300,000 SUBSCRIBER SPECIAL (And How You Can Do It Too)

now guys I don't usually I don't usually smoke okay so just for those of you who are thinking oh Thomas is doing it so it's cool it's not cool it's terrible but if I do smoke it's because I'm celebrating 300 000 subscribers and wow I mean that's just honestly I never dreamed of it I didn't um I remember getting lunch with one of the Game Grumps well he was a game Grump at the time his name was Kevin he was the editor for the game grumps and he came to South Carolina that's where I am right now I'm actually at my land um we have a 12 acre property that we purchased last year and we were just we're probably 15 minutes away and we were getting lunch and I said hey man do you think I'll ever get 150 000 subscribers I don't know why that was the number in my head do you think I'll ever get there and he said absolutely and uh here we are at 300 000 subscribers so huge thank you to you

guys so let's let's crack this uh this open here or what am I trying to say let's let's smoke this sucker and let's talk about first off you know well I want to tell you the story of how this channel got to where it is and how you can how you can replicate that and honestly why you should try and replicate making a YouTube channel for your game Studio um I want to talk about how how I got here and sort of give you guys an idea of the grind that it takes to hit 300 000 subscribers and by the way I know I'm not like you know I know I don't have a million subscribers and I know it's not that impressive to hit 300 000 subscribers but I'm excited and I just want to tell you about how you how you get here and what what the journey was like

um I'm a pretty anti-social person I'm also pretty insecure in a lot of ways like I'm pretty down on myself all the time and so like seven eight years ago I never would have dreamed I'd be talking to a camera in the middle of the woods uh in front of 300 000 people uh 300 000 subscribers um I never wanted to do any of that I just wanted to make games that's what I wanted to do right and I wanted to sit alone in my office and make games um but my brother-in-law Matt I believe it was my brother-in-law and by the way thank you Matt if it was you he sort of pushed me to just he said make a video just one video about how to make games and I did that and that was my first dedicated like upload where I talked to a camera I put some trailers up and stuff but I would never talk to the camera and I know a lot of you probably feel that way right now you're like man I

would suck on camera like and maybe there's been family in your life that made you feel insecure about who you are and your personality and maybe you're too quirky and you're or not even quirky maybe you're just cringe like I'm I'm pretty cringy a lot and maybe you feel really really weird um I felt that way but there's some in me like this little it's like a little creature or something that's inside of me and he's like stubborn and competitive and rude and just obnoxious and always wants to get his way this little thing inside of me this little creature and that's what pushed me to say you know what I'm going to do it and so despite feeling incredibly insecure I said let's let's do it let's you know let's make a video and that video did really really well um and I was surprised and people really liked what they saw the first sort of tip I want to tell you as I continue telling the story the

first tip I want to give you is you're not as silly as you think and if you are silly or cringy or awkward on YouTube on social media that's your advantage the beauty like the B it's so funny you know I love my family they've been really supportive of me I love my community but sometimes you know when I'm at a family get-together or some sort of party or a community event I feel small and I'm like really insecure but you guys are always really encouraging and and my my close family has been very encouraging so it's not like they haven't been but that insecurity isn't here very often when I'm talking to you guys because I'm super encouraged by you guys

so I just want to encourage all of you that just because you feel small in your local community and when you're home or when you're at school or at your desk job it doesn't mean it doesn't mean that your YouTube community that you slowly build is going to say the same thing they're probably going to say the opposite in fact the more open and honest you are on YouTube and on social media the more people are going to love you okay so I kept making games I made a game called pinstripe that took four years five total if you count console and that's really what I focus my energy on and and in my head I was like this is the only way to make money as a game developer so that's what I'm gonna do and I'll I'll sometimes do videos on the side then my channel started to grow and I started getting a little bit of Revenue

and just by the way PS PSA PTSD it's PSA Public Service Announcement YouTube ad Revenue sucks okay I make about a thousand dollars a month and I know that sounds like a lot but I've got 300 000 subscribers and I upload a lot of videos and it's only a thousand dollars a month and obviously you can't live on that um at least in America right um so you know I was but at the time I was bringing in like 100 a month that was like six years ago so you're making no money from barely any money from from YouTube ads and then and then I started getting sponsorship offers so I would take those you know I would work with skillshare udemy I even took a raid chat raid what's it raid something whatever that annoying I even I even sold out and bent over and took I took a deal with them too but you know I was just trying to make make ends

