My Real Job, Why I Got Into Keyboards, How Many Keyboards We Own, Sponsorships, Q&A

hey guys welcome back to the channel and today is the long awaited q a video it's definitely been a while since my birthday when i did the giveaway and you guys asked asked all those questions and now it's time to finally answer them alongside this i'll also be slapping on a bunch of behind the scenes b-roll a look into our studio my desk editing setup all that jazz keyboard closet also known as the supply closet and that's interesting and if there's questions you want to skip or anything of course timestamps are in the timeline bar as well as down in the description box below any products if i talk about any will also be down there not sure if i will or will not be [Music] here we go i got them all screenshotted on my phone here and we're just going to go through them pretty casually this is unscripted of course i haven't looked at these questions in a very very long time and of course i'll be taking some water breaks because filming is hard work question one let's see what's your vision for the channel is twitch streaming and custom builds like teja the direction or sticking with information and reviews like bad seat tech so the vision for the channel is actually to be different i am definitely considering branching out to other peripherals as well including headphones headsets mice things like that so any pc peripheral pretty much i think will be encompassed by the channel eventually that will also include things like i don't know it's hard what i actually really want to do is go into a more of a productivity peripheral kind of space with battle stations for working individuals who work in their home but game as well so i'm not really into the whole gaming thing but i am into having a really nice desk space to work with with good lighting comfortable peripherals comfy chairs ergonomics things like that it is sort of in my background to care about that kind of stuff but that's the vision i will not be doing any twitch streaming or live streaming on the youtube at least the betty right now doesn't want to do that and i do want to include different kinds of things on the channel as well as reviews i definitely don't enjoy doing reviews all the time although they're sort of fun i get to try out new products any tips on how to store keyboards in a small apartment well we did used to live in a small apartment and you just have to work with whatever space you have i would recommend buying either a bookshelf or some kind of shelving to store your keyboards if not we just threw them in the closet and that's where they stayed like out of sight out of mind equals less stress when typing do you care more about acoustics or feel personally i would say acoustics if something doesn't sound good then i sort of assume that it doesn't feel good either it's definitely about sounds i rarely have my headphones in if ever usually it's just low-fi music or some sort of ambient noise like that would you recommend getting a soldering iron or just doing hot swappable i definitely recommend getting a soldering iron before i soldered i was pretty much overwhelmed and intimidated by the idea of soldering something with the idea of messing something up but you know electronics are actually really persistent and it's hard to mess it up it's hard to break something alongside this there's just a bunch of good tutorials on the internet and you can buy something like what i did with the keyhive maypad the numpad that i use on my desk to practice soldering on it's a through-hole design i'll link it down in the description box below as well as the soldering equipment that we use as well it's really easy to use really simple i would say don't be intimidated by it hot swap is really easy to use as well but eventually your pads are gonna fall off or something and you'll have to solder them back on anyways how do you sell all your keyboards that's a really good question what we used to do when we lived in washington was i would take pictures of them post them up on ebay and then i would do a lot of that through my email through ebay and all that stuff and i either meet with people or whatever and that's just not the way that we want to do it in the future i was going to the post office way too much packaging is a pain and of course shipping costs are out of this world so what we want to do now is either find a local tech flipper or something or a up-and-coming local tech tuber or whatever and just sell a lot of what we have for a discounted price so that they can take care of managing their profits by themselves we're not in this to sell our stuff or profit i'm okay with taking half back that's fine it's just shipping and stuff and selling stuff that's just not my thing and it's really troublesome so right now we're just sort of letting things pile up it's not a great thing but whatever since when did you like mechanical keyboards over typical keyboards and what was your motivation motivation for choosing a mechanical keyboard for everyday use so i believe i made the switch from a membrane to mechanical in about 2013 or 14. i actually don't remember what i was using before my razer black widow te and i have reviewed that on on the channel yeah i'll just like link it somewhere over here it's a really old keyboard and right now it's no longer with me because i had to give it away before moving here to texas but i mean the thing was working amazingly and the reason i made the switch was i was doing a lot of gaming at the time and i thought hey i need something for gaming right because it's better right but um yeah membranes are pretty annoying especially when they get old and the rubber domes get stuck and they don't bounce back and now i guess i'm just used to mechanical and now i'm stuck here forever where do you think enthusiast keyboards are in terms of trend and popularity and where do you think it's going that's a really good one in terms of trends hot swappable is definitely where