The Evolution of TV Pilots: A Shift Away from the Traditional Model

In today's television landscape, it's less common to see TV pilots that seamlessly transition into the first episode of a show. Typically, studios and production companies pitch their shows and then create a pilot with the actual cast and crew. This pilot serves as a test episode, showcasing the concept and tone of the show to potential buyers or audiences.

However, there are instances where the pilot becomes the first episode of the show, often with significant changes in terms of lighting, mood, and visuals. The show "House" with Hugh Laurie is a prime example of this. The pilot was drastically different from the rest of the first season, showcasing a distinct tone that would become synonymous with the show. Another notable example is "The Office," where the first season was a completely different beast compared to the rest of the series.

This phenomenon highlights the iterative nature of television production. Pilots are often created as proof-of-concept, testing the waters and gathering feedback from studios, networks, or audiences. If the pilot receives positive reception, it may be retooled and presented as the first official episode. Conversely, if the response is lukewarm, the pilot might be scrapped altogether and a new direction taken.

The shift towards this more experimental approach has significant implications for creators and producers. With the rise of platforms like Patreon, Super Fans, and subscription-based services, content creators now have the opportunity to connect directly with their audience and test the waters without having to rely on traditional broadcast networks or studios. This democratization of production allows for a more agile and adaptive approach to content creation.

The Benefits of Creating Pilot Episodes for Fan Funding Platforms

Fan funding platforms like Patreon, Super Fans, and Coffee Club offer creators a unique opportunity to connect with their audience and test the waters without having to rely on traditional broadcast networks or studios. By creating pilot episodes specifically for these platforms, creators can gauge audience response and refine their content accordingly.

For example, Wendell's tech channel, Level One Text, has successfully leveraged this approach to create daily news shows that are supported by his patron base. By funneling fans towards specific content on Patreon, Wendell is able to test the waters and gather feedback from his dedicated audience. This approach allows him to refine his content and make adjustments based on viewer feedback, ultimately resulting in a more engaging and effective show.

The Power of Inner Circles: Leveraging Fan Funding to Create Exclusive Content

As creators gain traction with their fan bases, they may find themselves in a position where they have the luxury of creating exclusive content for their inner circle. This can take many forms, from sub-only streams or videos to private Discord channels and secret chats.

By leveraging this approach, creators can tap into the dedication and loyalty of their most engaged fans. In return, these fans receive exclusive content that caters to their interests and preferences. This model allows creators to build a loyal following without having to worry about the broader market's expectations or ratings.

Ultimately, this approach requires a deep understanding of one's audience and the ability to adapt to their feedback. By embracing experimentation and iteration, creators can refine their content and develop a unique voice that resonates with their fans. Whether through traditional broadcast networks or fan funding platforms, the key to success lies in understanding the needs and desires of one's audience and creating content that meets those expectations.

The Shift from Public to Private Content: A New Era for Creators

As creators continue to explore new avenues for monetization and engagement, they may find themselves opting for a more exclusive approach. By shifting their focus towards private or semi-private content, creators can tap into the dedication of their most engaged fans and build a loyal following.

This shift has significant implications for the way we consume content. As creators begin to prioritize their inner circles over broader audiences, the nature of traditional broadcast television may be disrupted. The line between public and private content becomes increasingly blurred, and new models for engagement and monetization emerge.

