What's Actually Working on YouTube in 2026 (AI, Shorts & Live Streaming)

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]So, if you've been trying to get ahead on YouTube, but you've been frustrated because the platform's changing, views are down, and there's a lot of new features, this is the video for you, because I got Roberto Blake dropping Pure Game: No Fluff. Let's dive into it.

[00:00:12]>> You got to just press record.

[00:00:14]>> Roberto, my first question for you is, what's the most underrated AI tool or workflow that creators should be using right now?

[00:00:20]>> When it comes to ideiation, you know, I've coined topic, title, thumbnail, and timing, and that's become an industry staple. So, it depends on what tool you're going to use to address each of those problems. YouTube has ass Studio, which most people don't know about, and it's zero dollars. So, as a Z solution, that's probably where people could start with YouTube Ask Studio. It goes off of your own data. The limitation is it will not tell you about your competitors or other people in other niches. So then your next option is people would go to the general broad AIs of like Claude, ChatgPT or Gemini, but that's not going to be YouTube specific context unless you already have YouTube specific information to give it. So the better option there is to use a tool like either Vid IQ, which sponsors you or one of 10 who I've worked with. And so those would probably be your two best tools to do competitor analysis and research to qualify your topics, build out your content pillars, or even get inspired for outliers. And then when it comes to titles, you can either use a tool or you could just check your own gut with a tool. And then after that, it's thumbnails. For thumbnails, you could go the handcrafted route with some AI supplementation. If you're already using Canva or Adobe, both of them let you work by hand with AI assisted tools as well. Or you could use one of these AI image generators. You could use Adobe Firefly. You could use ChatG's image uh 2.0. You could be using nano banana. You could be doing anything you want there.

[00:01:46]I would >> What went into your last thumbnail with tech stack >> for me and the way it's probably going to go from now on is I'm combining my handcraft with AI for some speedier things. I don't do the photo retouching myself anymore even though I could because why am I going to spend 20 minutes on retouching a photo of mine or even five minutes when it can be done in seconds. So, I'm using some of these things for speed and now I just move myself to being an art director as if I had a team of people working under me.

[00:02:16]>> The retouching person, the whatever person. So, you're operating inside of Photoshop with Adobe AI tools. Is that your main platform?

[00:02:23]>> That's my main platform personally. If I need something really quick on the fly because I already have my own photos like studio head shot put into this thing and it knows my YouTube channel for that. I'm using one of 10 >> must-have creator tools for packaging and getting more views. Ask studio which is free and that is already just embedded in the back end. You can start talking to basically AI chat that's connected to your YouTube analytics.

[00:02:50]You're then saying the problem is though if you want to actually do competitor analysis you could you could use Vid IQ or one of 10. I mean one of 10 I'm sure does other stuff as well but outliers is the big concept of one of 10. Right.

[00:03:03]Absolutely.

[00:03:04]>> And so outlier research that was all for you talked about two big problems ideation titles but then the second one would be retention and storytelling or video editing.

[00:03:14]>> I always say that retention is structure script writing storytelling and style.

[00:03:20]And I think that AI can help you there.

[00:03:22]A lot of people try to have it do everything. I think that where it can really help you is just kind of even fine-tuning the structural breakup of your videos because I think it's hard for people to just kind of maintain steady beats and energy and break their video idea or concept up into sections.

[00:03:39]The other thing is it could be good for research. It's better actual ability is to help you figure out the logistics of even executing your video idea in terms of what it's going to take in terms of the physical ability to do the idea that you had in your head and to plan out the execution of it and to give you a procedural for that.

[00:03:56]>> So, what would you say to someone who's listening? They've heard of some different AI tools, but they're feeling overwhelmed by AI tools if they're part-time and they're like, "Okay, do I use Gemini or do I use Claude for my writing or do I use Chad GBT?" and how many pro accounts do I need and I'm trying to budget. What advice would you give somebody?

[00:04:13]>> I would tell everybody to actually see if they're even maxing out the limitations of the free accounts at $0 and then instead of feeling overwhelmed, recontextualize how you're thinking about this. AI gives you the ability to compete with someone who has a team. So all these different individual tools, stop thinking about tools in your tech stack that are overwhelming you and treat them like independent freelancers or contractors. Treat each of these tools like a team member. Now, >> what is one AI tool or AI workflow that has saved you the most time this last year?

