This week we hear from Chris Minasians, Director and Editor at TotallyEV, an independent site dedicated to articles, reviews and interviews about electric vehicles. TotallyEV has recently hit 5 million views on YouTube, so he discusses building an audience through video reviews, and what it takes to run your own reviews site – including getting access to vehicles – as a solo publisher.
Minasians also explores the differences he’s noticed between his electric vehicle coverage on TotallyEV, and his more consumer-focused tech reviews on his other YouTube channel TotallydubbedHD, from audience engagement to relative revenues.
In the news round-up, Chris (Sutcliffe!) and Esther run through a busy week in audio and podcast news. We ask where people listen to podcasts – not Google Podcasts any more – and whether podcasters are seeing any benefit from Apple’s promotion of paid shows. There’s also the first agenda sneak preview for the Publisher Podcast Summit…
Here are some highlights from the interview, lightly edited for clarity:
Why the industry struggles with product reviews
It’s time and money. I remember my initial reviews that I was writing, they were super detailed. If I was doing a smartphone, I covered a lot of detail – I think it came to 4.5k words, which is a long review! But I was just really passionate about it. But my editors rightly said that our audience are not interested in that amount of detail. They just want to know is it good or bad in certain areas. The same sort of principle applies on YouTube now, because of people’s attention spans.
There’s not many people that will actually want to go into the fine details. There’s certainly people out there, but not in every single nook and cranny. So shortening those reviews, and making it more condensed and appeal to a wider audience, is what in my opinion, big publishers are trying to do because they want everyone to access their reviews.
Time and money go hand in hand because someone’s time is charged to the company. So the more time you spend reviewing a product, the [more expensive] that written piece.
Running a reviews site as an independent publisher
People don’t actually realise what it takes to be independent, and what you have to do. When you’re working as a journalist, more often than not, you have the contacts, and if you want to review a product you can request one, or you’ll get it pitched anyway because you’re known in the publishing world.
As an independent, I have to do a lot of [product review] requests myself. I get inbound requests, but I do a lot of outreach. So specifically on the car side, I will reach out to manufacturers and say, ‘Have you got this product available? Or will it be available at a later date? Could you consider me? Or if you have an event coming up, I’d appreciate an invite to it.’ Because I’m a small fish in a big pond, I know the likes of Top Gear etc. are going to be up there, not me. But sometimes it does mean that I am lobbed with those guys, because they appreciate the content I’m doing.
But not only do you have the editorial arm, you’ve also got the advertorial arm, you’re creating your own brand, brand identity. You’ve not got a strategy team, an ecommerce team, you’re creating all the ecommerce links yourself, the affiliate partnerships yourself, you’re linking it within the website or YouTube channel. Then you’re also a social media manager – which people employ full-time. So as an independent, you actually have a lot of skills. People don’t realise not only the amount of time it takes, but also the amount of skills you need to learn.
Monetisation across platforms
The most popular TikTok video I did, which has 1.2 million plays right now, was on a tilting electric vehicle, a tilting bike. But the reason I don’t spend too much time on TikTok and Shorts [production] is because the money you make is next to nothing. I could generate 50,000 views on whichever platform you want to choose, and I’ll earn probably 0.02p or something!
That TikTok video, when I was talking to the person who’d lent me the car – he’s at a garage and he’s the one who services the vehicles and is the UK importer for it – he said there were people who reached out to him based on my video, which is really cool. And I love that. But I don’t earn anything from that. And YouTube videos haven’t earned that much in the grand scheme of things in comparison to the amount of marketing it’s provided to that company.
Right now, I’m on 5.2 million YouTube views already [on TotallyEV]. So it’s growing, and the milestones are nice to see. But the thing for me, it’s not just the views and the subscribers. It’s more the engagement with the community and with the brands. Those are two things I’m more interested in. I’d rather have lower viewership and lower sub counts, but much higher engagement and better relationships with brands than to say I’ve got 50 million views.
The news round-up
Google Podcasts has finally shut down in the US, as Google turns its focus to building podcasting on YouTube.
- On the face of it that makes sense. After all, Spotify has both. Other than the fact podcasts tend to be longer than even prog rock songs, there’s no functional difference between music and podcast mp3s.
- But what it does mean is that publishers and creators who distributed through Google Podcasts are having to change strategy (again) – and an already fragmented landscape is evolving (again).
- Also, it’s just the latest in a long line of Google products that were launched with great hullabaloo and fanfare and bumbled along getting less and less attention until it got unceremoniously shut down.
In the meantime, Apple has been heavily promoting paid shows using Apple Podcast Subscriptions in its featured carousel.
- Writing for Semafor, Max Tani notes: “ [to the extent] podcasting has a homepage, it’s the top of Apple Podcasts. At a moment when the volume of podcasts has made it difficult for some shows to promote themselves, Apple’s top banner is one of the key promotional vehicles that many striving podcasters obsess over.”
- It is effectively trying to entice people across to Apple Podcast Subscriptions by tacitly promising they’ll appear in the most prominent carousel.
- Spotify may have given up on exclusive podcasts, but it’s still making heavy investments in the industry, which are paying off in terms of listener increases.
There was a notable post from Substack this week about the power of audio to grow subscriptions:
- “We’ve seen from our data that writers who have been augmenting their publications with audio or video in some way—whether that be a show that anchors their Substack or supplementary materials such as narrations—grow their mailing lists and revenue 2.5 times faster than publishers who don’t use audio or video.”
- That’s a huge multiple, but those who do video and audio alongside newsletters are also likely to be far more ‘serious’ about their publications compared to more casual newsletter writers, which could explain the skew.
The New York Times is to make the vast majority of its articles available to users via an automated voice, according to Axios.
- The company published 2,300 audio recordings, including podcasts, in 2023 with more than 600 Times reporters contributing. Its podcasts were downloaded nearly 1 million times last year.
- The Times plans to have all of its articles narrated in some way eventually, with the majority being automated, but 15%-20% of articles, especially more personal stories, will likely be read as “reporter reads.”
- We couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by this; surely one of the world’s leading publishers could have tried something more interesting?
To top off our podcasty week, new research from Edison Research shows that, despite headlines about the industry struggling, more people than ever are listening to podcasts.
- Edison’s results showed 67% of people in the US have ever listened to a podcast (up from 64% last year), 47% listened in the last month, and 34% listened in the last week.
- That’s higher for young Americans – 59% of those under 35 — and 55% of those under 54 — listen to podcasts at least once per month.
For a full day of publisher podcast best-practice, from what publishers are doing with paid podcasts to harnessing AI and video in podcasting, make sure you’ve got June 12th in your diary. Tickets are now available for the Publisher Podcast Summit at a pre-agenda rate until the end of April.