In this new era, creators must navigate the complexities of audience relationships and adapt to the changing landscape of media consumption. By embracing experimentation, iteration, and fan feedback, they can build a loyal following that is willing to support their creative endeavors in exchange for exclusive content.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso how do you build a show like this well we're going to kind of plan this out and write this out here oh i'm trying not to rip on uh devin nash here too much with this notepad like view but we are using google docs instead that wasn't my objective today but this is the easiest way to communicate like my thoughts here at the moment i don't have a name for the show yet nothing like that the names aren't as important a lot of people get caught up on that they're like if you know people who want to start a podcast or a comic book or whatever you can tell when they aren't really like into the idea of doing the work of the thing itself when they get stuck on the idea of what should it be called instead of actually doing the thing cause you can kind of make that up as you go afk chat was just a random name choice streamer news was fairly on the nose first and foremost you should here let's make a list let's do a numbered list you can't do this in notepad also we can actually improve the scaling a little bit more first and foremost brainstorm content ideas the actual the the tangible thing you want to stream and you may find that the thing you end up actually making the core focus of the stream isn't necessarily the biggest thing you thought you had at first so for example the things that i stream as a creator in general that's an easy way to start we have gameplay for video games here on twitch a couple years ago before i had a kid i did a lot of apex streams and halo streams and call of duty streams cause i play a lot of first person shooters and that tends to do well on twitch and so i'm streaming it i also want to stream unboxings i don't really include those in videos anymore it's a way to interact with you all preview upcoming video content i can show you stuff that i have coming in and we can get a first look at some products some of them we can't test necessarily but that's fine i also stream pokemon card openings now i would honestly encourage you to not necessarily it depends on how solid of an idea you have for your stream already so let's start there if you already have a pretty solid idea of like what you want your show to look like you've thought about this a lot you can probably skip this step or either briefly kind of be like okay i don't need this but if you are completely clueless i would go as open and like unrelated as possible so obviously unboxings gameplay and pokemon card openings are very loosely or otherwise not at all related things because we have tech gaming and pokemon but that doesn't mean they can't turn into something especially here on twitch or if you plan you know if you plan on streaming multiple times a week you can have two different shows and just make sure that's clearly communicated in your stream schedule things like that so we've got unboxings gameplay pokemon card openings and of course we have the general umbrella of tech which i will then make a you know tech education which i will make a subcategory of its own so we have tutorial stuff review stuff we have stream feedback which is my a show that i ran in video form called stream critique that's coming back by the way uh you can head to this website streamguides.gg stream critique if you want to have your stream featured in a video on stream and actually reviewed for tangible feedback on how to improve general like setup advice and then we have news which i'm not writing in this particular list because we're feeding that back over to streamer news which is a show i'm already running so worth keeping in mind there we could just do like general testing and tweaking so this covers like in today's stream i may move a monitor over and actually get it hooked up and usable testing things out for the first time where i don't have a completely solid idea of what the answer to a question is or what i want to convey in a video so it can be like practice or research for a video or a gadget that i just want to play with that i don't necessarily have the time to make a video on these are the things i want to talk about so these are my content ideas that we can cover in a show now these aren't necessarily related but then we can go from there and plan out what we think would actually be successful now for this you may need a little bit of experience streaming so if you've never streamed before and you're kind of working through this my recommendation would honestly be to go through each of this list and here i can even write that down and do some test content be it videos streams whatever and we talked about this on a previous uh on the discord uh community the discord stage channel we did yesterday go through and even if you make content that no one sees that you keep private unlisted or you just delete after you make it go through and make content in these categories both to figure out whether or not you like it whether or not you like the workflow also see if it does well if you make some videos do some feeler videos for a couple months and see you know what bites you get and things like that and see what actually works for you because you may find that when you get in here say which happens a lot for gaming specifically you may get in here and start streaming some gameplay and you're like well crap this actually wasn't very fun or i was a little too distracted with the game to interact with chat and i missed out on my first chatters and that's not a good feeling at all or i was too distracted by chatters to actually focus on the game and that didn't really work out as a game stream either you may find these things out if you've never done this before so step two would be test content live or offline so i'm gonna i'm gonna put this in parentheses because this isn't a necessary step or is it one that will apply to everyone but i won't say as many content ideas as you can but kind of like make sure you hit all the heavy hitters of what you actually want to do like really think long and hard about what is it that you want to make and why evaluate why so for certain things like gameplay why do you