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Home Interview Finding success in commentary content through consistency: An
interview with j aubrey
 * Interview


FINDING SUCCESS IN COMMENTARY CONTENT THROUGH CONSISTENCY: AN INTERVIEW WITH J
AUBREY

By
Nicole LaJeunesse
-
August 29, 2024

j aubrey has found success on YouTube diving deep into the lore behind popular
and controversial public figures. We had a chance to sit down with j aubrey to
talk about how he went from Lego animations to YouTube commentary, his approach
to narrative structure and content creation and why consistency is key for new
creators.



j aubrey
Subscribers: 1.23 M
Uploads: 85
Video views: 169,483,662
Content type: Commentary
User created: Feb 11th, 2018


BEFORE J AUBREY

“I’ve always wanted to entertain people,” j aubrey tells us at the beginning of
our interview. “I started my first channel when I was 13 making Lego stop motion
animation videos.”




Before starting the j aubrey YouTube channel we know today, j aubrey was writing
and producing stop motion shorts on AubreyStudios82. Friends would help with
script writing and voice acting, but j aubrey took on the laborious animation
process. “I would, you know, just take a bunch of pictures of Legos,” j aubrey
recalls. “It was very time-consuming.”

j aubrey didn’t expect much from this Lego-based storytelling endeavor, but one
video struck a chord with viewers, raking in around 400,000 views seemingly out
of nowhere. j aubrey says this had a big impact on how he viewed YouTube: “That
really motivated me to keep going and let me see that this was actually somewhat
of a viable thing if I really put enough time and resources into it.”


TOO MANY LEGOS

All of through middle and high school, j aubrey kept making stop-motion
animations, but when high school ended, j aubrey faced an issue. “I wanted to
keep making content,” he recalls. “I didn’t really think that I could continue
animating in a dorm setting because I had a big animation table set up with,
like, lamps and all this stuff.” The amount of gear and space required to
continue his stop-motion work just wasn’t practical for dorm life. It was time
for j aubrey to pivot.



At the time, j aubrey was binging content from YouTubers like I Hate Everything,
Colossal is Crazy and The Right Opinion. (Spoiler: j aubrey and The Right
Opinion have gone onto become friends, with TRO offering j aubrey advice and
encouragement along the way.)

“I really enjoyed what they were doing,” j aubrey says, looking back. “And so I
thought that maybe I could try doing that because all I needed was a mic and a
computer — I didn’t need the buckets of Legos that I’d been using in the past.”


A SUCCESSFUL PIVOT

There was one hiccup in j aubrey’s pivot to commentary. After uploading his
first two commentary videos to his existing animation channel, he discovered
that most of his viewers just weren’t that into it. “They didn’t perform very
well because I realized that’s not what people had subscribed for.”



Rather than try to drag his existing 120K animation fans into the commentary
scene, j aubrey started a new channel. “It was kind of nerve-wracking: the idea
of starting fresh again,” j aubrey admits, “but my friend, The Right Opinion,
convinced me to just go ahead and start clean and see what could come of that
and just start posting over there.”

That turned out to be great advice. As of this writing, the j aubrey YouTube
channel has amassed 1.23 million subscribers since it began in 2018.


J AUBREY TALKS COMMENTARY

The j aubrey YouTube channel started out with 13-1400 cross-over animation fans,
giving it a slight boost early on. j aubrey began posting around two videos per
month, garnering a couple of thousand views each. Channel growth was slow, but j
aubrey enjoyed the process.



“I was teaching myself how to write a different kind of script, and I was
teaching myself how to edit in a way that I had never done before … I really
enjoyed the learning aspect of it and also just researching the people that I
was talking about and giving my opinion on them,” j aubrey reflects. “I just
found it very rewarding because it was something that I had never done before.“


GAINING TRACTION

“Everything kind of changed that November [2018] when I made a video on this
TikTok predator.” The j aubrey channel had been enjoying slow but steady growth
since launch, but then one video — a comprehensive timeline of TheBudday’s
allegations and controversies — skyrocketed to 4 million views in just a couple
of weeks. With this surge in views, j aubrey’s subscriber count also quadrupled
from around 20K subs to around 80K.

