Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we–in partnership with global creator company AIR Media-Tech–profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each creator has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments here.
Demir‘s friends were tired of him talking about The Walking Dead. Anyone who’s ever been really into a fandom knows that people who don’t get it are weak and will not survive the winter usually only tolerate hearing about whatever media property you love for so long before they gently (or not so gently) tell you to broaden your conversational horizons.
Well, Demir didn’t want to broaden them. So he started a YouTube channel, Clashed PR, where he could talk Walking Dead 24/7, and hoped that his videos would find other Dead-heads out there on the internet.
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To say they did would be an understatement: Clashed PR now regularly brings over 200 million views per month, with its best month to date scraping almost 300 million views.
And, of course, it recently hit one million subscribers, which is why we’re welcoming Demir (who’s also behind the TikTok account c00kiek1ng, which has 2.4 million followers) to this week’s installment of YouTube Millionaires.
Check out our chat with him below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: For anyone who doesn’t know you, give me a little bit of background about you, where you’re from, and how you got into this whole video thing.
Demir: I’m from California. I’ve been doing social media since I was really young, YouTube videos, and stuff. I always found it fun. Over time, TikTok getting popular, I just finally found my time to shine, I guess. I don’t know the right word for that, but yes, eventually, because I was creative, did what I wanted and people noticed that.
Tubefilter: Is your biggest platform Clashed PR?
Demir: It depends on how you look at it. YouTube, if you consider that the better way of doing social media, then yes. TikTok is biggest in terms of numbers. I have 2.4 million followers on there.
Tubefilter: Did you start with YouTube or did you start with TikTok?
Demir: TikTok. I did YouTube videos when I was younger, but those weren’t really serious. My brand in general, TikTok 100%.
Tubefilter: What made you end up on TikTok?
Demir: I actually was on it when it was first blowing up, very early on, four years ago. I just thought it was funny and I just did stupid stuff on there until I grew more and more.
Tubefilter: How have things changed from you making videos that were just to make you and your friends laugh to what you’re doing now? What’s your content strategy?
Demir: That’s actually a good question. I think it mainly had to do with COVID, because I would hang out with friends, so my humor was a little bit different. Once I started talking to people online, I met new types of people and then I started posting videos and we would all talk about certain videos we could do and stuff like that. I met other creators who also did it. I can’t exactly remember how I first started, but something along the lines of that. It was something like that.
Tubefilter: Do you remember what your first video or two that took off on TikTok?
Demir: Honestly, it’s hard to remember, but I think my first ever really really viral one was this one where I was doing this fake streamer and I was pretending to be a streamer that was really toxic. I would get donations and I’d just get really mad at them for donating while I’m playing a game, trying to distract me by sending $10,000. It was all fake, but I knew how to edit because I had been doing it for a while. I was pretty good at acting too, because over the years, just making videos like that, you just get good at it. Then just from there, I did skit-type videos because that’s what c00kiek1ng is all about.
Tubefilter: You have that entire half of what you do on social media, and then you have Clashed PR, which is entirely, entirely different. With Clashed PR, you have a Walking Dead fandom-based platform on YouTube. Can you talk about how that got started?
Demir: That started as a joke because I had a really big Walking Dead obsession, and my friends were sick of me talking about it. I asked one of my friends, I’m like, “Should I just try doing Shorts?” Because I hated doing Shorts with the c00kiek1ng stuff. I didn’t find it fun. I’m like, “What if I just do what I like, which is the Walking Dead?” He was like, “Try it.” I’m like, “Okay.” We said random words, and we just combined and came up with “Clashed PR,” and I just did it. Then randomly one month, it blew up. It was the biggest ever blow-up I’ve ever had in any social media.
Tubefilter: So TikTok stuff wasn’t working when you posted it to the YouTube Shorts?
Demir: Yes. No, it wasn’t. That’s because YouTube Shorts’ audience is a lot different,and no, it just wasn’t working. No.
Tubefilter: You’re not the first person to tell me that. I’m not saying this as in like, “What do you mean you can’t get popular?!” No, that is by far the most common thing I hear from people, is that even people who have 10 million followers on both platforms, they’re like, “I’ll post a video on YouTube Shorts and it’ll get 15 million views and it’ll be 200,000 on TikTok. People on TikTok will be like, ‘What is this?'”
Demir: That’s exactly how it’s like, it’s crazy.
Tubefilter: It’s very weird the dichotomy of audience.
Demir: That’s also why I didn’t want to because then I’d have to make two separate types of videos c00kiek1ng style, and I was just like, “No, I don’t want to do that. Not fun.”
