u/Plastic-Yesterday-97

So my channel has about 100 subscribers right now, and I've been making videos for about 2 years with my first breakthrough happening about a month ago. Baby numbers, could easily start again. I don't show my face online, so I use a furry avatar as basically the mascot of my channel. It's a character with bright, unnatural colors, so not like a regular looking animal mascot. I feel like I would have a lot more success down the road if I dropped the more "furry" looking avatar and went with a normal looking anthro animal.

My line of thinking comes from the fact that even in 2026 furries are still super stigmatized and looked down upon, and there's definitely a lot of furry content creators who aren't shy about being lewd in their branding (i'm not a puritan but I don't like gooner bait type content/avatars, a problem definitely not exclusive to furry content creators). I don't like to associate with the furry community because it's extremely toxic and clique-y, plus there's just a lot of them who really can't keep it in their pants and have to let EVERYONE know what they're into even on their "SFW" main. I've seen an example of a furry creator like that have connections with a bigger "normal" creator, but I don't want people to see an anthropomorphic animal character and immediately assume i'm some furry gooner bait channel who makes constant jokes about sex and fetishes for people to sexualize my avatar.

idk. just my dumb random thoughts about branding. feel free to share if you have thoughts as long as you are respectful. thanks for any input if provided.

About two weeks ago, I made a video that sort of blew up. Currently sitting at 1.6k, which is huge for me as I'm used to <10 views. Gaming channel, how original I know. My style of content is low-key, lightly edited videos because I hate modern hyper-edited cinematic gaming videos. It was a different game than what I usually play, on a more popular game that I decided to post a video on as an experiment. I usually play Souls-Likes with proper narratives and gameplay where this game was a simulation game with no real end where you watch your characters be funny and interact with each other. I didn't expect it to get many views, so I set a view goal with the promise of a full series if the first video hit that goal. It crushed the goal, and here I am after just recording the third episode. However, I'm having doubts.

If I decided to quit this game and pivot to something I'm more interested in playing, I don't know if my channel would continue to grow. The second episode I made is doing about as well as the first, a slow but steady increase in views and subscribers. I'm fairly sure its advised not to do cooking videos if your channel is a computer repair channel as an example, because your audience would be expecting computer repair content and be shocked and likely not watch your new content. I might be overthinking or too small of a channel for it to really matter, but I want to keep this growth up without sacrificing my enjoyment of making videos as a hobby.

Any advice/input would be great. Thanks.

So I made a video that I didn't expect to get more than 10 views, none of my other videos ever did. The most I ever got before was about 47. Uploaded one on Sunday that just... took off! Had 50 views within the first 3 hours of posting, currently sitting at about 600 something. Subscriber count doubled, maybe even tripled (10 -> about 30 something last time I checked) and many People asking for more on the game I'm playing. I already have the second episode almost done, but I want to keep this momentum going.

I hope this isn't just a random stroke of luck, but it may very well be. So I'm here looking for some advice to keep the momentum going. What can I do as a hobbyist creator with a casual editing style (that is to say I don't do super cinematic hyper-edited videos like most big gaming creators do days) do to keep my head above water? I'm super thankful that this video is still getting attention, but I know it's going to eventually plateau. Any advice I can get would be greatly appreciated as well. Thanks