Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Sean Cannell: Start a Profitable YouTube Channel in 2024 | Part 2 | E279

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

A true YouTube pioneer, Sean Cannell joined the platform only two years after its launch. Having built a YouTube empire worth $10 million, he helps entrepreneurs grow their influence and pursue their ...passion full-time through the power of online video. In today’s episode, Sean offers invaluable insights on YouTube monetization and leveraging the platform for business. Sean Cannell is a business coach, international speaker, and YouTuber who has over 3 million subscribers across his channels. Featured in the "20 Must Watch YouTube Channels That Will Change Your Business” by Forbes, he helps entrepreneurs and creatives build their influence and income with online video through his seven-figure media company, Think Media.   In this episode, Hala and Sean will discuss: - The best way to monetize YouTube from day one - Diversifying YouTube income beyond ad revenue - How to supercharge your YouTube earnings - Lesser-known YouTube features for increased earnings - Strategies for integrating YouTube into your sales funnel - Organic lead generation with YouTube - The shortest path to big earnings with a small channel - Sean’s formula for building sales funnels on YouTube - The two big ways to get discovered on YouTube - Ethical clickbait writing that works - The YouTube algorithm - And other topics…    Sean Cannell is a leading YouTuber, business coach, and CEO of Think Media, with over 3 million subscribers across his channels. Through his seven-figure media company, he helps entrepreneurs and creatives build their influence and income with online video. He has been featured in the "20 Must Watch YouTube Channels That Will Change Your Business” by Forbes. Also an international speaker, he has shared his expertise on YouTube, online business, and digital marketing at events like VidCon Anaheim, Social Media Marketing World, Marketing Impact Academy, and Grow With Video Live.    Resources Mentioned: Sean’s Website: https://www.seancannell.com/  Sean’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seancannell/  Sean’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/seancannell  Sean’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seancannell/  Sean’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWWFavn3ym0w3myTD5OX59g  Think Media’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/THiNKmediaTV  Sean’s Free Class: https://courses.seancannell.com/youtube-1k-challenge-sign-up-march-2024  The Think Media Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-think-media-podcast/id1492533163      LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course.     Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Justworks - Start your free month now at justworks.com/profiting Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting Economist Education - Go to education.economist.com/PROFITING and enter my promo code PROFITING at registration to get 15% off any course from Economist Education. This offer ends on March 31st – don’t wait! Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Porkbun - Get your .bio domain and link in bio bundle for just $5 from Porkbun at porkbun.com/Profiting Pipedrive - Go to youngandprofiting.co/pipedrive and get 20% off Pipedrive for 1 year!     More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting   Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala   Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's episode is sponsored by Shopify, Pork Bun, JustWorks, Indeed, Economist Education, and Airbnb. Shopify simplifies selling online so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. Pork Bun is the all-in-one solution for managing links and building your digital brand. Get your dot bio domain and link in bio bundle for just five dollars from pork bun dot com slash profiting. Justworks is an employee management platform for hiring, onboarding and managing remote employees.
Starting point is 00:00:36 Start your free month now at justworks.com slash profiting. Indeed is the hiring platform where you can attract interview and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash profiting. Economist Education offers business courses tailor-made for executives and professionals. Get 15% off any course at education.economist.com slash profiting,
Starting point is 00:01:02 and enter the code profiting at registration. If you want to generate extra income and have space to share, try hosting your home on Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes. I did a video called this AI tool creates videos in seconds with no editing. Video has 418,000 views, it's doing 17 times better than other videos on the channel and still going up. But it's getting tons of clicks,
Starting point is 00:01:32 but you don't know what the tool is. What? No editing? What? Like all this curiosity around it because click bait is manipulative and deceptive, but you need to learn how to get the click. Sean Cannell, he's included in the Forbes 20 must watch YouTube channels that will change your business.
Starting point is 00:01:48 He runs a seven figure online video education company. And helps individuals and brands learn how to leverage online video and YouTube. YouTube themselves have revealed the criteria for how the algorithm works, but a lot of people don't know this. They consider watch history and previous viewer behavior. So it's not just about being the coolest viral trend,
Starting point is 00:02:10 it's about the fact that people are different. So when you start to understand that aspect, this is why having a niche and having boundaries around the type of content that you are creating is so powerful because you wanna start getting recommended along other content. This is why competition is a good thing, not a bad thing. Because competition and the consumption of subject matter
Starting point is 00:02:33 in these various niches is making a bigger pool for everybody. So there's big ways to get discovered on YouTube. So number one is... One is. Hey, young and profitors. You are listening to part two of my YouTube series with Sean Cannell. If you don't know who Sean Cannell is, he's an author.