Tubefilter: Do you have a structured schedule? Because obviously, you’re still in high school, which is an entire full-time job. Then you have two distinct busy platforms. How do you fit in making content for both platforms?
Demir: Truth is, I don’t really fit it that well. You’ll see me not posting for multiple days on either one of the channels. I can’t. I’ve tried to manage school, TikTok, and YouTube. There’s no realistic scenario where it is possible. It’s either I put my full focus into one out of those three, or they all just are doing okay with me putting little folks in each, but it’s mainly focused on YouTube and school. TikTok’s a little bit on the side right now because I can’t even monetize it. I’m not 18.
Tubefilter: When do you turn 18?
Demir: I turn 18 July 8th, so two months, three months.
Tubefilter: Oh, so not far off. You’re graduating in May?
Demir: Yes, the end of May.
Tubefilter: What are your plans? Do you have plans for college? Are you going to go to college?
Demir: I’m not entirely too sure, because I’m not too sure as to what I want to study, so I might be going to community college to figure it out or just take a little bit of a gap year or whatever. I’ll see.
Tubefilter: Tell me a little bit more about the production of your Walking Dead content. Just run me through it.
Demir: Originally it was YouTube Shorts. Those were pretty easy. I do like to perfect them a lot, though, so you’ll find me working a lot more than I should on them. One Short can take up to an hour or an hour and a half, because I keep trying new songs. I keep trying to perfect the audio, what sounds good. I also started doing long-forms. Those take a lot more time. I’d say like a week total production. That’s pretty much it, but I’m trying to focus more on long forms right now if anything.
Tubefilter: Take me through the start to finish of a long-form video. What do you do first? From conception to upload, how do things work?
Demir: It’s actually a lot of fun to do it. I usually think of a title or I just think of a general idea. I think of a title. I make a concept thumbnail and then I go to this website to compare thumbnail and title. It’s called ThumbsUp.tv. It’s irrelevant, but I’m just saying and I see how it looks and I’m like, “Okay, you know what, this can do good.” I always do the title and thumbnail first, and then usually in school, I do scriptwriting. In tutorial, I’ll just write some of my scripts every day, a paragraph or two, or if the video is a really good one that I can think of, I can crunch it out and I’ll get it all done and then I go home, voice it all out, and then just the next few days are editing every day. It takes a while.
Tubefilter: That’s a lot of work, on top of high school. Have you thought about working with an editor? I know that could be tough financially.
Demir: I’ve been trying to figure that out too. It’s just the rates are really high especially with I don’t make any money on anything that I do. YouTube also, I’m not monetized either.
Tubefilter: Got it. Do you have any plans or goals for this upcoming year? Aside from graduating, of course.
Demir: Other than graduating, probably just figuring out how to manage both TikTok and YouTube very well and maybe even combining the persona, because on YouTube nobody sees my face or anything. Maybe just make it more apparent that I’m c00kiek1ng and Clashed PR, whatever you like. Do you like the Clashed PR side? Do you like the c00kiek1ng side? I don’t care. If you support me, I appreciate that. I just want to make that more universal, because I think it makes the audience a lot stronger.
Tubefilter: What made you decide to be a faceless creator when it came to Clashed PR?
Demir: It was never really a thing like that. I was doing short clips. I didn’t expect it to do that good. Then I started making long-forms and I guess I just wanted to make it without showing my face because I know that making TikToks every day, showing my face is actually really time-consuming. Even just for a 20-second video, I’m like, “Okay, this is going to be a full eight-minute video, I can’t imagine…That would take a long time.” I’m just like, “Let’s just play it easy for now, and then I’ll see if I want to in the future.”
Tubefilter: Have you considered doing a Clashed PR-esque series for other media properties or is it Walking Dead your one true fandom kind of thing?
Demir: I actually did start posting other shows and the response was good. I might even start doing video games too, video game clips. It’s great. The response is great.
Tubefilter: That’s great. I know a lot of creators are really afraid, if they’ve built their platform on one distinct thing, to move to other things, so I’m glad that people are carrying over with you. What was it like for you to hit a million subscribers on YouTube?
Demir: That was actually my goal since I was really little. I think I wrote that down in my yearbook quote when I was in fifth grade. I don’t know. It was pretty surreal. Then again, I also feel like it’s not as crazy as if I blew up off solely long-forms, but I still give credit where credit is due. I still think it’s impressive. I don’t know. I got over it pretty quickly, though. I feel like you get used to it after a while. It’s like, “Okay, now I got to keep making videos. It’s not like I can just celebrate all the time.”
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