[00:04:44]>> I would probably say that it's Adobe Podcast Enhance, but also that's built into Adobe Premiere Pro as well.

[00:04:51]>> Isn't it also free?

[00:04:52]>> So, that one's free if you as long as you have an email address. So, is Adobe Firefly for generating images.

[00:04:56]>> Adobe Firefly is free >> if you have an email sign up. Now, there are limited credits for the free account just like all these other things, but there's a free tier of it. But, so I would tell people for that instead of, oh, it's going to do all the work and do my thumbnail for free. Think about this.

[00:05:08]It could just actually finally do some of the photo retouching, highlights, and do the relighting. And even just doing that would make your thumbnail like a hundred times better.

[00:05:18]>> What would be their fastest way to use simple photos on their phone and to retouch, relight them for as cheap as possible? I would go into that or even into Gemini or chat GPT the even the free tiers of those and one of these image generators and I would basically just tell it to um retouch your photo and to focus on sharpening the eyes, hair, lips um and nose. And I would tell it to um bump up contrast and just make this more attractive while not structurally altering my face or anything about me.

[00:05:51]>> So do you think have you looked at your viewership? Do you think your largest viewership's on TV? Everyone's saying that's where the viewership is. I mean, isn't it true though it's still distributed across multiplatform?

[00:06:02]>> The YouTube of 2016 is not the YouTube of 2026. In 2016, you remember this Sean, streaming was not a big deal on YouTube, and the streaming culture hadn't exploded yet with all these people like Kaisen, I show Speed, and so on so forth. Same thing for short form.

[00:06:20]Yeah, short form platforms exist, but Vine went under in like 2016. So, YouTube was a monopoly of long- form content and was the monopoly of internet attention. If we're going to watch leanin content that's visually stimulating, we want to watch it on the biggest screen we have, and that's our 607in TV, not our 5 in phone. The shift and the schism in YouTube happens because device context now really matters in terms of what's the best experience on every device. And then that changes what formats and what content people preference on those devices when they watch and how they watch. And YouTube also changes what it serves you based on what device you're watching on during what time of day you're watching on. So, what would you say are your best practices for anybody that wants to get results with live streaming?

[00:07:10]>> One, treat it not like an afterthought and not like a throwaway disposable video. When you do live streams, keep replay value in mind of people replaying and re-watching it. Keep repurposing value for multiple formats and multiple platforms in mind from the very beginning. Keep reaction value in terms of having things in your content that other people could react to, clip and share on your behalf and then also have reshare value for other people to say you have to watch this thing that I watched. You have to give me your feedback, your opinion, or we have to watch this thing and we have to debate about it. Whatever it is, or oh, you got to see this funny moment or clip. So, you want those four Rs in place when you're streaming. What size is it okay to start streaming?

[00:07:57]>> Day zero.

[00:07:58]>> Day zero. Even with nobody there, >> especially with no one there because that's how you're going to get in your reps and your practice. You don't want people there when you're doing your dressed rehearsal. If we're being honest, I'm very bullish on this concept of device context is actually going to be more important than format. And YouTube is kind of even with this proving it by universalizing the format to say you choose what the best experience to consume this content in is for you.

[00:08:24]>> Future looks bright on live streaming and and then you also drop in this nugget of format is a strategy but you're saying context >> device context >> device context >> planning your content knowing how it's going to be perceived and consumed on devices. From a content strategy standpoint, I think that you should actually be diversifying even within your content pillars across your formats and device pillars in terms of, okay, here's my long form and I know it's going to be on people's TV screens, computers, and phones. And so, regardless of what device they're on, here's how I'm going to make the video, structure the video for a lean back experience. If you are the kind of person who is making content where you have that going on, then your community is going to love it whenever you go live because now it's a special event.

[00:09:14]Whether you're doing that weekly or twice a month or once a month, it's now a special event. And they're also going to want the clips and the shorts from that special event. The same way that they watch clips out there from live events and when people go and do tours, concerts, or what have you. So, you're setting yourself up for multiformat and you're being intentional and so there's plenty of stuff for them to watch on any device in any format.

[00:09:38]>> What do you think about the channel collab feature? Does it lead to more views?

[00:09:41]>> I everybody I've seen using it. Even people use it on their own channels, >> right, between two of their own channels.

[00:09:48]>> It's been massively successful for them.

