Sorta Stupid
Welcome, Billy!
Sorta Stupid is a growing content creation brand that reacts to movies, TV shows and more across YouTube, Patreon and audio platforms. To reach its goal of 500k subscribers by the end of 2025, sortastupid.net needed to adapt — motivating the brand to partner with a YouTube marketing agency.
Building a home for “Billy”
CHALLENGE
YouTube and Patreon users prefer an experience they can rely on. They’ve grown familiar with these platforms and their associated features, such as the navigation and the comment section.
Familiarity reduces cognitive load, helping users enjoy content easily — but what happens when you ask them to consume on a content creator website instead?
SOLUTION
Sorta Stupid aimed to replicate YouTube’s user experience and centralize both free and gated content, including gaming videos, reactions, podcasts and webcomics. The channel enlisted Paradigm to design around user intuition and implement website integrations.
Sorta Stupid emerged from our process with a super smart new platform that helped it reach its subscription goals. Paradigm has continued on as the channel’s YouTube marketing agency, carrying out updates that improve communication, engagement and expansion.
Website Audit
Our partnership began with establishing a baseline for performance.
We sifted through sortastupid.net’s metrics, identifying pain points in the user experience as well as areas for improvement. Our strategists searched for opportunities to boost search engine rankings and engagement.
Ultimately, we devised a plan to improve Sorta Stupid’s content creator website through strategic messaging and design, intuitive site structures and updated accessibility measures.
Website Design
Our design team used visuals to enhance brand engagement and streamline the browsing experience.
We leaned into the playful aspect of the brand, utilizing gradients alongside characters from its webcomic, “Billy Ends the World.”
However, content availability and hierarchy always stayed top-of-mind. We crafted all pages in adherence with Google’s Material Design and the YouTube playbook — resulting in a familiar yet usable, accessible and practical look.
Website Development
Sorta Stupid hoped to augment its website to make content access and direct communication as seamless as possible.
As a YouTube marketing agency, we recognized one main hurdle. Sorta Stupid’s audience was split: some had a Patreon subscription, others had a YouTube subscription.
To ensure membership-appropriate access, our developers needed to centralize log-ins across all platforms on the Sorta Stupid website.
Patreon offered a straightforward account plug-in — but YouTube required more elbow grease. Channels could only unlock an Application Programming Interface (API) endpoint via a YouTube representative.
Paradigm guided Sorta Stupid through regular communications with the YouTube administrative team. Once we got the platform’s seal of approval, our developers built a custom plug-in aligned with its compliance recommendations.
By the end, our team coordinated multiple website integrations and applications for the content creator website that would:
- Display upcoming content and events.
- Enable content filters.
- Automate email communications.
- Facilitate fan art submissions.
- Verify user identity via seamless third-party logins.
- Unlock or restrict content based on third-party membership tiers.
-
558K
subscribers within 6 months post-launch (surpassed goal by 58K)
-
18%
increase in website sessions in the first 6 months post-launch
Analytics
Though the channel used YouTube views to gauge popularity, we realized that the metrics may not align with website views.
To refine how they pulled website data and inform content decisions, our YouTube marketing agency implemented Google Analytics 4. Strategists began tracking several performance indicators on the content creator website, including:
- Click-through rates
- Watch times
- Device usage
- Demographics
- Recommendations journey
