By: Spencer Cornelia

Please Read I am offering this eBook FREE because I want everyone to access it and have a chance at learning how to earn your first 1,000 subscribers on YouTube.

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Module 0: Intro

Setting Expectations

Being a content creator on YouTube has become a legitimately glorified career in the past few years. Myself and many other creators are comfortable sharing our earnings from ad revenue on the platform and many of us are earning incomes in the top percentages in America. In some rare cases, YouTubers are making as much money as top professional athletes and entertainers.

If you can figure out the game of YouTube and build up an engaged audience, then you absolutely can achieve whatever outcome it is you’re looking for. Some are in it for the money, some just want to build up an audience to feel important, and some are treating the platform like a business. Whatever it is you want to achieve, you absolutely can. But there are no shortcuts or easy mode.

I felt like I never had an advantage with YouTube. I started making videos in January 2015 and for years I wasn’t able to figure out how to grow a channel. I became obsessed with the platform sometime in 2019 and it’s no coincidence that a few months later my channel started experiencing exponential growth.

Spencer, why is it that you created a program for teaching others on how to grow a YouTube channel? Aren’t you creating more competition for yourself? This is a great question and something you should ask everyone trying to teach an online program or providing mentorship with all of the “hidden” secrets.

This is another possible income stream for me. This is another way to monetize the knowledge and experience I’ve gained by growing a channel on YouTube. The YouTube platform changed my life in a lot of ways and I hope that this program can provide that same experience to many more people. The reality with YouTube is that it’s such a massive platform that I don’t really believe in negative competition, meaning teaching people how to grow a channel will keep people or views away from my channel. I think it’s actually the opposite.

I’m going to help two different types of people with this program: channels that have absolutely nothing to do with mine and do not have any crossover audiences, which is going to be almost everyone. And then there will be a few students who may share some of the same audience. You’re going to learn about the YouTube algorithm in this course and you’ll understand why similar channels are actually good for you because when people find their channels, they’ll then find my channel because my videos will be in their recommended area.

My hope for you is that you take this program seriously and give your best effort to grow a channel. Trust me, if you treat this platform like a business and follow all of the guidelines in this program, you absolutely can become a full time creator. The purpose of this program is to 3 simply get you to understand the platform so you can have the foundation to then grow a channel to your first 1,000 subscribers.

Growing a following is really challenging, there’s no way to sugar coat it. Almost everyone starting a YouTube channel makes terrible content, doesn’t understand the platform, and will spend months toiling away in the YouTube basement getting less than 20 views a video.

Some of the best creators on the platform took years to see results. It took me 5 years before I could monetize my channel. 5 years! I can’t stress it enough. Some creators will have a more difficult path to their first 1,000 subscribers than others. A lot of this game involves luck. Sometimes you catch a break and the algorithm takes your video and sends you 500,000 impressions. Sometimes it may take months before you catch a break.

I want to set your expectations now that this is going to be a challenging journey to your first 1,000 subscribers, but I can’t stress enough how much it’s worth the effort when you finally do start growing. And if you’re able to really grow and turn YouTube into a business, trust me you’ll look back at your first videos and be thankful you put in the effort.

There are going to be upfront costs with starting a YouTube channel. First, you’ll be paying me to show you the roadmap (if you donated or joined the membership groups). You’re also going to have to pay for audio and video equipment, lighting, potentially build out a studio, and for some people, paying to outsource the editing of a video or the thumbnails. No matter what, there are going to be costs. If you aren’t willing to purchase the necessary equipment, then it’s unlikely you’re ready to pursue this career. I’ll guide you throughout the course on the best options for your budget. And if you aren’t ready now, come back to this eBook when you have some money saved up.

Getting to 1,000 subscribers is far from guaranteed. If you aren’t willing to put the work in, you aren’t going to succeed. But I can promise you that you will be fully prepared to become a full time creator following this program.

The Layout of the Course There is a lot of theory in the course for a reason. I want you to understand playing the game of YouTube first. I will also provide many case studies where we analyze real life examples. I want to make it clear that there is never a one size fits all solution. I’m not going to be able to tell every creator exactly what content to make, exactly what titles to use, exactly what thumbnails to use.

I think the best way to become a successful creator is to understand the platform, then understand how to analyze other channels, understand the game, and then be able to implement what you learned with your channel. In some modules, we’ll break down things I’ve done successfully and we’ll analyze other channels. I’ll provide my commentary. But YouTube 4 is always a test ground. It’s a never ending process of trying to figure out what works FOR YOU.

The modules are presented in a linear fashion and are meant to be consumed in order. There will be a couple modules that don’t have any actionable steps and will be more focused on teaching the entire platform, the algorithm, or explaining all of the ways you can monetize on YouTube.

The goal for this program is to simply help you go from 0 subscribers to 1,000 subscribers as fast as possible. I include a lot of theory because I want you to have a really deep understanding of the platform before you begin making any content. Creators who understand how to treat this platform like a business from the start have a much higher probability of success than those who are just uploading videos because they see others making money and they want a piece of the pie.

Throughout this entire program, I’m going to be providing many examples of actual YouTube channels so you can understand the concept I’m teaching with an actual practical example. I think that’s one of the best ways to learn. As I gain more experience mentoring students on growing YouTube channels, I will be updating this course as well.

My Theory on Why This is THE BEST COURSE on YouTube Growth Because I made it. Ha! Go out and make it happen and make this eBook look good, okay?

Module 1: Background & Benefits

Why I Earned This Income

I released my first video on YouTube in the first week of January 2015. I wanted to do something creative outside of my job so I started posting videos. I had been on the platform since 2008 and seriously started considering becoming a creator in 2012 when I saw Vitaly’s “Do You Even Lift, Bro?” video and then the rise of all of the picking up girls channels. I bought a Sony camcorder in 2013 thinking I was ready to make it as a YouTuber. At the time, I was only making $500 a month interning with the Birmingham Barons so it was a big purchase for me. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to go out and make videos nor did I have a partner to film videos with.

Fast forward to 2015 and I wanted to become a fitness influencer. I bought an affordable Canon Rebel T5 for $500 off Amazon. I saw the rise of fitness YouTube channels so I brought my camera to the gym to start filming videos. I edited them thinking I was on my way to becoming a huge fitness influencer. After releasing 24 videos, I didn’t receive much traction attaining maybe 50 views per video at best. It was pretty clear I didn’t have what it took to become a fitness YouTuber.

Around that same time in my personal life, I made a career change to attend a coding bootcamp. I felt it was more important for me to make videos on my coding bootcamp experience because those types of videos didn’t exist when I was trying to make my decision on whether I should attend a bootcamp or not. These videos received a little more traction with one video actually having 1,000 views. I was so amazed. The audio was terrible and the visuals weren’t anything special, but I was able to get 1,000 views! What a success for me at the time.

A couple of times a month someone would email me or add me on LinkedIn saying how much they enjoyed my bootcamp videos and how much it helped them. That felt great being able to produce an amateur video, post it on YouTube, and then have people reach out to me from watching these random videos.

The entire time I was making videos I knew the upside of YouTube and what can happen when you find the magic formula so I stuck with it. When the bootcamp was over and I moved to Las Vegas, I ran out of things to talk about so I paused on making videos. I eventually wanted to start an online fitness and weight loss business. I took a program to become a NASM certified personal trainer, I started a meetup for weight loss, I paid a developer to create an awesome online platform for weight loss and fitness education, and most importantly, I made plenty of YouTube videos. These were posted on another channel that’s been deleted so you won’t find them anywhere.

That venture fell flat on its face. I couldn’t figure the game out. I paid someone to run Facebook ads and they didn’t work. It wasn’t the right time or the right business for me. I built out the entire ecosystem but I didn’t focus on what actually matters: finding paying clients first and then worry about a business.

I was pretty destroyed when I moved on from that business. I put a year of time, energy, and money into something that was a massive failure. I was emotionally destroyed because I felt like this was my way of becoming a business owner and making some money.

Fast forward a year to January 2018 and I wanted to continue making videos for my main channel. It had been almost two and a half years since my previous upload. I was as hungry to make it on YouTube as I’d ever been. I wanted to make personal finance videos as well as videos tracking my progress as a real estate investor. Sometimes I would go a few weeks without posting a video, but I stuck with it. I had a lot of confidence in myself that I would be able to figure it out. My subscriber and view numbers were very low but I knew I’d figure it out at some point. 7

Fast forward to today, and I did figure it out. The reason why I’m earning a good income from YouTube is because I figured out the formula that works for me. It took me five years to gain any traction and hit my first 1,000 subscribers, but I think I can help the new wave of creators cut down their timeline quite a bit. The structure of this program will hopefully give you all of the tools necessary to not have to wait 5 years for your first 1,000 subs.

I’m going to say it all the time, but you have to be willing to consistently post videos and focus on improving in order to succeed on YouTube. Some people may reach my success in six months, some it may take five years. Everyone’s path is different but the end goal can be achieved by everyone.

You Will Succeed My goal is to have 100% of my students succeed so I will provide all of the necessary guidance in order for you to hit 1,000 subscribers and have a positive experience with this program.

Here are the criteria to guarantee success: 1. You follow the strategies introduced in this program 2. You don’t quit 3. You will earn 1,000 subscribers

It is inevitable that you will hit 1,000 subscribers if you have a gameplan from the start which will be provided to you in this program, you produce videos, and you continue to improve with every video released. Let me repeat: It is inevitable that you will turn your YouTube channel into a business if you stick with it.

Nearly every creator who starts a channel thinks there’s too much competition or every niche is too saturated. This is not the right way to think about YouTube. Start your channel knowing you will succeed and now it’s time to prove it. There is a niche for everyone.

Let’s do our first case study and analyze a channel that might blow your mind. Jelle’s Marble Runs is a channel that produces videos of marbles racing. Yes marbles racing. Over 1.2 million subscribers at the time of writing this eBook. 1.2 million people subscribed to a channel with videos of marbles racing. The videos get views too. 102 million lifetime views at the time of writing this eBook. 102 million and that number was achieved in less than 2 years.