[00:09:49]I've seen people finally scale their second second channels to start getting views on the level of their main channels. I've seen people revive channels with this. Um, it's been functionally very well and I think it brought collaborations back to YouTube in a big way that we hadn't seen before because between the pandemic and like cancel culture collabs seemed to go away from the fabric of what you know made YouTube great and now it's back.

[00:10:15]>> So, we're talking about all kinds of uh new things. You dropped a bunch of live streaming game. There's some new live streaming features. Um, and I would love to talk about shorts. There's a massive opinion. Do you think shorts hurt people's channels and killed channel growth?

[00:10:33]>> It depends on how they're executed and it depends on whether the channels actually had momentum or not. Uh but what I will tell you is this another thing with um shorts and where I don't feel it hurts channels is a lot of people's expectation of it and the reason it feels like it's hurting and underperforming is they're treating it like a derivative of YouTube long form instead of treating it like its own thing. It has its own best practices.

[00:11:04]You also don't need to put in the same editing criteria into a short that you do a long form because it's a different audience. The structure is different.

[00:11:12]The even the hook, like with a regular YouTube video, you have 8 to 15 seconds to hook somebody. With a short, it's two to five. The structural difference in short form from long form is radically different. So, you have to build a short form mindset for creating content. You can't just piggyback off all the best practices of long form. That's hurting people a lot. There's also the output frequency. The optimum output frequency for short form. You can tell people never bothered to try Instagram or Instagram stories or Snapchat or Tik Tok and that they just started short form from a YouTube long form mindset. Sean, the output necessary to really truly be successful with shorts, unless you're a great cinematographer like Max the Meat Guy and he's just a unicorn. Unless you're that, the output amount is really a minimum of three to five shorts a day.

[00:12:07]And the optimal amount would be five to 12 a day spread out over 30 minutes to an hour of releasing each short.

[00:12:15]>> We talked earlier about second channels.

[00:12:18]There seems to be a buzz right now. It's still probably underground for 99% of listeners, but like you could call it a sec second channel strategy. So break down your understanding of a second channel. Old school people had sometimes like main channel, vlog channel. Second channel might have been a hobby or an expression. But what we're talking about is there's like it's like a strategy people are doing.

[00:12:41]>> Think of it like this. They're expanding the franchise, but they're not changing the category. So, what they're doing is instead of going, "Oh, I had a main channel and now here's the personal channel for you to get to know me as a person." No. What they're doing is they're just giving you another way to interact with exactly the same thing, the same value proposition as the first channel, but now they're just changing the style or format of the output. And that's why it's just this higher signal because it's moving away from what appeals to the commons to appealing to the denser part of their audience. And it's a franchise that expands from the 10 instead of the 10,00 true fans philosophy.

[00:13:24]What if you had 100,000 real players?

[00:13:27]So, what do I mean about real players?

[00:13:29]Play long-term games with long-term people. So, the basis of the 10,00 true fans, those are your loyal Ryder Day super fans. Now, what if you had an extension of that that 10xes twice over?

[00:13:42]That's how you get to 100,000.

[00:13:44]>> Why do you need 100,000? That seems like a big number. Because even if people are real players in intentionality and they're aligned on values and they recognize the value and the quality of what you're providing, they may not be ready yet at scale. But here's the key.

[00:13:59]>> So it's a lower level than a true fan.

[00:14:02]>> No, it's actually a true fan, but they aren't at the level of commitment that turns them into your highest ticket customer, but they are someone who can qualify to be a customer. In fact, this content is qualifying them further and taking them to where they can afford the high ticket or to go deeper or the next investment because all right, they already know you because of the main surface level content. They've gone now here where it's like you do lower lift.

[00:14:29]You don't have to do as much to attract them. You're now in retention mode. It's like okay, the main channel attracted you. This thing though retains you because you've graduated to where you're absorbing more value. You qualify for higher value. But that doesn't mean that you qualify for higher products yet, but you could.

