STARTING OVER🙌 · Grindstone

STARTING OVER🙌

Yesterday I made the decision that I am starting a brand new channel.

This is a VERY (very) long post but I hope it's provides insight into my thought process and my strategy behind starting from 0.

For those of you that don't know, my name is CupppaJoe and I am a Full-Time Call of Duty content creator who has almost 400,000 subscribers (350,000 on my main Call of Duty channel and 50,000 on my 2nd Call of Duty channel).

Why am I making a new channel? To expand beyond the Call of Duty space. I started playing Call of Duty (again) 4 years ago and before that I didn't play video games from 2013-2020. Growing up I only played Call of Duty and sports games like Madden and MLB which means there are HUNDREDS of games that I haven't played.

Assassin's Creed
Red Dead Redemption
Halo
Fortnite
The Last of US
Old Call of Duty's
Destiny
Minecraft

You name it...I probably haven't played it.

What is my WHY? Think back to the first time you played a certain game. You weren't 100% sure what you were doing, just sort of figuring it out. It was fun, it was challenging and at the end when you beat it, you had a certain feeling, whether good or bad. If you go back and play it today, you can NEVER replicate that first time play through experience. But I can...

Where do I begin?

First thing, is there a market for this? Quick YouTube search of "First Time Playthroughs" immediately shows that there is.
Then, even before diving too far into what games I want to play, etc. I created the channel. Now you might say "well duh" but for me, that puts it in motion. We now have a channel with zero content. Name - CupppaJoe Plays. Keeping it simple.
Next I came up an initial list of games which was about 25-30.
Let's talk about Style and Tone: my mindset throughout every game/video is going to be "I literally have no idea what I'm doing" because I don't. And I want that to come through the camera. It's something I'm going to remind myself of before I start recording and throughout the video. I want you to feel that NEW experience even though you might've played the game.
Then, I announced it on my main YouTube channel (through a Community Post) and in my Discord. I absolutely wanted to leverage my current audience to gain some initial traction which has given me around 300 subscribers in the first 24 hours.
Finally, and this is ongoing, I want to consume other First Time Playthrough content. I want to see what other people are doing. What are they doing videos on? What games do well? What games didn't do well? How long is the video? How edited is the video? I'm looking for patterns and things that can help guide me to more views.

How often am I going to post? My Call of Duty channels are still my main priority. This for me is fun but let's not disregard the fact that this could one day be significantly bigger than my COD channels just based on audience size alone. So I'm going to try to post every 2-3 weeks.

What's the first video? Now THIS is the toughest question and I am spending a good amount of time on this. Based on my list of now 50+ games (I got additional game suggestions from the YouTube Community Post as well as some friends), I am looking through trying to determine what the best game is for my 1st video. I want to be strategic.

I need something popular and recognizable. I don't want a niche game as the 1st video. How do I determine? Searching YouTube for "XYZ Game First Time Playthrough" and seeing if other creators in the space had success with that game.
I need something not too challenging - choosing Elden Ring would not be very smart...and I think I would give up on this whole channel if I started with Elden Ring with how difficult it is.
I want something outside of my comfort zone - being a COD player, Fortnite or Halo would be an EASY choice but...that's not really what I'm looking. I want this first video to set the tone that "I literally have no idea what I'm doing".

Here is a link to it if anyone wants to follow along and I am definitely going to keep everyone updated here! https://www.youtube.com/@CupppaJoePlays-p8p

Feel free to ask questions below!👇

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