THE TIKTOK PREDATOR (TheBudday Allegations)

“I just remember being, like, so blown away,” j aubrey recalls, “just like,
every time I would refresh, it just kept going up.” j aubrey says this is the
moment that convinced him YouTube was worth his full attention. Until then, j
aubrey had been editing for The Right Opinion and doing other odd jobs. After
this first viral hit, j aubrey decided to put all of his time and effort into
his own content.




YOUTUBE AS A CAREER

While j aubrey is technically still in college —”I have two classes I need to
finish before I can graduate,” he admits — he still considers YouTube to be his
full-time gig. That hasn’t always been the case. “The first [animation] channel
was definitely more of a hobby and more of a passion project … this channel
started off as a passion project [but] it definitely turned into something where
I view it way more as a job.”

j aubrey says it can be hard to find the balance between viewing YouTube as a
career and still finding joy and passion in the work. “It is for sure a job,” he
tells us, “and that can come with like stresses as any job would, but at the end
of the day, I mean, this is what I enjoy doing more than anything else. And I
have no idea what I would be doing if I weren’t doing this.”


HOW J AUBREY ATTRACTS VIEWERS

When asked how he makes sure the videos he makes will bring in the views, j
aubrey offers simple advice: “It boils down to what do people want to see?” j
aubrey explains that the easiest place to start is with yourself — think about
what interests you and what’s missing from your YouTube homepage. “That’s kind
of why I started making commentary videos,” j aubrey reflects. “I wanted to see
people talk about these creators that we’re not being covered.”



To get new video ideas, j aubrey makes sure to keep up with the latest news from
creators both on YouTube and elsewhere online. “I’m constantly looking at what’s
going on, like, in the YouTube space … who [is] involved in controversy.”

Unlike many commentary creators, though, j aubrey doesn’t try to chase the trend
right away. Instead, he waits until the dust settles. His goal — and what has
become his niche — is to tell the whole story. “I’ll try to put together, like,
as comprehensive a video as possible going over the controversy that person just
experienced a few months ago,” j aubrey says.

Because j aubrey waits until his subject has left the cultural hot seat before
telling their story, he is able to structure his videos into compelling
narrative arcs. For j aubrey, this process is essential.



“I focus a lot on like the structure of a video. That’s probably the other most
important thing beyond the topic itself,” j aubrey tells us. “I try to structure
it in a way that, even if it’s someone that maybe my audience has never heard
of, they would be interested in learning their story.”


THUMBNAILS ARE KEY



Another factor is attracting viewers is, of course, the video thumbnail.
“Thumbnails are the most important thing,” j aubrey reminds us. “Like, I really
put a lot of attention into like crafting a thumbnail.” While he has passed off
some of the editing work, j aubrey still makes all of his thumbnails.

“I try to make like something that looks kind of uncanny — something that’s
gonna catch their eye,” he says, referencing the creepy smiles he imposes on his
subjects’ faces in each thumbnail. “You want to choose a very expressive face
when you’re making a thumbnail,” he advises. “What I discovered is … some of the
people that I covered didn’t always have the most expressive faces. And so I
just started just adding smiles.”



Along with the exaggerated smile, j aubrey also adds bright pops of color to his
thumbnails to make them stand out amidst all the other videos on YouTube. “You
have to package the video in a way that makes people want to click on it,” he
says bluntly. “Sometimes that means kind of dipping into clickbait, which I
think is fine as long as the video is worth that person’s click.”


WE LOVE A GOOD DEEP DIVE

j aubrey suspects that having a typical video runtime of 60-90 minutes also
plays a role in his success. “I love to watch like a good deep dive on something
that I know nothing about,” he says, “And so that’s what I like to make, and I
feel like that’s what people respond to really well … if it’s a long … they can
just, like, put on in the background while they do something else.” He notes
this format seems to work well for a lot of creators right now: “That just seems
to be what’s popular at the moment.”