[00:14:47]>> So, when is somebody ready for the second channel strategy? I give the advice to a lot of beginners, like when they're just starting to not start two channels because it's hard enough to run one. It would seem that a lot of people that are that are more professionals, they might have teams or they're delegating to editors or some different things. Who's ready for a second channel strategy? If you have people on payroll already and you don't feel like they're absolutely working themselves to the bone >> and they're already on payroll or you've optimized your system so well to where they have all this extra time and they're like, "Oh, boss, I want to put a little bit more quality and craft into what I'm move to a second channel." Go ahead and use a second channel and then say, "Guys, I don't need to squeeze 10 or 20% more quality out of this because it's not going to double our view counts. But if I take that same leftover energy and we just have more content going out and we have it on another channel here, then we're going to literally double their our money and I can pay you more because now we'll just have more content going out the door and you don't have to put in the same level of effort to this but the same intention.

[00:15:52]>> As one of the OGs in the creator economy who's gone through the ups and downs of life, energy, moving challenges, consistency, how do you think about being consistent?

[00:16:04]I know. I mean, I follow your stuff online. So, you had mentioned now you're building AI software. You have a live show. You've had certain seasons where you've been more consistent, multiple channels, short form, long form, live streaming. What is your current perspective for yourself personally? How are you staying consistent? for the solo and workingclass content creator. One of the reasons I'm so passionate and bullish about AI is that it can get people through those tough seasons if they can optimize, if they can put out more content, if they can have more momentum. For the people who can't afford or haven't gotten to that team level yet, AI is the competitive advantage for them. And it really can scale that working-class content career who only has 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week. It's really there for them. for that person. I'm not telling you to take yourself out of your content, but if there are things that it allows you to show up in the way that you need to instead of not at all. So, I would say from my own experience, the things that have helped me in times of consistency is you rise or fall to the efficiency of your systems, but also your support. The thing that will help you be consistent is you have structure orderly life. But if you don't have the structure and boundaries, if you don't have systems so that when you are starting something, you're not starting from scratch every single time with your very limited resource of time and your limited bandwidth, energy, attention, you know, especially if you're a working-class creator who has a family, then you have all these competing priorities. So, what's so wrong about using a supplemental system? It's not about outsourcing all of it. It's about what about making up the difference because your battery is running low. How's that unreasonable? Why not be kind to yourself and do that? So that's my point of view that loops everything we talked about. It was a lot of threads to connect. I think I brought it all back together. So if I wanted to be more consistent and when I want to be it's systems, structures, support, and strategy. If you have those things nailed, then you're going to do well.

[00:18:04]>> You mentioned Clippers earlier. This is maybe a new concept for people. Clippers as a type of creative, a whole network.

[00:18:15]Explain the concept. You know, I think it was an interesting one. There's there's the Logan Paul Impulsive podcast. Oh, he had Joel Ostein on. And he was like, hey Joel, you should get some Clippers. So Logan Paul told Joel Ostein, do you have Clippers? He goes, what's a Clipper?

[00:18:28]>> I think you're doing a great job of meeting them where they are, you know, but we got to get the Clippers going for you.

[00:18:33]>> We got to get through the Clipper.

[00:18:34]>> Y'all got to help me.

[00:18:36]>> Y'all got to help. So, um, a clipper would be there's a couple ways to approach this for streamers. They've been doing this for a while and they tasked their mods with being clippers and finding the best parts of their live stream, chopping those up to clips and distributing them. Um, not only for the >> on different channels, >> different channels, distributing the clips, >> not just on the creators account, but they're also what a lot of them do is they say, "Hey, I just want more people to see me and I want more distribution.

[00:19:01]I want infinite scale." And therefore what the creator is doing is paying them for every 100,000 views that they're um that they generate like aggregate.

[00:19:14]>> So freelance video editors work with channels of any size and >> but usually the more popular ones >> pay-per-view. Yep.

[00:19:25]>> So there are freelance clippers that work for Mr. Beast.

[00:19:28]>> I mean you'll see people in the comments. They're like, "Yeah, I got $1,000."

[00:19:31]>> An army of them. Yeah.

[00:19:32]>> There's an army of them. So people doing it this at the highest level. There's some some entrepreneurs that maybe have money they really want to spend on personal branding spend $10,000 a month, $100,000 a month.

[00:19:43]>> Imagine spending 50 bucks for a 100,000 views and they're real views. They're they're organic, all algorithmic driven because you're like, >> is that the I mean the numbers range, but 50 bucks for 50,000 views sounds like >> 50 50 bucks for a 100,000 views.

[00:19:57]>> $50 for 100,000 views.

