How One YouTuber Managed to Stay Relevant After Her Subscribers Aged Out

And what all creators can learn from it

The year was 2013, I had dropped out of college after one semester and depression hit hard.

Most days I lay in bed watching Youtubers do their makeup, go about their morning routines or show me their latest purchases in a ‘haul’ from my phone. It was the golden age of YouTubers…of relatable and quirky personalities who had their shit together imparting outfit ideas, travel hacks and good vibes onto us.

I was semi-present but I needed this content. I couldn’t get lost in a TV show and definitely not a movie. I needed some semblance of realness, even if that realness was kind of fake. At least these were real people and not actors with a scripted storyline.

I rarely did my makeup and felt no impulse to create any of their DIY project ideas but these were real people sharing their life, even if that life was heavily edited and stylized. And so, everyday I would go through my subscriptions like a to-do list, passing time with these short, colorful videos.

Then I got older and found a job and lost that dedication I had to the Youtubers that once entertained me and made me feel less alone. So did a lot of their subscribers. People started growing up, needing that sisterly guidance just a bit less. That’s not to say that they aren’t still successful, but after generating content and amassing followers for so long, their views should be at all-times highs instead of sloping downward. Many older generation lifestyle YouTubers have slowed down video production or stopped completely, growing out of their content themselves.

But recently, I’ve rediscovered Shelby Church, the lifestyle YouTuber who did a total 180.

Looking through her videos it’s hard to pinpoint when Shelby really decided to shift her channel from the bubbly teen style that put her on the YouTube map to the videos she makes now: testing newfangled tech products, exploring unique living spaces and comparing their costs, and occasionally interviewing successful business owners, all done with a fresh, objective viewpoint.

Why do some YouTubers fail to adapt and others succeed? What did Shelby do differently? And what can all creators learn from it? I took a closer look at her content for answers. Luckily, there was a lot there.

1. She kept going

Even though views weren’t coming like they used to, it would have been a lot easier to stick with the format her subscribers had come to know. The videos were still doing well, just not as well and revamping could have alienated even more viewers. But she slowly ventured into new, more serious topics, starting with photography. Many videos took off, hitting that 1M view mark, while others garnered 30–40k views without much rhyme or reason… but she kept innovating and experimenting with ideas.

2. She got realer

While one of the main appeals of Shelby’s old videos was her relatability, these days people want genuine, not that quirky relatability of the past, and she achieved that by listening to herself (see #3).

One of her most viewed videos breaks down how much YouTube pays her based on her views. And this was before everyone hopped on the being-transparent-about-money train. If there were any barriers between her and her viewers, this video and other similar ones broke it down.

She also maintains real objectivity when trying new things, and though it seems like she does well financially, she values the dollar and we don’t feel any sense of privilege coming from her.

3. She listened to herself

In another video, Shelby explains that she got to a point where she realized she wasn’t happy or proud of the content she was making. So she really started listening to herself in deciding what content to create. Not the algorithm, or what she thought others expected of her or what other creators were doing. About her video interviewing with the CEO of Scentbird, she said, “I just made it because I thought it would be a cool video, I didn’t really think it was gonna earn me that much…” The video would end up gathering close to a million views and earning her a lot more than her other videos.

I think some YouTubers are stuck in the past. They’ve created successful content for so long, why shouldn’t it keep being successful? But Shelby’s ability to tune in to what she wants to create, get real and keep going helped her adapt and recapture her original audience’s attention (gaining new traction along the way). She definitely recaptured mine and, in a recent video, introduced me to this cool platform, too.