Whenever you think there isn’t a niche for whatever it is you want to create, check out channels like this one and remember that there is a piece of the pie for everyone.

The Upside This will be the last section before we get into the inner workings of YouTube, and I want it to serve as motivation for you to complete the course and then begin making YouTube videos.

The upside of YouTube is truly endless. If you treat YouTube like a business from the start, and can consistently improve your content, you can make a really great career on this platform. Here are all of the ways you can benefit from YouTube.

#1: When your channel reaches the criteria to be monetized, then you can start earning revenue from the ads placed on your videos. At the time of writing this eBook, the criteria is 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. When you’re a monetized channel, Google will place ads on your videos, and when people watch the ads or click on them, you get paid.

#2: YouTube viewers are a lead magnet for your business. If you treat YouTube like a business and have a gameplan to monetize off of the platform, all of your videos can bring in thousands of dollars of business. Here are two channels treating YouTube like a business really well: Dr. Joseph Cipriano is a chiropractor and has over 1 million subscribers and each video gets hundreds of thousands of views. A certain amount of people watching his videos will need chiropractor help in his region of the country. Who do you think they call?

The second is a channel for Las Vegas residents needing lawyer assistance. I searched “Las Vegas lawyer” and no specific channel appeared. Here is a perfect example of a lane that is wide open for a huge profitable niche. If someone in Las Vegas is looking for a Las Vegas based lawyer, there is no one here. I use this example because if a Las Vegas based lawyer saw this, he could start creating videos today and be the first result for this search term. How much is each potential client worth to a lawyer?

#3: You may have opportunities to promote other products and get a cut. This is known as affiliate marketing. If there are products that exist that supplement your content and you can help sell those products, then you can earn a commission. This is generally a smaller portion of people’s monthly income, but some creators make boatloads of money on affiliate commissions. Examples of creators making a lot of money from affiliate marketing are the personal finance gurus who earn a commission every time someone signs up on stock investing platforms using their affiliate link.

#4: You can make a lot of money from companies wanting to sponsor your videos. Typically, a creator will be asked to make a fifteen to forty-five second ad during their video promoting a company. Smaller creators can earn $500-$1,000 per video for sponsorship deals. Here are two examples from creators I follow:

In Graham’s video detailing how he bought his Las Vegas home for $0 he has a sponsored segment about signing up for Simplisafe. They pay him a certain agreed upon amount for that segment. The company, product, and ad placement were great because the product fits well within the purpose of the video - home security for a new home.

In this video, Invest with Henry details how he makes over $500 a day and has a sponsored segment with Stash, which is an app that helps investors invest their money.

#5: You will be shocked at the networking possibilities that come with building a YouTube following. People will reach out wanting to connect with you. All it takes is one video. You never know who’s watching your content. So far in my journey, I’ve been able to connect with amazing people all over the country who follow my content. I’ve had numerous successful real estate investors with million dollar portfolios wanting to connect, I’ve joined a mastermind with other YouTubers who make a lot of money, and I’ve made many friends who attend my meetup 12 in town. Not everyone is into socializing and networking, but if you are, YouTube is such an amazing opportunity to network and expand your connection list.

As I was typing this today, I was alerted that Russ the rapper, who’s legitimately famous, tweeted out my video on his Twitter. You never know who’s watching your content. Graham Stephan has posted my video on his Instagram before too. You’re one video away from potentially getting seen by someone you would love to meet.

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#6: Long term upside of creating an ecosystem around you. The benefit of becoming a content creator is people like you. They like your content. They start following your channel. They become immersed with your videos. They like them enough that they’ll watch your ads, they’ll buy your products, they’ll become a customer if you’re running a service based business, or they’ll buy your program. Do not quit. Please do not quit because this is the most enjoyable outcome of being a YouTuber. Monetizing, relationships, and networking.

Module 2: Understanding YouTube

What is YouTube?

YouTube is a content platform for sharing videos. But YouTube is also the #2 search engine in the world. This is important to remember because making content that people search for is what will lead to quick growth, but also sustained growth over time because it’s content people will always be searching for.

YouTube has two major components: one is the browse feature which allows users to scroll on their ‘feed’ looking for the next video to watch. And the other is the search engine. The browse component is built off of your recent search history, your recent interactions with videos, what videos you watch, what videos you like, similar videos to the previous videos you had watched. All of this formulates the feed. The search engine component is built for optimizing your search terms. When you search for “how to invest in real estate”, YouTube wants the best videos for you to appear at the top.

Understanding YouTube

Here’s a screenshot of my feed. The top left video is a song by Kendrick Lamar. The middle video on the top row is of Dan Bilzerian. The top right video is a video about real estate investing. Also in the screenshot is a podcast by Logan Paul, a video about Borat, and a video about Russ. All of the videos you see are presented to me because the algorithm thinks I’m going to be most interested in watching one of these videos next.

If you go through my recent watch history, most of the videos I’ve seen recently are similar to the videos presented to me here. I listened to a Kendrick Lamar song, watched a video about 16 why Dan Bilzerian is going broke, probably watched a Logan Paul podcast, and I made a video about Russ.

User Experience is Priority #1 Always keep in mind that user experience is priority #1 with all of the content you create and every interaction a viewer has with your channel. If you focus on creating the best experience for anyone viewing your videos, then all of the other metrics will grow. Your view counts, your subscribers, your income, your sponsorships, the leads coming into your business. Everything will grow when you keep the customer, aka the viewer of your videos, at the top of your priority list.

Channels grow when audiences like their content. Audiences like when you don’t waste their time and you deliver the content they’re looking for. One of the easiest explanations for why my channel has grown so fast is because I always focus on user experience number 1.

User experience can be increased by doing the following: #1: Getting into the meat of the video immediately. When someone clicks on a video because they’re interested in the title and the first four minutes are not addressing the content, you risk losing a lot of your audience. Many creators make this mistake. Focus on getting into the actual content at the very first second. Audiences will appreciate this.

#2: Keeping your content as short as possible. In my opinion, one of the five best creators on the platform, David Dobrik, makes videos that are exactly 4 minutes and 20 seconds each. No wasted time. Casey Neistat is excellent at this as well. It’s no coincidence that they have two of the biggest followings and engaged audiences on the platform.

At some point a couple years ago, the algorithm shifted to analyze watch time as a main indicator of a video’s quality. When the news broke, many creators began filling their videos with as much fluff as they could reasonably add in order to make ten to fifteen minute videos. Does that strategy work? Sure. But I also think it’s very short term thinking. The goal with YouTube is building a long term channel where audiences will like your videos years after they were released. In a few years, audiences might not appreciate ten minute videos that only have three minutes of real content. It sounds silly but watch enough videos and you’ll be able to see what I mean.

Which ties in to #3.

#3: Refrain from spending minutes asking for likes, hitting the subscribe button, buying your merch, or visiting your patreon. If you want to promote something, it’s best to do so in the middle of the video if it’s a natural fit or at the end of the video when the purpose of the content has already been delivered.

As you’re going to find out later in the course, the number of subscribers you have isn’t that relevant. What’s most important is keeping people watching your video all the way through to the end. At this point, every creator has bombarded your attention demanding likes and subscribes on every video. If consumers like your stuff, they’ll like your videos and they’ll subscribe to your channel. The way the algorithm works, if viewers liked your video or watched long enough, more of your videos will be placed in their recommended, and if your content is good enough, they’ll come back. They’ll keep coming back, trust me.

#4: We’ll cover this in the module about editing videos but you want to edit your videos in such a way that there is no wasted time. Editing a video is crucial with keeping the audience engaged in your content. 18

Module 3: The Algorithm

Breaking the Mystery

The mysterious YouTube algorithm. The all important algorithm. The best way to describe the algorithm is to use some circles. When you upload a video, it will be pushed into the subscriptions area for all of the people who are subscribed to your channel. This feature makes it easier for your subscribers to stay updated with the videos you release.

YouTube has made changes over the years and unfortunately videos released by channels you are subscribed to no longer automatically show up in someone’s feed. I’ll say that again for clarity. Just because you are subscribed to a channel does not mean that creator’s newly released video will show up in your browse feed. Their new video will show in your Subscriptions area but not necessarily in your browse feed, nor is their upload guaranteed to send you a notification, even if they have the bell clicked.

Now why is that? YouTube is always tracking your behavior on the platform. The browse area is meant for showing you the most likely videos that you’ll be interested in next. If you recently searched for a video on how to paint your house and a music video by Michael Jackson, then your feed will shift to have content similar to the house painting videos and similar to Michael Jackson’s music.

The #1 goal of YouTube is to keep you on the platform. The algorithm is built to understand what you will want to watch next based on what you have recently watched. If you haven’t been 19 watching many videos from a specific creator, then their videos will stop showing up in your browse feature. I’ll discuss this later, but this is why subscriber numbers sometimes don’t matter. Now back to the circles.

You release a video and some of your subscribers watch it. If the video hits certain performance metrics, then YouTube will push the video to an audience that is not subscribed to your channel but has a similar profile. They may have similar viewing patterns, maybe they’ve watched one of your videos before, maybe they’ve recently been watching videos about how to buy a car and you just released a video titled “How to buy a car in 2020”.

If certain metrics are reached with this new audience, then YouTube will find another more broad audience. And when I say certain metrics are met, I mean a certain amount of people are clicking on the video, the average watch time for the video is a certain amount, and maybe a certain percentage of people are hitting the like button. No one knows specifics, but this is the general idea.

This is essentially how a video goes viral. A lot of your subscribers watch the video immediately, then the next circle of audience members clicks on the video and loves it, then YouTube pushes the video to a new audience and they love it. And this process continues until you hit a certain level where the people just don’t click on it. This is usually when a video “dies off” meaning the views taper off.