Starting point is 00:03:06 He's also a huge YouTuber himself with his podcast channel, Think Media that has millions of podcast subscribers. And he's also one of the top YouTube experts and teachers in the world. He's also an entrepreneur. He's the CEO of Think Media, a media agency and Sean is absolutely incredible. I was blown away with all of his YouTube knowledge in this episode, so much so that I asked him to stay on an extra 45 minutes so that I could break it down
Starting point is 00:03:32 in a two-part episode because I just didn't wanna stop learning from him. I'm trying to grow my YouTube channel myself. And selfishly, I had a lot of questions to ask him that I think all of you are gonna find super, super relevant. So this is part two of our conversation. We're really focused on monetization and growth strategies.
Starting point is 00:03:49 If you haven't heard part one yet, I would recommend that you go back, listen to that. In that episode, we talk about foundational things, why YouTube in 2024, what are some of the questions and considerations we need to ask ourselves before we start investing in a YouTube channel? So again, listen to part one if you haven't yet. And if you have already checked out part one, then enjoy part two of our episode with Sean Cannell. Let's talk about the different ways that entrepreneurs and people in general can monetize YouTube.
Starting point is 00:04:18 What are the different ways when you're just starting out to when you've built a following? Sean Cannell The best way to monetize when you're just starting on YouTube day one, also if you don't have an offer and a sales process or a sales funnel yet, the very best way to get started is affiliate marketing and even JV relationships. What's exciting about this is you can start a real business adding value through free content on YouTube and when appropriate, giving calls to action and integrating in affiliate relationships. Let's say you started a YouTube channel
Starting point is 00:04:53 about productivity for W-2s and entrepreneurs and the best tools for that. So then you can make a video on how to use ClickUp or how to use Monday.com or ClickUp versus Monday.com or Slack versus ClickUp. Well, all these different SaaS products, software as a service have affiliate programs. And by using your affiliate link, putting it in the video,
Starting point is 00:05:20 adding value and then educating about it, you can not only get a commission if someone purchases the software, but oftentimes you get continuity. You may be paid every month. So I think about one of my friends, Pat Flynn, who has a podcast called Smart Passive Income. And through talking about an email CRM,
Starting point is 00:05:39 believe it was ConvertKit or something, and there's a Webber and there's been these other ones, but I think it was ConvertKit, fill in the blank, whatever CRM, over time, through adding valuable content, people signed up for it and he got continuity, and I wanna say it led to like $30,000 a month in reoccurring. There is actually a YouTube software that we recommend
Starting point is 00:05:59 that we're at about $22,000 in reoccurring revenue a month, because again, it's not just the transaction that person signs up on. When someone gets this tool, loves it, uses it for years, 99% of people listening to this have things they pay for monthly that they love. And so if you were the originator of that transaction, what's cool about that is from day one,
Starting point is 00:06:19 if you make the right videos, especially if it was something search-based, and there's, we could spin off on a thousand different ways to make money as an affiliate. But for a conversation sake, if you were to do ConvertKit versus Active Campaign 2024, really break down the pros and cons, and those are email CRMs, then you can affiliate link to both. This could be your first video on your channel, and that video could get discovered, get views and get transactions.
Starting point is 00:06:48 And you could have 50 bucks of reoccurring revenue a month, 300 bucks of reoccurring a month. Over a couple of weeks, especially the video keeps getting views. And that's what we teach people. Our favorite thing to do is rank videos and search. Like create a video today that keeps getting viewed for weeks, months and years to come.
Starting point is 00:07:01 And not just rank videos and search, our definition of ranking is rank videos also in suggested, which simply means either someone types in a search and the video shows up on the first page, or as people start looking for things, the video gets recommended at the end of other videos or suggested by the YouTube algorithm. Either way, if you can get views while you snooze,
Starting point is 00:07:21 you've got a ranked video, and if you've connected it to an income stream like affiliate marketing, you're in a sweet spot. Good news about that is you don't have to be monetized by YouTube yet to start earning money. You could pretty much start from day one. The second thing I would say is once you hit a thousand subscribers and four thousand hours of watch time, you could apply it to the YouTube Partner Program. YouTube will start paying you for views on your videos, and for 99% of entrepreneurs listening to this, I wouldn't recommend focusing on this.
