Gadgetory

hey what's happening everybody I'm know her from technobuffalo com and i've got an email that somebody sent me I'm embarrassed to say this but a while ago it was in 2011 but not very far into it so I apologize it's taken me so long to finally do this I got this email from Nick and I emailed him back and said you know this is the kind of thing that I've been asked a lot and you know John and and lots of people I know who are tech journalists tech reviewers youtubers to do tech stuff it been asked the same question a bunch and so I'm going to do a video on it or a series of videos or something and I've been meaning to do it it's just taking me till now to finally start doing it so Nick I apologize but hopefully better late than never hopefully everybody else you know I cannot provide some insight for you and well just going to read the email mr. Kravitz no please call me Nick I've been watching you for years and I loved all of your videos on phone dawg you always made that personal connection with your viewers that I don't get a blowout skip that part I've also been watching John for lakers and the soldierknowsbest for the same amount of time and I've always loved you and them I'm excited now that you are all part of the herd yeah me too and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your videos I'm a sophomore in high school and started tech reviewing YouTube channels my friend right now our reviews are pretty much just pictures with our voice over because we can't get any products my question to you is what advice do you have for us how can we expand the number of subscribers we have how can we get products thanks for taking the time to read this sign Nick yeah Nick I took the time to read it I took the time to email you back but apparently it took me a long time to find the time to actually answer the questions so PS here is the link to my youtube channel youtube.com slash trusted tech reviews so there you go there's a little plug from Nick's site you can go check that out everybody if you want to or not so I might try to start answering this question obviously you know my experience is my opinions whatever different than other people's so definitely gonna follow up this video or the other videos definitely going to get John to lend you know some of his insights as well because it's something that that we've been wanting to do in something that you know whether he's a I when I left phoneDog back in last October so you know i was at phoneDog somebody you don't some of your like why are you on johnson she have a weird one over that I'm pretty left phoneDog I wasn't looking to start up with another side or anything like that I just I needed a break from a bunch of different things but one of the things that attracted me to taking this gig with TechnoBuffalo I've known John for a while I think the world of them but we talked a lot about wanting to do stuff not just reviewing products but also doing more stuff with the audience and with people who you know are interested in doing stuff like what we do because the opportunities for doing this have just grown enormously with the internet you know it's so easy to start a blog start a YouTube channel it's hard to make a living doing it but it's easy to start which is really cool so I'll definitely you know get John on camera other people as well and get more you know more information and insight from other voices if that's interesting to you guys to hear more about this but for me to try to answer next question here's what I would say first off you know how do you increase your number of subscribers there are people on YouTube who know way more about that than I do with phoneDog we just started doing the videos it wasn't something a lot of people were doing back when we start doing the videos a lot of there are sites out there other phone sites that you know had been along around from longer were better known than we were obviously other tech blogs and that kind of thing but not all that many people doing YouTube videos in phones in particular and I've always been interested in video making and it's just something I wanted to do is actually at a show at the CTI trade show and they had a big these big posters up for this contest they were having them the video chronicles submit your video journal of the show and I had a little point and shoot camera at shot like 30 second peg clips and I'm the worst photographer probably in the whole tech blogosphere and I was taking photos of the phones the new phones to put them on the blog and I started shooting some video clips just for fun there was a guy dressed up in a big black berry costume like a life-size you know like a mascot trussed up like a blackbird so I took some video of him I thought it was funny and I saw these signs for the contest and I kept going I shudder bunch of video and on the plane ride home I took out my laptop flying home from Orlando it was in Orlando that you're back to California and start editing this video together and it was just really fun and so I entered the contest I won the contest because nobody else entered and and then we started doing these YouTube videos and if you go back and look on the crabby crab channel these first youtube videos I mean I think they're all pretty funny you know the first one is the last one for the first ones definitely funny i shiny this thing called phone in 60 seconds and you know do the whole review in 60 seconds to give it like a story and a theme and I quickly learned and here's the long-winded first part of my answer to you I quickly learn you know give the people what you want if you're interested in in in growing your subscriber base now that could be finding your own unique style for doing things ah maybe you're funny maybe you're a developer and you have insight into that kind of stuff maybe you