want to make gameplay streams why do you want to stream it is it because everyone else does it does that mean that you actually want to do it is it because you consider that the default format of streaming like so many people do does that mean that's actually what you want to do do you enjoy gaming as your luxury kind of you time that you want to keep as entertainment or passive relaxation for you if so turning that into work may not be the right idea at all so you have some stuff to work through there um and i want people to make sure that they are really going for the right idea for them and that may not always be the case however look at these big things and decide like you could do things adjacent to it or you could turn it into an aspect of your show so then we prioritize your your topics here so prioritize this means that you're going to take and once you've either tested your content or building on the experience of what you already have done or made or have viewers for then you decide what would be the most successful if you have the data or experience for that or what you felt the most comfortable or the most effective or got the most enjoyment out of doing so this is kind of different for me because i very much enjoyed game streaming but i also felt that weird obligation where every time i played that i should be game streaming which isn't what i always want to do sometimes i just want to play apex with the boys not stream apex and perform for everyone else and not get to pay a close attention to the game secondarily and here i'm gonna write this down did you enjoy it the most secondarily performance is an inclusion here so for me given my lengthier career and all of that i'm i'm gonna i'm at a bit of an advantage here but i know i love you all so much all of you stream viewers watching right now and video people too but my gaming content overall has been my least successful like my straightforward i'm gonna make gaming content about this game for the sake of gaming that kind of content has been my least successful and least worthwhile content i have produced throughout my entire career from start when that was all i was doing to my transition to tech to even a cup you know a year ago when i was streaming apex on twitch right now i love you all but you all show up to talk about tech to talk about streaming and to get interactivity regarding that not to watch me play apex and especially when i'm rusty and don't get to play a ton what's the point that doesn't mean as cujo is spoiling and pointing out in chat that doesn't mean you don't get to play games so there's a couple ways you can do this here so we're gonna go ahead and add our performance so i know from expect or from experience and from my data that gaming is not super even if it's something i enjoy or something i want to do it's not something that is super successful so for me even though i've tried it a few times and that's how actually i got up to affiliate but i was also secretly actually we'll get to that so for me it doesn't make sense really whatsoever to turn this twitch channel or to make my stream content all about gameplay doesn't make sense it's it's a hard ladder to climb i'll never be like super big you know in the scrolling of pages of people streaming so overall it just doesn't make sense for me to stream gameplay that doesn't mean i don't get to utilize gameplay for my streams though or don't get to play games in the first place of course and doesn't mean that it can't be a part of my show so we have prioritized here by by my experience you know you can figure out what you enjoyed the most what you got the most community or interaction from what opens up the most doors of opportunities for you we talked during my last stream about figuring out your career goals and identifying the jobs around that and how reverse engineering your way up to getting that dream job which one of these gets you closest to that so that is also gets closest to career goals so we know from that that tech education umbrella for sure is number one and we could pick and choose here from these unboxings is inherently going to be related because that's number two but i also enjoy gameplay and i also enjoy my pokemon card openings so then we can start formatting our show based on this limited amount of information already building a stream show is cool but you don't want it to look amateurish nerd or die takes your stream to the next level with their high quality customizable stream packs full of layouts widgets overlays alerts and more with source files available to make it your own and one-click easy setup consider checking out streamos a nostalgic stream layout reflective of yours truly to remind your viewers of a simpler time head on over to eposvox dot gg slash nerd or die and save 15 with coupon code eposvox at checkout like we have barely scratched the surface and from what i have listed right here we can plan a show so i'm not even going to add another point right now we will come back to that and we'll just call this uh heading 2. we'll call this twitch show of the box so what will my show be about obviously i've thought about this a little bit in advance in order to be able to explain this to you guys but based on the basic logic that we have worked through here we can figure this out so it should be we'll make just a bulleted list it should be a tech show so under that we can then plan out and you don't want to get caught up in too many of the tiny like in the weeds or granular details just yet but we can start planning out some of those details so it's a tech show which means we're probably going to be in either just chatting like we are now or uh there's a science in technology category i struggle with this even on youtube because there's a tech in an education category there's not an education category currently on twitch there's an educational tag which i have used for this stream for the first time because i didn't know that existed but there's not an educational category but you can pick out your category based on what your primary content piece is going to be and obviously if you're on youtube category doesn't matter a whole lot here um and i think i had someone asking if sorry john quattro uh can you apply this idea to vodka too 100 so actually we're going to wrap around to why that matters in just a minute actually obviously on youtube category doesn't matter but treat