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Sandy and Mary K were kind enough to have me back on Writing of Social for an episode asking the question when should Christians be on YouTube as content creators?
Summary
This episode of Writing Off Social tackles one of the most frequently asked questions from Christian writers who are trying to grow their audience without social media: what about YouTube? Hosts Sandy and Mary Kay sit down with Thomas Umstead Jr. for his third appearance on the show to dig into the real costs, real benefits, and real dangers of YouTube as an alternative to social media platforms.
Key takeaways:
- YouTube is not social media in the traditional sense, but its Shorts feature makes it behave like one — and the research on what short-form video does to your brain is not encouraging.
- Adding YouTube to an existing podcast workflow is simpler than it used to be, but it comes with hidden costs that go beyond the upload itself.
- YouTube rewards controversy and edgy content, which means it changes not just your format but potentially your mission.
- The analytics and passive revenue YouTube offers are genuine benefits — but only if you actually use the data to make decisions.
- If your only reason for starting a YouTube channel is to sell more books, Thomas says don't do it. YouTube has to be its own ministry, not just a sales funnel.
- Knowing your skills, your enthusiasm, and what people need — and staying in the overlap of all three — is the foundation for deciding whether YouTube is right for you at all.
- It is okay to say no. Focus is a gift, not a failure.
Welcome Back, Thomas
Sandy: Thomas, welcome back to Writing Off Social. It is so good to see you again.
Thomas: Thanks for having me. I love coming on this show.
Sandy: We love to have you. As Mary Kay said in the intro, this is your third time here as a guest. We should probably have some kind of trophy or hall of fame recognition for guests on their third visit.
The first time was back in 2024, and we actually broke that interview into two episodes. Part one was episode 36, "The Rise and Fall of Social Media," and part two was episode 37, "What's Working for Writers in 2024." Then you were back in 2025 for episode 73, "AI Tools for Authors." We'll link to all of those in the show notes.
Our audiences have a lot of overlap, so most people probably already know who you are. But just in case, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
Thomas: I'm the host of the Novel Marketing Podcast and the Christian Publishing Show, and now Author Update, which is a podcast but a YouTube-first podcast rather than a YouTube-second podcast. I make courses and tools for authors, all of which are at authormedia.com.
Sandy: Please go check out all of those things. We'll have links to everything. Author Update has been such a fun addition, Thomas. You all just make industry news feel so accessible and help us figure out what's important and what's not. Go check that out, friends.
Now, here is our question that we've made you answer three times. While social media is not a requirement to be a guest on Writing Off Social, we're always curious what role it plays in the lives of our guests. Personally and professionally, what is your current relationship with social media?
Thomas: I've more or less completely purged Facebook and Instagram from my life to the point that when my wife sends me Reels, or when anyone sends me Reels, it's like a hassle. The app isn't even on my phone. Logging in is this big, difficult thing. Getting rid of Meta altogether has just been the best, because Meta platforms are just the worst.
I do use X probably more than ever before, partly for monitoring news. A lot of headline discovery comes from X. Author Update is basically a distillation of that, along with RSS feeds and paid news sources. Curating news is a surprisingly big job, but the newsmakers are all talking to each other on X. As the host of a news show, it's hard not to be active there.
Sandy: Congratulations on your exit from Meta. That is commendable. I'm having a similar experience myself. My youngest just finished her freshman year of college and joined Instagram for the first time because it turns out that's how college students communicate. She had chosen not to be part of it, which I was obviously behind. But when she joined, I felt like I needed to reactivate my deactivated account just to kind of monitor her first experience on there.
I have it on my laptop, and she sends me all these funny Reels. Every time I get on, I have to remember what I'm doing and where I'm going. I love being blissfully unaware of how to use it. I love that the platform keeps going on without me, and I am completely good with that.
Thomas: So since you left, it officially stopped being a social network. There was a big antitrust case against Meta for illegally acquiring their competition in an anti-competitive act. They recently got the case dismissed, and their winning argument was that they're not a social network. Their claim was that all anyone does on Instagram is watch videos of strangers and that people don't interact with their friends anymore. That's not what it is anymore.