Starting point is 00:07:49 However, just talk to my friend, Louis house. He makes tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars in terms of YouTube ad revenue, not even his core business, but the size of his show has grown to such a level we make around half a million dollars a year from the views on our videos, YouTube ad revenue. Now, if you spin off YouTube other income streams, you can make super chats. When you're live or premiering a video,
Starting point is 00:08:13 somebody can basically tip you. People can also actually tip you. You have to make sure you turn this on. So one of the smallest tweaks for an established creator that's like a business owner who doesn't even think about this stuff is to just turn on these features. Cause sometimes by default they're turned off.
Starting point is 00:08:28 And when somebody it's called like tip jar or thank you, they can do a thank you. It's like two bucks, three bucks, five bucks. So if you just add great content, people out of the goodness of their heart will just tip on a video and you could do super chats, super stickers. That gets more into like the gaming entertainment
Starting point is 00:08:44 live stream. But if you got fans, they get by certain stickers. You got channel memberships. People are probably very familiar with memberships. I recommend doing them off platform because YouTube takes 30%. If you had a hundred grand worth of reoccurring revenue a month,
Starting point is 00:08:57 they'd take 30 grand if it was all through their channel memberships. It'd be like premium subscription and you could just upload exclusive content. You could do exclusive live streams. There's an exclusive community tab. So you just have kind of a sub community. Now the benefit is YouTube does all the heavy lifting
Starting point is 00:09:14 and you don't gotta go anywhere else or whatever. So it could bring you peace of mind, but no matter what at high dollar, I mean at low dollar figures, but it's really painful at higher dollar figures. I'm like, shoot. And if I had all those people integrated, you wouldn't want them to lead.
Starting point is 00:09:26 I'd be like, I don't want to give you $30,000 a year. Because you could use Kajabi or school or these other things, and you could save a lot off that. However, you do have to move people off platform. So super chats, channel memberships, super stickers, thank yous, YouTube shopping is integrated now, similar to TikTok Shopping. And you could go direct with different retailers.
Starting point is 00:09:49 It's basically like affiliate marketing, but on YouTube Shorts, you could point to things. And this wouldn't just only be if you're like a fashion, makeup, or skincare channel. This would include cameras and tech and consumer electronics, and they might pay you 5, 10, 15%. So you can look in the backend what retailers there are. So then I think the biggest thing though, for this audience is just this idea that you gotta ask yourself is YouTube the business
Starting point is 00:10:16 and is content the business itself or is YouTube a marketing channel for your existing business? So I think leads becomes the biggest opportunity to your own products or services. And you can start doing that day one without your channel being monetized. So I think about one of our students,
Starting point is 00:10:35 Jendevor Richter, when she had 546 subscribers, she emailed us and said, I just had my biggest revenue week ever in my business, $11,000, because of what I implemented from your program Video Ranking Academy. Thank you so much. And she only had 546 subscribers, and her videos were getting 26 views, 88 views.
Starting point is 00:10:59 A couple hundred. Her best video is a couple thousand. She hadn't even crossed a thousand subscribers yet. Her channel wasn't even monetized. But if her channel got monetized by YouTube with those amount of views, they'd be paying her like $6. She'd be at a level like $22. Whereas she had an $11,000 new week,
Starting point is 00:11:17 which that's why for business owners and entrepreneurs, the question then becomes, how can I create a video that will attract my ideal audience? How can I then add value in that video that builds trust and helps them get to know me? And then what call to action can I give that they'd be interested in to something probably free or even just to book a call?
Starting point is 00:11:38 We have a lot of loan officers and real estate agents. A lot of that is just add value and like jump on the phone with us. Add value, fill out the form form and then we'll follow up. Then it's on you. I mean, you've had many guests and you're an expert yourself. Your sales process is now taking people off of YouTube. How good are you at follow-up?
Starting point is 00:11:57 Is it email follow-up? Is it social selling? Is it, they are going to book a call and then that's up to you. Is it they are gonna book a call? And then that's up to you. But the power is that YouTube itself can then drive traffic into that funnel, if you will, and you could start monetizing instantly when you start creating smart content.
Starting point is 00:12:17 You know, one other story that's interesting is I think about my friend Levi Lassick, read our book, YouTube Secrets, his business partner, Travis Plum, Dallas real estate agents. Small team, six people working, YouTube Secrets, his business partner, Travis Plum, Dallas real estate agents, small team, six people working for him or something. And as far as marketing goes, they're not investing in any marketing, no billboards, no yellow pages, no classified ads, which by the way, whatever works as a digital YouTube guy, I'm all for traditional stuff if it's gonna work.
Starting point is 00:12:48 But all they did was focus on organic YouTube content. Not even paid ads, not paid Facebook ads, not paid leads from Zillow. His focus on creating YouTube content after reading our book and thinking about that. And wouldn't you believe it, after six months, how many transactions have they converted in their business?