meet you know um money started coming in slowly and I was actually bringing in around three thousand dollars a month just from YouTube stuff you know sponsored videos and AD Revenue and I was like whoa like this is actually slowly picking up and that's sort of I re I sort of felt like that was my limit in terms of income potential and just like the reason you make YouTube videos it's like it's like supplemental income right my wife got pregnant and she was believe it or not she was supporting us before we were making four thousand dollars she was supporting us and we were we were living on on her income and then we had some savings but I just sort of kept going making games and making YouTube videos and I would work sort of through the night because she worked night shifts so I sort of aligned to my schedule with

hers and remember she came home one day and said that she was pregnant and that was with our first child livian and I remember just being really scared and I sat down in the kitchen and I just I said I think I'm it was like a week of knowing we were pregnant and I just was like I think I'm I think I'm depressed or it was like anxiety and depression it was just a mixture and I've had trouble with that for as long as I can remember honestly and there was always this feeling in the back of my head despite making some revenue from YouTube and uh you know we would blow through the kickstarter money we would do kickstarters and then I would do kickstarters and then the money would be gone you know to because we're working on a game and uh just I remember just feeling like man I'm gonna have to go get a job

you know so it was you know it was tight money was tight um but then I started to discover the secret and the secret is this having an audience is more valuable than gold it's more value valuable than cash which cash isn't really valuable anymore is it it's more valuable than crypto well crypto is not valuable anymore either is it you know that that really does drive home my point which is guys build a freaking audience an audience is incredibly valuable here's why a lot of you are building an indie game right now and you have this dream of like okay if I sell this into game and it does well I'll make fifty thousand dollars and I can live on that and make my next game right the problem is

that's a big gamble isn't it to spend all your time uh years making games and hoping that it pays off uh I think Jeff Walker he's a he's a digital entrepreneur he wrote a book called launch I really like it he calls it hope marketing which is you build a digital product and you just hope and you pray that when you launch this thing you make some money that's called hope marketing and you guys know I'm really passionate about marketing so it's unsurprising that this conversation has landed in at the marketing discussion but with an audience with an audience you don't have to hope you really don't have to hope and yes I mean I'll be honest with you guys you guys are profitable right an

audience is profitable because yeah 99 of your subscribers won't give you a penny but when you launch a game when you launch a digital product so for me I've launched two games and I've also launched a digital product called full-time Game Dev which is my course um and also we're planning on launching a an asset on the asset store um when you have an audience you can pretty much guarantee that your audience is going to support you so first off guys I just want to say a huge thank you thank you so much for supporting frankly my dreams um and by the way I don't sit on my property here to go look at me look at me I'm trying to show you like this is why building an audience is so important this is why six seven years of

building this YouTube channel is so important because it gives you the opportunity to say you know what I feel like making a new game you know what I feel like making a digital product like a school or an online course or a coaching program you know I feel like making an asset pack today or for me you know what I feel like making short horror movies the reason I get to do this guys the reason I am I am free like I'm completely free to do what I want the reason is because I prioritize putting an audience together building an audience across all social media platforms and also an email list it's it's like 370 000 people total and a lot of those might be crossovers but the reason I prioritize that is because I think deep down I knew

that an audience is more valuable than gold it allows you to do whatever you want any Creative Drive you have that audience or at least a portion of it will be there to support you now time for a shout out um I I want you guys to one build your own channels and maybe one day I'll give you a shout out for your channel but I want to shout out some channels I just really love and that have really supported me and that you guys should should go and check out um and after I do the shout out I'm going to give you some tips on starting your own channel okay Pawnee pants Pawnee pants gets my number one vote haven't met potty Ponte pants I really want to meet Ponte pants but Ponte pants gets my number one vote

