My interview with YouTuber Sir Swag.

At 160 thousand subscribers, Sir Swag's YouTube channel is a huge success. I was lucky enough to sit down with him to discuss his channel and personal insights regarding successful youtube practices.  If I were to give a brief summary of Sir Swag's channel, I would summarise it as a self-aware gaming channel whose attitude takes nothing seriously, an attitude accompanied with no fluff, no bull shit content that looks to put its subscribers first, and profits second.
Click here to visit Sir Swags channel

How would you describe your YouTube channel?

“I would describe it as a haven for fucking degenerates, I would describe it as comedy, gaming lots of those titles I suppose”

How did “Nuclear Pancake” come about?

“How many videos did you fucking watch? Nuclear pancake, I think that was my first video, so basically, there was this move for this one character in dirty bomb. They have a mine, you throw it out wait for a few seconds and it explodes, but if you throw it out and shoot it, that blows up straight away and that just makes this ridiculous grenade that you can use anywhere. So, I said “nuclear pancake” once and then a few weeks later in a development video they said they were going to put a nerf on mines citing “damn you nuclear pancake”. Then all of a sudden it became a standard term in the game.

Your channel adds a satirical twist to game reviews, game guides, and community commentaries, with the use of text to speech. Ultimately, how do you see your channel growing in terms of content? Have you considered extending the scope of your text to speech commentaries beyond the gaming community?

“I have considered going into movies, cause I did the 30 games in one sentence series, the 30 overwatch mains into one sentence series. I thought, could I maybe expand it into movies or shows? However, I don’t know how well that would work because my channel is all about gaming like even when I alternate between different games, my view rate and sub rate just drops dramatically no matter what the content is. So I’m thinking moving to non-gaming things is certainly possible, however, it would be very very hard, whereas gaming in itself is such a big topic.”

Earlier, you mentioned to me that you believe your text to speech commentaries has created a third entity, separate from you, a persona of sorts. Are there any variations to the text to speech voices that you would consider?  Do you think that changing the text to speech voice would hurt or help your channel, or is the persona more intertwined with the commentary itself?

I have asked on several occasions, “if you guys would support me in using my real voice, then I would be more than happy to do that” however, a lot of them are just like" Nah it's funny, we like it" it’s one of the main selling points. The text to speech has its ups and downs, cause its either you love it or just freaking hate it. I think the market’s big enough that I’ll just keep the text to speech for regular videos, and if I wanted to do other stuff ill make another channel, like if I wanted to stream ill use my real voice.”

What about the actual text to speech voices? Could you change it?

I could change it, but it’s such an iconic voice, it’s the standard one. I started it because of the MLG videos back in the day like “MLG stranger danger” shit like that. I was like pissing myself, I thought that was the funniest shit, so I just used that, because I found it so funny.  I don’t think I’ll change the text to speech voice, it’s too iconic.

How often do you upload content on YouTube, per your personal experience and YouTube available metrics, what’s the most effective frequency if any? 

“Alright for me, I like to do an upload every week. I aim for one a week because I think it’s something where I can keep up with, and it keeps the view rate and sub rate going for the rest of the week, However, if it were up to me I would probably want 2 to 3 videos out a week to bolster that. People just like new shit. “

Obviously on any creator oriented platform, content quality is imperative to success, however, assuming a channel’s content exhibits this level of quality, in terms of initial channel growth what aspect do you feel is most important, continuous improvement of quality or an increase content quantity.

I’m always about quality over quantity, a lot of channels just put out a video every day, which for me is unsustainable, it takes too long to make a video and to put it out every day. I think what I have over a lot of other channels is I spend a lot of time researching and writing, making all the edits really snappy. Like I would spend months getting gameplay for a game before making a video on it because I want everything to be really really good, every 10-second clip. A lot of channels what they will do is just film five minutes and talk over the top of that, whereas me, I get a whole bunch of clips and show those clips as I’m talking about it. So yeah, quality over quantity every time. Again, it’s way better to make an amazing 2-minute video than a shitty 10-minute video.  

Do you use any other social media platforms? And to what extent to do you use these platforms?

I use only one other platform and that’s discord, to converse with fans and what not.  

So you don’t even use Reddit? Despite you noting that your channel's success is partly due to the Reddit community.

Yeah usually it's other people promoting my content for me, one of my biggest ones, that made it to the top of the overwatch sub Reddit, the funny part about that is at the end of that video I said, “this concludes the video where we talk about every overwatch main in one sentence, subscribe to see more videos that make it to the top of the overwatch sub Reddit so until next time goodbye, and within a day it made it to the top of the overwatch subreddit, yeah that was the most badass thing I’ve ever done.  So yeah, it’s mostly other people doing it for me, it’s making things that can go viral so easily so I don’t have to promote, I feel like that’s more effective. If you can get something on the top of Reddit that is worth thousands of dollars of self-promotion.