One thing is very clear with the algorithm. The more you upload quality content, the more YouTube will push your videos. Because as more people watch your current videos, a certain percentage of people will come check out your other videos and then your older videos will start showing up in their browse feed until they subscribe or stop clicking. This is how channels can grow quickly. This isn’t rocket science. Consistently release quality content and YouTube will do its best to keep pushing your videos to new audiences.

The downside is this can work the opposite way too. If you start releasing content that isn’t quality or no one seems to like, then YouTube will actually stop promoting your videos and this is how some channels become dead or have terrible engagement. You’ll see channels with one million subscribers only getting 3,000 views. That’s terrible.

Here’s a quick view of the last 90 days on my channel taken on October 25th. All of the little mini spikes are days where I uploaded a video. Since my channel growth has been exponential to this point, basically every time I release a video, all of my numbers spike. On this chart you can see a few spots where I released a great video because the spike is more than normal. My release schedule during this period was one video on every fourth day so I would see a spike on release day and then 2 or 3 days a slight downward trend, and then back up on the next release day.

Competition A very common thought for new creators is that YouTube is too saturated or there’s too much competition. Competition is great on YouTube and here’s why. You want people in your niche making similar content to you. Those channels will actually help bring you views because when consumers are checking out their videos, they’re very interested in the topic that you both are in, and your videos will start popping up in recommended for these new viewers.

The best thing that can happen on YouTube is for a channel very similar to yours to blow up. Because if you are in a similar niche, then your videos will be on the sidebar and in the browse feed for people consuming that channel and you will inevitably grow as well.

This is why one of the most important things to understand with YouTube is that you do not want to recreate the wheel. The blueprint for succeeding in any niche is available if you look. Figure out what is working in your specific niche and add your own twist or make your videos and channel unique to you. That’s the secret sauce. 23

Video Signals

The YouTube algorithm is not a human and there’s no way to evaluate what makes a specific video good. So the algorithm relies on signals from each video. At the making of this video, the two most important metrics right now are CTR and watch time.

CTR is Click Through Rate and is evaluated as a percentage of how often people click on that one specific video when it’s presented to them. If a video’s CTR or click through rate is 3% then that means every 100 times that someone sees that video, it gets clicked 3 times. Titles and thumbnails are what lead to this number being high or low.

Here’s the analytics of my most viewed video at 550k views. The CTR is only 3.4% which is actually pretty low, but the video has nearly 8 million impressions. Think back to the circles example. The video had great numbers with my subscribers and then had great numbers with each subsequent circle which is why I was able to attain over half a million views with a channel that had around only 50,000 subscribers at release.

Watch time is the average amount of time viewers are watching a specific video. Let’s look at the same video’s analytics.

On average, viewers are watching 54.6% of the video which is bonkers. Nearly 40% of viewers are watching the entire video, which is over 11 minutes long. This is why the video has taken off. The video was suggested to newer and newer audiences and people were clicking the video. When people clicked on the video, they were sticking around until at least half of the video was done.

What You Really Want on YouTube

This is a very important section because very few people make the mindset shift of understanding YouTube. Social media is a game of fame, followers, and fortune. Everyone thinks that you need millions of followers to make any money. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Many channels that have over 1 million subscribers do not earn a single dollar from YouTube because their content is not advertiser friendly.

A couple of examples are the Nelk Boys, Steve Will Do It, David Dobrik, and Logan Paul. Their channels are amazing, some of the best content on the platform for pure entertainment. But their audience is incredibly broad. And they all do not earn any money from ad revenue despite tens of millions of views per month.

What you really want on YouTube is to have a very specific and engaged audience. Think about it like this. Let’s use the example of a lawyer in Las Vegas. They have a wide open lane to take over. They may only get 100 views per video, but if their videos are super targeted towards people needing legal help in Las Vegas, then they may have a video with only 100 views but it may land them 3 new clients. If those 3 clients all pay for services, then the lawyer might make tens of thousands of dollars from a video with only 100 views. 25

If you’re selling some kind of coaching or mentorship services, you may only get 3,000 views on a video, but if only a couple of people pay for your services, then that single video made you thousands of dollars. Now imagine putting out a new video every week. The important factor is treating YouTube like a business from the start.

Focus on a very specific audience and making quality content for that audience. Clients will find you. Your ideal audience will find you. Stick with it and don’t quit.

Module 4: What You Really Need

Who Needs Millions of Views

You will learn in the monetization module about CPM, which is the amount advertisers are willing to pay for 1,000 views of their ad. Some niches on YouTube can earn $30 to $50 per 1,000 views of ads on their videos because the content they make is very friendly to advertisers. Some content though is not very advertiser friendly and may only earn $1 for 1,000 advertisement views on a channel’s videos.

There are some channels that need millions of views per month just to earn a median income salary. If your content earns only a $1 CPM, then you’ll need around 5 million views per month just to earn $36,000 per year. 5,000,000 views every single month is really challenging.

This section is helping you understand what creators need millions of views in order to turn YouTube into a full time income. This section is before the module on picking your niche for a reason. Channels that create content in niches that have very low CPM are going to need millions of views just to earn a median level salary. This is why you commonly see creators resort to asking for Patreon support, merchandise sales, or any other form of income off the platform just to be able to make YouTube videos as their full-time income.

Even worse, some channels aren’t even allowed to monetize because their content isn’t considered advertiser friendly. I can’t give you an exact list of niches that aren’t advertiser friendly, but generally any channel dealing with entertainment, vlogs, pranks, picking up girls, personal storytelling, gaming, music, or any channel that relies on copyright material. Channels like these are going to have a difficult time monetizing from ad revenue.

Think about this perspective through the eyes of an advertiser. Advertisers want a specific audience who has income ready to spend on their products or services. Keep this in mind when we reach the section picking your niche.

I’ll give you an example from my channel. I made a video detailing online dating scams which is not an advertiser friendly video. The video has 101,000 views and yet I’ve only earned $36 from the video. The CPM is $6, but I’ve only earned $0.69 from ad revenue. Thankfully viewers with Premium have watched so I earned $35 from them. $36 from a video with 100,000 views in only 109 days. 28

Who DOES NOT Need Millions of Views

Now let’s talk about channels who are really strong with monetization. Channels like personal finance, stock investing, real estate, make money online opportunities, selling on Amazon, entrepreneurship, credit cards, and exotic sports cars to name a few. Any content that is advertiser friendly is going to have a higher CPM.

Let me show you another example from my channel so you can see the difference.

This video only has 5,900 views and is basically a dead video but it’s made $62, almost twice as much as a video with twenty times the amount of views. The CPM is a little over $24. Imagine if this video was put together a little better and had over 100,000 views. That’s how you build a channel that makes a lot of money from ad revenue. 29

If you make content with very high CPM, then you don’t need that many views to earn a full time income just from ad revenue alone. If you happen to find the golden ticket and are able to attain a lot of views while in a niche with high CPM, then that’s how you can start making tens of thousands of dollars per month.

Graham Stephan and MeetKevin are examples of guys making multiple hundreds of thousands each month from ad revenue alone because of their ability to get millions of views and high CPM.

Additionally, the creators who already have a business established off the platform and can turn viewers into customers in their business or with their services, then those creators don’t need millions of views either. Even if you aren’t monetized on YouTube, you can still earn millions by converting followers into customers of your business.

Module 5: The Formula for Success

The Formula

Let me present to you the YouTube Golden Rule: make videos for a specific audience, not for you. This is the biggest mistake new creators make. YouTube is a search engine. I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of the views on YouTube are on videos that start with ‘how-to” or some educational format. People go on to YouTube to either learn something specific or to be entertained. Let me emphasize the YouTube golden rule again: make videos for a specific audience, not for you.

Too many new creators make videos they think people will like. “Hey my family thinks I’m funny, I should do daily vlogs into my interesting life.” or “I’m a great chef, I’ll make boring twenty minute videos making eggs and bacon and think people will click on the video.”

If you want to win on YouTube, then you need to play the YouTube game. When you select your niche, you always need to keep in mind exactly who your audience is. The goal of YouTube is to make content that people are either directly searching for, they will find entertaining and educational, or they will find purely entertaining.

The goal of this program is to get you your first 1,000 subscribers and turn YouTube into a business. Some niches are much more challenging to break through. If you really want to grow on YouTube, then you need to always be thinking about what audience you want to make videos for. The quicker you find your audience and make quality videos specifically for them, the quicker you’ll grow.

Why Subscriber Count Matters We’re run by social media today and follower counts absolutely mean something. No matter what platform you’re on, we all notice how many followers someone has. There’s an inherent value we place on influencers with large followings. The more subscribers you attain, the more influential you appear. Additionally, people are going to be more likely to subscribe to your channel the more subscribers you have.

When you attain certain levels of subscriber counts, then you will attract different levels of attention. Attention can be in the form of sponsorship possibilities, the attention of another creator in your space, or an increased number of networking possibilities with people who find your channel.

The goal should always be to deliver quality content that will lead to high subscriber counts. Typically, having a high subscriber count indicates that the channel makes quality content and is one to follow.

Lastly, having a high subscriber count will lead to solid numbers upon upload of a new video. Just think about it. If you have 10k subscribers, you might have 1,000 views in the first 24 hours of uploading a video. If you have 100k subscribers, you might be able to achieve 10,000 views in the first 24 hours of uploading videos. That scale factor of 10 carries over to views and income too. More subscribers can lead to a lot more views by default which leads to a lot more income.

There’s a concept called view velocity which is how many views you get upon the first 24 or 48 hours of upload. This is one of the ways that the YouTube algorithm checks the quality of a video. If you have a large subscriber base and you’re making quality videos for that audience, then your view velocity will be really high in the first 24 to 48 hours after upload. This tells YouTube that your video is really valuable and it needs to be pushed to more audiences.

