What YouTube channel converts the most viewers into school members: this channel or the main channel?
The main channel currently converts the most viewers into school members, but it's not proportional to total subscriber count. This daily updates channel converts more people to Clarify because I talk about it more often. I enjoy the daily consistency here more than just making money, and I can see a future where long‑form media drives more growth. The benefit is being able to go deeper on topics since I'm not trying to appeal to 500 k people; I target about 20 k interested people, so the audience is more aligned.
The main channel is now at about 140K subscribers (1417), up 829. The daily updates channel gained around 40 subs, and Instagram rose by roughly 200. Maker School churn is around 23.6%, roughly steady. I estimate that missing the welcome thread cost me about $75k in lost revenue. To cut churn, I plan to rewrite Maker School content, launch cold‑email campaigns, and improve the onboarding flow, which could save hundreds of thousands over the next months.
All the information in my Maker School is free. The school community adds daily accountability and organizes that information into a clear roadmap: day one do X, day two do Y, day three set up emails, day four send five Upwork applications, day five do this, day six do this. It also includes Q&A, a network, and a monthly call with me where you can ask any question (time permitting). In short, the community holds your hand through a business model, offering structure and support beyond the free videos.
I would never launch a community without first securing distribution; I frontloaded that distribution through my YouTube channel. Once the channel had reach, I started the school group. The biggest factor in its growth is simply showing up every day — I’ve posted consistently for over 300 days, missing only a handful of days for travel. That daily consistency builds trust and goodwill, which has translated into strong momentum: in the last week alone I added 25 K monthly recurring revenue, far outpacing other communities that only managed a fifth of that. The steady presence, not any ad spend, is what drives the growth.
Connecting deeper to my online community before school was really about doing the same things I do now on School, just on the platform I was growing—YouTube. One big trend I had, that few others my size did, was responding to nearly every YouTube comment on the main channel. I kept that up until around 30–40k subscribers, which is about ten times more than most people stop at. The key insight for me is having some element of two‑way communication. That’s why the daily updates channel works so well, and why I’ve grown to almost 12k subscribers in 183 days of consistent posting. As long as you can create some back‑and‑forth, it humanizes you, moves you from a pure creator archetype to something more approachable and equalized. I try to do that by replying to YouTube comments, joining other people’s Schools, commenting in their Schools, doing Q&As, sharing knowledge drops and value drops. Those are the main parts.
community engagementyoutube commentstwo-way communication