[fiat_fandango]

I certainly agree - I still think most creators underestimate the necessity of putting in some leg-work to understand your audience and attaching your channel to a niche that has an existing audience at all.

Something that I ended up doing by accident was identifying a niche that a) was low risk (nothing political etc), b) had decent reach, and c) ended up with most of my traffic coming from "browse" and not "search".

Initially, I had no idea traffic coming from "browse" was indicative of content that would likely drive more long-term value outside of "news" videos.

Ironically, videos that feature community drama unfortunately still are my best performing videos.