I love Pawnee pants's style I love his videos I love how informative and entertaining they are and I just got to give the guy credit because he's making an awesome game so I highly suggest and the link is in the description to follow Ponte pants Noah and his brother at Blackthorne prod that's number two for me and the reason why is because Noah has been there for me for the last four years I think anytime I have questions just reach out to him on Discord anytime I want to get advice or encouragement I know I know that Noah will be there just the nicest guy so I highly suggest following Blackthorne prod that's Noah and his brother great Channel but honestly like tied with second place but I hate maybe third place but honestly it's probably tied

is David RB David how are you doing this David's David's game Arcadian Rift is glorious glorious beautiful game and it's great because you know Noah has these 2D games and then David has these 3D games both of both of you guys are incredibly impressive so go follow David RB if you're if you're into 3D games and unreal uh David is your guy so Link in the description for David um sadly the other David that is number four um although to be honest sometimes I want him to be number one uh sadly he he he quit doing YouTube um but David Whaley I mean good grief David Whaley is his channel is called Game Dev unlocked and uh you know he is

an incredibly talented developer he made a game called the first tree but I just really like how humble and honest he is anytime I'm feeling cocky that inner monster inside of me that's getting cocky or snarky or greedy I think about David he's just a really moral guy he's got a sweet personality and he's a really good friend and man he's been there for me so much you know what's sad is like all of these guys um I feel like I haven't given back to them you know they've been so encouraging to me and I haven't really given much to them so anyway um just just check those out below and then finally man I always mess up your name he's a student of mine at my school full-time Game Dev but ondrash Andrew Andy Andre Andre however you say your name he's got a small Channel right now but he's he is figuring out YouTube

and he's also figuring out game development um he he made a game called um Arab skira and he he admitted that it didn't do very well and that's okay you know that's one of his very first games and he's just so honest and I just want to see him succeed so if you guys want to click below to subscribe um to Andre Andre Andre Andres Andrew it would really mean a lot to me because um he's been very encouraging to me as well so those are just some channels that I'm just super duper you know jealous of in a lot of ways because their personalities are so so genuine and so good and they're just good people so be sure to subscribe below to them um now finally I want to leave you guys with some tips um the first one is I was actually I was in San Francisco two days ago I'm on the East Coast so I'm in South Carolina

flew all the way out to San Francisco with my wife to to go to hang out with the unity CEO his name is John and uh he's just the sweetest guy I really like John a lot you'd think a CEO of uh he used to be a I think CEO of EA games or at the very least CEO um you'd think that he'd be kind of a jerk honestly but he's so nice he was so nice to me but anyway I got to hang out with him and also some some Developers and uh we did like a lecture or a fireside chat kind of like this it's just me and him with some some Unity developers in front of us and I met some Unity developers and some of them said stuff that kind of was discouraging to me a lot of them were very encouraging and you know big

dreamers but some of them said Thomas you have this big Channel you don't understand how hard it is you don't understand the bubble you're in and my encouragement to you guys is to not think that way and I know a lot of you are in parts of the world that it's difficult I can certainly understand that being a challenge just because YouTube is primarily English the audience I would just encourage you that it takes a long time it takes a long time to build a YouTube channel and to get to the point where you're smoking cigarettes celebrating 300 000 subscribers it takes a long time so frankly don't be greedy and don't be selfish and impatient takes a long time okay do you want a million bucks well it's gonna take I feel like Michael Scott for some reason that just reminded

me of Michael Scott do you want a million bucks it's gonna take you a long time to get there all right the same history with building an audience and again an audience is more valuable than cash so it's going to take you a long time as Mr B says I think he said if you don't have 100 videos you're not a YouTuber I think that's totally true I think that's totally true stick with it your first hundred videos or whatever they're going to be trash and that's okay that's okay start building your audience all right and by the way guys I've heard through the grapevine I think it was somebody at Unity headquarters said that um YouTube is is growing like crazy in the Game Dev sphere same as true with twitch so if you're a game developer start building your audience okay

here's a quick tip if you want to see some growth start copying other channels if I'm being completely blunt and honest with you cop at least copy the the topics the titles and kind of the thumbnail Style and obviously put your own spin on the actual content itself but do whatever if you want to see fast growth do what other channels are doing okay um and like clockwork YouTube's going to start pushing your content it takes a while but it's it's definitely it's definitely some advice that I took which is just start start looking at what's popular and replicate that doesn't mean don't be yourself it doesn't mean steal I know I said copy but you know what I mean um so yeah anyways guys thank you so much for 300 000 subscribers it means the world to me and uh click below to subscribe to those channels all right I love these guys and I love you guys so

much this is a dream come true it's the middle of my work day I should be making games but I get to do what I want right because I I spent 10 I've honestly it's been 15 years of just grunt work building up my studio and my channel and I encourage you guys to be patient and do the same okay I love y'all take it easy cheers don't smoke it's a celebration Sig all right chill it's really nice too I wish it didn't cause cancer then we could all be living in the Mad Mad life you know that could be done Draper all day