Sink or Switch: Powerful Personal Branding Lessons From the #1 YouTuber
YouTube is a long and difficult game. In order to stay on top, you can only rest on your laurels for so long.
Traditional careers are becoming more and more like this. The days of staying with in the same company in a similar position are over.
Job security? Company loyalty? They are concepts of the past, at least in America.
This is why we can draw great knowledge from the internet personalities.
They are always hard at work adapting with the tides, and making sure their brands stay strong and healthy.
Today’s internet personalities are arguably more like entrepreneurs — often working 80+ hour weeks to stream, produce content, build businesses and arrange charity events for their fans to enjoy and participate in.
I want to introduce you to one of them who has enjoyed a 10+ year career while his peers slowly faded into obscurity beside him, and show you what you can learn from his journey.
Meet Felix Kjellberg — better known as PewDiePie on YouTube.
The channel he’s known for today started in 2010, featuring mostly gaming.
He made his first big break through differentiating himself by focusing on the horror genre, becoming most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time in 2013 and subsequently becoming assosciated with the niche. He continued making primarily gaming content until 2017 where he started branching out into more topics.
Now having followed his career closely for 10 years, I present to you the branding insights I’ve gleamed from his astounding success.
Lesson #1: How to Bounce from Category to Category and Still Succeed
If YouTube played any part in your childhood, you will find one of three realities:
- Reality #1: Your favorite childhood YouTuber has left the platform for good.
- Reality #2: Your favorite childhood YouTuber has changed drastically, either becoming a cariacature of themselves or exuding major “big media company” vibes. Or both.
- Reality #3: Your favorite childhood YouTuber is still uploading the exact same thing they became known for, but their eyes seem somewhat lifeless.
Leaving, becoming corporate shill or holding onto what once was — what’s it going to be? Traditional jobs, startup founders and art careers can spiral down any of these lanes too.
Enter PewDiePie. Over a decade on the platform, most of his peers that he used to interact with have ended up in one of the above realities. But not him.
He has moved from gaming, to comedy, to vlogs, to discussing news, to producing series and livestreaming — seemingly effortlessly.
What is the secret?
How can you move from project to project or from position to position and still succeed?
The main reason PewDiePie has been able to stay on top for so long is his impressive “soft skills”.
A hard skill is being able to paint, while a soft skill could be having a great eye for colors. These soft skills are the skills that follow you no matter which field you enter, which means in theory they have the greatest ROI for your efforts.
Some of PewDiePie’s soft skills include:
- Having a knack for comedy
- Being a great speaker (according to a professional)
- Great work ethic (he has posted videos daily for almost his entire career)
- Possessing the ability to be honest/vulnerable with his audience
- Creativity & having an eye for good content opportunities
Coupled with his many hard skills, he’s been able to do all of the things I stated as examples above: streaming, producing many different types of content, building businesses and arranging charity events all to outstanding success.
Could it be that the “golden touch” people talk about that certain CEOs/visionaries have brought into multiple companies and creative projects, are really the result of extraordinary sets of soft skills applied each time?
It’s a notion worth pondering.
Lesson #2: Become Financially Impervious Even as Your Industry is Falling Apart
YouTube’s history is ridden with drastic changes to the platform.
One day 40-minute, sparsely edited gaming videos are all the rage, the next they have been shafted for 10-minute, intensely cut hodgepodges of screaming sound and color designed to keep your attention all the way through.
It’s not for the faint of heart.
One morning you can wake up and witness your entire library of videos having been claimed by some giant conglomerate. They found a loophole in YouTube’s ever changing copyright policies, leaving you powerless to stop them as they claim the slice of pie you had worked hard to carve out for yourself.
YouTube requires a multi-pronged approach.
PewDiePie has been subject to losing many projects, content series and revenue streams he’s set up by the snap of a finger. But like a tree spreading its roots, he has always managed to find his footing.
Here is a list of the income streams he currently holds:
- Partnered with enery drink company GFuel
- Founder & co-founder of clothing lines Based.gg & Tsuki
- He’s behind four video games: PewDiePie’s Tuber Simulator, PewDiePie: Legend of the Brofist, Poopdie, & PewDiePie’s Pixelings
- Merchandise/Represent store
- Sponsored videos
- Sponsored Instagram posts
- Affiliate marketing
- YouTube ad revenue
I’m sure there are some I’ve missed, and he has had even more in the past.
The truth is that even as his sitting on a massive 100M+ subscriber base, only a few million of those millions are actively engaging with his channel.
In today’s time he is a household name. But “only” a fairly popular YouTuber in terms of raw numbers. This is why it’s crucial for even him to manage multiple revenue streams to continue to make money.