get all that you know somehow you have a hook up to get all the hot stuff before it comes out you know maybe you've got a camera planted in Google's labs I don't know but so one thing is you know to give the people what they want while still being true to yourself and for me that turned into finding you know the best way to talk about these phones because that's why I got him to do in this but I thought it was really cool did all these new phones and you know back then a few years ago especially the poser is getting more and more advanced all the times new features and you know the industry grew so fast and so that quickly turned into basically just a little intro than the phone on camera and me talking about the phone you know I never did videos like this was just me talking into the camera or rarely sometimes we did but but mostly it was you know the phone on camera than me just given my kind of honest opinion marketing yourself you know learning youtube search engine optimization how to use tags all that kind of stuff is important I'm not an expert on that but we'll try to get some people in here you are you know building your subscriber following on YouTube again their strategies for that partnering with other sites find other channels you like do things but you where I still phonedog john and i did a thing or we traded videos you know i appeared on his channel and he on ours and that helps kind of open you up to you know new subscribers if your video shows up in somebody else's channel maybe some of those people will then go subscribe to you definitely having a website so you can you know show up in regular Google and other search engine results definitely helps because that can drive traffic back to youtube and then there's Facebook and Twitter which are huge sort of you know in themselves and getting involved in that stuff so it's definitely more than just you have to make the videos and whether it's good because you're great on camera or it's good because you're great special effects or it's good because you get products and people want see the products whatever it is you have good content but then you have to know you have to be doing all these things you know again youtube search and subscriber strategies website you know social media all that different stuff definitely helps as far as getting the product so people always ask me if they always ask Jonathan sabra's how do i get the products just go get him don't worry about it don't worry about approaching the company's it's harder now than it used to be because there's so many more sites doing video and reviews who want products to review and we'll talk about that a little bit later but the first thing you need to do is just get products and review them you know borrow when I first started with with phoneDog i would get even before that when i was writing for a website called powerbook central and now we didn't do video stuff then but to get stuff to review you know sort of two strategies one is contact the companies and ask them for stuff to review but that's kind of harder second is just get it so buy it or borrow it or trade for it or you know whatever it is you want to do at phoneDog at the beginning i would borrow phones from people and you know i'd have to like give them my phone so they could use them we would swap sim cards and whatever and i play with their phone you know for a few days so i could write a review because you can't really a good review you know just after five minutes using it or I would buy a phone and then resell it used either on eBay or Craigslist or something like that I would trade phones I went on like howardforums all the time and traded phones through the mail with people sometimes I would buy a phone from a carrier and you have like that 30-day window and you can return it and then I would return it which you can't do too many times because look at John but you have to just find a way to do it I'm not saying go spend all your money go broke you know whatever don't run up a credit card bill but you have to you have to put some effort into it to get started and then once you have you know following which you have some subscribers some views that kind of thing it's easier when you start emailing the companies and calling the companies and asking for review stuff I would say don't start trying to get phones from verizon start with accessories start with apps because these smaller companies are more likely to send you stuff they need the publicity more their products are often you know less expensive a verizon sending you a phone especially if it has service on it is a lot riskier than a case company sending you a case because the case is worth less the services you know there's no service on a case that kind of thing it's less of a risk so you also when you approach these companies you have to be professional you know write a good email get somebody to help you with it make sure the spelling and the grammar is correct you know sell yourself to them but make it short and to the point tell them why it is you know they should send you something and then when you're done send them a link to it you know it building these relationships with people is really important whether it's viewers or the PR people at the companies or you know whoever it is also you know if you're thinking about getting started on this just yourself get a partner get a couple of partners you know partner up with some other small sites and work together and post each other stuff and you know you're really just trying to build audience and you know you see on the big blogs we report on on different companies I mean big bugs bugs bigger than TechnoBuffalo you having gadgets and gizmos and cnet's of the world you know they'll report a story that was on somebody else's blog and give a link back because that's how the web