Starting point is 00:13:07 Zero. How is that for a good news? Like that's pretty exciting. I mean, so, okay. So that, but I love this story because it's realistic. They committed seeing, okay, I can see that in my local market for them it was Dallas. Their channel is called Living in Dallas.
Starting point is 00:13:21 So they do neighborhood tours, house tours, pros and cons of moving to Dallas, different neighborhoods, all this stuff. Six months, they got some leads, no transactions. I think it's around 2021. In the following 12 months, they do $90 million, which leads to about 2.9 collected real estate commissions, 2.9 million from just organic YouTube traffic. They started realizing that, you know,
Starting point is 00:13:50 if they're getting 10,000 views a month, that equals 77 leads. And here's also what's crazy about the leads. The leads were so qualified. They told me stories of docuSigns getting signed, they never met the person. They go, oh yeah, no, I trust you, you know, whatever, I've been watching your videos. It's kind of weird trust you, you know, whatever, I've been watching your videos.
Starting point is 00:14:05 It's kind of weird to be on the phone with you. I've been watching your videos. I already know, like, and trust you. I already have got a vibe. I feel like I already know you. Or when they meet in person, there's already like rapport. And even though Levi might be meeting them for the first time, this person had got to know them in video.
Starting point is 00:14:20 They tapped into search discovery, search terms, as well as viral approaches. Should I buy a house now? Is the market crashing? All this different stuff. And only using YouTube. And again, as they've scaled, you start realizing we can hire somebody,
Starting point is 00:14:36 we can do paid ads. Why not? If anything works, keep scaling it up. But that's just the power. And to that point, at the end of nearly $3 million in revenue their channel was still under 5,000 subscribers. Wow. A small YouTube channel but they were attracting the right people and I've heard real estate called
Starting point is 00:14:56 high ticket affiliate marketing because if you recommend $10 lipstick and you get 3% then you just made 30 cents. But if you sell a million dollar house and you get 3%, then you just made $30,000. So real estate is like high ticket affiliate marketing. And let me throw in one nugget for your community. If you were looking for a business model or like the shortest path to making big money
Starting point is 00:15:21 with a small channel, JV partnerships would be the best way to do that. Meaning being an affiliate for somebody else that has an event, coaching program, mastermind or course. And the reason why is because of percentages. Amazon gives me 4% on cameras and ticket price. But let's say it's a thousand bucks, camera, I get 4%, I make $40.
Starting point is 00:15:44 If you recommended somebody's educational program That was a thousand dollars. Probably you're gonna get a fifty percent commission. You'd make five hundred dollars so this is just a leverage conversation, so if you could start creating videos and One example if you go to a website like clickbank.com You could find somebody's like marathon training program So if you started like a running channel marathon marathon training, and maybe you're also like, well, I'm not really an expert, but I'm a hobbyist. This is the marathon training program I did.
Starting point is 00:16:11 My stepbrother, Alan, Escaland did an Ironman, and he paid for a couple thousand dollar program because Ironmans are no joke. So if he documented his journey and got other people inspired, and then recommends that as an affiliate, he can make thousands of dollars in a commission. If he learns how to rank videos, passive income,
Starting point is 00:16:30 I mean, you only need 100 transactions if you make a thousand dollar commission to make six figures. So I think that this goes into that framework of you could be a knowledge broker, a reporter, and eventually the expert. I think one of the coolest ways to start a YouTube channel is to be a reporter, to do what you're doing,
Starting point is 00:16:48 and you can bring on other guests, a knowledge broker of other people's knowledge, and when they have products and programs, you recommend those. And again, you might be getting 77 views on your videos, 376 views on your videos, but if you're attracting the right people with the right titles and the right information, and then someone's like, oh cool, I can go deeper with this
Starting point is 00:17:07 person compared to a super chat, someone tipping you $3 on YouTube and that's where 99% of creators are stuck. Is there a kind of in a somewhat small-minded money mentality by not thinking about better vehicles to earn bigger income? So, so smart. So many things that I wanna dive deep on. And one thing that I wanna add is sponsorships, right? So once you actually have an audience, you can do things like what I do. If you guys are watching my channel,
Starting point is 00:17:33 I'm always doing like host read ads that sponsors are paying me for. But of course, it just depends on how far along you are because you need thousands of views for that to actually make sense monetarily. You mentioned this at a high level, but I'm curious to understand, can you give us an example of a sales funnel
Starting point is 00:17:50 for like a coach or an entrepreneur? What would that sales funnel look like on YouTube? My favorite way to do it, and this gets very granular, is I like teaching and I like teaching with numbers. So if you're a coach, what's three things? So insert pain point that you solve. Three little known tax strategies to save thousands for business owners.