This is ignoring he has already made enough money to retire and never have to work a day again if he wished, because of his multiple ventures and successes of the past.
So the question is: how can you prevent being financially boxed in by diversifying yourself?
How can you implement a multi-pronged approach and become impervious to whatever future holds in store?
It’s a topic beyond the scope of this article to be sure. But it’s becoming an increasingly vital thing to ponder, internet personality or not.
Lesson #3: Riding Trends & Waves, Genuinely & Successfully
Trends are part of our society now more than ever.
I don’t think there’s anywhere where you can catch as much heat for “jumping on the bandwagon” as on YouTube/social media.
If you’re doing it because everyone else is doing it, AND it seems fake to your audience — expect major backlash.
But what the outsiders don’t understand, or perhaps don’t want to understand is that trends are the lifeblood of many content creators. In some sense of this field, you must stay relevant to keep your job.
PewDiePie moved away from gaming when Let’s Plays — long videos of a YouTuber recording themselves playing a game from start to finish — were seeing an all-time low in terms of interest.
Moving on to more easily digestible content might have been the single smartest business move he’s made.
And people complained.
Oh, how they whined. Blinded with nostalgia and armed with the YouTube comment section, they expressed utmost distate in the beginning.
But PewDiePie stuck to his guns. It paid off big time. Many gaming channels died with their Let’s Plays while he moved onto greener pastures.
The lesson? Always have your ear to the ground for the next thing.
The “next thing” could be a career opportunity, a lucrative side project or a topic you notice is silently picking up steam.
You decide where you’re going, but would it hurt to leverage something you see is on an upward swing?
No one is above it because we’re all already doing it in one way or another.
If you’re going to do this publically, the key to not just selling out wherever you go is this:
Add value.
Seriously. If you’re able to add value to any conversation you go, just like much of life, that’s genuine effort and will be well received.
Entertainers and comedians do this automatically. If you can make something funny, that’s value.
Selling fidget spinners? “You’re just jumping on the trend!”
Making fun of fidget spinners? “Haha, now that’s something I can get behind.”
Of course, it can be argued that the person selling fidget spinners is adding value too. It’s more so about what kind of “social damage” your brand can sustain and still be successful.
Lesson #4 Pursue Where Your Mental Health is Directing You
It’s true PewDiePie left the ancient version of the gaming genre as it was on its way out.
But there is a different, more important reason for his decision.
In a video titled “WHY I DON’T PLAY VIDEO GAMES ANYMORE..”, he described how he’s unhappy making the same thing he’s made for years:
I think you can tell if I’m not really having a good time if I’m playing a game, you can see that. So that’s why I don’t play a lot of games that I used to play, and my fans are kind of pissed off about me for it. There’s just no way to win — if I play, I lose. If I don’t play, I lose. So I might as well just go and be selfish and think abou me. Because yes, it is my job to entertain… but I also think you guys don’t want a fake version of me. I think you want me to be honest.
He continues:
…I want to experience other things. All those (other) things I genuinely want to do now instead of playing games.
Oh look, he’s a multi-fauceted human like the rest of us. Big surprise.
No matter how much we want to be single-minded robots staying in our little niche that we carved out for ourselves, we can’t be. We’re humans with many aspects and aspirations to us.
We tell ourselves:
“Just be quiet and do the work, I’m in such a privileged of position that tons of people would kill to be in. Just continue doing what works… my feelings about doesn’t matter. Just do it. Do it!”
It goes without saying you can only go on like this for so long without breaking.
I described in the previous point, in PewDiePie’s case it wasn’t smooth sailing to make the switch. But he has time and time again credited the switch with why he’s enjoying this job more than ever.
Nobody wants it to be the case, but mental health runs our lives. As humans we are slaves to it.
And for good reason — if you’re miserable doing what you do, then that’s probably not a good trade-off for commercial success in the long run.
There are periods of everybody’s lives with extreme imbalance, and that’s normal. Few startups would get off the ground if their founders didn’t eat, sleep and breathe their cause in the beginning. Few students would graduate with phenomenal results or even graduate at all.
The key is zooming out.
Are you inside a three-year imbalance or a thirty-year one? Is this thing you’re working on going to serve you mentally, physically and emotionally for a long time? Can you endure your journey’s suffering and still enjoy it?
Reframe your goals, reframe your life.
Like what you see? Consider subscribing to get email notifications whenever I post a new article.
If you are enjoying Medium and liked my article, consider signing up for Medium through the link below. Medium is $5/month and I’ll earn a small commission as long as you’re subscribed to the platform. Thank you!