Something like 9% to 11% of usage on Meta is people interacting with folks they know. The other 89% to 91% is just a TikTok clone. It's TikTok but with Meta's algorithm rather than TikTok's algorithm.
Sandy: That is exactly my experience. When I go to my home feed, I follow a handful of people I know in real life, and they're just not there. It's all videos.
Is YouTube Actually Social Media?
Sandy: Okay. Well, we could talk about that all day. Let's get to why you're actually here. When we coach writers on how to grow their audience and sell their work outside of social media, one of the most frequently asked questions we get is: what about YouTube?
YouTube is something we have conspicuously left out of our training material, mainly because we don't teach things that at least one of us hasn't tried and been successful at ourselves. We both hate the idea of video, so let's be honest about that. But beyond our personal preferences, YouTube is one of those blurry forms of media. It operates as a search engine, but with its comments and algorithms and short-form videos, it can feel a lot more like social media and TikTok than it first appears. There's the addictive nature, the time drain, all things we try to steer writers away from. But you, Thomas, you have led the charge as you always do into the murky waters of YouTube. Are you ready for us to pick your brain?
Thomas: I'm a little scared, but let's go.
Sandy: We'll start you off with a softball. Would you define YouTube as social media, and why or why not?
Thomas: YouTube doesn't have a good mechanism for peer-to-peer interaction. There's no place on YouTube where YouTube is facilitating and moderating a relationship between you and a friend the way a traditional social network would. There was a time when YouTube was kind of joined at the hip with Google Plus, if you can remember that, and it had a lot of social network features bolted in. But that experiment is long gone.
It's not a social network in the old sense. But in a newer sense, the YouTube Shorts feature, which YouTube has been really amplifying over the last couple of years, is becoming more and more of a part of the experience. And there's a study we're going to cover on Author Update soon about the effect of Shorts on people's brains. Basically it kills your memory and your focus. Even a 10-minute break where you scroll TikToks or Reels instead of resting leaves your brain shot afterward. The research showed TikTok had the biggest negative impact. Twitter actually came out the least harmful, which says something about what X is trying to become. YouTube was compared in that study as well, and it wasn't as bad as TikTok, but it was still pretty bad.
Part of it is the passive nature of it. It's really easy for one potato chip to turn into a bag. To YouTube's credit, they just rolled out a feature a couple of weeks ago where you can set a Shorts time limit inside the app. Let's say you set 15 minutes. After 15 minutes of Shorts, it'll say your time's up. That's a really good reminder, because you start swiping up and suddenly an hour is gone without even realizing you went into Shorts at all.
So YouTube is a conundrum. On one end, you have these mindless Shorts. On the other, you have two-hour university-level lectures from some of the greatest minds alive. You can listen to Jordan Peterson lecture for an hour and get the same depth and intellectual rigor as reading his book for an hour. And then it has this wonderful category of videos that are super boring to almost everyone, except for the one person they aren't. Here's how to repair the ice maker in your specific model of refrigerator — that video puts most people to sleep, but if your ice maker is broken, it's suddenly saving you $3,000.
Sandy: I have to say, if I'm on YouTube, it's almost always to fix something in my house or to follow a tutorial for some tech thing. Someone dragging their cursor around a screen is so much more helpful to me than reading instructions.
How Thomas Uses YouTube Right Now
Sandy: Tell us how you're currently using YouTube. You mentioned Author Update being YouTube-first. When did you start going in that direction, and why?
Thomas: Back in 2024, we started taking the videos we were already recording. We record in video using Riverside, just like you are right now. And you aren't doing anything with your video. I was the exact same way. I was recording video and not doing anything with it. So I thought, fine, I'll just start uploading it to YouTube.
One of the things I found right away was that I reached a completely different audience. My podcast audience was women in their 50s. My YouTube audience was men in their 20s and 30s. A different generation and a different gender. And it was straight additive. Most people are either a podcast person or a YouTube person. So by putting the podcast on YouTube, we started to reach a new kind of person who was quickly joining the community, coming to conferences, taking courses, being very vibrant. That was encouraging.
