Can You Have More Than One Niche on a YouTube Channel and Succeed?: The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 250
“I felt like I was just chasing viral content or chasing views, and not really creating videos because I wanted to.”
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Kallie Branciforte is the creator behind the blog and YouTube channel But First, Coffee. She’s a wife and mama, and probably in need of another cup of coffee. In 2013 she started blogging and making YouTube videos purely for fun. After a few years she started seeing some successes, and after about 5 years was making a full-time income. In 2020 she quit her job and now blogs and YouTubes full-time from her home in Shoreline, Connecticut. After paying off over $70k of debt in under a year, she has a strong passion for affordable living and finding ways to simplify life and loves to share that passion with her audience. Across her different channels Kallie shares honest motherhood, thriftiness, life hacks, and simple DIYs and organization ideas. She’s been featured on The Rachael Ray Show, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Yahoo! Entertainment, Daily Mail, and more.
Kallie began as a beauty blogger, and started her YouTube channel so that she could use the videos on her blog. In 2017, she had a huge transitional shift with her channel after feeling stuck and burned out in the beauty niche. She branched out and started trying new content and trying new things, creating videos that she thought she would want to watch, and things that she was passionate about. She shared some of her journey in paying off 70k debt, money saving tips, DIY, and crafts. For that entire year, she tested the water, and it was that experimentation that helped her channel steadily grow by over 300K in just 2 years. By allowing her content to grow and evolve along with her, she realized that you didn’t have to fit into a specific niche-related box.
“I realized that it was ok that my channel was going to grow with me.”
You never know for sure which videos will go viral, and one viral hit in particular has really changed the landscape of Kallie’s channel. Her Life Changing Gift Wrapping Hack video has gone super viral, getting millions of views every holiday season, and it’s earned her roughly $65,000. Viral hits are really hard to replicate, but Kallie has a very specific content-creation strategy. She breaks her content into a couple of categories: the “bread and butter” videos– content for her audience that they have come to expect, the videos that might have a viral component, and the wildcard video that might just be a little different than the others. She plans out all of her ideas on a calendar 1-2 months in advance. She gets a lot of ideas and requests through interacting with her audience in the comments and in DMs, and tries to create one video a month based off these requests. Kallie does everything herself, and it takes her an average of 10 hours per video to complete from start to finish. With 6 videos a month, that’s 60 hours a month at minimum just in video creation alone! And yes… she still has her blog!
“It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers, and it’s very easy to get caught up in trying to recreate someone else’s success when you’re trying to find your own.”
3 Key Interview Takeaways
- Have a blog. A lot of YouTube creators start off as bloggers, but then switch entirely over to YouTube and leave blogging behind. Kallie has not done that. Why? Having a blog creates opportunities. YouTube has great SEO, but you can do more with having a specific blog for people to find you. Every single YoUTube video can also have its own YouTube post, which doubles the opportunity to be found, and can also now be pinned on Pinterest (and for Kallie… her content is a goldmine for Pinterest lovers). A blog is a place to send people with all of your stuff, and it’s a secondary avenue to market your videos in any way that you can.
- Allow your channel to grow as you do. The person you are at 22 is not the person you will be at 30. Your interests may change, your life will go in different directions, and your priorities might shift. Your audience is aging right along with you. Since we as humans are constantly shifting and evolving, don’t feel like you need to stay within one box if it no longer feels right.
- Don’t get caught up in viral success. It’s impossible to predict which video will go viral, if any at all, so don’t chase a viral hit, and don’t compare the success of others to yourself. When you stop worrying about the numbers and stop trying to recreate what others are doing and just make what YOU want to make, you will be successful.
Mentioned in the episode:
Life Changing Gift Wrapping Hacks
Connect with Nicole
Kallie Branciforte: But First, Coffee Blog
Kallie Branciforte on Instagram
Resources
Add your name to the Zero to Influence YouTube Bootcamp waitlist so you are notified when space becomes available!
Watch my replay of my FREE Zero to 100k Subscribers Masterclass
FREE GUIDES:
Creating Content During Crisis: How to Create Impactful Content During COVID-19 Pandemic
Getting Started on YouTube: YouTube Niche Workbook
How to get onto PR lists and receive a TON of free product even if you have a small following: PR List
YOUTUBE OPTIMIZATION PLUG-IN I RECOMMEND
TubeBuddy [Use the code ErikasBuddy to get 20% off]
MY FAVORITE BUSINESS TOOLS
Course Creation: Looking to create a course? Kajabi is the BEST platform hands down. I use this for my course after extensive research on all the other platforms.
Live Calls and Interviews: I use Ecamm for my podcast interviews, both audio and for YouTube that you see here on YouTube. It makes it super easy to share my screen and create the split-screen with my guest. I’m not super techie and this software is really easy to use!
Webinars and Live calls: I use Zoom.us for my group coaching calls in my private membership group for female YouTube creators. It’s also the software I use to record my Road to 100k YouTube Subscribers Masterclass!
THE BEST YOUTUBE/PODCASTING EQUIPMENT
After interviewing HUNDREDS of successful YouTube creators, these are the pieces of equipment that hands down get mentioned time and time again. You can’t go wrong with anything on this list!
- 4k Camera: Great for starting out and vlogging
- Lens: This lens is recommended highly by many of my podcast guests, it gives the blurry “YouTuber” background look.
- Audio: If you want to upgrade your set-up, audio should be one of the first investments (after a good camera). This microphone is unanimously the favorite amongst my podcast guests.
- Podcast/Voiceover Microphone: If you are looking for a great microphone for a podcast or video voiceover, this is it! This is the one that you see in all of my videos and the one I’ve recorded my podcast on for years.
- Webcam: For my interviews, that you see in my videos, this is the webcam that I use. Super inexpensive and easy to set up!
- Inexpensive Lighting Kit: Need to pick up some lights but don’t want to spend a ton? This is a great set that will get you started and help improve the look of your videos.
- Ring light: Looking for that beauty look? Invest in a ring light! This is an inexpensive light that does that trick!
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