The Pivot to... A Lot of Work

In the war between written words and video, I worry about writing as a profession

This is by far not the most important thing happening in the world right now (look to the recent passage of the NDAA which contains a definition of sex that erases trans people and requires military academies to ban trans women from women's sports).

But this is the struggle that has dominated my own life recently.

I am a writer by trade. I am good at it, most, if not all, of you appreciate my writing work. That's why you're here, that's why many of you support me financially. It's also getting harder and harder to make a living just from writing.

Having your writing discovered without working at a larger publication feels harder than it used to be, forcing many writers to try a "pivot to video" in a desperate grab for a larger audience. This is mostly why my posts on here have been so sporadic lately, along with being very sick for a few weeks here.

This piece is about what that pivot means for a writer's workload, why more writers are trying video, and a few tips on how to make your video content more compelling. But first, some backstory.

I have all but given up on finding work as a staff writer, no one is hiring staff writers to cover LGBTQ issues anymore, despite the fact that transphobia is one of the major planks of conservatism in 2025. I don't know, maybe outlets feel like Erin in the morning and Assigned Media do enough coverage for everyone.

I worked on the politics team at Vox from 2019-2021 and was also part of the identities team there. Nowadays the identities team, which was responsible for covering racial issues, women's issues, and LGBTQ issues, no longer exists. I applied for a full time position there once and they hired someone who is kind of looney these days (no I will not say who).

I still have my MSNBC... excuse me, I mean MS NOW, column, but the work there is fairly inconsistent. I still have my Xtra column, but that's only once per month. together, I maybe make $1000 a month total between the two? Sometimes $1500 if I manage to write two MS NOW pieces in a given month.

That's partly why I've made such a push on here and on my Patreon this year. And you all have responded in a big way! I now have a decent shot at covering all my bills almost completely from my Patreon and that's all down to you all! Thank you!

So what does video have to do anything? Well, I've had my podcast, Cancel Me, Daddy, since 2021. It has never really been a super profitable venture. My former co-host, Oliver Ash Kleine and I loved working together, but we were a little inconsistent with putting episodes out. What started as publishing every other week became more and more sparse. We took 6 months off before Oliver left, killing the algorithms that had sustained our listenership.

I tried coming back with a solo venture from late 2023 to last summer. This too was difficult. I had to hire an audio editor, and the episodes were super inconsistent because the vibe changed every episode depending on who my guest was that given week.

Then I welcomed my current co-host Christine Grimaldi to the show and she has been a dream to work with. She is funny and is actually better than me at delivering a line read.

Yes, I'm jealous.

We revived the podcast last fall, and have been consistently hitting our every other week schedule since then. Frustratingly, our audio-only listenership stubbornly stayed at around 4000-5000 people and wouldn't budge. We had 15,000 subscribers across Apple Podcasts and Spotify, but the algorithm had already calcified for us, only showing our show to our most diehard listeners.

Six months into the show's revival, friends would tell me they didn't even realize that we were doing regular episodes again because their podcast app of choice did not show them when a new one dropped.

This is fundamentally a discoverability problem. Podcasting is extremely competitive, and it's hard to get noticed by the algorithm in Apple Podcasts, the world's biggest podcasting app. We even had the god emperor of progressive podcasting, Michael Hobbes on right after the election of Donald Trump and the episode was still stuck at the 5000 listener level.

It was a really good episode, we got lots of good feedback on it, and past episodes with him soared into the 15,000 or more listener range (our most listened to episode in show history was the one we did with Hobbes about the Depp-Heard trial, which last I checked had over 90,000 listeners).

I have always been a skeptic of the "pivot to video" strategy. I had watched it crash and burn in the Facebook fake video viewership numbers scandal. But we had to do something to move the needle.

I have always thought that podcasts were more suited for video than trying to convert written work into video. There's something to the form, being able to watch the expressions on your favorite hosts' faces when they react to something is something that just can't be replicated in an audio-only format.

So bravely, Christine and I did an episode during the Papal Conclave where we cosplayed as a bishop and the Pope respectively. This, we thought, would be the perfect episode to launch Cancel Me, Daddy into the video era.