The early videos were pretty awful though. It was just me, and I was only doing the audio edit and then exporting that same file to YouTube. But even that started to get an audience and grow.
It helped that we weren't starting completely from scratch. We had been uploading a still image of the podcast cover with audio before that, but I'm not convinced that works. It only reaches people who want a podcast experience but haven't figured out how to put a podcast app on their phone, which is a pretty narrow slice of people. Most people on YouTube want a video experience. And the YouTube audio-only experience isn't very good because YouTube will insert ads that are visually much more interesting than whatever still image you've got up, unless someone pays for YouTube Premium.
Sandy: So Author Update is fully produced and YouTube-first. Would you say Novel Marketing has also evolved, or are you still mostly recording for the podcast and then putting it on YouTube as a second step?
Thomas: We've adapted Novel Marketing to be a hybrid. And in doing that, we've had to learn what makes something work on YouTube specifically. With podcasts, listeners have a long relationship with the host. For people listening to this show, it's not your first time. You know Sandy and Mary Kay. You know their kids. Some banter and chit-chat and a slow open is fine and maybe even enjoyable.
You absolutely cannot do that on YouTube. On YouTube, you have to start delivering on the promise of the headline and the thumbnail within 30 seconds. Ideally within 5 or 10 seconds. If you want to see this done well, watch a Mr. Beast video. The thumbnail shows him saying he's going to fall off the highest cliff in the world. You hit play, and within 10 seconds, he's falling off the highest cliff in the world. Then when he lands, he announces 21 other crazy things coming in the next 15 minutes. There's no introduction. He doesn't say hi, I'm Mr. Beast. He just jumps straight to the value.
The assumption on YouTube is that this video has been algorithmically served to someone who has never seen you before. You have to convince them on the topic before you convince them on the show. So you introduce the topic and why it's worth their time. You introduce yourself much later, sometimes much later, because people don't care who you are. They care about the topic.
So we've gone with a hybrid approach where Novel Marketing has a pre-written intro before I get to the line about it being the longest-running book marketing podcast in the world. That line often doesn't hit until a minute or two in now. Shorter intros are better. We've been learning how to adapt the content for YouTube while it still works as a podcast.
Author Update, on the other hand, is live. We record it live on YouTube, and that's what I mean by YouTube-first. YouTube Live has all of this monetization built in where someone can attach dollars to a chat message to give it more prominence. That's also a way of supporting the live show.
The Money Side of YouTube
Thomas: This is another big difference between YouTube and podcasting. YouTube shares advertising revenue with you. You get paid once you pass certain initial thresholds, which are no joke. You need a certain number of watch hours and a certain number of subscribers. But once you cross those thresholds, you start to earn money. It might be $100 or $200 a month. It's not a lot, but it can cover some editing costs. Eventually the YouTube passive revenue can basically wash YouTube's face of whatever additional costs you're carrying.
The live format also adds a sense of risk, especially because we cover controversial topics. There's always this tension with Author Update that you never quite know when something is going to go sideways or a wild comment is going to land. You can only have that genuine sense of danger in a truly live event. A prerecorded podcast or pre-recorded YouTube has a lower level of risk because if something went terribly wrong, you just wouldn't air it.
What we do then is take segments from Author Update and release them as their own standalone videos. So we get three bites at the apple. There's the live event, then YouTube converts the live recording into a full-length video that gets some algorithmic attention, and then we clip it so each segment becomes its own standalone piece with its own chance to get traction. Then we release the full audio as a podcast. We also make blog versions of our Zeitgeist episodes, the cultural analysis segments. We call that the blogifying step.
What YouTube Does to Your Content Strategy
Thomas: One interesting thing is that YouTube really rewards going long on live formats, whereas individual YouTube videos need to be right-sized for the content. It's a complicated platform with a lot to learn. But I don't think Novel Marketing has gotten worse by adapting for the YouTube format. It's definitely grown its audience. It hasn't grown the podcast audience, I don't think, but it hasn't shrunk it either. And it's added a YouTube audience that, if current growth rates continue, may eventually eclipse the podcast audience.
