My name is Griffin Beels! I work a 9-5 at TikTok as a Machine Learning Engineer for the TikTok Algorithm, but in my free time, I make videos & stream! I mostly make content around speedrunning (namely SM64), whether that's skits, fun VFX edits, highlights from runs, or stories about cool stuff I learned or accomplished. Here's one of the videos I had the most fun making recently: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/v77a8NWLjyM To answer the original intro questions: 1) I'm located in Los Angeles (just moved to LA two months ago! I lived in San Francisco for 2 years prior). 2) Content: https://linktr.ee/griffinbeels, mostly focused on https://www.youtube.com/@griffinbeels / https://twitch.tv/griffinbeels right now! 3) My #1 fear is being wrong D: Even if I'm ordering something on Uber Eats, I think *super* hard about the "right" answer for what to eat; similarly, if I walk down a street full of restaurants, I'll walk it a few times before deciding LOL. This has been one of the biggest things I've been working on this year -- using failure to learn and teach rather than letting it paralyze :D Nice to meet you all and happy to be here!

I posted a video about a week ago with the first thumbnail below. It ended up not doing well at all, I was worried that the video I had worked hours and hours on wasn’t interesting enough for any given viewer to click on. However, usually before I post videos I create 2-3 thumbnails to have and this definitely saved my video. The second thumbnail, although it still can be improved, increased the CTR by almost 5% and the views went from around 200 to 2.7k. I decided to share this because I think a lot of people, me included, get so wrapped up in creating this “masterpiece” of content with long hours of work just to see it flop. If you believe in a piece of content you posted, like truly believe you gave it everything you had, don’t give up on it after it doesn’t do well right away. Change the title, change the thumbnail, post a short and link the video to it and most importantly prepare for one thumbnail to not be received well early on in the process and make multiple thumbnails!

Hello again skoolmates 🫡 I'm on the hunt for someone who can edit my streams into clips and youtube videos. Does anyone have anyone they'd like to recommend? Or sites they've used to hire editors in the past? I have a clear vision and reference for what I'm going for, so I'm hoping I can hand off my stream recordings and it to someone without stressing about it. I'm finding that editing these myself is zero fun and too time-consuming for me 😅

What challenges did you face that you wish you had known about before you started?

Hi all, I was wondering if you had any experience with doing adwords to try and get more followers. There is a video option that does this and I tried with one of my videos, I ended up getting over 200 new followers on youtube. I assume they are real, because it all went through google, there wasnt a watch time more than 30 seconds, and you do not make income from views from ads. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this, or any thoughts.