Poll: Future Direction 2025

The Dr Pepper video is coming shortly; I didn't want to post on the Easter holiday as engagement is relatively low. There is an early preview of the Dr Pepper formula sheet available to the Drink Maker and Benefactor levels, but once the video is published, it will be available to all paying members.

The content I make is for you because this content/videos are not financially feasible without support from your memberships. So, thank you for the financial support.

As an example, recreating this Dr Pepper type recipe (and yes, based on my taste testing, this is as close as it gets) requires 24+ ingredients, and about a third of the flavour compounds have no current future use. And one key ingredient costs about $200 (shipping, customs, etc.), so it gets expensive. I have found a cheaper alternative for you, though. This is an expensive video to make, and the vodka bill alone for two videos is over $100 (testing behind the scenes and demonstrating in the video), so it's not cheap.

Having said that, I enjoy the science and the discovery of making these formulas. But, this is a community so I need to know where you would like to go with the content, hence the poll. But first, you need some background info on what I experience behind the scenes. It would be a good case study on introducing something interesting but complex to YouTube that grows beyond what one person can handle.

As I publish videos, I track the analytics and engagement. In my opinion, the last 12 videos have done poorly, with only one getting more than 3000 views (the last one on Dr Pepper). The most critical analytics is audience retention, and currently, within the first 30 seconds, it drops to about 60% for the last dozen videos, and I don't even do introductions anymore, or even mention "follow and subscribe" to try to keep engagement up. So a video with 2000 views only gets 1200 people past the 30-second mark.

For those unfamiliar with audience retention, it is more important to the YouTube algorithm than the simple click-through rate. A good thumbnail will get people into the video, but if they are leaving within the first 30 seconds, YouTube sees that as a negative and then won't push it through "YouTube Suggested videos," which is how new people would discover my channel and its content. Not many people search for subjects they don't know about, and many are apprehensive about science or math; they'd prefer kitchen-level instruction using familiar things, like herbs and spices.

Now, I would love to be great at everything (videography, video editing, graphic design, programming, entertaining, etc), but let's face it, most people have a core skill, and mine is chemistry. I'm okay at the other stuff, but as a one-man show, I know my limits, so editing and graphics could be better, but there is only so much time, and I focus on making videos and answering questions.

Speaking of questions, I get a lot of questions. And not easy ones like an entertainment, news, opinion or product review channel get. I get questions like:

"I'm creating a protein-based beverage, and I'd like to incorporate caffeine into it, and make it taste like a light refreshing citrus with hints of pineapple and cotton candy, kind of like Red Bull. How would I make it taste like that and how long can I expect it to be shelf-stable? And what protein powder is best? Where can I buy it? And I'm in such-and-such a country, what are the regulations on including caffeine in this product? Also, where can I get caffeine powder?"

Though this is a composite question, many of the questions I get are multipart like this or some people send me a 10-paragraph outline of their product, asking me to review it.

Obviously, I can't answer all of these types of questions, but I do try, and I'm happy to answer questions, preferably one to two-paragraph questions. You can always ask multiple follow-up questions, but from an efficiency standpoint, I can answer concise questions quickly.

Have no doubt, I fully recognize that these questions need to be answered, as there are no easy-to-understand or easily accessible public resources on this topic.

At this point, I get at least a dozen complex questions daily, and there isn't time to answer them all. Each video I make increases the number of support questions I get. Even funnier, many people have asked me how they should use other companies' products. When I say "Ask the company," I often get a response that they did, and that "it wasn't very clear or they don't know." This was the reason I made the Working with Formulated Flavours - Basic Taster video.

Last year, I created safety and equipment videos to answer questions quickly by pointing to the video. The downside is that it killed the channel's momentum as viewership declined. That's why I've been focusing on the flavour videos, hoping they would pull in people curious about how flavours are made. The Dr Pepper stuff was just a chance discovery while looking through resources on cherry flavours.

So now that you have a basic understanding of what is happening behind the scenes (rapid growth in questions, slow channel growth and engagement), what would you like to see or what direction should we go? I do plan on doing some YouTube live streams, I'm hoping that might be a quicker way to answer questions, with it being permanently available online, so it may help with the flow of questions..

And as usual, add your comments below. The poll is just a few suggested directions, but I'm always open to hearing things I may not have considered. And thank you for supporting this content.