the category as the general idea or theme of the show so we can fit in just chatting or science and technology science and technology is probably good well cujo's pointing it i was literally reading that as i was saying that probably good because of the low viewership and for my granular tech testing like if i'm doing some really nerdy testing of a product that would fall under uh science and technology but the more q a kind of interactivity parts would make more sense than just chatting we could either just primarily dominate science and technology to see if we can boost that for views keeping in mind that that category if we go to twitch right now there's a back and forth here because if we go to twitch as a website right now it's gonna autoplay some streams that i don't want in terms of categories obviously that's categories you don't we think you'll like but just categories in general just chatting is gonna stay close to the top but unless i get at least 5.3 kv wait is it oh this is recommended for me hang on viewers i was like why is 5 higher than 142. so unless we get higher than like 30k viewers at a time we're not gonna boost science and technology up into the part where people are looking for it other than people who are already coming for me which as a new creator you can't really rely on that uh what if we go into science i what spelling is that not behind the scenes there's a cat can i not search for the category science yeah i can't even i'm gonna have to scroll a while to find the category it may not even show up because currently it's only finding the search bar doesn't exist right now i mean obviously it exists but it's not so you see you see the dilemma here uh both could be advantageous and i kind of wish in some regards we could duel category um but this would be an opportunity where perhaps you alternate categories within a show based on what you're actually doing you know how that goes otherwise just chatting is probably a more likely fit at least for the majority of the content that might be up here top science is 400 streams yeah so that would be a little bit hard to really boost into getting new viewers and that's kind of an objective on twitch is that is the game you have to play that may not be my personal priority uh because i already have an existing audience base and i'm just trying to get you all to watch and educate you at the same time i am still trying to grow my twitch so getting new viewers through twitch possibly a benefit uh girl thulu is asking about the podcast category that would be advantageous if you are doing a show like this and you have like you know it's going to be a set time which we're going to talk about and go back and forth or have guests and you don't have a i guess a locked off like category that is a non-gaming category on twitch so science whatever uh podcasts would probably be perfect if it's more of a talk showy kind of thing although cujo's asking about talk show category i don't know if that's a category or a tag um either way yes you could 100 fit in there if you're like this is my show i'm going to talk about my interests and my hobbies and things like that and honestly the thing is here i'm a little bit i operate in a little bit more of a literal kind of thing as we have learned in recent years the categories on twitch are very much flexible and uh not they don't have to be super literal uh so you could 100 go forth as a podcast or talk show or whatever and stick with it and stay there and be totally fine no reason you necessarily couldn't um so honestly i will throw that in here like you can be a little bit flexible you run into the possibility of screwing yourself if you try to do a specific game category because obviously the gameplay streams are going to take priority over that so i know it's going to be a tech show i know it's going to fall into these categories you could be game you could be doing gameplay so if you're streaming gameplay obviously go with the game that you're streaming keep keep that in your head because i'm specifically overlooking this so we have tech show it's going here then we have to plan out what's going to be in the show which is the topics we talked about here earlier so getting back to john quatro's question told you i'd come back about this applying to vods so they may just be asking about the offline thing and if so yes 100 if you are just trying to get better uh with videos or test for yourself 100 just record the videos and edit them and then keep them unlisted or private no one ever has to know you did it and you can test for yourself alternatively you never really have to upload it or you can upload to side channels same thing with these shows if you want to just test it out the format either just streamed in nothing or do a local recording and then delete it or stream to a side channel where only like your inner circle on your discord or something gets access to it and you can then flip it back around and actually pilot it later on uh if you think about tv shows this is i think less common these days where the pilots actually just turn into the first episode but typically with tv shows the tv studio or the company or whatever pitching the tv show will often get to a certain stage where they then go playing and film a pilot with the actual cast and things like that the first step of episode of show is often the pilot episode which is basically the test episode where you're trying to sell the show as this is what we want to do would you like to buy our show now sometimes the pilot never sees the light of day or until after the show ends and it gets leaked or something like that but sometimes the pilot becomes the first episode and if it's not been funded or planned out ahead of time that pilot could be very different than the rest of the show i believe house uh the show with hugh laurie was one of those shows where the pilot has completely different like lighting and moods and visuals and a completely different feel from the rest of the first season you have shows like the office where the whole first season was a drastic difference from the rest of the show and then they completely changed the show a little different but the pilot episode itself the very first episode of the show is very different from the second episode and moving forward that is the same concept where you test it out get feedback and either it's successful and you just