i'm seeing it right now pretty much all the fancy builds are available with a hot swappable option i see recolors of everything being a thing recolored stabilizers recolored plates recolored switches just everything you can do to match the overall aesthetic of your keyboard as for layouts and sizes i would say either 65 or 75 is ruling the world right now and probably for the next few months are any of your keyboard review models sent over by companies that is a yes and usually i disclaim it either in the description box or i say thank you to blah for sending over this blog for review that's just something the ftc says you should do and personally i feel like if you get something for free you should disclose that because well you got it for free you got no skin in the game right you have to get your insurance after 25 yeah so in america when you turn 26 you're kicked off of your parents insurance plans and then you have to buy your own so essentially i'm on my own insurance plan and i'm not sure if it's a good one or a bad one do you have a job that's a good question how am i living without a job yes i do have a job and this is a complicated question because i'm let's just start at the beginning anyways so i'm an occupational therapist and what i do is i work occupational therapists also known as ot can do many different things but what i did was i worked in the school system for a school district and i came to several different schools of different age groups i work with the kiddos with special needs to either work on things like handwriting problem solving adjusting being flexible just a lot of things fine motor emotional support things like that i did that for about a year and then we decided we were gonna move to a lower cost of living area aka here and now i'm sort of doing this digital marketing thing full time in our own business and what this business is is we own our website switchingclick.com we own our youtube channel sorta not really because youtube owns it but it does make money in its own way so essentially we're doing affiliate marketing we want to be a high quality source of information for you guys rather than seeing the low quality websites on the internet when you do a google search for best blah blah blah where the person doesn't have the product they've never used it before or they have really just read the description box or reviews on the internet and just plugged that product for their own benefit what we want to do is provide the highest quality most straightforward honest answers that you can find and most of our products that we review or our roundups our best of lists things like that we have used the products and it's just a more straightforward place to get information rather than going over to another website where they use stock photos and they don't have it so that's what we do now and i guess you can say youtube is my full time but it's not really there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that maybe people don't think about do you think you will be still doing youtube if your channel isn't as successful as it now as it is now yes absolutely even at around 100 subscribers i believe we were still making although a small amount of money a decent amount of money youtube's one of those things where you sort of have to be dedicated in it for the long term yes i believe we did see pretty fast growth it's been about nine months almost nine months working on the channel now and it's grown pretty good it's about 11 000 subscribers right now it's really hard to differentiate how much money the youtube makes versus how much money the website makes because we didn't really separate those analytics from the beginning but now it's sort of a mumble jumble and it's sort of fun interacting with you guys having your own community at the discord server also linked down below so yeah i would still be doing it maybe i would be getting less review samples and paying more for the products initially we did buy all of our own products and that is quite the investment so i'm sort of glad people are sending us samples to review how did you get into keyboards i get that this question was probably the most asked question so i'm gonna just go in depth with it so what what i was doing a long time ago in graduate school and things like that was that i was streaming a lot on twitch i was doing initially i was doing call of duty saw some growth with that didn't really like it and then i switched over to a moba called heroes of the storm and that was really good was seeing some decent viewership there but my keyboard was just too loud so i had to look into a different keyboard a more quiet keyboard so that's how i found the drop control i liked that it was hot swappable and that it was sort of future proof in a way i was definitely a beginner to keyboard so that's what i picked it was sort of expensive jake sort of freaked when he found out it was about two hundred dollars and that was it that was pretty much it and then a few months later we needed an idea to make a website over and mechanical keyboards was what we decided on after a lot of brainstorming what kind of computer do you use i use windows and it's a computer that i made in or that i built in about seven years ago so i guess about 2013 2014 i built it it had very very very old parts i was basically using a refurbished nvidia 660 ti so pretty old and now it's replaced with like a amd radeon r or something it's pretty old as well so this winner we're gonna upgrade our pcs as like gifts to ourselves basically because we need it for our business and we need it for what we do apart from content creator on youtube do you or your husband have another profession right now no but before june june and before he was a mechanical engineer and i was an occupational therapist i guess we saw an opportunity to really go all in into our online business and we did how many keyboards do you have 35 i don't really know do you buy the keyboards initially yes we bought all