One of the other parts of the gig when you decide to become a content creator is remembering that making the content is only part of the job.
Every once in a while, you actually have to stop and look at the numbers.
Not just views.
Not just subscribers.
Not just whether one video went up or down.
You need to look at who is actually watching you.
I was digging through the analytics for The Gigman’s Life and had one of those moments of, “Wait a minute. Who exactly am I reaching here?”
My current audience is overwhelmingly male, which honestly isn’t much of a surprise considering how much I talk about rideshare, electronics, Raspberry Pi projects, retro computers, cars, scams, gig work, and whatever rabbit hole I fall into that particular morning.
But the more interesting number was the age range.
The strongest watch-time audience is sitting in the 25-to-44-year-old range.
That is something worth paying attention to.
The 25-to-44 range is a very useful audience for a lot of content because you’re talking about adults who are generally old enough to have their own interests, careers, disposable income, hobbies, and opinions about the things they buy and use.
And yes, there are younger audiences that advertisers and creators chase very aggressively.
I don’t particularly want to build content around kids.
There are too many extra questions involved when you start deliberately aiming content at minors, and frankly, that isn’t what The Gigman’s Life is about anyway.
This is a channel about adulthood in all of its ridiculous forms.
Working.
Driving.
Technology.
Money.
Fixing things.
Building things.
Getting scammed.
Trying not to get scammed.
Buying something you probably didn’t need at Micro Center.
And occasionally realizing that the Raspberry Pi project you started three weeks ago has somehow turned into an ESP32-controlled Macintosh cooling system with custom 3D-printed hardware.
The important part is that analytics can tell you whether the audience you think you’re talking to is actually the audience that’s showing up.
And sometimes the interesting number isn’t who gives you the most views.
It’s who actually stays.
In my case, the 25-to-44 audience is producing a disproportionately large part of the watch time.
That tells me something.
It doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to redesign the entire channel around an age demographic. I still want to talk about the things I find interesting, because once you start manufacturing every conversation entirely around analytics, I think you start losing the reason people showed up in the first place.
But it does mean that when I’m talking about Raspberry Pi, ESP32s, retro computing, gig work, AI, 3D printing, Linux, old technology, new technology, or just how badly somebody designed something, I now have a little better idea of who is actually sitting on the other side of the screen.
That’s part of the gig too.
Make the video.
Upload the video.
Make the thumbnail.
Write the description.
Answer comments.
Look at the analytics.
And every once in a while say:
“Well, I’ll be damned. That’s who’s watching me.”
Welcome to content creation.
It’s another gig.
The Gigman’s Life
TheGigmansLife.com