make it the first official episode or you scrap it and you start over or you're like okay this idea works i don't like this piece of content i made but i learned some lessons from it and i'm going to move forward with this idea and maybe only share the pilot episode to patrons or something and the same thing with the inner circle and discord if you have an existing fan funding base of some sort being on patreon coffee coffee only fans twitter super follows youtube channel members that's great content to share with them because they get to enjoy it even if it doesn't work for your channel to go public or you may find that there is a big following for that and that can result in two things that can result in either you get a big enough response from your patreon effectively group where you're like okay i need to make this actual public content and just keep re-releasing it and even if it's not as successful as your other public content you keep making it because that's what people are paying you for and that's worth more than the views i'm gonna point you towards my buddy wendell from level one text he runs a tech channel much like my own and if you look at their videos i don't have a hotkey set up for this scene for some reason most of their videos are their daily news show now i consider this a a a an issue in a little bit in the sense that it could cost them viewership due to the lower ctr click-through rates on their videos of the actual individual news episodes and the like but they do a daily news show with their core group here um that is supported by their patrons by their fan funders and they do this every day because that is the big thing that their entire patreon subscription group is up for and so they are literally funding this content and it's still content that's getting views and bringing new viewers in but their patreon group is paying for this and demanding it and that is ultimately who they're supposed to be beholden to right you may also end up in a secondary scenario or tertiary at this point maybe where you're only making that content from patreon where you're making that content exclusively for patreon so you're funneling people from your public viewership you know generally through your normal videos and then they support you on patreon or whatever your private twitch subs link to discord whatever that's a lover a way to leverage twitch and streaming specifically is you can get people to subscribe on twitch you give them a special role on discord secret chat and then they pay for that through their twitch subs or whatever and they continue paying you to make that content but you never release it publicly so they are purely joining your fan funding and funding you just to have access to that content because you may find that no it doesn't really work for public production especially in the stream world and be like okay my average concurrent viewers on this content is crap but my die hard subs love it then you have sub only streams or sub only videos or discords private night you know where where you only give it to the people who are your inner circle or who are paying you or however you want to divide up your fan group from there and that is an extremely powerful position to be in and so if you find yourself there don't consider it a mistake or be like why isn't this working i still want to make the content leverage that heavilyso how do you build a show like this well we're going to kind of plan this out and write this out here oh i'm trying not to rip on uh devin nash here too much with this notepad like view but we are using google docs instead that wasn't my objective today but this is the easiest way to communicate like my thoughts here at the moment i don't have a name for the show yet nothing like that the names aren't as important a lot of people get caught up on that they're like if you know people who want to start a podcast or a comic book or whatever you can tell when they aren't really like into the idea of doing the work of the thing itself when they get stuck on the idea of what should it be called instead of actually doing the thing cause you can kind of make that up as you go afk chat was just a random name choice streamer news was fairly on the nose first and foremost you should here let's make a list let's do a numbered list you can't do this in notepad also we can actually improve the scaling a little bit more first and foremost brainstorm content ideas the actual the the tangible thing you want to stream and you may find that the thing you end up actually making the core focus of the stream isn't necessarily the biggest thing you thought you had at first so for example the things that i stream as a creator in general that's an easy way to start we have gameplay for video games here on twitch a couple years ago before i had a kid i did a lot of apex streams and halo streams and call of duty streams cause i play a lot of first person shooters and that tends to do well on twitch and so i'm streaming it i also want to stream unboxings i don't really include those in videos anymore it's a way to interact with you all preview upcoming video content i can show you stuff that i have coming in and we can get a first look at some products some of them we can't test necessarily but that's fine i also stream pokemon card openings now i would honestly encourage you to not necessarily it depends on how solid of an idea you have for your stream already so let's start there if you already have a pretty solid idea of like what you want your show to look like you've thought about this a lot you can probably skip this step or either briefly kind of be like okay i don't need this but if you are completely clueless i would go as open and like unrelated as possible so obviously unboxings gameplay and pokemon card openings are very loosely or otherwise not at all related things because we have tech gaming and pokemon but that doesn't mean they can't turn into something especially here on twitch or if you plan you know if you plan on streaming multiple times a week you can have two different shows and just make sure that's clearly communicated in your stream schedule things like that so we've got unboxings gameplay pokemon card openings and of course we have the general umbrella of tech which i will then make a you know tech education which i will make a subcategory of its own so we have tutorial stuff review stuff