Think about this from the YouTube algorithm’s perspective. A channel releasing videos getting 500 views within the first two days of upload is a lot different than a channel releasing videos getting 50,000 views in the first two days. The latter will get a lot more push to non-subscribers compared with the former.

Why Subscriber Count DOESN’T Matter One thing that I please ask of you is to never ask all of your friends or family to subscribe to your channel. Please do not join Facebook groups that are sub-for-sub setups where you subscribe to someone’s channel and they subscribe to yours. This program is about earning your first 1,000 subscribers, but they need to be the right subscribers.

Here’s the reality of YouTube in 2020: subscriber count doesn’t really matter. I’m obviously contradicting myself if you read the previous section, but subscribers don’t matter in the ways you think.

Targeted views are what matter most. If it hasn’t stuck by now, hopefully it will. Your goal is to turn YouTube into a profitable business. You want the right views watching your videos. The right views are people who will watch all of your content, they’ll buy your merchandise, they’ll become customers of your business off platform, or they’ll buy your music or whatever.

You always want to focus on creating quality content for a specific audience. Quality wins out all the time. No matter what. No matter how saturated a niche is, quality content always wins out. The beautiful thing about the YouTube algorithm is it is set up to promote new channels. New channels will always have opportunities to grow. And between me and you, creators love finding the next new star. Trust me. There are still not enough great creators on the platform, there never will be. There is plenty of room for someone if they make quality content that’s uniquely them.

Don’t stress, the views will come if you focus on user experience first and making quality content for a specific audience. And don’t worry, we’ll get into more specifics shortly. 32

There’s a channel named Airrack who’s exploded on YouTube this year. Over the last ten months, he’s grown from zero to nearly 800k subscribers.

James Jani is another channel that’s grown like crazy. He has reached 422k subscribers with only 9 released videos. 33

To hammer this point home even more, check out the analytics of my channel for how many minutes are consumed by subscribers vs. non-subscribers. Over the lifetime of my channel, 83.4% of the minutes consumed are from people not-subscribed to my channel. Yes, 83.4%. Only 16.6% of the watch time on my channel is from subscribers. From what I’ve seen from others willing to share this, most creators are around 80/20, about the same as me. This is average. Most how-to tutorial channels will be even worse as views will come from viewers not subscribed to the channel finding the videos from search.

A lot of channels ask for subscribers at the beginning and end of every video, and I personally just don’t find this to be valuable. People will subscribe if they like your content. I’d argue that adding a lot of subscribers who may not watch your content isn’t beneficial at all.

Your subscribers definitely provide value and you should strive to achieve the highest subscriber number you can reach. There’s no doubt there’s many benefits to achieving high subscriber counts, but don’t focus on it. Focus on quality content for a specific audience and you’ll do great.

Module 6: Monetization

How Monetization Works on YouTube

For this module, we’re just focusing on how to monetize on the YouTube platform. We briefly discussed CPM before so I’ll keep this short.

The way YouTube ads work is there is an auction where advertisers compete for how much they’re willing to pay for certain audiences. If a specific audience is very defined and is likely to have discretionary income, then advertisers are willing to pay more. An example is viewers that consume a lot of content for personal finance, credit cards, and real estate investing. Advertisers are willing to pay more because consumers in those niches generally have a higher income and more disposable income.

Sidenote: You do receive revenue from YouTube premium members because of how the split works with YouTube.

Whereas, channels that are focused on pranks and making entertaining content don’t have a defined audience so advertisers aren’t willing to pay as much. Or maybe they don’t even want to advertise to an undefined broad audience so they back out.

An example would be a local company offering mortgage loan products. They’re going to be willing to spend a lot more money on videos that are real estate related and are local to them. They wouldn’t want to advertise on popular music videos that can be seen from anyone around the world.

Your CPM is dictated by your content and the audience you attract. Ad revenue from the ads playing on your videos is monetization #1.

#2 is from livestream super chats. When you reach a certain level on your channel, you are able to livestream for your audience. I won’t cover this much in this program and maybe I’ll add sections later. When you go live, members can pay for a super chat which is more noticeable in the chat and the purpose is that you will answer their questions directly. View it as a way to get paid directly from the person asking the question.

#3 is from a member area. I do not participate in this and it only becomes available after you reach 30k subscribers.

Module 7: Funnel Building

Funnel

Admittedly, this is not my strong suit so this section will not be about teaching and more about presenting ideas to consider for you and your business.

Everyone’s business and backend is different so what you do is up to you and your specific situation. The title of this program is getting your first 1,000 subscribers, but the main purpose is to turn YouTube into a profitable business. Most likely, a majority of the money you earn will be from other means than YouTube ad revenue.

A few things to consider: #1 should you start an LLC? I have created one to protect me legally and so I can create a business that pays me a w2 salary. But it is a cost and some new creators are better suited spending that money elsewhere. Lastly, very few creators need an LLC for their YouTube channel. Don’t worry about this until you are making six figures as a creator IMO.

#2 go ahead and make sure your website is optimized for traffic. Most of you might not have a website so this doesn’t apply to you, but if you are someone treating YouTube like a funnel to your website, then make sure it’s ready for traffic. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll blow up from the first video, but it’s entirely possible that you’ll receive some traffic and you’ll want to make sure to capture those leads from day one.

#3 is to begin optimizing all of your social media. I’m expecting all of my students to succeed and grow a following. Now would be the ideal time to really think about what you want your brand image to be. When people begin following your YouTube channel, they’re likely to start looking for you on other platforms. You want them to have a positive perception of your brand on every platform. Now is the time to eliminate any old pictures or tweets or posts that may not align with your brand today. If you don’t have any presence on any other social media apps, then now may be the best time to begin creating those profiles.

#4 is to prepare yourself for people contacting you. If you optimize your YouTube channel well, people are going to begin contacting you. If YouTube will be acting like a lead funnel into a website, a program you created, or a service you’ll be providing, make sure those brands are ready to handle traffic and attention. This could mean getting emails established or making sure all of your forms on your website are operating successfully.

Module 8: Picking a Niche

Deciding on a Niche

Hopefully by signing up for this program, you already have a good idea for what your niche is. It’s not mandatory to have your specific lane picked out on YouTube just yet. It wasn’t until my fourth or fifth niche that I found traction. This isn't uncommon either. You may find that your initial niche is good for a few hundred subscribers, but then you find out that you want to make different content and you switch.

I think a lot of new creators struggle selecting a niche because they’re going for the absolute perfect idea they’re passionate about. Here’s a little known secret: when you jump on the YouTube creator train, the goal is to create content for an audience. And you may find that you create amazing content in a niche you never imagined. You may want to make videos talking about the world wars. After a few videos, you realize that the audience wants you to talk about history specific to Japan and tell stories about specific army officers.

For me, my big growth surge happened when I began making videos objectively analyzing the make money online gurus in a series titled Authentic or Charlatan. At some point, I started making videos showing my YouTube analytics, I made videos talking about why your favorite athletes are broke, and the music industry. Completely random. The market will show you what videos to make when you know how to look.

But you do need a starting point. It will be beneficial to have an expected starting point.

One homework exercise for you is figuring out what kind of content you’d like to make and analyzing the best content creators within that niche. Don’t copy them, but you can figure out what works based on their videos and implement the same strategies in yours.

Module 9: The Channel

Profile Picture

I would personally recommend maintaining the same profile picture for all social media accounts. I know it may sound a little conceited or silly, but I view my social media brand the same way I do huge corporations. When someone finds me on another social media app, there’s no question it’s me because I use the same high quality, professional image everywhere.

For most creators acting as a personal brand, I would highly recommend using a well done professional picture as your profile image. No matter what niche you select, you will always be the creator, and you want the brand to stay with you.

For those of you creators that will be treating YouTube strictly for business, then I do think it’s smart to use your logo.

I imagine this will be most of you; if you’re a creator making personal videos but then also have backend funnels to products or services off the platform that are sold within an LLC or business, then I personally would recommend using personal branding for your channel. You yourself will always be the one creating content which is why I think it’s best over the long term to keep the channel name as your personal name.

Sidenote: you can also get creative with your channel name and mix personal name with your creativity. MeetKevin does this excellently as he has a well known name which he uses in his channel name, but it’s also very unique by having the Meet attached in the front.

One of my favorite channels is Coffeezilla. He does not monetize in any way off the platform so this doesn’t really apply, but he’s locked in to that branding name and it’s too late to change. If he ever wanted to sell a product or service in the backend, he would be stuck with his branding name of Coffeezilla. That brand name doesn’t really mean anything because it’s a secondary channel, but he limited himself from creating a backend funnel around anything he himself does using his name and he would be stuck using Coffeezilla.

This isn’t meant as a critique as not everyone wants to treat YouTube like a business, but these are simply thoughts I want you to begin having because now is the best time to make these kinds of decisions.

A friend of mine, Ryan Pineda, has a growing channel and he adds ‘Show’ to the end of his channel name. I personally don’t have an opinion on what is best about adding extra words like Show. That’s more personal preference. I believe the shorter and easier it is to say, the better. That’s why I’m such a huge proponent of just using your name. But the goal is to stand out in any way you can and if you believe you have a solid name for your channel, then go for it.

Channel Banner Art Something you will want to do from the start is create channel banner art.

Here’s my channel about page and banner art. I made mine myself and would recommend hiring someone on fiverr to make yours if you wanted to outsource. The expected cost would be 39 around $20. It’s up to you on the importance you place on your channel art. I think mine is fine and catchy for the niche I’m in so it works for me. Some of you may want a more professional look and it would be worth it to hire someone to design the banner art for you.

Here’s an example of a friend of mine’s channel art (Tom Nash) that I think looks really good.

How you want people to perceive your brand will dictate how much effort you put into your channel banner art. Don’t stress about it or think too much. When you’re just starting out and don’t want to spend any money, you can do something simple like just place text of your name in the middle and deal with it later.

