How Lasercorn reached 7M+ subs by playing video games and making people laugh

Who are you?

My name is Lasercorn and I’m mostly known as the the creator of The Lasercorn Channel (700k+ subs) and the co-founder of Smosh Games (7M+ subs). My job is to play video games (not very well) and make people laugh!

What is your personal backstory that led you to start your creator journey?

I’ve always really enjoyed video games and, when I first moved to California, I honestly didn’t think that I could make a career out of it. In fact, I was actually looking for more traditional editing work because I had gone to school for editing. So my initial goal was to land an editing job in a field like film or television. And that’s when I saw a random ad on Craigslist for someone to capture and edit gameplay videos! When I first saw this, I thought that it had to be a joke. And yet, I didn’t have a whole lot going on at the time. The only other occupation I had was writing for a game journalism website called Gamefront. So, without much to lose, I thought I would give this Craigslist ad a try. Turns out, the ad was real and I was mindblown that I could actually make money by capturing, recording, and editing video game content on YouTube. So that’s what started my journey at a company called Mahalo. I then moved to a company called Clever which then became Smosh Games — and that’s the story of how I got my start.

When you first started as a creator, what was the hardest challenge to overcome?

Many of my early videos were for a channel called Mahalo, but my biggest challenges (and wins) came when I started making videos for Smosh Games. The biggest challenge was that I wasn’t used to getting hate comments — mainly because my early videos revolved around video games, where I simply instructed people how to find easter eggs and other fun stuff like that. But when I started being more of a personality on Smosh Games, I was suddenly subject to greater scrutiny and backlash. People would say things like “You’re not funny” or “I didn’t come to this channel to see you.” And that’s when I realized that people on the internet can be really aggressive and hurtful (which sounds really obvious these days). So over time, my biggest challenge was to desensitize myself to all the negativity. It took several months to accomplish this, but eventually I realized that I don’t know these people, so why do I even care what they think? And when I zoomed out, I realized that the positive usually outweighed the negative. Lo and behold, after the first few months of getting negative comments, they started to disappear.

What was your biggest early win as a content creator?

My biggest win was definitely at Smosh Games, as we were actually the fastest channel to reach a million subs at the time. Nowadays the record is, of course, broken (as all records go), but it was a really cool milestone and memory for our team. And in our second year, we won a Streamy, which was pretty cool as well. Those early wins really shaped our belief that this channel could be something big.

Describe your process of getting your first 1,000 viewers or followers.

The first video where I cracked 1,000 views was a video called riot shield man. This was actually at Clever Games (before Smosh Games). I basically ran around with a riot shield in Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and bashed people while doing a funny voiceover. I said things like “Riot shield man is here to save the day!” and other shield-related jokes, such as “My favorite actress is Brooke Shields!”. At the time, this video blew all of my other videos out of the water in terms of views. I think I achieved this through two actions: working very hard, and being different. For the video itself, I actually went into the game and used the camera mode where I could capture different angles. And then I would drag that into Adobe Premiere, do all the voiceovers, and cut it altogether with effects and stuff. Through this experience, I learned that — if you want high-quality videos that people want to watch — you have to put in the effort. In addition to the effort I put in, I was different than others. Other CoD creators simply made kill montages without any other embellishments. I took a different approach by inserting humor into the gameplay. To this day, I always give the advice to young creators — what are you doing that’s different than others? For some, the answer is that they’re truly the “best” at whatever they do. But I was never the “best” at video games, so I had to take a different route and be creative and comedic. And so that’s what I did.

You’ve attracted millions of views to this day — what were the most important factors to your growth?

Three things: Be different from others, know what your niche is, and be consistent. Being different is fairly self-explanatory — you simply have to make content that is different from others. You cannot succeed by playing someone else’s game. You have to play your own game and be original. The second item is a bit harder — you have to know your niche and your audience. Who is watching your videos? Why are they watching it? And what niche do I fit in? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then you’re creating content without any clear direction. The final key is consistency. When I first started making videos, I was very consistent — mainly because it was my job, and if I stopped making videos, I would lose my job. But when you venture out on your own and create your own channel, it’s a whole different ballgame. You have to find your own motivation and stay consistent.

Early creators struggle with marketing themselves. How did you approach marketing?

Marketing is very important. I don’t think it’s enough to just be on your primary platform, such as YouTube. There is so much competition these days for people’s attention, so you have to standout amongst the pack by driving people to your content through multiple channels. For example, if you take the funniest part of your video, turn that into an Instagram reel, and link to your video in that reel, you have a much better chance of driving traffic than just posting your video on YouTube alone.

Since you have to be active on multiple platforms, how do you focus your time?

This is a tough one, because you can either focus on what’s getting you the most views, the most income, or something else, depending on what your goals are. For example, we have a podcast channel with several hundreds paying patrons. While several hundred is nowhere near Instagram follower or view numbers, these are paying patrons. So you have to ask yourself: “What is my goal?” Is it to make the most money, drive the most views, or something else? And then you look at your metrics, see what is moving you closer towards that goal, and pursue that path.

As you look back on your creator journey so far, what has been the single biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge for me has been consistency. Since starting Smosh Games, I started a family, had a son, and we’re in the process of adopting another son. So a lot has been going on in my personal life, and it’s much more difficult to maintain consistent when you have a lot to juggle. Moreover, if you’re a creator who is just creating for themselves, as opposed to working for a company, you have to find self motivation to maintain consistent. You’re not going to be clocking in every day, working amongst coworkers, or anything like that. It’s oftentimes just you, in your bedroom, cranking away at videos. It’s a lonely path at times, and that makes it all the more difficult to be consistent. The key throughout your creator journey is to turn creating into your job. Even though you don’t have a corporate structure, you have to find your working cadence, be consistent, and turn content creating into your job.

If you were to give one piece of advice to someone who is just starting their creator journey, what would you say?

To someone who is just starting out and maybe a bit uncertain or apprehensive about the road ahead, I would say that you never know what could happen unless you try, and there is really no penalty for trying in the creator economy. Worst case scenario, you make a couple videos, they don’t get that many views, and you pivot to something else. Or maybe it does get views and you decide that you want to double down and build upon it. You simply never know until you try. So the real question is: Why not? If you’re afraid of getting hateful comments, just remember that those people don’t matter. You don’t know them and you’re never going to interact with them. So don’t worry about what they have to say. Once you really ask yourself “Why not?”, you’ll realize that there’s really no good reason to not put yourself out there, create something awesome, and see how it goes. There is no “certainty” in the creator world. Mr Beast didn’t know that he would become the top YouTuber in the world, and I certainly didn’t think that I would be a part of multiple successful channels.

What’s in store for Lasercorn’s future?

I’m getting more and more into writing in the future! In fact, I’ve written some stuff that hasn’t come out yet. I also wrote a puppet show that was featured on FailArmy which is kinda cool, as it was my first time writing a puppet show. The more writing I do, the more I realize how much I love it. So I’m not necessarily going to stop making YouTube videos by any means, but I think my future is more writing in general. I think I want to focus on comedy, but I’m not yet sure on what type of comedy. I like to keep an open mind in general, since that’s how I got my start as a content creator. In addition to more writing, I plan to continue creating more content on the Lasercorn and OGSoG (the other channel I contribute to alongside Mari, Joven, and Sohinki).

If you are content creator who wants to get mentored by Lasercorn or collab with him on a video, get started here!