the keyboards all those red dragon reviews all those top 10 under a hundreds all those top 10 under 50. we bought all those keyboards even now we still buy some keyboards like the razer huntsman mini we bought the real force r2 we bought the varmilo keyboard i buy all my customs if something is given to us for free as a review sample i disclose it are you planning to review more mice and headsets absolutely we are definitely considering doing things alongside that route but rather than the gaming route i'm thinking more of the like productivity slash office route with like the logitech mx masters or headphones audiophile headphones things like that how many times have you decided to change your own keyboard after making a review what features convince you to change so very rarely do i actually switch over to a keyboard after a review the few times that that has happened is the kikron k6 which is one of our absolute faves right now it's sitting in the corner because some of the pads fell off because we swapped the switches too many times so i have to re-solder those and fix that but that's an easy fix k6 was on my desk for a very very long time the durgod fusion with the cherry mx silence which is on my desk for three ish weeks it's pleasant to use and then i got sick of that mushy feeling and then after i built my kbd75 that's pretty much been on my desk for a long time a month and a half now maybe the key move shadow i swapped those with switches to test in and out a lot so i use that a lot as well currently we're testing the realfars r2 as well as the varmilo and those so far have a lot of potential to be on our desks but i still prefer my kbd75 so it's definitely hard it's hard convincing me to switch over to a keyboard that we review and the let's see the features that caused me to change are hospitability is a big one being able to test switches being able to lube them mod them i just referred modded keyboards over solder keyboards because it's just more pleasant to use and it's better sounding this one is how did you and your husband meet well we met in college and we met at the gym i think sophomore year or something i decided to work out because i was playing a lot of ultimate frisbee i was on the school team and i needed to jump higher and they said hey you need to go squat so therefore i did and he started working out at around the same time i suppose so we met in the gym we weren't dating we didn't even start dating until after we graduated from college so it's been like that ever since so now we're married what is your favorite city and after the pandemic where do you plan to visit or vacation let's see i think our favorite city is actually san diego california we go to vacation there a lot and it's sort of the place where we traveled first together on our very first like long trip so we just really love it there we're both from california i'm from socal he's from norcal we clash a little bit about that sometimes we want to go overseas after the pandemic either to argentina or thailand but right now during the pandemic which we expect to last a little bit longer than we thought it would be we'll probably visit sedona arizona next year to go hiking and stuff what's your opinion on custom mechanical keyboards being such an expensive hobby so that's a good question and i struggle with this a lot actually because well we review things so i'm the kind of person where i don't really like waste i like sustainability i like really making the most out of something that you have so i struggle with the fact that we go through technology so quickly because we review it and then we put it in the closet that definitely goes against what makes part of me me and we have conversations like that all the time and keyboards are just a commodity like they don't they don't mean much more than just stuff sometimes so i think that when things are just commodities they can get out of hand and get very expensive i think the same thing is happening with pc parts or with cars or with all those other things sure they're tools but at the same time there's also some kind of status as associated with having a fancy graphics card having a fancy car having a fancy keyboard and there's some exclusivity in it as well that really adds up to the status it's okay that it's expensive i don't really have any problem against that i think the problem that i have with it is when people start spending a lot more money than they can actually afford to spend on a keyboard it's like you already have one you don't need to think about getting another one or getting a better one i joke around that there's really no such thing as end game because there's always more and that's true there's always going to be the next best thing the next better thing being that we make content about mechanical keyboards it's really hard for me to just say well we can step away because we can't we sort of have to be in the trenches finding the trends noticing things and stuff like that but if if we weren't making content about this then i would probably step away from the hobby and just stop looking at geek hack or met groupbuys.com or different sites like that where you feel the urge or the need to buy more because i have a keyboard already and i like it a lot so it's fine it's just hard it's definitely hard things can be expensive it's whatever it is things can be fancy and exclusive and thousand dollars or whatever but in the end there's definitely better things that you can spend your money on and that's up to you so the fact that it's expensive really isn't the keyboard's fault it's more what we make up of it that makes it so expensive i don't know if that made sense what would you say is your favorite part about customizing and modding a keyboard do you have any that you like right off the bat and didn't want to customize at all i i would say my favorite part is probably modding the stabilizers i think that makes the biggest difference for me as for keyboards that i don't need