we have stream feedback which is my a show that i ran in video form called stream critique that's coming back by the way uh you can head to this website streamguides.gg stream critique if you want to have your stream featured in a video on stream and actually reviewed for tangible feedback on how to improve general like setup advice and then we have news which i'm not writing in this particular list because we're feeding that back over to streamer news which is a show i'm already running so worth keeping in mind there we could just do like general testing and tweaking so this covers like in today's stream i may move a monitor over and actually get it hooked up and usable testing things out for the first time where i don't have a completely solid idea of what the answer to a question is or what i want to convey in a video so it can be like practice or research for a video or a gadget that i just want to play with that i don't necessarily have the time to make a video on these are the things i want to talk about so these are my content ideas that we can cover in a show now these aren't necessarily related but then we can go from there and plan out what we think would actually be successful now for this you may need a little bit of experience streaming so if you've never streamed before and you're kind of working through this my recommendation would honestly be to go through each of this list and here i can even write that down and do some test content be it videos streams whatever and we talked about this on a previous uh on the discord uh community the discord stage channel we did yesterday go through and even if you make content that no one sees that you keep private unlisted or you just delete after you make it go through and make content in these categories both to figure out whether or not you like it whether or not you like the workflow also see if it does well if you make some videos do some feeler videos for a couple months and see you know what bites you get and things like that and see what actually works for you because you may find that when you get in here say which happens a lot for gaming specifically you may get in here and start streaming some gameplay and you're like well crap this actually wasn't very fun or i was a little too distracted with the game to interact with chat and i missed out on my first chatters and that's not a good feeling at all or i was too distracted by chatters to actually focus on the game and that didn't really work out as a game stream either you may find these things out if you've never done this before so step two would be test content live or offline so i'm gonna i'm gonna put this in parentheses because this isn't a necessary step or is it one that will apply to everyone but i won't say as many content ideas as you can but kind of like make sure you hit all the heavy hitters of what you actually want to do like really think long and hard about what is it that you want to make and why evaluate why so for certain things like gameplay why do you want to make gameplay streams why do you want to stream it is it because everyone else does it does that mean that you actually want to do it is it because you consider that the default format of streaming like so many people do does that mean that's actually what you want to do do you enjoy gaming as your luxury kind of you time that you want to keep as entertainment or passive relaxation for you if so turning that into work may not be the right idea at all so you have some stuff to work through there um and i want people to make sure that they are really going for the right idea for them and that may not always be the case however look at these big things and decide like you could do things adjacent to it or you could turn it into an aspect of your show so then we prioritize your your topics here so prioritize this means that you're going to take and once you've either tested your content or building on the experience of what you already have done or made or have viewers for then you decide what would be the most successful if you have the data or experience for that or what you felt the most comfortable or the most effective or got the most enjoyment out of doing so this is kind of different for me because i very much enjoyed game streaming but i also felt that weird obligation where every time i played that i should be game streaming which isn't what i always want to do sometimes i just want to play apex with the boys not stream apex and perform for everyone else and not get to pay a close attention to the game secondarily and here i'm gonna write this down did you enjoy it the most secondarily performance is an inclusion here so for me given my lengthier career and all of that i'm i'm gonna i'm at a bit of an advantage here but i know i love you all so much all of you stream viewers watching right now and video people too but my gaming content overall has been my least successful like my straightforward i'm gonna make gaming content about this game for the sake of gaming that kind of content has been my least successful and least worthwhile content i have produced throughout my entire career from start when that was all i was doing to my transition to tech to even a cup you know a year ago when i was streaming apex on twitch right now i love you all but you all show up to talk about tech to talk about streaming and to get interactivity regarding that not to watch me play apex and especially when i'm rusty and don't get to play a ton what's the point that doesn't mean as cujo is spoiling and pointing out in chat that doesn't mean you don't get to play games so there's a couple ways you can do this here so we're gonna go ahead and add our performance so i know from expect or from experience and from my data that gaming is not super even if it's something i enjoy or something i want to do it's not something that is super successful so for me even though i've tried it a few times and that's how actually i got up to affiliate but i was also secretly actually we'll get to that so for me it doesn't make sense really whatsoever to turn this twitch channel or to make my stream content all about gameplay doesn't make sense it's it's a hard ladder to climb i'll never be like super big you know in the scrolling of pages of people streaming so overall it just doesn't make sense for me to stream gameplay that doesn't mean i don't get to utilize gameplay for my streams