Writing About Section

I don’t have an exact formula for writing the best About section on YouTube. I also don’t have any data on how many people actually click on my About section, but I do it to other channels when I’m analyzing their content and trying to figure out if it’s a channel I want to subscribe to. So I think it’s important to spend some time crafting the message you want to potential subscribers.

Let’s analyze mine. I give a simple description of the types of content I make and then I provide a passive sales pitch by mentioning my two mentorship programs. And I end it with something personal, my favorite quote. This is probably a pretty solid formula. A one or two sentence elevator pitch on what content you create, maybe a passive sales pitch for what you can offer to people following the channel, and add something personal at the end.

If you scroll down to the bottom, you can see all of the links to my social media accounts. I think it’s smart to add all of your social media links to your YouTube account so they appear here.

Creating an Email Hopefully you already have an email established to use specifically for your YouTube account. Now would be the time to consider either keeping your personal email as your contact email or creating a separate email solely for YouTube inquiries. No matter what size your channel, people will find your email located on the About page in the business inquiries section and contact you.

Links

Creating an account: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/161805?hl=en&ref_topic=9267674

Manage Your Channel’s Basic Info: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2657964?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop& oco=0

Manage Channel Branding: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2972003?hl=en-GB 42

Module 10: Equipment

Video

How much do you want to spend? That is the question you will have to ask yourself. The good thing is that nearly all creators start off with inexpensive video equipment and make it work. I used a Canon Rebel T5 that I bought for $500 many years ago to get to 90k subscribers. Recently, I purchased a Canon eos M50 for around $650 and the quality is a huge upgrade. There are more levels to “quality” if you’re willing to spend money.

Keep in mind what is expected for your niche. Expectations really dictate people’s perception of your equipment. The first video to take off to 100k views was a video I made sitting in a private study room in my local public library. The audio is not good, the visuals are terrible. But people liked the content and subscribed. Plenty of the videos that I released as my channel was growing had terrible studio setup and people subscribed.

If you’re making videos presenting yourself as a professional photographer, then you better make sure the video quality is high. Additionally, if your content is talking about becoming a millionaire and you’re using $500 camera equipment, the audience may be a little thrown off.

There’s something relatable about a creator making great content on a budget. People feel like they can relate and are closer to the creator than someone with a $10,000 production budget.

What camera equipment should you buy? If I were you, I would go to your local camera store and have a professional help you. I don’t want to tell you a specific camera that does not fit your needs.

If you’re going to make videos in your bedroom or in your house, then stick to something simple to start. Your budget should be around $800-$1,000 for a camera body and a nice lens. You’ll get a camera nice enough to take you to 100k subscribers. And if you get in the $700 range for a camera, you can rely on the stock lens for now.

If you want to go super budget friendly, then you can do what I did and buy a Canon Rebel T5 or T7 for $500. It’s plenty good enough to get started.

If you’re willing to spend money to have a high end camera, then I’d recommend making sure your studio setup is A+ as well. You don’t want to waste a really expensive camera if your background setup is not ideal.

Here’s a link to a blog post detailing the best cameras for vlogging. This will give you some ideas for what to consider when selecting a camera. https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/buying-guides/best-cameras-for-vlogging

Here’s a link to an article detailing the best drones for beginners if you’re interested in adding a little flair to your videos. https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/buying-guides/the-best-drones-for-beginners

One thing I would not recommend is using your webcam or iPhone. If you’re going to take this endeavor seriously, then you’ll need to invest in a camera.

One final note: some channels create content where the creator’s face isn’t shown. Plenty of my first videos in the Authentic or Charlatan series were without my face at all so I technically didn’t even need a camera. A lot of channels are faceless for a myriad of reasons. Keep this in mind if your niche will be storytelling and video essays where your face won’t be in the frame.

Audio I use the Audio Technica AT2020 USB+ mic, a generic pop filter, and I have a stand as well. The mistake I made was I purchased the wrong stand to match with the microphone. One recommendation I have is to buy the complete kit for your audio which would be microphone, pop filter, and stand to make sure they all connect together. This isn’t too much of an issue as no one even notices, but it would be a little easier on me to have selected correctly from the start.

The expected price range for good audio will be up to $200 if you want to stay budget friendly. My total setup was $150 to $180 I believe. You can find options that are a little less expensive though. If you’re tight on budget, then expect to pay $50 to $100 for audio equipment.

If you plan on making videos in public and out of your house, then you will need to get an external microphone that plugs into your camera. The Rode microphone is what you will typically see on YouTuber’s cameras. The expected cost of this would be $50 to $90.

If you want to add another layer of sound improvement to your studio setup, then you may consider buying foam sound panels which will cost another $50 to $100 to provide a background and help with audio. This is not necessary. I will add that it does help with your background if you are in your bedroom and have a blank wall behind you. It gives the appearance that you’re in a professional studio.

I’m not an expert so I would recommend going to your local Guitar Center or audio store and making sure to buy the correct product. Audio is much more important than the camera so you’ll want to make sure to get what will work for you. Going with a budget friendly camera for $500 and then spending $200 to make sure you have nice audio is what I did and worked well for me.

Editing Software

We’re treating YouTube like a business and you will want professional editing software. You can get by on free editing software if you have great video footage and you don’t need any editing. But almost all YouTubers are going to want some form of professional editing software to add cool edits into your videos to keep the audience engaged.

Here are your options: #1 I use Final Cut Pro X for Mac. $300 one time expense. I would highly recommend this product if you have a Mac.

#2 is Adobe Premiere Pro. This is subscription based and costs $21 per month or if you want the whole Adobe suite, it will cost you $53 per month.

Before we get to number three, I find the first two to be the best options for all creators. When you’re first starting out, it’s likely that you’ll need some help with editing and you’ll turn to tutorial videos on YouTube. Final Cut and Premiere have the most tutorial videos I’ve seen so that’s something to keep in mind.

I’m going to provide a link for you to check out a blog post detailing the best paid and non-paid video editing softwares for YouTube creators. https://www.creativebloq.com/buying-guides/best-software-for-editing-videos-for-youtube

Since I haven’t personally used anything other than Final Cut Pro X for my Mac and CyberStudios from my HP laptop days, I can’t speak on anything else recommended in the blog post. It doesn’t hurt to start with a free software and see how you like it before paying money for another tool.

At some point, you will most likely need to purchase a professional editing software because you want your videos to be the best they can be from the start.

Lighting Many makeup and up close video content creators will typically use a ring light. On Amazon, you can find many options for under $100.

I personally used two umbrella lights aimed at my face in such a way to prevent any glare. You can find umbrella lighting kits on Amazon for under $100 as well.

Lighting is really important and please do not make videos using your ceiling light that produces a yellow image on your videos. It looks really amateur and is going to be difficult to make your videos appear professional. Can you grow with any lighting? Of course. But the goal is to make your videos stand out from the first release so the $100 you spend on lighting is worth the money.

If you need assistance with lighting, there’s going to be plenty of YouTube tutorial videos and blog posts describing what type of lighting you will need.

Here’s a good tutorial on lighting for small creators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXe3rEWrDVg

What I use now (and highly recommend) is adjustable LED lights found on Amazon and a standalone warm LED lightbulb.

Studio setup

If you’re going to be making videos in your bedroom or living room aka your new creator studio, then you will want to figure out what type of background you will want.

When my channel was first growing, the background was the cheap curtains I was using to cover up my window because I was in my bedroom. This looks very amateur. Unfortunately, at the time of producing those videos, this was all I had. I was still able to grow so it can happen. But if I was trying to promote myself as a success story or promoting a business that I ran, then I don’t think people would have bought in.

This is why many of my first videos were audio only and did not include visuals of me. I was insecure about my setup and did not want anyone to see it.

Start analyzing your favorite YouTubers backgrounds and figure out what you want yours to look like.

Here’s two I really like and can be replicated with minimal cost.

This is Chandler David Smith’s backdrop. He talks about real estate and investing.

Here is Ryan Pineda’s backdrop who talks about real estate and investing as well.

If you check out the makeup tutorial channels, you can see that nearly all of them are in their bedroom, which works for that niche. Anything more professional may actually not fit in with the content of that niche. 49

Here’s my new setup that was reasonable on the wallet. Much more professional looking. I was able to reach 90k subscribers before making this change, but I would have loved to have had this setup when I was first starting.

Module 11: Organization Mastery

Behind the Scenes

I love Google Drive. I love how easy it is to maintain a clean and easy to navigate folder structure. I am also a very organized person. The purpose of this module is to show you how I maintain my organization for YouTube. You do not need to copy this model but you’ll see a few different ways how I save a lot of time and energy with using Google Drive.

Here is a look at my complete Google Drive. Here are all of my major folders for everything I have going on. We’re going to check out my YouTube folder so you can get an idea of how I organize everything YouTube related.

Within the main YouTube folder, I have three sub-folders. Let’s head into the Descriptions folder. I personally really dislike typing out descriptions for every single video I release so I created templates. Each individual Google Document represents a different type of video I release. I have many different types of videos I release, some are in a series called Authentic or Charlatan, some are about the music industry. Let’s look at the Description for the music industry.

These templates are huge savers of time and energy. When you release videos, the last thing you want to do is type out all of these links and this template with every single video. I think these templates are solid too with all of my social media links and links to popular videos. I also include a link to my book list Google sheet because a lot of people asked for it. We’ll cover Descriptions more in-depth later.

Back to the sub-folders section. Let’s go into the Future Posts folder.

Here are more folders delineating all of my content into the specific folder. I’m always thinking of ideas for videos. Whenever I have just a small idea for a video, I’ll create a Google document and place it in one of these folders. Let’s dive into the real estate folder.

This was back a long time ago when I was still thinking of making a lot of real estate related content. Every time an idea would be created in my mind, I would immediately come here and create a document to save that idea. Humans can be very forgetful. Let’s click on one of these documents.