works and you know again you can do that on YouTube was kind of guest appearances on different people's channels and stuff and then you can do that you know on the web on twitter by link sharing and all that kind of stuff as well and that's that's really important because you know the nice thing about the web is most of its free for people to read so yeah technobuffalo is in competition with you know whoever with into mobile but also if somebody's really into phones they can read both of our sites they can read into mobile you know and SlashGear whoever because they're free and so you know it's competition but it's also working together sharing links and that kind of thing and that's why it's called the web because it's all kind of intertwined like that what else what else can I tell you about growing subscribers in that kind of thing you know if you're really you're really into this also with your reviews you you want to make you need to practice you need to make sure that you know again whatever it is you're doing is working for the audience so you know like i said i first started out trying to do these things it was like a little theme and a little story and it was either i tried to be funny or i was trying to like you know i would shoot them in different places the first video ever did first one review was in my backyard and then i did one like in front of the TV with mtv on behind me because about a music fo and i did these different things and that was fun but then i noticed that that didn't affect the view count what affected the view count was how interesting and unique was the content so again sometimes that's getting a phone first sometimes it's just reporting on something unique and maybe it's an app apps or cheaper than phones easier for you to get a hold of a bunch of apps to try out you know maybe it's something about you know routing an android phone or jailbreaking an iphone or maybe it's a how-to maybe you can do a tutorial to help solve some problem like you know how do i just got a blackberry for the first time how do i use it you have to be creative and think of those kinds of things and and then promote yourself send the links out don't spam people but send them go to sites that you read bigger sites and oftentimes they'll have a little thing that says send us tips technobuffalo does send us the tips and you know odds are not very many your tips are going to get published but if one of them does that could really help that could really give you a little jolt to traffic that will really you know help you out to that end I'll TechnoBuffalo on our website we have a lane you know asking for user submitted content we're really into that we do a lot more stuff for that in the next couple of months but you know we're looking for good stuff all the time so definitely send your stuff to bigger sites and see if you know see if they'll publish it see if somebody will write back and give you an idea for something they would publish you know that kind of thing you really you have to you just have to keep pounding the pavement as they say don't get discouraged if you know you think you've done something awesome and it gets like five views because the next thing you do just might happen to hit on you know what the public's interested in trying to go to events if you can especially if you live near a place like San Francisco or New York City where there are lots of tech events shoot video you know different places go to if there's an apple store or you have to ask for permission at the stores but if their tech events or even if it's not like a huge trade show but it's like a local tech club or something interview different people when you interview people then those people will come to your site to check out the video they'll tell their friends that kind of thing and that's how things start to grow you know the whole social networking is through telling other people so I don't know it's been 14 minutes and be going like that and talking a lot but I finally wanted to start answering Nick's question and wanted to throw this out to everybody out there watching you know like I said definitely going to get John on camera here should I get a few other people I know both from the mobile tech world but also just the tech world in general talk about this stuff yeah how do you grow an audience video wise and also other you know otherwise how do you get products to review all that kind of stuff but really you just have to start and you have to start but you have to keep doing it and if it's something you really want to do you know you're going to find a way to do it I'm not saying you know if you're you know if you're an adult and you have a job and you have rent to pay in bills to pay I'm not saying go quit your job and just start doing YouTube 24-7 because it takes a while it's hard to make a living doing doing YouTube and amassing if you're a kid blow off your homework and just do this what I am saying you know find a way to do it and keep doing it and try different things and just trying to get better and better at it and you know that's how you get started so I hope that was helpful at least a little bit Nick thanks for the question and out people out there if you know their stuff you want you want to know about specifically about this whole tech long thing you know put your questions in the comments put them on the website and you know we're going to do this with this for a little while and try to share some of our experience with it i don't know if it's wisdom john as wisdom i don't know if i have wisdom but I'll sure what we know alright so next time my name is Noah thanks for watching and it's almost NBA playoff time go next I live in California the warriors aren't going to be in the playoffs but I used to live in New York always be a Knicks fan go Knicks till next time