He also points out that longer videos can give viewers a reason to return to
your channel, potentially increasing overall views: “Like, they’ll maybe watch
half of it in one sitting and then maybe like a few days later, they’ll come
back and finish it.” That is, if the video is worth watching. ”You want there to
be substance so that people feel compelled to watch the entire thing,” he
reminds us.




ADDING CAPACITY

For a long time, j aubrey researched, wrote, recorded and edited all of his
videos himself. While not as time-consuming as stop animation, it was still a
long process to tackle on his own. However, j aubrey recently found a solution:
“Recently, this past summer — really starting in May — I’ve been outsourcing my
editing a lot more frequently just to speed up the process … for the longest
time, it was just me doing everything. And that’s why I was able to only get
like one video out per month.”

Working with outside editors doesn’t only free up time for deeper research and
script writing. This collaboration also opens up new creative possibilities:
“Now that I’ve worked with some of these editors on a few videos, I kind of know
what their strengths are, and so I will play to that as I’m writing the script …
it’s like a different challenge.”


ADVICE FOR NEW CREATORS

Throughout the interview, j aubrey emphasized the importance of consistency.
“Consistency is absolutely key,” he insists when reflecting on the advice he
would give to new creators. “At the beginning,” he says, “just talk about
whatever you want to talk about … make the videos that you want to watch
yourself, and make sure to stay consistent with it.”



He goes on to point out that each new video is another chance to improve: “You
want to be enhancing your skills enhancing the quality of each video … don’t
worry if the quality is like not that great at the beginning because you can
always refine that as you go along.”

Even for j aubrey, staying consistent can be a challenge: “It’s like, you can
have a video that you work on for a month, and you do, it does really well, and
that’s very rewarding and very gratifying. And then it’s like, okay, well, now I
have to do that again … That’s why you have to really enjoy it.”

He reminds us that success on YouTube is never guaranteed. “Nobody should really
go into YouTube for the money,” he says. “It should be the content that you want
to focus on because if you make good enough content that people want to watch,
then I think the money will follow.”



He goes on to say that consistent breaks are just as important as consistent
production: “I can see why people do get burnt out and struggle with motivation.
And I think that can be a very challenging aspect if you do not take consistent
enough breaks.” In other words, creators need to remember to go outside
sometimes.

In the end, though, j aubrey is encouraging to those entering the YouTube scene:
“I feel like it can just be very daunting, thinking about building a channel
from the ground up. But my best advice would just be to do it … because you
don’t really know what to expect until you’re actually in it.”


WHAT’S NEXT FOR J AUBREY

“I’d like to continue doing the kind of videos that I’ve been doing for
basically as long as I can, j aubrey assures us toward the end of our
conversation. “Especially now that I’ve been outsourcing … I feel a lot more
motivation to continue on with what I’ve been doing because I am looking forward
to posting a lot more frequently.”



The j aubrey YouTube channel has found good success in his hour-plus deep dives,
but with more help and resources, he also hopes to add some new formats into his
content rotation. “I am trying to get into shorts and I’m posting on TikTok,” he
tells us. “I’m just cutting my videos that I make down into more easy-to-consume
60-second shorts.”

Most exciting, j aubrey has plans to expand his production to include in-person
interviews and investigations. “It would be really nice to kind of do what I’ve
seen other YouTubers do, which is make a blend of documentary footage that you
yourself film and then like the B-roll that I’ve been doing.” He references
iDubbbz as an example: “He goes out and will spend time with a person and will
film them and … tell their story through you know, their own testimony.”

We can’t wait to see how these more involved documentary projects turn out. If
you’re curious too, you can keep up with all of this upcoming content on the j
aubrey YouTube channel.


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Nicole LaJeunesse
Nicole LaJeunesse is a professional writer and a curious person who loves to
unpack stories on anything from music, to movies, to gaming and beyond.




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