Whenever I create the document, I will always include whatever sparked my idea juices so that when I go back to that document, I can be put back into the frame I was in at that moment. This specific document is just a news article. Sometimes, I’ll even include a note to myself.

Let’s try another document. Let’s click on “Should You Buy a House in 2020?”

In this document, I have an entire outline created. When I had the thought of creating the video, I wanted to capture everything going on in my mind at the time. Here’s the result. Obviously this was more than just a single thought, but it’s worth the time to get everything in writing whether on a screen or piece of paper whenever you have a great video idea down. You never know, it could be the video that helps your channel blow up.

Now let’s check out the In-Progress folder.

Here are all of the videos that I need to make ASAP. Clearly there are a lot in progress. And sometimes I’ll go back through the list and realize I don’t really want to make a video on a certain topic and I’ll just delete it. Whenever I release a video and am ready for my next one, I generally head straight to this folder and decide on what video I’m in the mood to make.

So that’s my complete Google Drive. I would highly recommend focusing on being very organized with your system for creating videos. Don’t feel the need to copy exactly what I’m doing. But it does work for me and you can see that my system is very organized. I save a lot of time and energy with the descriptions, and I always make sure to capture great video ideas as they come to mind.

Module 12: Secret to Gaining Views

The #1 Secret to Guarantee Views

Here’s a quick little secret for generating the best topics to talk about. Go to YouTube. Think of some general keywords or phrases of topics you want to talk about. Type those words or phrases into the search box and you will see the topics that are most important to viewers right now. What you are seeing are the search queries for those keywords. Let’s do a couple of examples.

My buddy wanted to make a video on dividend investing. Let’s search for that term within YouTube. The phrases that you see are what people are searching for. YouTube is basically giving you the guide on what videos to make.

Second phrase is ‘dividend investing robinhood’ so maybe a great title would be “Dividend Investing: Robinhood or StockApp”. Next option is dividend investing for beginners. I think a title could be “Is Dividend Investing for Beginners? | The Truth”.

This list could provide five to twenty different video ideas for you.

Let’s look up another keyphrase for the creators wanting to break into the makeup space.

I don’t know anything about the makeup niche, but I can quickly come up with ten to twenty topics right now that would guarantee me views.

Let me also set expectations. Just by utilizing this strategy does not mean you are guaranteed to go viral from day one. It’s unlikely to happen. The reason you use this strategy is because YouTube is a search engine just as much as it is a platform for entertaining content. You won’t rank at the top for these exact phrases from the start, but these topics are what people are searching for and clicking on right now.

When those viewers are done watching a video by a larger channel, your video may get recommended as the next video those viewers should watch because the YouTube algorithm is seeing your video as being very similar. You aren’t going to go viral right away. But if you’re constantly making videos that people are searching for, of course they are going to subscribe. Because you are making the exact content that they are searching for and most likely need to watch.

You also need to make sure your content delivers and it’s high quality or else no one will subscribe. This is assuming that when people watch your content, they’ll like it. If you use the strategy I just shared, it’s entirely possible that you start getting a few hundred views per video right from the start. And it’s also another reason why you should treat YouTube like a serious business from the start.

Don’t Marry Your Niche

Hopefully you’re able to pick the perfect niche right as you start your YouTube career. For those of you treating this like a business or funneling viewers into your services off of the platform then 60 this section won’t really matter much to you. For most of us, this is a very important section to understand.

You may start off your career making fitness videos thinking you’re going to be the next big thing in the fitness world. Or you may start in the niche of talking about the history of politics in America. What is most important in your career on YouTube is that you make quality content for a specific audience. Your focus should always be creating quality content for the marketplace.

You may find that people aren’t really clicking on your fitness related videos, but they love your cooking videos where you talk about fitness during the preparation process. If the market is telling you hey we will click and watch these types of videos but we won’t click on those other types of videos, then it would be very strategic of you to listen to the audience.

I’ve danced around many niches before finding that people loved how I analyzed gurus and make money online marketers. So I made some more videos around that content and it was clear that people really liked that content.

I’ll preach it all the time. Start super focused on a very specific niche. When you find that niche and start to grow an audience, you can then grow more broad. Since the initial growth spurt, I’ve maintained a central theme to my channel, but a lot of my videos are very different content than the make money online gurus.

Start with a niche and make the best videos you can. But if the market is telling you that a certain type of video you make is what they want to see or are searching for, then it’s in your best interest to keep producing those videos.

Becoming a Content Creator There’s a mental shift every new creator needs to go through in order to succeed on this platform. Becoming a content creator. You are creating. You are taking nothing but an idea and turning it into a piece of media that has visual and audio elements that can either tell a story, explain a theory, entertain, tell jokes, or just film yourself going to the gym.

The world needs creatives. The world has also shifted. TV is no longer what it was. Newspapers and how people consume news has changed. People legitimately turn to YouTube for their news, their entertainment, how to fix their house, how to solve complex math problems, or listen to music. YouTube is the ultimate platform. It has everything you want.

Your job is to create content that people want to consume and will enjoy. Any time you have an interesting idea, write it down. It could make for a great video. Everytime you hear someone struggling with a problem, consider if it’s valid enough to make a video on it.

I would suggest spending time on YouTube analyzing what videos show up in your browse. What types of videos are getting a lot of views. What topics are people talking about? If you’re skilled in analyzing presidential related news, then maybe you become a news anchor channel.

The goal of every creator is to figure out what’s working in your niche, make those kinds of videos with your own unique twist. Everywhere you go, the world opens up for possible content. Maybe you film yourself driving to work. Maybe you take videos of the beach by your house. Maybe you take videos of you complimenting strangers. Anything and everything becomes possible, the only thing holding us back is our creativity.

This is a muscle, the content creator muscle, that will develop over time. You’ll understand when you start putting out videos. You’ll start reading an interesting news story on Reddit or Google news and you realize that you can add a very interesting perspective so boom there’s your next video idea.

To summarize, work on growing the creative muscle and always looking for your next video idea. Some of my best and most viewed videos were sparked from reading a comment on one of my videos. I’ve had plenty of video ideas come to me in the most random of times. Make sure to write them down when they do arrive in the idea center of your brain.

Google Trends to Explode Channel I have not used this tactic, although I think it’s really smart to do when you’re a small channel. Full disclosure, this is not my idea. I learned this method from Sean Cannell with Think Media who does an excellent job teaching creators how to grow their YouTube channels. I will provide the link to his YouTube video explaining how to use Google Trends to analyze the trends of keywords or phrases. The theory is that you can see when a keyword or phrase is trending and ride the wave by making a video on the topic. He calls it trend surfing.

I want to give full credit to him, so check out his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw95Ip89kIA

Module 13: Producing a YouTube Video

How to Write a Script

I spent a lot of time researching and writing my script. To me, my script is what has helped my channel explode more than anything else. It is the magic behind the scenes that creates a majority of the finished product. The script’s value is in creating a story, condensing a video into its most important elements, and assisting the creator with keeping the video organized.

One thing you can only improve with experience is writing your script or producing your video with editing already in mind. Unfortunately there’s no exact magic sauce I can feed you where you’ll understand what I’m saying from day one. Over time, you’ll discover little tricks to use during the writing of the script and producing the video to cut down your time editing.

This section will show you how I write a script and research for a video, but the main goal is for you to see little tricks I use to make my process of video production very smooth. There are some creators who just make videos and worry about the editing when that time comes. Then there are creators who already have the editing in mind and will create around that or in ways to make that process easier.

When I am researching, I keep extensive notes in the document for that video. When I find something interesting from a video or a source online, I make very specific notes and I add the source. Let’s check out the script for one of my popular videos on “Why Uber Drivers are Getting Scammed”.

I always leave the source. If the source is a video, I’ll timestamp the exact locations where the important or relevant quote came from.

In some instances, I’ll include the reasoning for saving that media to remind myself what the importance of that specific media is.

When I research for a video, I do a deep dive down every rabbit hole imaginable. I watch ten interviews, I analyze LinkedIn, I go through their website, I read blog posts about them. In some cases, like the music industry videos, I’ll go down rabbit holes just to better understand the world I’m researching. This is the level of research I do for videos. When it’s time to write the script, I’m usually well prepared enough to basically write the script off the top of my head. So I do.

While I’m writing the script, I’ll reference some of the media that I had saved as a reminder for something that may be worth adding in. After I have the script written, I’ll go back and add relevant media to the clips.

In the Uber video, you can see where I have my speech portion and then I have the specific clip used to supplement what I was talking about. I have the specific timestamp which makes it loads easier when editing the video. It only takes you having to go back through an entire video or interview to find that specific quote once to never want to do it again.

Here’s the script for my video “Kanye West vs The Record Industry” where I analyzed the music contracts Kanye released on his Twitter. I’m using this to show you a slightly different example.

In this video, I read from the contracts a lot. In order to remember exactly where I was reading from because I knew when I was editing the video I was going to show a screenshot from that position in the contract, I made sure to recognize exactly where I was in the contract. You see Section 6 - advances. This reference makes the editing process much simpler and easier.

Now I will show you the script for my Authentic or Charlatan episode on Graham Stephan because this was fifty videos ago and you can see the progress.

Some of you may want to make videos that are audio only and then you use other people’s content. I had all of my audio files saved in numbers so the editing process would be easy and I’d know exactly where to match up the audio with the script. The titles of the videos are above the section where I would be using clips from that video but I do not have timestamps. This is an example of a video where everything was done and I had an idea for how I wanted the video to look, but I was going to do most of the heavy work when editing.

If you want to get into the finer details of writing a script, let’s have a quick discussion. People love storytelling. People love a simple structure of beginning, middle, and conclusive end. People love when you make claims and then use outside sources to back it up.

What I’m always thinking about when writing the script is telling a story, presenting an idea, or helping the audience reach a conclusion about a topic. I’m always thinking about the audience. Remember how I said user experience should always be priority #1? I’m always thinking if I’ve 66 conveyed a point well enough, if something I’m saying needs more research, or if I’m dragging too long without saying anything of importance.