modded at all probably the realforce r2 it sounds beautiful as it is and it really doesn't need anything to change do you follow any mechanical keyboard channels if so which is your favorite i would say my favorite is probably brandon taylor i know he doesn't make a ton of mechanical keyboard content but as for when he does i really like what he does with his b-roll his music selection and his overall voice is just so soothing it's like background music what's the best way to get into mechanical keyboard reviewing this is actually something that i want to make some videos over in a series and that's because they're it's hard it's a hard barrier of entry you need a decent amount of capital or cash to start with but if you already are a mechanical keyboard enthusiast and you already have a bunch of keyboards then just start reviewing whatever you do have make sure the audio is good you can use your phone to record but the audio really matters here and then record your a-roll like this put some b-roll over it slap it on there add some transitions and that's how you start how we started is we bought a lot of keyboards and i know that's probably the part that people don't want to hear is that well you need to spend money and yeah you do because how else are you going to get the volume of videos required to start showing companies that you have a following that you have a good viewership that your audience trusts you let's see what do you think of ortho linear keyboards would you consider making a video of one in the future i currently have no opinion on them because i haven't used them but we do have a plank kit coming soon i'm not sure when i think drop said they'll be delayed or whatever but coming soon i expect i will not like it but we shall see does your family know about your keyboard hobby and what do they think about it my parents friends family whatever they sort of all know that we have this online business thing where we make content surrounding mechanical keyboards they actually just think it's weird and they are surprised that you can you can do that so and they honestly don't even know what mechanical keyboards are because they all use laptops or whatever they don't really think anything about it my mom initially thought that we were just spending a lot of money but now she's fine aside from mechanical keyboards are there any hobbies that you or your husband share or share share that you might create content about um yeah i guess we we like a lot of technology in general i think that this channel will essentially revolve around the peripheral space around key on around computers and then his channel will be everything computer related and inside the computer so essentially pc building and that side of things as for hobbies we really like going on walks hiking we dabbled in a lot of things like fishing snowboarding which i will never do again because i essentially broke my butt we like rock climbing but probably can't do that again because essentially i broke my foot doing that i was out for several months we dabble in musical instruments i have a piano he has a guitar i'm not musically inclined in any way we have a lot of hobbies we're pretty much focused on the business usually for now we read books we bike we take care of our animals do you guys have any pets yes so we have a four-year-old long-haired norwegian forest cat named indy and she's right here always lays down in her rocking chair and then we have an eight-year-old rescue dog he's an australian shepherd named gage and he's super cuddly and we love them both to bits while doing these videos i understand there's a lot of money being spent on keyboards and accessories how do you manage all these expenses well we're really frugal people and while we were working our full-time jobs we saved a lot of money because well we were eating pretty bland boring foods and we weren't doing much with our time and saving money was pretty much our goal because we wanted financial freedom and time independence so that's where we are at now we control pretty much 100 percent of our time and our finances are pretty much in check at the previous location what was the strange noise in the background cars driving by we lived on the third floor of an apartment complex that was right next to a really busy road not only that it rains a lot in washington so that road was always wet and so cars driving by is very noisy do you feel like you're locked in for the keyboard niche any plans to expand what's next it's a really good question and that's something that we've been thinking a lot about recently i don't like being locked in into keyboards it's really easy to get burned out on doing the same thing over and over and yes we do plan on branching out that's in the process right now we recently started snazz up your setup which is something that where we talk about battle stations desk accessories things that make your setup cooler this upcoming one is on wire management which i really enjoy doing because i'm that kind of person go ahead judge me whatever i like being organized and then we also have a bunch of ideas in the pipeline that are coming out so yes we do have a lot of keyboards but i'm not going to just review all of them back to back to back i'm going to place other kinds of things in between and you know if you don't like it whatever i'm going to do what i like doing because when you create content especially consistently for several months or even years down the line you want to love what you do and you got to enjoy it what's your background what do you do for a living what's your hobby it would be nice to know more about you so we can consider your review analysis keeping in mind your background so i used to do a lot of gaming i did a lot of call of duty on a console and that was when i was streaming call of duty that was fun then i switched to well i've always been a pc user but then i went to pc for gaming so i played mobas primarily and then i streamed that and then that was