To date, just 449 people have watched that episode on YouTube. I was brand new to video editing and only used the editor on Riverside, the platform we use to record our episodes. I made the thumbnail image on Canva, and it radiated "graphic design is my passion" energy.

It was terribad.

Since then, I've self taught myself to video edit, I learned how to use the basic functions of Davinci Resolve. The edits marginally improved but even just looking at our last video episode, you can tell an amateur edited it.

It also added a ton of work to my schedule. At the beginning, editing a full episode took me 3-4 full days of work. I was struggling with depression and sleep apnea as well. As I got more proficient, I could edit a full episode in a day or two, depending on how graphic heavy the episode is.

Earlier this summer, I had committed to writing three pieces a week on this site for you all, but I also had a YouTube channel to manage. On YouTube, you can't just release one video every other week and expect that your audience will grow.

The ideal upload schedule for the podcast right now is one full 45 min to an hour long video episode every other week, one YouTube exclusive 20 minute video every other week, 2-3 eight to ten minute segment videos over that two week period, pulling out compelling sections from our longer episode, and 3-4 YouTube Shorts/TikToks.

This is the schedule I've determined will sustain growth on the platform for us as a relatively small and new channel. It's also SO MUCH WORK.

The eagle-eyed among may have noticed my lack of posts on here lately. I apologize for that, but I've been video editing CONSTANTLY for the last three weeks trying to edit all of that video.

Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and hired a couple of video editors. You should get a return to the usual 3 pieces a week on here soon.

Now would be an amazing time to support the Cancel Me, Daddy Patreon (which is different than my personal writing Patreon).

(Yes it's confusing, yes I'm sorry but I can't co-mingle the money for myself and the show)

Here's the good news: Since launching on YouTube, and then starting to upload video episodes on Spotify, our audience has grown significantly. We haven't had an episode get under a 6000 total audience in months, and over our last 6 episodes (the "Spotify Era") we are averaging over 10,000 total audience per episode. That number is huge, it means we can finally start attracting sponsors soon.

(If you have a business and want to chat about sponsoring the podcast, reach out to me and I can connect you to our ad rep!)

The YouTube algorithm is undefeated at discovery. I maintain that it is the single best discovery tool for creatives currently in operation and maybe ever. Yes, even if all your videos are scuffed like mine are.

There is no YouTube algorithm for writing or audio. If you're a writer, your best bet is to try to go viral on Twitter or BlueSky. But no one is going to just happen upon your work like they could with the YouTube algorithm. There is no "YouTube for writing" and that's why I think more writers should try to find a way to use YouTube to promote your work.

A Quick Guide to Video Content

Making a video is not too different from writing an essay. You want an interesting and splashy hook right at the top. Something that grabs the viewer's attention.

Then you need a banger nut graf. Tell them why they should care.

Then state your argument and let the viewer know what the payoff will be by watching the video.

Then do a proof/payoff loop until the end of the video.

It looks a lot like a basic essay, right?

You are a writer, you already have a natural advantage at the most basic building block of video making.

If you can, hire an editor who knows what they're doing. Yes it's worth the expense if you can handle the cost. You can also self teach yourself to video edit, just be aware of the aforementioned time commitment.

You want to make sure your video is not just you talking into a camera for 10-15 minutes. That feels like a zoom call and people will get bored. If you reference an article or an news event, throw a screenshot of the headline or a photo of what happened on screen. Treat these like you would the hyperlinks you include in your writing.

Keep your intros short. No one cares how your week is going, just put the video and the bag.

If you're writing an essay for an outlet, you don't start with describing how your day is going, you just start your essay. Do that with video.

For Shorts/TikTok, the first second is critical. No preambles, just straight up meat. These are the tweets/skeets of the video world. Make your point and go.

Lastly, I am now offering a consultation for any writer/podcaster interested in pivoting to doing video content. I haven't really set a price yet, maybe $50/hour. I've helped a few people now get set up with it.

Reach out to me if you're interested in that. If there's interest, I will maybe make a more solid commitment to this idea.

Thank you so much for reading this week. I'll be back to my usual 3 pieces a week cadence next week, and then I'm planning on taking the last two weeks of the year off afterwards and I'll be back in January.

If you like this work, consider supporting me on BurnsNotice.com or on Patreon.