This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
The Good Political News channel runs out of stories. Oh man, this is so reflective of life in America, and not just America, but around the world sometimes. We're going to hear a failure Friday segment, a story from a content creator. In this case, it's a story of something that did not work out so well. So we're all about featuring success stories and case studies, all kinds of things you could do to make extra money, and real life examples, questions and answers and so on.
But every Friday, we look at something that did not work. So in this case, a content creator launches a YouTube and TikTok channel focused on sharing uplifting political stories inspired by some popular good news channels. And you might have seen some of these good news channels, they're sharing heartwarming stories about animals, about, I don't know, other stuff, like good things that happen in the world. And thankfully, there are a lot of good things that happen in the world. But this guy had a vision to focus it on political good things, you know, people coming together despite their disagreements and such.
And as noted, he kind of ran out of stories, didn't have enough content, at least to make this a recurring series, or maybe he just figured something else would be better. Anyway, let's hear the story. And let's consider what we can learn from the story as we think about our own side hustles, our own small business ideas. What is the next thing you want to do? You want to make sure there is enough content or enough market or demand, whatever the case may be for your idea before you start, so that you are best positioned to succeed.
So let's hear the story. I'll be back at the end with a quick wrap up. Hi, I'm Taylor. A little over a year ago, I decided to jump into content creation with a unique twist. I wanted to create a channel dedicated to sharing good political news.
I'd seen the success of YouTube and TikTok channels that had focused on heartwarming stories, whether it was people doing good deeds or animals being rescued. And I thought, why not do the same for politics? The world is filled with bad political news. So I figured a channel highlighting positive political stories could be refreshing. But as I quickly found out, it wasn't as simple as I had hoped.
The idea behind the channel was to find stories of politicians, activists, community leaders making a real difference in their communities, highlighting bipartisanship, effective policy changes and positive social initiatives. I imagined a space where people could tune in and be reminded that not all political news is divisive or negative. I was inspired and ready to fill a niche that I thought was sorely missing. So I started with a few videos that I felt really good about. I highlighted a local mayor who initiated a successful program to reduce homelessness in his city.
And I covered a bipartisan effort in Congress to improve veterans' healthcare. These stories were well received by the small audience I had. And I thought I was on to something. But pretty quickly I ran into a big problem. The stories were hard to find.
Unlike the wealth of good news stories about people or animals, positive political stories weren't as easy to come by. I spent hours scouring the internet for examples of political leaders making real positive change. But most of the news was focused on controversy, conflicts and negative outcomes. Even when I found a good story, it wasn't always in the ideal format I could use for TikTok or Instagram. It wasn't long before I hit a dry spell.
I found myself struggling to meet my upload schedule. I had originally planned to post new content twice a week. But as I kept digging, I dropped to weekly. As the weeks went on, I spent more time looking for stories than actually creating content. And worse, the few stories that I did find weren't really driving engagement like I'd hoped.
It became clear that my channel wasn't going to have this steady stream of content that the more general good news channels had enjoyed. After a few months, I was burnt out. I was spending countless hours researching and coming up empty. I'd underestimated how hard it would be to maintain a steady content schedule with such a narrow focus. In the end, I had to face the fact that a good political news channel wasn't going to work.
Politics is a challenging space for content creation because it often is nuanced, complex and focused on problems rather than solutions. Looking back now, I realized that I should have broadened my focus from the very beginning. If I had included more general feel-good stories or focused on the long-term impacts of positive political changes, I might have been able to sustain the channel. But by sticking so closely to the idea of good political news, I was limiting myself too much. It was a tough experience.
It taught me the importance of choosing a niche that has enough content to support consistent production. While the channel didn't take off as I had hoped, I'm now working on a project with a little bit more flexible approach. And I'm excited to take what I learned into the next venture. Alright, well, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That's what I always say in the Failure Friday segment.
You try one thing and it doesn't work, you try something else. I also think it's probably fair to say that this project could have worked. It just is relatively difficult. If you compare it to the good news channels that are featuring happy stories about pets being rescued and such, there just is a lot of content for that and it's not that hard to find it. There's a lot of archival content from over the years that you can pull up, different stories you can share, new stuff coming out all the time.
Whereas for something like this that is more focused, which is usually a good thing, it can be more difficult. So it's not just that, oh my gosh, there are no good stories in politics. It's just there are relatively fewer compared to talking about pets or whatever else. So just something to keep in mind, you always want to choose the hustle that best reflects your skills, your interests, as well as what is most feasible for you. In fact, tomorrow we have a question about difficult side hustles.
I'll talk about some things you might not want to try, so perhaps we could add this one to the list. But for now, I'm going to sign off. We have a new episode coming out every day, of course, sidehustleschool.com, some resources. Everything's free there. The whole podcast is free.
In fact, you can access 2,800 plus total episodes on the website and many of them on streaming services. I hope you'll subscribe or follow much more to come. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