Starting point is 00:18:16 Pretty sick title. You get in the video. Number one, Augusta rule. Number two, cost seg bonus depreciation. Number three, whatever. After number two, tie in the second point that you have a free thing that goes deeper on it. And by the way, if you want access to my cost seg
Starting point is 00:18:39 bonus depreciation calculator, or just in the whole video, these are just three of the strategies. If you want my guide with 21 of the best tax strategies for entrepreneurs, just hit the link in the description or go to thinktaxstrategies.com. That doesn't exist, but you give that pretty URL. Maybe it does. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:18:59 So, it's not ours though. One of the reasons why I like making it point number two though is because if it polarizes the right people to download it, good, but it's also going to potentially stop the viewing session, which is not what YouTube wants most. I think you absolutely should call people off the platform, but do it in such a way that also people could stay on and there's still a reason for them to stay on for the next point.
Starting point is 00:19:19 So that's why I would do that on point number two and I would tie it to the point. You teach a little bit about that, and then you're like, hey, listen, if you actually want to go deeper, my entire LinkedIn Navigator deep dive training, I would give it to you for free. It's 20 minutes long. Click the link in the description.
Starting point is 00:19:35 So that's how I would do it. And then it's like online marketing best practices. I think the naming of whatever you're giving away free, the desire of what you're giving away free, the desire of what you're giving away free, alignment on the entire thing and congruency. Congruency is that when they land on the page, they're on the right page, people have horrible landing pages, navigation above,
Starting point is 00:19:56 it doesn't even seem like it's them, there's not authority there, doesn't load, malware notification. I mean, it's just kind of stressful. Someone's like, man, there's so many things. You just want to remove friction. Sometimes the biggest mistake is you're making a video that have people thinking one way and giving a call to action that's not related.
Starting point is 00:20:15 Think about what video would attract the ideal person for your opt-in. What opt-in would attract the ideal person for your offer? And those things are broken all the time in people's businesses. Someone opts in, but they're not the right psychology, psychographics, demographics, because it was a cool free thing, but did it really align? And then the YouTube videos, if you were talking about how to hire team members in a video, and then you were like, and by the way, if you were talking about how to hire team members in a video, and then you were like, and by the way,
Starting point is 00:20:48 if you wanna download my 21 tax savings guide, like not horrible because maybe some people are like, that does sound interesting, but the reason they're there, the better guide would be a freebie that's like, you know, and if you wanna get my scripts, my job interview scripts for how to really filter out the wrong candidates and lock in the right candidates, just go to thinkhiringscripts.com
Starting point is 00:21:12 or click the link in the description. So that would be my biggest thing. The strategy of the content that attracts the right people then the opt-in that ties together, concurrency and the whole thing. And then again, a good sales process and funnels that you probably have endless episodes in your own library of some good stuff
Starting point is 00:21:28 on making great funnels. But what's powerful about that is it is a psychology, everybody listening to this needs to know. Thinking about their whole, you could call it sales journey, the whole customer journey, thinking about the entire thing start to finish. And that is a never ending process of tweaking. All of us can improve it.
Starting point is 00:21:47 Ours is probably a six out of 10. And we've done pretty well. Small tweaks lead to giant peaks. And so just being willing to be like, can I change my opt-in in the future? Can I change my offer page? As I'm just my offer page, the checkout page and the thank you page,
Starting point is 00:22:01 and then follow up and what do I wanna do next? And is that all aligned? And usually when things are not working, it's just because a piece is broken and there's some cognitive dissonance that happens or something. Sometimes from YouTube to your landing page, it's not quite what it looked like
Starting point is 00:22:15 and all these little details like that. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. What's up, YapBam? Being an entrepreneur and working remotely definitely has its perks. And I know a lot of you listening in are in the same boat as me,
Starting point is 00:22:31 but do you really take advantage of being able to work from anywhere? I know I typically don't, but thankfully this past holiday, I finally decided to make use of my work flexibility for the first time ever. My boyfriend and I decided to pack up and leave to the West Coast to spend an entire month
Starting point is 00:22:48 working from home in the sun. We got a super cute bungalow in Venice Beach with a fence backyard. The change in scenery, the fresh air, and the slower pace to help me to inspire some really cool new ideas for my business. And honestly, I'm feeling really refreshed and ready to rock in 2024.
