How Changing Your YouTube Niche Can Be the Secret to Channel Growth Success with Kimbyrleigha: The YouTube Power Hour Podcast 345

“It’s scary to change your niche!”

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Kimbyrleigha is a law school graduate, holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology while currently taking courses in Medicolegal Death Investigation, and most importantly, she’s a Mom. Her grandmother introduced her to true crime when she was in middle school; all started with the OJ Simpson trial and she’s been studying murder cases ever since, and her goal as a teenager was to become a Forensic Psychologist. She has a love for sharing what she’s passionate about with others and does so through her true crime YouTube channel.

When I first had Kimbyr on the show several years ago, her entire channel revolved around phone fashion, phone accessories, and pop sockets. Since then, she’s experimented with different types of content on YouTube and has settled into true 

crime, which she’s been pretty successful with for the last year. But how can you be successful on YouTube after doing such a complete 180? How can something so vastly different from what you’ve done for years be lucrative?

When Kimbyr first started her channel, she never really purposely thought about what she wanted to do… she just kind of fell into trends, and created a variety of content as she experimented. She soon became known for her phone accessories content, but as time progressed, she started to feel stuck. Sometimes, we tend to find something that works and keep doing it over and over again until we almost feel pigeonholed into something that we don’t totally align with. Phone accessories started to become more and more expensive to keep buying for new videos, which weren’t really doing that well anymore and not giving her a return on her investment. And really, she didn’t really enjoy making them anymore. She felt stale and stagnant.

“I started really trying to explore what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be known for, and who I am really.”

Transitioning to True Crime

Kimbyr and I have been good friends for many years, and after many conversations with me and a lot of self-reflection, she started searching for the missing piece. She decided to give true crime a try, because she loves storytelling and she loves true crime. If she was going to learn about it, why not share it if she’s passionate about it? It’s just like talking to a friend, right? And the more she thought about it, the more she realized that making the switch to being a true crime channel perfectly combined her passion for learning about true crime and following famous law cases with her educational background in psychology, sociology, and law. 

She took some time off as she pondered making this change, because honestly, it’s super stressful to change your niche and confuse the community you’d built around an entirely different topic. The community she had built was fairly young, and found her based on phone fashion accessories, and true crime could not be more different! But during this break, she really focused on what she wanted to do, and utilized many of the lessons in the Zero to Influence YouTube Bootcamp.

Audience Response

To be frank, this change was NOT well- received at first. Her pop socket loving viewers were dropping like flies and leaving some not-so-nice comments about what they thought of her new videos. She lost around 10,000 subscribers, and it was hard seeing those numbers drop. It’s hard not to question yourself and wonder if you’re doing the right thing when you see that kind of response. She thought about quitting a lot. There just becomes a point where you’re exhausted and drained; like you’re running on a treadmill but not going anywhere. But her phone accessories content wasn’t making her a lot of money, and having no direction wasted a lot of time. Why continue doing something you’re not passionate about? That just leads to burnout, and now, at least with a vision and a plan for her content, she felt like she had the direction she needed to get out of the slump.

She found that the true crime community welcomed her with open arms. They were incredibly supportive and gave her helpful, constructive criticism for how she can improve her content and her delivery, and that’s how she knew she was really onto something. She had never had an audience that was so invested in her content in such a constructive way. All that hard work, listening, and learning paid off when one of her videos blew up, getting over 100,000 views and bringing in over 10,000 new subscribers. 

Final Thoughts

What should you do if you want to change your niche? According to Kimbyrleigha, don’t start another YouTube channel. You can, but if you’ve already built an audience, there’s a reason why they’re on your channel… they come back every week because of YOU, not just what you’ve been creating. You can transform your channel, you just have to be consistent. Set old videos to private as you go along, change your banner, change your thumbnails, and change your metadata. Youtube is so smart at serving the content at where it’s supposed to be, and once it knows what kind of channel you are, it finds your viewers, almost like magic! Don’t be afraid to take a break from YouTube. Utilize your instagram stories to stay in touch as you take the step back you need to figure out the direction you want to go in. Most of all, don’t quit! Just take a breather, find your support system, and dig deep about what you would talk to your friends about over dinner. 

Remember, even if you only have 10 views on a video, that’s 10 people who listened to you. Interact with them to keep them coming back. If you value them, they will come back! Appreciate your audience and it will pay off. 

“And that’s what’s fun about YouTube. If I’m going to learn about it anyway, why not share it if I’m passionate about it? It’s like talking to a friend.”

Mentioned in the Episode:

PopSockets – How to position a PopSocket – How to Put on a PopSocket 

Pathological Liar Butchers Parents Part:1| Chandler Halderson – DEEP DIVE

Connect with Kimbyrleigha

Kimbyrleigha on YouTube

Kimbyrleigha on Instagram

Podcast Music Credit: Boop by x50 @x50music
Music provided by Free Music for Vlogs youtu.be/o52xQkQWzyU

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