I’m always doing my best to move the story along at a consistent pace. Sometimes, I cut out a lot of content simply because I don’t think it’s necessary for the video. I think storytelling always does well in every medium. How can you tell a story with your content? How can you always have a clear beginning, middle, and end? I think those are important questions to ask with every piece of content.

One thing you want to keep in mind is the audience’s attention span. What can you do to consistently keep them engaged? One thing I pride myself on is having audiences engaged for long periods of time on my channel. It’s not a coincidence that my channel has grown a lot and I’ve had many videos go over 100k views for a small channel.

Here’s the analytics for my most recent release as of October 26th.

These are the analytics for my video titled “Part 3: Why Your Favorite Musicians are Broke”. The average watch time is 5 minutes and 39 seconds for a video that’s nine minutes and 1 second long. The average watch time is 61.7% which is bonkers. But most importantly is look at the chart for how long viewers stayed on the video. That’s a very linear line.

Right before the end screen, I had 51% of viewers make it until the end of the video. That’s ridiculous and something that every creator strives for. It’s really challenging keeping viewers on your video until the end.

I’m very happy to see these numbers and I stress this segment so much because I want you to care about your audience as well. If you can make videos that keep people engaged throughout the entire video, it’s inevitable that you will grow. This is why I stress to keep videos as short as possible. Trust me, it is much more long term thinking and a long term benefit to keep audiences engaged throughout your entire videos. YouTube really cares about watch time and the algorithm really cares about the length of time viewers are spending on your videos.

How to Film Your Video

I use a tripod that came with my camera when I purchased it on Amazon. Everyone will have different strategies of filming. Most people create content that revolves around them sitting somewhere in their house and filming. Some people are going to go outside and film.

I’m not an expert on using a camera so this section will not be educating you on becoming the next Martin Scorcese, but there are just a couple quick points I want to make.

I’ve released a couple videos recently where my face was not in focus and people commented recognizing this. This is not something I would recommend. Understand your camera well enough to know how to put your face in focus. If you’re buying a more high end camera that has auto focus then you should be fine. Keep this a priority though because you want people to 68 think highly of your content when they come across it and having small errors like that could keep someone from subscribing.

Lighting is probably going to be something that most people aren’t experts at. I would definitely recommend upgrading your lighting to make it look professional. Yes, some channels have huge view and subscriber numbers with terrible lighting. But the goal is to optimize your channel from the start.

If you are someone who will be filming outside, make sure to keep in mind to have quality lighting on your face when you speak or produce content. Some videos I’ll stop watching if it’s hard to see the person or if the video quality or lighting quality is poor.

How to Edit Your Video You may want to consider looking into a subscription for editing templates. I use Envato Elements and it makes life significantly easier when editing videos. The monthly cost is easily worth it as using Envato saves me so much time and energy and looks really professional.

I also subscribe to Epidemic Sound for my sound effects and background music. I would highly recommend checking out services for both.

Outsourcing

The only outsourcing I have done is for a couple of thumbnails. I have never outsourced for video production or editing so unfortunately I’m unable to give you first hand experience for those elements.

I was referred to someone on fiverr to do the thumbnail creation. He charged $10 per thumbnail and promised delivery within 24 hours. Adding the fiverr fee, it was $12 total per thumbnail.

I liked his thumbnails but I usually have a video complete and I’ll do the thumbnail right before scheduling the video to be released. Having to wait 24 hours kind of threw my process off a little. And $12 per thumbnail adds up. And I honestly love creating thumbnails now. To me it’s like a fun game. If you can gain the skill of creating click worthy thumbnails, then you will grow on YouTube no doubt.

Honestly, the best education I received was from someone who randomly sent me thumbnails that I should have been using for older videos. He emailed me the thumbnails and I used them because they were way better. Remember, I told you you never know who’s watching and who will be willing to help out.

Some creators have a full time editor that edits every video. Some people have a cameraman following them around. It’s up to you how much you want to spend. I’m guessing most people 69 watching this will be doing everything themselves. The goal is to turn your channel into a profitable business so you can outsource if your content is viable for it.

The benefit of a mentorship program and community is the constant feedback on thumbnails and titles.

Module 14: Copyright Issues

For those of you who plan on creating 100% original content, then this does not apply to you. For those of you who may be using media someone else created to support your video, there’s a very important distinction between copyright claims and strikes. Copyright claims happen when you use someone else’s material and the YouTube ID system tags it and notifies you that you have copyrighted material in your content. You are unable to monetize because any ad revenue will go to the owner of the copyrighted material, but you are still able to release your video.

If you don’t have to have this material in the video, I would consider deleting that piece of media and uploading the video again. If the material is needed, then you may just need to bite the bullet and accept that you can’t monetize on that video.

Now on to copyright strikes. Copyright strikes are brutal and should be avoided at all costs. When you receive a copyright strike, it means the original creator has sent a claim to YouTube that you were using their copyright material. If true, then you will be given a copyright strike. If you receive three copyright strikes, your channel will be removed. So please take these seriously. The good thing with YouTube is that the strikes only last 90 days. If you receive a strike and then don’t receive another strike until 91 days later, your channel still only has one strike.

Here’s an example of an active copyright strike:

I’m not a lawyer so I will not be explaining fair use, but it would be wise to spend some time researching fair use to protect yourself if you plan on using other people’s media. 71

Module 15: Metadata on Upload

Intro

YouTube goes through changes with their metadata because they’re always searching for the most optimal way to understand what content is released, how people interact with the content, and how to evaluate the content of every video.

YouTube metadata is all of the “data” that you provide to YouTube for a specific video. Everyone has a different way of going about what you’ll be seeing in this section. I feel like it’s more appropriate to walk you through what I do and show you how the system works and leave it to you for how you want to do things.

The scenario is you just uploaded a video to YouTube.

Description We’re going to look at the video details for my video titled “Part 3: Why Your Favorite Musicians are Broke”. The title and thumbnail will be discussed in the next module. I’ve always valued the description box and the space within it. Some people don’t enter much of anything in the description box and I think that’s a waste of an opportunity.

This is one of the signals you send YouTube so the algorithm can get a good idea of what your video is about. I enter a detailed description of what the video is about and I certainly use as 72 many keywords as possible. Keywords are important words or phrases that you want the algorithm to know. Just think of keywords as words or phrases that you want people searching for.

If I’m not in the mood to write the description, sometimes I’ll just copy and paste important sections from the script.

Below the paragraph or two detailing what the video is about, I’ll add in sections for links to my social media accounts and other popular videos. I don’t have any data on if this works as well as you’d think, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. I do think you can add too much to your description and so you may be better off adding a comment to the video and pinning it to the top if you want more people to see.

If you’re considering doing longer form content or podcasts and feel that it would be better for the audience to know when certain topics are talked about, you can add chapters to your video. I’ll provide the link here for accessing the documentation: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9884579?hl=en

End Screen I have a subscription to TubeBuddy so my end screen may be a little different than yours, but the elements are still the same. The end screen functionality offers you the ability to add elements on the screen for the viewer to see at the end of the video. What you’ll typically see is the channel thumbnail with the chance for the viewer to hit the subscribe button as well as the thumbnail for another video or two.

I’ll quickly touch on cards here. I think it’s a waste of time to mess with them. I’ve checked my analytics and no one ever clicks on cards. I’m talking maybe one or two clicks on a video with tens of thousands of views. I would recommend not even worrying about adding cards in your videos. If you really want to add a reference to another video, mention it in your content and place it at the top of the description text.

The theory of an end screen is that a viewer watched the entire video, this will give them the opportunity to watch another video by the creator or subscribe if they liked the content enough. This is just another way to optimize your channel. Some people don’t use end screens. Some people do. It will be up to you.

I personally add a black screen for 10 seconds at the end of every video and then add thumbnails for two videos. One of the videos I’ll select the option “best for viewer” and the other video will be the playlist of whatever video I posted. In this instance, the video is in the Music Business playlist so I’ll select Music Business playlist. If someone watched this entire video, then it would make sense to offer them similar videos.

Playlists I have loved playlists since I started creating on YouTube. I think it’s smart to create playlists with the release of your first video. People want to tune in to series. This is the entire premise of television. This is Netflix. A series of entertainment broken up by episodes. As you grow, you’ll find that people enjoy going back and watching every video in your series in sequence. Yes it happens. And if your series is good, a lot of people will love doing that. 74

I continually create new series as I find videos that work. Keep in mind that people love tuning in to something that brings excitement for what’s next. I’ve been showing the analytics for “Part 3: Why Your Favorite Musicians Are Broke. That’s a series in itself and I’ve received a lot of great comments indicating that people love the episodes.

One thing to keep in mind when you’re creating content is if you can turn a long video idea or concept into a series. Think about a video topic that might be twenty to thirty minutes as a single video. It may actually be more strategic to break it up in two or three parts to keep the videos shorter, more precise, and giving you the ability to sell to the audience that more of this content will be on the way.

Think about consuming content from the viewer’s perspective. If they watch a video and really enjoy it and then at the end you notify them that there will be another episode coming next week, they will be much more likely to subscribe then if you just give them the generic template of “hit the subscribe button if you like the content.”

Here’s an example of all of my playlists at this time.

Scheduling Video

Having the ability to schedule videos in advance is a huge feature for YouTube.

When you upload the video, there’s a component that allows you to pick the state of the video. When you upload, the video will be set to private by default. The unlisted state allows for anyone with the link to the video to view the video but it will not be posted for public consumption. A video set to private will not be seen by anyone, even if you have the link. The members only option is a feature when your channel hits a certain number of subscribers and you want to release only to those paying for members only access.

Scheduled allows you to set the exact time and date that you want your video to be released. Some creators who outsource a lot of their work will film a week’s worth of videos in one day, send the videos to their team, their team will batch edit and upload, and then schedule all of the videos for release at a consistent rate.