[00:19:59]>> That is a real number. And that's on the higher end in some cases. In some cases, there are some people who get more than that follow. Some people get more, some people get less. Usually people from their own community. So imagine that your favorite creator puts out a call for Clippers or they go through a website um where oh and that's my favorite one of my favorite creators.

[00:20:19]And so imagine you're a fan of Logan Paul or I show Speed or KSI or Mr. Beast and you realize all right I'm going to be given permission to make a Mr. Beast or a Logan Paul fan account. and I get to keep all the revenue I generate and I'll get paid for performance.

[00:20:35]>> So for people that are hearing about this the first time, it it could be argued that like an individual like a Luke Belmar, but we'll talk about I think he might have been spending 10K to $100,000 a month in Clippers.

[00:20:46]>> And so think about it like this. If you're getting billions of views of attention and you you and I know that with short form especially because we know now we have the data now. YouTube didn't put this data out there before, but now we know we see new viewers, casual viewers, returning viewers. If you're doing like if you have a hundred kids working for you that each are pulling in a million views a month, you're getting a 100red million views a month.

[00:21:14]>> Yeah.

[00:21:14]>> For not a lot of money. You can't buy regular ad distribution and get a h 100red million views for $5,000 a month from Google. big key is to fuel the Clippers is not just the content a but content that's clippable and D. Now some of these clippers might be able to make magic happen better than you could have ever imagined but nevertheless it's still predicated on the input.

[00:21:39]>> Exactly. Garbage in, garbage out. So then you already spent money. See this is just longtail extending your investment. You put money into the beautiful studio, the work that you're doing. Maybe you have a co-host, podcast, locations, um, whatever your interviews, whatever you're doing. You put money into that. Now you're expend you're extending the lifespan of that investment because you're scaling it past just what your own account generates now because now you have an army ofund 150 clippers out here. You put a couple thousand bucks and for these kids, it's good money for them and they like doing it and it's building their portfolio and they could be working for multiple people and they can gain this distribution. They could be using Opus Clip, for example, and they could be having five, six, seven accounts each themselves. So like, yeah, you have 100 clippers. Every one of those clippers, for all you know, has 10 accounts cuz that's how they're getting you the aggregate of their views.

[00:22:30]>> Yeah. Yeah. Do so many outputs that it would be unreasonable for you to fail.

[00:22:35]>> We already said that short form, the optimal for it is like 10 plus a day if you're really going to go hard. These kids are money hungry and incentivized to do that and to have multiple accounts. So you could do 10 a day on 10 accounts.

[00:22:49]>> So now you have a hundred kids putting out a hundred videos each a day.

[00:22:54]>> Yeah.

[00:22:55]>> And they either perform or they don't because that's how they get paid. Let's say because they all want to make some decent money and you're paying 50 bucks for uh a 100,000 views. All of them want to get 500 bucks. So all of them have a real incentive to try to get you like a million views every month each. So now you have a 100red million views on the line in the pipeline. Sean, what percentage of that, if you have any kind of reasonably priced mid to high ticket offer, do you need to convert out of a 100 million views? How many of what percentage of that do you need to convert to make real money?

[00:23:28]>> So, you take a 100 million views multiplied by 01 is a million people would be the per Yeah, that would potentially convert on something.

[00:23:37]>> Let's take it two zeros down to 10,000 customers generated off of 100 million views. Like, that's like barely. this thing's barely working. Okay, so that's like not even 0.1%. It's like um you know a fraction of that, but it's still 10,000 customers. If you sell anything at all in the world, you are doing just fine. and the sheer volume and scale of attention that that can now back channel to your main content in the first place.

[00:24:07]Even um a percentage of that, a mil 1% of that translated back to your own main channels long form, you just add a million views to your pipeline. If you have a even halfway decent RPM on YouTube, you just made profit off the money you spent for the clipping distribution. And that's at a 1% back channel conversion rate to long form views.

[00:24:33]>> Number one, >> clipping industrial complex.

[00:24:34]>> The clipping industrial complex, knowing what's happening in the creator economy.

[00:24:38]Number two, um you could think about applying that and everything's like factors of scale. Opus clip, which by the way, you know, we've worked with OpusClip in the past, but it's one of our favorite softwares. Our affiliate link will be in the description.

[00:24:49]Roberto's got a bunch of resources as well in the description. And as usual, my name is Sean Kel, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel.

[00:24:56]And I can't wait to connect with you in a future