And for certain episodes, the YouTube audience already does surpass the podcast audience. Here's another interesting difference. With podcasts, your most popular episode and your least popular episode might have a 2x difference in downloads. You don't really go viral on a podcast. It's like the least viral of all the media formats. Whereas on YouTube, your most popular episode can be 10 or 20 times more popular than your least popular one. We'll occasionally have episodes pop in a big way.
It also drives topic selection. For blogging, it's all about SEO and what people are searching for on Google. For podcasting, it's about answering the questions your own audience has. This episode is actually a great example of that podcasting approach because it came directly from questions your audience was already asking.
For YouTube, it's controversy. That's why Author Update performs so well despite being a much newer show. Because it's live, more controversial, more political, more cultural, more unpredictable, all of those things make it more popular on YouTube. Even though Author Update has about 20% of the subscribers Novel Marketing has, it often gets the same number of views and watch minutes.
The Tech Barrier: How Hard Is It Really?
Sandy: That learning curve and content flow is really phenomenal. I'm thinking about our listener who hasn't dabbled in YouTube at all, or who isn't nearly as tech-savvy as you are. For someone beginning with much less confidence, what barriers would you see for them? What new tools or platforms would they need to learn?
Thomas: The first step is learning how to create quality video, which used to be really difficult. When I was first getting started, I spent over $1,000, maybe $2,000 on mirrorless DSLRs and HDMI capture cards and complicated tech trying to get better visual quality than a webcam. At the time, a lot of Mac webcams were garbage 720p cameras.
Then the pandemic happened, and suddenly Apple decided they needed to put good webcams in their devices. But in the meantime, Apple rolled out a feature called Continuity Camera, which lets you use your iPhone as your webcam. And it turns out my iPhone produces just as good video quality as that $1,000 mirrorless Sony camera I bought. Way, way simpler. I can mount an iPhone above my laptop with a $20 mount when I'm traveling and have basically the same quality video I have in my studio.
The video quality problem has been more or less solved on the Apple side of things. If you're on Windows, the situation is less ideal. And if you're already recording video in a tool like Descript, the steps to produce video aren't much different from producing audio. You're already doing 95% of the work.
The iPhone also uses a lot of onboard AI for lighting, which means you don't have to learn about three-point lighting or the rule of thirds. You can point it at a window, shoot into bright light, and still get a decent image. It's gotten much easier to capture and edit video if you're already using tools like Descript, which is both an audio and video editor.
Once you start creating video, you'll probably want to add headlines and some visual elements to spruce things up. But here's something interesting: I haven't found that the visually polished videos perform any better than the simple ones. I put a lot of work into one video about podcast interview prep, shot B-roll, included all this footage of microphone technique. It's one of my worst-performing videos. Whereas a video of me just talking to the camera about a controversial topic gets 10 or 20 times more views.
The main thing is adapting the content, opening strong, and making a clear promise fast. The one skill you do have to learn is making a good thumbnail. Every YouTube video needs its own still image that sells why it's worth the next 30 minutes of someone's life.
Sandy: We are making a custom Pinterest-sized pin for each episode anyway for the blog post and show notes. So I'm already in Canva doing that.
Thomas: Then you could probably add this podcast to YouTube for about 15 extra minutes of work per episode.
Is It Really Just 15 Extra Minutes?
Sandy: I believe almost everything you say, but when you say that, I get suspicious. Because we hear this kind of thing all the time. If you're already recording a podcast, you may as well throw it on YouTube. If you're already writing the blog post, you may as well share it on Facebook. And in practice, those throwaway actions added a lot of time without much return on investment. Do you really feel writers can treat YouTube that casually?
Thomas: If you're already producing a podcast, it's like driving to the grocery store to buy toilet paper. Can you also pick up eggs while you're there? You're already in the store. Walking across to the egg section isn't much extra work compared to driving there in the first place.
And here's why it's different from posting to Pinterest or Facebook or the others. Posting your content to those platforms doesn't actually drive traffic because their algorithms are optimized to keep people on the platform. If your content is essentially saying "stop making Facebook money and go make podcast money," Facebook isn't going to show that post to anyone. Even if it's only five minutes of work, it's five minutes of completely wasted work. Do that for 30 episodes and that's an entire wasted hour.
