As a creator that’s been on YouTube for years doing one thing, sooner or later you might find yourself wondering whether you should stick to your niche or branch out.
The decision is tricky. YouTube algorithm loves and demands consistency, advertisers favor predictability, and audiences respond better to what’s familiar, but creative fulfillment often leads to experimentation. So, what to do? Let’s explore the options together.
Case Studies: How Creators Approach It
Now let’s look at how some creators handle this question in details:
Matt D’Avella
Matt’s content was always about lifestyle and minimalism. It’s a relatively simple and straightforward niche, which attracted a lot of attention. He experiments on occasion with docu-style interviews and collabs, challenge videos, workouts, video essays. It’s a small enough shift from his original content so as not to alienate the audience he gained this far, but it’s different enough to stay away from creative burnout.
KallMeKris
Now this is an interesting case, because KallMeKris started her content journey with short comedy TikTok sketches. Some thought she’d be a one-time wonder, but she branched out and experimented. A lot of YouTubers say that people don’t actually subscribe to content, but they subscribe to you and it has been proven here.
There’s all sorts of content on her channel varying from challenges, weird product reviews, reaction videos, and even true-crime deep dives. She talks about things she cares about at the moment and over 12 million people are there for it. Her case shows that branching out works the best when people originally subscribed to your personality over your content.
Linus Tech Tips
Now a channel who remained in their niche for years is Linus Tech Tips. There are format experiments such as live streams, tapping into ‘how to build a gaming setup’, YouTube Shorts, and overall industry commentary. The niche remains central. For this channel, it’s enough diversity without changing the whole core.
FunkyFrogBait
The last case is an interesting one. While FunkyFrogBait is a channel built on commentary and video-essays and it stays consistent at its core, the creator had decided to branch out in a different way. They made a different channel. Instead of confusing their existing audience with a sudden one-eighty of their content, they have made something new. The original channel is intact, and the new channel attracts a different audience.
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Staying in a Niche
When your viewers subscribe, they’re subscribing to the type of content they expect. Usually, it can be a bit confusing for the viewers if they click on your videos, for example, to get recipes, and then suddenly you start posting gaming videos. So, what’s the pros of sticking to a niche?
Pros
The first pro-staying in a niche argument is algorithmic favorability.
Let us explain.
The YouTube algorithm thrives on something it can predict. When a channel is consistent in posting one type of content within a well-defined topic, the algorithm better understands your audience and pushes your videos to the right viewers.
Channels like Veritasium or Linus Tech Tips have built their entire channels by staying focused on one niche. And they’ve reaped their rewards for it. As Think Media has said “Never upload videos your subscribers didn’t subscribe for.”
Second pro-staying is that your subscribers know what to expect, they’re already loyal to what you’re making. A channel that experiments too widely can instead end up driving some viewers away.
The third pro is clear branding and monetization. When content stays within a niche, brand partnerships become more predictable, easier to sell. This, in turn, transforms into strong commercial appeal for brands that want to reach out to you so you promote their products.
Cons
Of course, there are arguments against staying in one niche. Lots of people argue that creating the same type of content, over time, can become draining and lead to creative burnout. Staying in one lane can feel trapping and boring after enough time has passed.
As much as algorithms like predictability, a niche you’ve started in can soon become over-crowded and limit your growth potential. Some people argue that once you’ve gotten most of the interested viewers, growth can slow unless you innovate within your niche, branch out, or reach global markets.
Speaking of algorithms, if trends in your niche decline, your channel might feel the impact immediately. People argue that if a creator stays too narrowly focused, it makes their channel vulnerable to even the tiniest shift in viewer behavior or ad demand.
Experimenting
Experimenting and tapping into different things has a potential to revive your channel, uncover new audiences, and show your personality from different angles. Not to mention it can renew your interest in creating content if you’ve lost it because you’ve been stuck creating the same types of content. But it comes with risk.
Pros
The first benefit of branching out is that it allows you to explore different content styles, formats, or niches that you’re interested in or that pay more. It can re-ignite the spark of passion for creating and sometimes doing something different saves a creator from burnout.
The second one is the growth potential. New formats and niches mean new audiences that haven’t found your channel yet because you’ve talked about something they weren’t interested in. Channels like Game Theory and Dude Perfect started in a specific format but their content evolved so much that right now they have things for every demographic. That in itself can lead to growth.
The last one is safety. Trends come and go and if you go the ‘viral one-time sensation meme’, once the trend has passed you’re out. So content with a lot of variety can make your channel more adaptable. So, for example, if one type of content just stops pulling the numbers, the other can keep up the interest and revenue going.
Cons
Let’s put it that way: not every experiment gets the success you might hope for. Some just don’t stick and that’s okay, but it might lead to confusion or even frustration among your audience. If your subscribers don’t see the relevance of the new content, retention can absolutely drop.
There’s always the risk of temporary drops in impressions and reach because YouTube algorithm, again, loves consistency, and it will need some time to adjust and re-learn your audience.
Experimenting too heavily can also reflect on your brand deals. See, if your monetization and sponsorships is tied to the niche you’re in, if you do something too different it might make your channel a little less appealing to brands.
Practical Advice for Creators
These cases go to show that there are different ways to spice things up if your channel gets too stale for your tastes, including making a whole separate channel if the content you have in mind is a complete one-eighty from what you have been making thus far. That, we can help with. Even more than that, we can make sure that your content reaches people globally with tools and services at our disposal.
Now, what else to keep in mind? And how do you keep your audience in case you do decide to branch out?
- Making a separate channel/playlists: make a playlist with content that you want to make to get a feel for the type of reaction your audience has for this, or, if you’re feeling brave, make a separate channel and go wild!
- YouTube Studio: analyzing is your new best friend. See your YouTube Studio stats to understand what works and what doesn’t.
- Personality-first: most often your audience subscribes to you, not your content, so if your channel focuses more on you as a person and not your niche, experimenting is that much easier.
Choosing between staying in a niche or experimenting isn’t exactly binary or black and white. There are pros and cons for both decisions and you can even combine approaches in a way that’s unique to your channel and specific content you make.
We’ve seen this play out across 3,000+ channels. Some doubled views by leaning deeper into one niche, others unlocked growth by mixing in smart experiments. Our job is to spot which path fits your channel.
Let’s find your next winning move.
Your niche is usually your foundation, that much can be true; experimentation is something that fuels growth. Combined together they open so many possibilities.