fun too and it got less fun because it's so time consuming right now i don't really do any gaming i do a lot of typing i'm an occupational therapist i'm licensed and registered i think a lot about ergonomics posture longevity sustainability and things like that as your body ages and grows older i like lasting products products that i know you buy once and you pretty much get a ton of use out of it and i know a lot of products nowadays aren't really meant to last a long time but that really matters to me when i review products i try to think about what kind of audience it would be good for personally even if it's not good for me i'm sure there's somewhere somewhere someone out there in the world that could benefit from the product i like the sk71 sure that layout is absolutely not for me but it could be for someone else or a long time ago when i reviewed the kinesis freestyle pro definitely not for me was terrible for me but the things that make it not for me make it good for someone else so in a way i try to see the good and the bad of a product and try to think about who it's good for how have you been staying productive during quarantine i am self-proclaimed pretty much a productivity master and the reason for that is in college i don't know i was a pretty good student i did pretty good i stay on track with things but i'm pretty much obsessed with productivity and efficiency with my time i've dabbled in many many many different time management systems that pretty much are combined and gobbled together to make a more efficient system currently right now we use the google calendar to plan our day-to-day we use todoist to do recurring tasks and we use notion as our content management systems for the website and for the youtube channel as well as a product tracker to track everything that we have in our closets everything that's coming and things like that as well so a lot of systems over time and it makes me productive alongside that i really recommend you get some kind of accountability partner some kind of friend a family member whatever do a zoom call check in with them every week make goals make sure you stick to it do you write code i did dabble in programming for about four to five months and i do have a portfolio website somewhere on the internet on github i did javascript html css all the front end stuff and i did a little bit of back end with node but it's pretty much out of my realm i did a lot of python and it was fun but it's pretty much the hardest thing that i've ever done in my life and i couldn't really wrap my head a lot around a lot of it so i stopped in the keyboard community people talk about an aftermarket where is this aftermarket this aftermarket is called the reddit mech market so if you just look up mech market on reddit that is where the aftermarket is make sure you follow the rules or else your posts will be deleted will you make a video on your desk setup absolutely we moved recently and got all of our setups junk together that will be featured in snazz up your setup with the wire management video alongside that will probably do a studio tour and an office tour as well eventually on the channel and that's it for the q a i don't think i missed a whole ton i screenshotted a bunch of questions from i don't know that video so i hope this answered a lot of your questions and i was i don't know this was a really honest video i know maybe some people think if you're a full-time creator or reviewer or whatever that you're not honest about what you do but personally that's really not what we're here about at switch and click either on the website or on the channel we're about honesty thoroughness straightforwardness and we don't really make blanket statements on like this is the best keyboard you can buy or things like that there's just like how there's niches in website making and youtube channels there's also niches in product creation so if a company is making a product that's not meant for a certain person then you know it's not for you but it's for someone and with that in mind i don't really try to dis too many products unless it's outright terrible and you know some parts of certain products are and but that doesn't make it a terrible product it makes it a terrible product for me so yes we do have skin in the game yes we try to keep a certain kind of reputation with all the companies that we work with and with that being said so far so far we haven't gotten paid for any of our reviews we have only gotten review samples perhaps in the future you know some day we're gonna have a sponsored video and maybe that day will come sooner than than not i don't know but i don't know stick with us right uh yeah if you have any questions you know feel free to ask them down below we try to be really honest here at switch click and with all this new found information about our lives and what we do for a living i hope it doesn't make you not want to you know watch the channel or support us or whatever but yes a lot of the links that we use are affiliate links and we do earn a small commission from them and that's always disclosed like everything else but anyways i am so thirsty and dehydrated that's a lot of questions and a lot of answers i'll probably edit a lot of this out anyways i hope you enjoyed this q a perhaps we'll do one later along the lines i know as a creator on youtube or as a newer creator there's a lot of questions that we encountered during this whole growth process and i do want to help other people get into this whole youtube space and there's a lot of holes there's a lot of opportunities for pretty much anybody to do it so yeah i hope this was helpful and insightful and i'll see you

Channel: Switch and Click

Views: 98,182

Keywords: tech tuber, q&a, youtuber, inside the life of a tech reviewer, tech reviewer, tech reviewers on youtube, tech reviewer job, tech reviewer questions, tech reviewer closet

Id: W5-ZyyaCoIo

Length: 35min 45sec (2145 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020