The reason it can work on YouTube is that the video is native content to YouTube. YouTube is actually making money by serving that video to people. They'll push it to an audience, especially if you can get some initial traction. The zero-to-100 problem is still real on YouTube, and some channels just linger in obscurity. But that's less likely to happen when you already have an email list. You just include the YouTube link in your emails. YouTube does the rest.
One of the things that originally pushed me toward adding YouTube was my mom. She doesn't like podcast apps. There's too much friction for her. But she's completely YouTube-fluent. I tried for years to get her to watch or listen to my show. She'd say yeah, yeah, but never get around to it. Now that I'm on YouTube, she hasn't missed an episode. I think she watches Author Update live.
The Downsides They Don't Tell You About
Thomas: We should talk about some real downsides of YouTube. One of the biggest is that the comment section can be very mean. Much, much meaner than what you'll experience on podcasting. A show like Writing Off Social, with edgy content about quitting social media, plus women talking to women, that combination would likely do well on YouTube because it hits the kind of controversial topics the platform rewards. But I had a client back when I was a literary agent who had a YouTube channel doing what you might now call trad wife content before that was even a thing. She had built up these principles from the Bible, and she had atheists and feminists constantly attacking her in the comments. But she also had 100,000 subscribers. That's kind of the game.
The more you court controversy, the more views you get. Our best-performing videos are the ones with the lowest percentage of likes. The sweet spot for us is about 10% to 15% of viewers thumbing down the video. Our videos with 100% thumbs up get hundreds of views, maybe low thousands. The ones with lots of downvotes get thousands of views, sometimes tens of thousands.
The thick skin required and the edginess that gets rewarded on YouTube does change the format. And you have to think carefully about what happens if you start getting traction. What if every video gets 10,000 views? More subscribers are great, more people through your funnel is great, but now you have a whole new platform and a whole new audience with their own expectations. Are you ready to grow that?
Sandy: I have to be honest. You just said two things that are literally making me sweat. One is that people will judge your appearance on YouTube. The other is the mean comments. Mean comments were one of the things that drove me off social media in the first place, and when you put those two things together, I'm just like, YouTube is not for Sandy.
Thomas: Yeah. And how you look really does matter on YouTube. Being old or young doesn't have as much impact as you'd think. Being fit or unfit, attractive or unattractive, that matters more. People in your life usually won't tell you that you look unhealthy. But people on YouTube will. When I started my weight loss journey these last several months, it wasn't because of YouTube, but I'll say that all the trolls complaining about my face was helpful motivation on top of how terrible I felt and how unhealthy I was generally.
Sandy: I have to say, I'm afraid you may not have convinced me to join YouTube, though I deeply appreciate all the effort you've made.
Thomas: My goal was just a well-informed decision. You want to know the advantages and the disadvantages before you choose. Because there is a role for YouTube, and it's not all roses and butterflies.
YouTube, the Algorithm, and Your Soul
Thomas: The advantage of the Writing Off Social approach is that it's algorithm-buffered. But there's always some advantage to entering algorithm-world. And there is sometimes a missionary calling to go into a difficult place and be the light of the gospel there. But you have to be careful about it. If you're going to go minister to prostitutes in the red light district in Amsterdam, which there are missionaries who do, you need a special calling for that. You need special protection and a special spiritual approach. You don't just go because you think it'll be fun. Because if you're not prepared, you stop being the influence you think you are. You turn into a thermometer rather than a thermostat.
So as you venture into algorithm-land, you have to be very careful not to forget who you are.
How to Actually Get Started on YouTube
Sandy: For those who, even through this whole conversation, feel called to move into that space, what are the first things they should do?
Thomas: I would start by watching YouTube videos on how to make YouTube videos. There are a hundred different creators making more or less that same content. You can learn a lot really quickly. I'd also watch all of the interviews Mr. Beast has done on those channels. He'll guest on these how-to-YouTube shows, and he's the master of the algorithm. Nobody YouTubes better than Mr. Beast. Whenever he's talking about the algorithm, listen. Those videos are really helpful.
