videos, I had 300 subscribers.

My first breakthrough came when I created 4 videos on China (and Taiwan) which were picked up by the YouTube algorithm (possibly due to great watch time?). Then, someone posted my China-Taiwan video to a right-wing forum and I went from 300-1500 subscribers extremely quickly.

Two years after reaching 1K subscribers, I was only at 4K subscribers. It took a really long time to get to 10K subscribers. I sensed I needed to change my strategy for coming up with ideas and presenting them

I realized my passion for history wouldn’t translate into channel growth (or monetization). I needed to pivot away from obscure history videos.

I decided I wanted to make this YouTube thing work. So, in September 2020, I decided to take a sabbatical from work and focused on producing as many different kinds of videos as possible.

I started with tech; I made videos relevant to Taiwan's semiconductor chip shortage that was happening at the time.

These were a hit. Producing as many different videos as possible and discovering this niche was what got me to 10K subscribers.

To get to 100K subscribers, I tried to focus on the tech/semiconductor niche as much as possible (since those videos were doing very well).My growth pattern was simple; I just produced more and more videos in an under-served niche, got picked up by the YouTube algorithm and had some of them organically reposted/viral on forums.

This strategy hasn't changed much. But to get to my current subscriber count (~270K subs), I focused on watch time and retaining viewers for as long as possible.

I realized it's important to make content I watched myself. I wouldn't watch stuff that's just a guy boringly saying a collection of events. I wanted to know the underlying stories & ideas behind something.

So I changed my videos from being less "Wikipedia-styled vomit" to being more about story-telling, explaining ideas and problem solving.

After this change, watch time doubled and tripled (it was crazy!). From then on, if a particular topic didn't have at least 50% watch time, I dumped it. Keeping your viewers on your videos is key to growth.

As MrBeast says, "If you make content that people genuinely crave, can’t find anywhere else, and actually watch. You’ll blow up."

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✨ To check out the full interview including how much money the channel makes*,* what his content creation process is like (i.e. finding ideas, promoting etc) and key lessons for new YouTubers*,* click the link in my bio*.*