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Choosing creator niches by what the viewer wants (and reading the comments)

Why on-topic creators (UFC fighters, mukbang, recipe and Love Island accounts) flopped for Cal AI while day-in-the-life fitness creators and moms printed, the comment-section test for niches and individual creators, and spotting creators before they blow up.

Updated 2026-10-24·3 sources·organic-growthinfluencer-marketingcreator-selectionaudiencecal-ai

Choosing creator niches by what the viewer wants

TL;DR

  • Choose niches by why the viewer watches, not what the creator does: UFC fighters track every calorie, but their audience is on the couch with beer and pizza — thousands of dollars, no download spike.12
  • Same failure with mukbang and even recipe/cooking content: viewers want food as entertainment or reward, not calorie bad news.34
  • “Views can lie, followers can lie, comments cannot.” Niche test: do big creators’ comment sections ask for the solution your app offers?5
  • Creator test: “fire emoji” comments (audience there for looks) vs “thank you, I didn’t know how to train hamstrings” (audience there to learn). Only the second converts.6
  • Jake Castillo: ~9 of 10 creators won’t convert; a cult-like following is what you want, and it’s a lagging indicator — sign good-but-small creators cheaply before they blow up.57
  • Best Cal AI angle: big creators’ day-in-the-life vlogs with a quick scan at breakfast, ~4 posts/month.8

Details

Failures and why (Cal AI).

  • UFC creators: the bet was that fighters cutting weight need easy tracking; viewers enjoyed watching someone else diet, not doing it themselves.12
  • Mukbang: “scan 20,000 calories” seemed a wow moment, but a cheat-day viewer wants no numbers.3
  • Recipes, cooking, normal meals: didn’t convert; healthy-meal videos were only “okay” (Alfie Dickens).4
  • Comedy/random viral creators (a drive-thru stunt creator scanning fries): good CPMs, but the audience isn’t thinking about calories.9
  • Love Island contestant Harry Cooksley: decent start, then underperformed — comments were all about his partner Shakira, so the audience was there for her.10

What worked. Four fitness sub-niches: bodybuilders/gym bros, women’s fitness, weight loss, plus moms. Mom influencers were expensive because they know they convert; some were profitable at a $10 CPM, others weren’t.11 Big lifestyle creators (e.g. Jessie from the Mormon Wives reality show) sometimes drove hundreds to thousands of promo-code uses per video; Alfie timed her posts just before and after a new season to get a low effective CPM.812

Saturation within a niche. One creator cost $20K for a month and drove ~$120K in sign-ups; a similar creator in the same niche did poorly because the audience had already seen it. Fitness was big enough to rotate sub-niches; smaller niches needed only one creator.13

Diamonds in the rough. Jake signed his ~12th–15th creator at 10–12K views because the content was funny and charismatic; in month three a video hit 7M views and he never dropped below 500K afterwards.7

Older buyers. Dawson Gibbs: mom, family and 30+ creators convert highest for family-relevant products; reach older audiences on Facebook/Instagram, 18–25 on TikTok/Snapchat.1415

Disagreements / caveats

  • Cal AI’s experience is one category (food/fitness). The principle — audience motivation over topical match — is the transferable part.
  • New TikTok/Instagram accounts for UGC and the 3-day warm-up steers new accounts to a niche audience; this note is about picking existing creators whose audience already fits.

See also

Footnotes

  1. How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI @ 20:16 — Jake Castillo ↩ ↩2

  2. How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI @ 21:17 — Jake Castillo ↩ ↩2

  3. How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI @ 23:12 — Jake Castillo ↩ ↩2

  4. Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI @ 19:19 — Alfie Dickens ↩ ↩2

  5. How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI @ 25:37 — Jake Castillo ↩ ↩2

  6. How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI @ 26:54 — Jake Castillo ↩

  7. How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI @ 28:41 — Jake Castillo ↩ ↩2

  8. Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI @ 20:31 — Alfie Dickens ↩ ↩2

  9. Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI @ 18:31 — Alfie Dickens ↩

  10. Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI @ 30:03 — Alfie Dickens ↩

  11. Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI @ 17:28 — Alfie Dickens ↩

  12. Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI @ 27:28 — Alfie Dickens ↩

  13. Meet The Marketing Genius Behind Cal AI @ 16:12 — Alfie Dickens ↩

  14. The 1 Billion Views Content Strategy Every App Should Steal in 2026 @ 46:49 — Dawson Gibbs ↩

  15. The 1 Billion Views Content Strategy Every App Should Steal in 2026 @ 22:45 — Dawson Gibbs ↩