The other thing is to know who your Timothy is. This is a practice I preach a lot, which is having a real human person in mind who you're trying to reach. You never want to be making content for the algorithm. You want to be working with the algorithm to find your Timothy and other people like him. That servant's heart, that desire to use YouTube as a way to love and bless your audience, those rules don't change. It's the same with podcasting, email, all of it.
And my third piece of advice would be to check out the episode I did with Dave Jackson, who is a Hall of Fame podcaster. He interviewed me and I interviewed him on adapting a podcast for YouTube. I share a lot of hard-learned lessons from the first year or two of my own adaptation. You can find it at authormedia.com.
The Real Question: Should You Even Start?
Sandy: Let's summarize everything you've said this way. If a writer is listening, she's weary of social media, and she's wondering whether she should start a YouTube channel. What would you advise her?
Thomas: If your goal is to start a YouTube channel so you can sell more copies of your book, I would say don't start a YouTube channel. That's not enough to make the journey worth it. You have to want to do YouTube for its own sake. You need to see it as its own ministry.
So if you're helping moms become better homeschool moms, more peaceful and more organized, and you want to write a book for homeschool moms and think YouTube will help you sell it, don't do YouTube. But if you're saying, "I want to help homeschool moms who are stressed, so I'm going to create a short video reviewing this IKEA organizer that lets me roll all the homeschool stuff from room to room," and that video is its own piece of content that blesses moms, and then at the end you say, "Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter where I share more tips," and it's an extension of your ministry — then YouTube might make sense.
But it is not an easy button for getting more book sales. It is the total opposite of that. There are much easier ways to get more book sales. And if you want to find out what those are, listen to my podcast Novel Marketing, where we almost never talk about YouTube.
A Word About Chasing Too Many Rabbits
Sandy: Is there a final word of encouragement you'd like to share with our listener who just wants to be faithful to write the words God has given her, get those words into the right reader's hands, and do it all without losing her soul to social media?
Thomas: It's okay to say no. There's a Chinese proverb that says, "The man who catches two rabbits catches neither one." There's something real to be said about focus. We actually made a mug that just says "chase one rabbit."
You have to approach this prayerfully. And you need to look at three things: What are my skills? What am I enthusiastic about? And what do people need? Find the overlap of those three things and stay in that zone. Your enthusiasm sometimes follows your skill, by the way. Being good at something creates its own enthusiasm, and being bad at it takes whatever enthusiasm you thought you had away.
Staying in that zone requires saying no a lot, including to good things. Things you're good at but feel no enthusiasm for. Things people want but that you're not able to deliver well. If you can stay in your strength zone and prune what falls outside of it, you'll be more fruitful.
It also requires trust. If you're not going to reach people on TikTok, you have to trust two things. One, that God hasn't called you into that dark world. But two, that he's going to send somebody else there. You can't go everywhere. Most of you don't have a prison ministry, but that doesn't mean you don't believe in prison ministry. You just haven't been called to it. And you might do far more for the kingdom putting your book aside and saying yes to the guy at church who keeps inviting you to come to the prison with him.
Writing is not always the best way to serve the kingdom. Sometimes your local church could really use another Sunday school teacher. It's really just a matter of saying yes to Jesus. He has a plan for you, and it doesn't have to be some mystical thing. He's already given you gifts and inclinations and he knows what he's growing in you. Look at the Bible. Look at yourself. Be who God has made you to be. And if you believe God can speak to you, ask him for wisdom and then be obedient to what he says.
Show Notes and Where to Find Thomas
For show notes and all the ways to connect with Thomas, visit writingoffsocial.com/92 for episode 92. You'll find links to:
- Thomas's website at authormedia.com
- Novel Marketing Podcast (episodes 36, 37, and 73 featuring Thomas)
- Author Update on YouTube
- Thomas's crosscast episode with Hall of Fame podcaster Dave Jackson on adapting podcasts for YouTube
- Thomas's Blogifier tool in the Patreon toolbox
If you found this episode helpful, the best way to spread the word is to text it to a writer friend and then leave a five-star rating and review.
As you sit back down to write, may you remember these words from Isaiah 64:8: "Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay. You are the potter. We are all the work of your hand."