Starting point is 00:23:05 And who helped me make these remote work dreams come true? It was Airbnb and Airbnb has come in clutch for me time and time again, whether it's finding the perfect Airbnb home for our three day annual executive team get together or booking a vacation where my extended family can fit all in one place. Airbnb always makes it a great experience. And you know me, I'm always thinking of my latest business venture and I've been begging my boyfriend
Starting point is 00:23:31 to start hosting our place on Airbnb. And finally, we're gonna start. So many of my successful friends host on Airbnb and it's such an amazing way to generate passive income. So to start, we have a plan to start spending more time in Miami and we'll be hosting our place to earn some extra money when we're back on the East Coast. 2024 goals and I'll keep you updated.
Starting point is 00:23:53 A lot of people don't realize that they might have an Airbnb right under their own noses. I was pretty surprised myself. You can Airbnb your place or spare room even if you're out of town for just a few days or weeks. You could do what I did and work remotely somewhere else and Airbnb your place or spare room, even if you're out of town for just a few days or weeks. You could do what I did and work remotely somewhere else and Airbnb your place to fund your trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host.
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Starting point is 00:26:24 have left in the past citing benefits as the only reason why. And here I was thinking that we couldn't afford benefits when it's literally not that expensive at all and you actually split the cost between the employee and the employer. I had no idea. I found out on JustWorks.
Starting point is 00:26:43 JustWorks has been a total lifesaver for me. We were using two other platforms for payroll, one for domestic in US, one for international. We had our HR guidelines and things like that, employee handbook on another site and everything was just everywhere. Now everything's consolidated with JustWorks, a tried and tested employee management platform.
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Starting point is 00:27:51 Start your free month now at justworks.com slash profiting. One of my favorite things to do right now is to take every sales funnel that we have, break it down into each actionable chunk, get all the historic data, understand all the different averages for click rates, conversion rates, and then you're able to see
Starting point is 00:28:13 where is everything falling apart? Where is the leak? Where do I need to improve? And you can even do like bottom up forecasting where you can say, okay, if I want to generate $50,000, I need to send out this many DMs, I need to get this many clicks,
Starting point is 00:28:27 this many people need to show up to my webinar, this many people need to convert, and you can work backwards. But it first starts with being intentional. Intentional when you're designing it, intentional to track your data, intentional to get your averages, and then think about where you can improve.
Starting point is 00:28:42 100%. Okay, so a couple more growth strategy questions for you. In terms of growing your channel organically, you said it's very important to get top of the search results. Also, the suggested sidebar is really important. So how can we get better at actually being discovered organically on YouTube? So there's two big ways to get discovered on YouTube.
Starting point is 00:29:04 The first is YouTube suggested. The second is YouTube search. organically on YouTube. So there's two big ways to get discovered on YouTube. The first is YouTube suggested, the second is YouTube search. The fastest way to go viral on YouTube is to tap into YouTube suggested. That is the YouTube recommended engine. 75% of views basically come from YouTube recommending content.
Starting point is 00:29:22 And the true generator of virality is YouTube putting your video on people's home pages, putting in the suggested feed, and then the velocity of as as people are exposed to the title in the thumbnail, they click on it, they watch it and YouTube promotes it to more people and they click on it and they watch it. That's the viral side. The remaining 25% of traffic is from people searching on Google or YouTube or elsewhere.
Starting point is 00:29:46 External traffic, you can send an email to your list, go watch my video, share it on social media, and there are a few other surfaces, channel pages, internal playlists. So let's go in reverse then and say, to get tap into search though, even though it's not as viral, what I love about it is it's practical.
Starting point is 00:30:06 It's slow and steady wins. And it also is very much evergreen because sometimes viral can go up, but then it goes down. And some people are known for maybe getting a lot of views on a singular video, they can't sustain the pace of always trying to make these viral videos.
Starting point is 00:30:20 So they disappear. So for example, like our channel is so heavily search-based, we like can't drop under four million long form views a month. We just stay there because of our library. It's like anti-fragile, unbreakable. It's a mindset that a lot of people can't even relate to because some people might then hit a 10 million viewed month,
Starting point is 00:30:38 but then they fall off. It's like a yo-yo diet. So what I love about search-based is even though it might be slower, it's kind of like compound interest or investing slowly or letting your real estate appreciate slowly. Just a long-term mindset. And so search-based would be about
Starting point is 00:30:54 using keyword research tools, understanding psychology, what are people searching for, and writing good titles, of course, still making good content, title, thumbnail, content, description, some video optimization, and going into it knowing I'm optimizing my video for search. Now there's also, it's kind of two different ways of thinking because how you'd optimize your video
Starting point is 00:31:16 for search, you might title your video how to interview potential employees. That would be a search based title. Probably not viral, that niche and business advice like that usually wouldn't go viral anyways. But the thing about that, right, is it becomes a resource that may be watched for the next 10 years.