What I do is finish a video and then schedule for release the following day. Within the YouTube analytics tab, you can see when your subscribers are online the most, which for me is around 7am. I typically finish videos at night and then schedule for the next morning. It’s such a great feature because when you have the release scheduled, you don’t have to remember to change the state to public, it happens automatically.

Monetization

The goal is to have everyone watching this reach the monetization requirements and start to make money.

The display ads are always selected. I only select skippable and non-skippable ads. If the video reaches the requirement to allow you to place mid-roll ads, then I just select auto. YouTube knows what’s best for the viewer and I trust the system.

The one thing to keep in mind is that if you post a long video, 30 minutes or longer, then you may want to check the auto roll. I uploaded a video once and received a couple negative comments after upload about how many ads there were. I then went into this widget and found that there was an ad auto populated every couple of minutes on a video that was 60 minutes long. That’s terrible user experience and the only time that auto mid roll ads weren’t ideal.

Tags I have seen interviews where YouTube employees who work on the algorithm say that tags are pretty much irrelevant. I don’t treat them like they’re irrelevant, but I would recommend not spending much time on tags.

Definitely fill in the tags section with as many tags as you can and also make sure that they’re applicable to the video.

Module 16: Titles & Thumbnails

Tabloid News

I hate to admit it, but thumbnails and titles are basically tabloid news. You know the magazines that you see at the checkout aisle that are demanding you to pick up and open the copy? They have your attention for a split second and do whatever they can to get your attention and raise your curiosity just enough to purchase. Because you have to know why some celebrity MIGHT BE cheating on another celebrity or YOU WON’T BELIEVE who she was eating dinner with last night.

As much as I hate to admit it, YouTube is a game of doing your absolute best to grab someone’s attention in a split second and raising their curiosity just enough to click. Thankfully, there is a really low barrier to get someone to become a potential customer of yours. You don’t need anyone’s money like the magazines do. All you need them to do is click on your videos.

How you get their attention and earn their click will be discussed in this module.

How to Improve Admittedly, I was terrible at thumbnails when I first began on YouTube. Most everyone is. I find that most beginners fall in two camps: either a) they just make a terrible thumbnail that looks really amateur or b) they fill up the thumbnail with every bit of information in the video.

Creating thumbnails is a never ending process of improving. You’ll never be perfect. But if you improve, you can be good enough to receive enough attention to turn YouTube into a full time career.

One thing I do all the time is browse through YouTube and analyze what thumbnails get my attention. Become fully present of your attention. Become aware of exactly where your eyes go and your perception of what you’re looking at. I’ll generally put headphones on with some enjoyable tunes and I’ll browse through YouTube for twenty minutes. Analyze what thumbnails and titles grab your attention.

You should analyze the use of text or the decision to not have text. What color is the text? Where is the text located? What image is used? Are there any edits to the original image? Do the images have any background or are they lined with an outline? Why do some people use arrows or emoji’s in their thumbnail? When people use an arrow, why is it pointing where it’s pointing?

Take notice of what grabs your attention. I then look at the views. If a video has 1 million views and the channel only has 200k subscribers, then that thumbnail and title killed. This sounds obsessive, yes, but this is the level of obsession that I want all of my students to have. 80

Keep in mind that everyone has a different style. What’s awesome about YouTube is you can always be testing. You may find that your niche and your channel is best to have no text in the image. Sometimes just an image of a celebrity is all that’s needed. If your brand gets big enough, then sometimes just an image of you is enough to get 1 million views.

I found that the best thumbnails I make are very simple. A nice clean image with very little text and sometimes an arrow pointing to something.

I also use www.remove.bg for my thumbnails. You can upload an image and their service is removing the background from the image. If you notice some of my better performing videos have thumbnails where the subject is without a background. The service costs $9 per month and is worth 10x that easily.

Here are examples of thumbnails where I have the subject without a background.

Module 17: YouTube Analytics

Analytics Studio

You can torture yourself analyzing all of the YouTube data within the YouTube Studio app. I would recommend only analyzing a couple of key metrics to ensure that what you're doing is either working or not working.

I generally wait to check a new video’s performance until at least 2 hours after the video was released. I’m most interested in hitting one number: 10% views to sub ratio within 48 hours of upload. If the newly released video hits 10% views to current subs ratio within 48 hours, then the video is a good performing video. If the video is around 20% views to subs ratio, then it is a video that will perform really well. If the video does not reach 10% views to subs ratio, then it is a video that was not watched or many people did not care about the video.

The importance in analyzing the data is figuring out what videos work for your channel and which ones do not. If you analyze my channel, you can see that I am always trying new videos. I have had videos bomb. I have had videos take off. After a long enough time, you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what videos perform well and what videos do not perform well.

You can engulf yourself in all of the data at your leisure. I don’t find much of the data to be useful. The only data that truly matters right now as of December 2020 is CTR and watch time.

Are people clicking on your videos and how long are they watching your videos after you got them to click? These two numbers matter MOST and everything else is nearly irrelevant.

CTR Click Through Rate. When your video appears on the screen when someone is scrolling, how many times do people click on that video? This is what CTR measures. It is a great indicator for how intriguing your thumbnail and title is. Upon upload, I’m generally around 10-15% for a video that performs well. I’m generally under 10% for a video that does not perform well.

As the video gets pushed to more and more people, most of which are not subscribed or familiar with my channel, the CTR will decline naturally. Some of my best videos ultimately have a 3-4% CTR because of how many people they reached. A CTR of 3% is terrible with only 10,000 impressions, but it’s really good with 10,000,000 impressions.

If your CTR is consistently low, then it’s a good indicator that you need to improve your thumbnails and titles. Or it could be a deeper problem that your content just isn’t interesting enough for consumers.

Watch Time

Most of my videos are around 50%-55% average watch time. My highest performing videos will be upwards of 60% watch time and worst performing videos will be closer to 45%.

Yes, I have written about CTR and Watch Time twice in this eBook. That’s how important these two metrics are.

Focus on making the best content first and all of the data will work in your favor long term if it’s actually good. The Analytics tab can help guide you, but don’t become a slave to every number and having it alter your mood.

The Wave Get comfortable riding the algorithm wave. If you analyze the data, you’ll find that your channel will have ups and downs. It can be entirely random for your channel to experience a temporary 50% drop in views, subs growth, and revenue. Don’t stress. It’s part of the natural wave pattern of being a creator.

Here’s a screenshot of the views on my channel from the last 90 days. My views can be down by as much as 50% week after week.

Enjoy riding the wave when your channel is blowing up, and keep focus on improving your content when your channel is sliding down. Learning to ride the wave and not getting too down when your numbers are down is best for long term viability on the platform as a creator.

The month of September 2020 I gained 17.5k subscribers. Best month ever. Wow, I’m going to hit 100k subs in no time! The next month I dropped to 10k subscribers. And the first half of the following month, I had only gained around 2k subs for a pace of about 4,500 for the entire month. What a terrible slide.

Here’s a screenshot of the subscribers on my channel from the last 90 days. It’s possible to have two weeks stretches where overall subscriber numbers are down 50% from the previous two weeks.

I upgraded my camera, my lighting, and my studio. I focused on upgrading the quality of my content. I thought of different ways to improve the story telling. The last half of the month, I was back to 500 subscriber days, $300 days, and 50k view days. Riding the wave baby.

Changing Titles and Thumbnails

If you analyze large channels close enough, you may notice that they will change thumbnails and titles after the video is released. A lot of larger channels will look for a video to hit specific metrics, and if those are not met, then they will change the title of the video and/or the thumbnail in hopes to hit specific metrics. 84

It’s up to you how deeply you want to analyze data. I will recommend going back and switching up the titles and thumbnails to older videos if you feel like you have improved at that skill set and think the video could benefit from the switch.

I have done this a few times with videos 6 months or older. One video saw a noticeable rise in views immediately after I switched the title and thumbnail. A few others did not see any noticeable rise. It’s up to you how much time and energy you want to devote to this practice.

Want to guess when I went back in and made a change to the thumbnail? That’s over 6 months after the video was published.

If you are interested in playing around with changing thumbnails and titles, then I’d recommend having 2-3 options ready to go when the video is released. If certain metrics aren’t hit at a certain timestamp after release, then go ahead with the switch. Document the data to see if it had any effect, and then evaluate if it works for you.

I generally have a pretty good idea of how a video will perform. If it is massively underperforming and I feel the content is much better than the views indicate, then I will change up the thumbnail and/or the title. I always change the thumbnail first. 85

Module 18: Let’s Get Monetized If you’d like to get to monetization as fast as possible, I’d recommend joining my Patreon membership tier where you will have access to a Private Discord Community, Monthly Coaching Calls, and Access to having all of your questions answered, join here: https://www.patreon.com/spencercornelia

If you are not interested in joining the membership groups and would like to donate, then you can send money to any of the following:

Donation Amounts: $5 / $25 / $50 / $100 / $250 / $500

Venmo: @Spencer-Cornelia Cash App: $SpencerCornelia Paypal: [email protected] Coinbase (Ethereum): 0x8443c1af59E77a956E43727a75D54EBFc1BF99B3 Coinbase (Bitcoin): 3QphERCVz9Wm5qW4vtag1Y1S911ZezdVQD

Conclusion

If you read the entire eBook, I hope this will give you the boost needed to start a YouTube channel!

If you were able to get a lot of value out of the eBook, then I’d be very thankful for any donations.

Or if you just wanted to learn about YouTube for free, then that’s cool too.

Either way, for those of you wanting to become YouTube stars, I genuinely hope that this eBook will be step 1 for you turning your skills into a full-time income as a content creator. If that becomes a reality, I would love a shout out :)

And for those of you who can provide constructive criticism, I’m always open to listening and making necessary improvements when needed.

Best of luck to you, Spencer