though or don't get to play games in the first place of course and doesn't mean that it can't be a part of my show so we have prioritized here by by my experience you know you can figure out what you enjoyed the most what you got the most community or interaction from what opens up the most doors of opportunities for you we talked during my last stream about figuring out your career goals and identifying the jobs around that and how reverse engineering your way up to getting that dream job which one of these gets you closest to that so that is also gets closest to career goals so we know from that that tech education umbrella for sure is number one and we could pick and choose here from these unboxings is inherently going to be related because that's number two but i also enjoy gameplay and i also enjoy my pokemon card openings so then we can start formatting our show based on this limited amount of information already building a stream show is cool but you don't want it to look amateurish nerd or die takes your stream to the next level with their high quality customizable stream packs full of layouts widgets overlays alerts and more with source files available to make it your own and one-click easy setup consider checking out streamos a nostalgic stream layout reflective of yours truly to remind your viewers of a simpler time head on over to eposvox dot gg slash nerd or die and save 15 with coupon code eposvox at checkout like we have barely scratched the surface and from what i have listed right here we can plan a show so i'm not even going to add another point right now we will come back to that and we'll just call this uh heading 2. we'll call this twitch show of the box so what will my show be about obviously i've thought about this a little bit in advance in order to be able to explain this to you guys but based on the basic logic that we have worked through here we can figure this out so it should be we'll make just a bulleted list it should be a tech show so under that we can then plan out and you don't want to get caught up in too many of the tiny like in the weeds or granular details just yet but we can start planning out some of those details so it's a tech show which means we're probably going to be in either just chatting like we are now or uh there's a science in technology category i struggle with this even on youtube because there's a tech in an education category there's not an education category currently on twitch there's an educational tag which i have used for this stream for the first time because i didn't know that existed but there's not an educational category but you can pick out your category based on what your primary content piece is going to be and obviously if you're on youtube category doesn't matter a whole lot here um and i think i had someone asking if sorry john quattro uh can you apply this idea to vodka too 100 so actually we're going to wrap around to why that matters in just a minute actually obviously on youtube category doesn't matter but treat the category as the general idea or theme of the show so we can fit in just chatting or science and technology science and technology is probably good well cujo's pointing it i was literally reading that as i was saying that probably good because of the low viewership and for my granular tech testing like if i'm doing some really nerdy testing of a product that would fall under uh science and technology but the more q a kind of interactivity parts would make more sense than just chatting we could either just primarily dominate science and technology to see if we can boost that for views keeping in mind that that category if we go to twitch right now there's a back and forth here because if we go to twitch as a website right now it's gonna autoplay some streams that i don't want in terms of categories obviously that's categories you don't we think you'll like but just categories in general just chatting is gonna stay close to the top but unless i get at least 5.3 kv wait is it oh this is recommended for me hang on viewers i was like why is 5 higher than 142. so unless we get higher than like 30k viewers at a time we're not gonna boost science and technology up into the part where people are looking for it other than people who are already coming for me which as a new creator you can't really rely on that uh what if we go into science i what spelling is that not behind the scenes there's a cat can i not search for the category science yeah i can't even i'm gonna have to scroll a while to find the category it may not even show up because currently it's only finding the search bar doesn't exist right now i mean obviously it exists but it's not so you see you see the dilemma here uh both could be advantageous and i kind of wish in some regards we could duel category um but this would be an opportunity where perhaps you alternate categories within a show based on what you're actually doing you know how that goes otherwise just chatting is probably a more likely fit at least for the majority of the content that might be up here top science is 400 streams yeah so that would be a little bit hard to really boost into getting new viewers and that's kind of an objective on twitch is that is the game you have to play that may not be my personal priority uh because i already have an existing audience base and i'm just trying to get you all to watch and educate you at the same time i am still trying to grow my twitch so getting new viewers through twitch possibly a benefit uh girl thulu is asking about the podcast category that would be advantageous if you are doing a show like this and you have like you know it's going to be a set time which we're going to talk about and go back and forth or have guests and you don't have a i guess a locked off like category that is a non-gaming category on twitch so science whatever uh podcasts would probably be perfect if it's more of a talk showy kind of thing although cujo's asking about talk show category i don't know if that's a category or a tag um either way yes you could 100 fit in there if you're like this is my show i'm going to talk about my interests and my hobbies and things like that and honestly the thing is here i'm a little bit i operate in a little bit more of a literal kind of thing as we have learned in recent years the categories on twitch are very much flexible and uh not they don't have to be super literal uh