Starting point is 00:31:36 So that's what's kind of cool. Now, interesting thing you could do though, is the suggested angle on that same video would be one outrageous mistake business owners make when hiring. That's still niche but that's the kind of titles that are going viral right now it's more open loop more curiosity based less how to keyword format. So if i look at some of our even newest podcast which we can do both. less how-to, keyword format. So if I look at some of our even newest podcasts, which we kind of do both,
Starting point is 00:32:09 we just did an interview with Louis House, it's called 85 minutes of strategic content tactics with Louis House. We don't even say what it is. Now some people might say Louis House on AI, personal branding, and the state of influencer marketing in 2024. So I think it's just picking and choosing your positioning.
Starting point is 00:32:31 Genius personal branding tips with Chris Doe. I'm thinking if the person has authority or not, if they aren't known, I may not even include them in the title. This gets into the tactic of naming your YouTube videos different than your audio podcast too, because audio podcasts cannot see thumbnails. And they also longer, more detailed of what you're about to get. This is hard for us to sustain. We're talking about it right now. It's like the track of how they're positioned differently. But here's one. This YouTube strategy will guarantee views in 2024. And then the thumbnail is kind of an open loop. So that target there would be suggested because then it's like what YouTube strategy. Whereas if I said how to use affiliate marketing to make money with YouTube. Interesting thing is that title probably wouldn't perform super great, but would be
Starting point is 00:33:19 rankable over the long haul for people that already know what affiliate marketing is. Whereas the reverse would be how to make thousands of dollars a month with this simple YouTube strategy. And the answer in the video is affiliate marketing. So that's pretty high level in terms of are we going after suggested? Are we going after search? If you get really advanced to this stuff, you can pivot later, ride suggested for a few months. The video tapers off, then pivot it to make it search based. You can edit it. Yeah. And it's kind of now it's like down. It's already got
Starting point is 00:33:57 its established watch time. But sometimes the problem with the suggested style is if we even want to search our own library and we do have like a customer service and stuff and they try to link our videos they can't find it. If they search affiliate marketing because you can search a channel there's a little search bar on people's channels on desktop. Well it doesn't come up because it just is like how to make a thousand dollars with this one strategy. So I'm not trying to overwhelm the listener to be indecisive but those would be two different skill sets to master.
Starting point is 00:34:27 What I've noticed is that a lot of people lean on one or the other and the most powerfully positioned creators tap into both. It's like diversification of your portfolio too. You've got long-term search-based evergreen videos ranking, and then you also got some breakout videos that are crushing. I did a video about an AI tool. If I would have just revealed what the tool was, it wouldn't have done nearly as well because no one knows about the tool yet. There's a good
Starting point is 00:34:54 book, a couple books to get. There's one called Great Leads by Michael Masterson, but it has to do with awareness of where the audience is right now. So if you give away too much in the title, it means they're already problem aware. Are they problem aware? Are they solution aware? Are they pain point aware? We call it the mass appeal method. If you're going to go more viral, you want to be more mass appeal.
Starting point is 00:35:15 Whereas if you go all the way down to like solution aware, how to use click up step by step is solution aware. Whereas how to overcome overwhelm and organize your digital life. Click up is the answer, but you went much broader. I'm like, oh, I'm overwhelmed and I wanna organize my life. So I did a video called
Starting point is 00:35:33 this AI tool creates videos in seconds with no editing with a sick thumbnail. Video has 418,000 views. It's getting 115 views per hour. And it's 17x outlier score. It's doing 17 times better than other videos on the channel and still going up. So it's getting tons of clicks,
Starting point is 00:35:52 but you don't know what the tool is. It's creating videos in seconds? What? No editing? What? All this curiosity around it, and you'll notice a lot of the quote unquote viral videos. For us, we also say VFM, viral for me.
Starting point is 00:36:06 So it encouraged the listener, if you get 50 views on your videos, then following some of these tips, if you get 500, that's viral for you. You just got 10X views, like viral for me. We might be able to get you 1,000X, because if you get 50 views, then if you get 50,000, you just got 1,000X more views.
Starting point is 00:36:21 Using these strategies could be that, okay, would it be appropriate? And then the final thing in all of that is as skilled as you get at psychology, copywriting, and I could even say ethical clickbait writing. Because clickbait is manipulative and deceptive, but you need to learn how to get the click. So just you wanna do it ethically.
