RECORD STORE TALES #1055: Sex Sells (But Fur Sells Better)

Long story “short”:

Recently, Deke started getting decent views on his YouTube Shorts.  I think the idea originated within the Community from Brent Jensen, who likes to make short clips from the highlights of his Thursday Night Record Club videos.  So Deke tried it, and had some success.  Jex Russell said to me, “Hey man, you should try YouTube Shorts too!”

Sounds good!  But how?  I asked Deke, and he advised me to check out some Google tutorials as that could explain it better.  I stumbled through it, and eventually got some videos to work.

I started with a couple shorts.  Like Deke, I chose highlights from the live Grab A Stack of Rock shows.  I chose two to start:  both with my co-host MarriedAndHeels showing off her shoes.  Let’s face it:  even though the videos were not “adult”*, sex still sells and heels are sexy.  I had some moderate success.  I was excited to get a few hundred views on each.  I kept going!  I uploaded an Alice Cooper clip from MuchMusic to my Youtube Shorts, got a couple hundred more views.

Then a MarriedAndHeels video of her lovely Easter manicure went crazy and broke 1800 views!  I knew I was onto something!  A video of her hot T-strap heels got similar views.

I have a tricky problem.  It’s the same problem I have here on WordPress:  No direction.  I started out talking music, but that got stale (and the hits dried up).  I decided to cover toys, games, soda pop, nature, and of course, high heels too.  So there’s no actual direction.  Nothing for a subscriber to latch onto and say “I like this channel”.  But that is my problem, a self-made problem.  I like lots of different content myself, and there’s no point in starting multiple channels.  So this is the bed that I made.

Here’s what I didn’t expect.

It is true that I wanted to exploit heels for views, and it definitely works.  MarriedAndHeels gets five times as many views when she’s on Grab A Stack of Rock than any other guest.  She gets double the views of any rock star I’ve interviewed.  The only guest who ever got more views than her is Martin Popoff.  So, yeah.  I cynically said “Let’s get the Instagram Queen of Heels on the show and see what happens.”  But, on the other side, she is truly a friend, and one who I wanted to work with creatively since the day we met.  I’ve been wanting to get her on the show since last summer, because I knew we would be great together.  And I was right.  I don’t even fully understand why she thinks I’m cool or wants to be on my show, but I’m learning to just accept it without the questions.  The fact is, we are a great creative team.  Everybody thinks so.  People who don’t even care about the heels, enjoy watching us chat.  So that was successful from an artistic point of view, not to mention the friendship.   The numbers are a nice bonus.

But I found something that sells even better than sexy nails and heels.

I uploaded a chipmunk.  That got 2000 views.  I uploaded another.  That got 3000 views.  Then, a raccoon.  2000 more views!

Sex sells – but furry critters sell even more!

Good thing summer is coming!  There will be lots and lots of cottage critters to upload to YouTube Shorts, and lots more heels with my friend.  I’ve probably made a total of about 10 cents from all these videos, but everything adds up!

YouTube is tricky, and you have to constantly feed it new content or everything dries up.  With the help of several furry friends, and one in high heels, this will hopefully be easy to do this summer!

 

* On every MarriedAndHeels short, YouTube flagged them as adult content even though nothing was adult.  I won every review.