so you could 100 go forth as a podcast or talk show or whatever and stick with it and stay there and be totally fine no reason you necessarily couldn't um so honestly i will throw that in here like you can be a little bit flexible you run into the possibility of screwing yourself if you try to do a specific game category because obviously the gameplay streams are going to take priority over that so i know it's going to be a tech show i know it's going to fall into these categories you could be game you could be doing gameplay so if you're streaming gameplay obviously go with the game that you're streaming keep keep that in your head because i'm specifically overlooking this so we have tech show it's going here then we have to plan out what's going to be in the show which is the topics we talked about here earlier so getting back to john quatro's question told you i'd come back about this applying to vods so they may just be asking about the offline thing and if so yes 100 if you are just trying to get better uh with videos or test for yourself 100 just record the videos and edit them and then keep them unlisted or private no one ever has to know you did it and you can test for yourself alternatively you never really have to upload it or you can upload to side channels same thing with these shows if you want to just test it out the format either just streamed in nothing or do a local recording and then delete it or stream to a side channel where only like your inner circle on your discord or something gets access to it and you can then flip it back around and actually pilot it later on uh if you think about tv shows this is i think less common these days where the pilots actually just turn into the first episode but typically with tv shows the tv studio or the company or whatever pitching the tv show will often get to a certain stage where they then go playing and film a pilot with the actual cast and things like that the first step of episode of show is often the pilot episode which is basically the test episode where you're trying to sell the show as this is what we want to do would you like to buy our show now sometimes the pilot never sees the light of day or until after the show ends and it gets leaked or something like that but sometimes the pilot becomes the first episode and if it's not been funded or planned out ahead of time that pilot could be very different than the rest of the show i believe house uh the show with hugh laurie was one of those shows where the pilot has completely different like lighting and moods and visuals and a completely different feel from the rest of the first season you have shows like the office where the whole first season was a drastic difference from the rest of the show and then they completely changed the show a little different but the pilot episode itself the very first episode of the show is very different from the second episode and moving forward that is the same concept where you test it out get feedback and either it's successful and you just make it the first official episode or you scrap it and you start over or you're like okay this idea works i don't like this piece of content i made but i learned some lessons from it and i'm going to move forward with this idea and maybe only share the pilot episode to patrons or something and the same thing with the inner circle and discord if you have an existing fan funding base of some sort being on patreon coffee coffee only fans twitter super follows youtube channel members that's great content to share with them because they get to enjoy it even if it doesn't work for your channel to go public or you may find that there is a big following for that and that can result in two things that can result in either you get a big enough response from your patreon effectively group where you're like okay i need to make this actual public content and just keep re-releasing it and even if it's not as successful as your other public content you keep making it because that's what people are paying you for and that's worth more than the views i'm gonna point you towards my buddy wendell from level one text he runs a tech channel much like my own and if you look at their videos i don't have a hotkey set up for this scene for some reason most of their videos are their daily news show now i consider this a a a an issue in a little bit in the sense that it could cost them viewership due to the lower ctr click-through rates on their videos of the actual individual news episodes and the like but they do a daily news show with their core group here um that is supported by their patrons by their fan funders and they do this every day because that is the big thing that their entire patreon subscription group is up for and so they are literally funding this content and it's still content that's getting views and bringing new viewers in but their patreon group is paying for this and demanding it and that is ultimately who they're supposed to be beholden to right you may also end up in a secondary scenario or tertiary at this point maybe where you're only making that content from patreon where you're making that content exclusively for patreon so you're funneling people from your public viewership you know generally through your normal videos and then they support you on patreon or whatever your private twitch subs link to discord whatever that's a lover a way to leverage twitch and streaming specifically is you can get people to subscribe on twitch you give them a special role on discord secret chat and then they pay for that through their twitch subs or whatever and they continue paying you to make that content but you never release it publicly so they are purely joining your fan funding and funding you just to have access to that content because you may find that no it doesn't really work for public production especially in the stream world and be like okay my average concurrent viewers on this content is crap but my die hard subs love it then you have sub only streams or sub only videos or discords private night you know where where you only give it to the people who are your inner circle or who are paying you or however you want to divide up your fan group from there and that is an extremely powerful position to be in and so if you find yourself there don't consider it a mistake or be like why isn't this working i still want to make the content leverage that heavily\n"