Starting point is 00:36:42 To do so, what's so important in all of this is not just trying to come up with some amazing title but then realizing that content doesn't deliver. You want there to be congruence there. And so the dream is to say, okay, even if I'm working by myself, we now do it as a team, but if I do it by myself, I never write only one title for a video. I always write at least five. And then I say after I've just challenged myself to write five, to come up with five,
Starting point is 00:37:08 use AI, chat GPT, massage it myself, look at this, look at that, boom, I got at least five. Then I can score it. A tip is also, if you have Facebook group or you have some way to survey, there's limited characters on X and some other platforms, but the YouTube community tab gives you enough characters. I did it this morning.
Starting point is 00:37:24 I took five titles of a video that I wanted to pivot because it wasn't doing that well, posted them on the YouTube community tab, people voted. 50% of people voted for the winner. The next highest was 21%. That right there, only 103 votes. That right there, small data will map to big data. That will tell you which title is best.
Starting point is 00:37:43 So challenge yourself to write five titles, write it all down. But sometimes the best one, then my final question is, yeah, but do I really actually deliver on that in the video? That's a good title. That's a really good open loop. But does the video let people down after that? Because making short-term decisions to get a click that ends up leaving people feeling dissatisfied after watching the video or deceived is the wrong move for your brand. But writing clickbait titles that actually deliver on the promise thus being ethical is the ultimate skill set in 2024
Starting point is 00:38:18 for not just winning on YouTube, but I think winning with copy across platforms. So many great strategies. I'm going to have my video team rewind that piece back because I feel like we need better support with our titles. So the other question that I have about getting searched and ranked is the algorithm, because I know that every social platform is considering different metrics to decide whether or not they're going to serve content to users on the platform.
Starting point is 00:38:43 So what are the different metrics that you think the YouTube algorithm is judging to decide whether or not they're gonna serve content to users on the platform. So what are the different metrics that you think the YouTube algorithm is judging to decide whether or not they'll show your video to users in this adjusted feed? Yeah, here's the cool thing. YouTube themselves have revealed the criteria for how the algorithm works, but a lot of people don't know this. The first one, and the often misunderstood one, is they consider watch history and previous viewer behavior. So it's not just about being the coolest viral trend.
Starting point is 00:39:12 It's about the fact that people are different. So if you are helping people with weight loss, intermittent fasting, helping people getting keto, helping people get in keto. When YouTube's recommending videos, after someone's viewer behavior of searching for keto, keto diets, keto meal plans, then YouTube takes that data and will start recommending similar content.
Starting point is 00:39:35 Now we could take that even further. You start having these associations that YouTube makes, meaning that it's likely for many people who maybe start pursuing ketosis to maybe also be into Andrew Huberman. They're into sleep. Should I drink alcohol or not? They're into biohacking, so Dave Asprey. So maybe they're also looking at red light therapy and some other things. And then maybe more high level again, they're looking at just the personal development or self development of like a Tim Ferriss. So when you start to understand that aspect that this is why having a niche and having boundaries around the type
Starting point is 00:40:19 of content that you are creating is so powerful because you want to start getting recommended along other content. This is why competition is a good thing, not a bad thing because competition and the consumption of subject matter in these various niches is making a bigger pool for everybody. When people start to go deep in a particular subject that they love, they don't watch just one video about it. They spin off and watch multiple videos about it, multiple different angles around it.
Starting point is 00:40:49 So I'm a big Bible guy, it's part of my faith. And so you could get into like Bible study. And then you might get into like some obscure things in the Bible, like this is pretty niche, aliens. You get into the Nephilim, you get into these different things. Well, when somebody starts going down that rabbit hole, they'll watch one person's 45
Starting point is 00:41:06 minutes, somebody else's 45 minutes, and now your title and your thumbnail, you just need to know your goal is to get recommended and discovered along other people. Tactically, this also could be why you react to or even commentate on and join the conversation because your goal is to get your video recommended with other videos that are ranking. So number one is people's watch history and their previous viewing behavior. Number two is click through rate. And bottom line, YouTube has two major metrics,
Starting point is 00:41:37 click through rate and watch time. So it's, are people clicking on this video? One of the cool things YouTube is doing right now is it's recommending a lot of brand new channels and small channels. This is totally true. Channels with only a few subscribers, channels with only a handful of views.
Starting point is 00:41:53 They're showing up on my watch page. They're showing up and most of the people listening to this just take my word for it because I don't know how much YouTube you consume. But if you do consume YouTube, watch what happens and notice that obscure channels will start getting recommended. I will keep it vague, but I was following a scandal
Starting point is 00:42:11 that an organization is in right now. And there's, I now, because I've just consumed one person talking about that, I'm getting recommended all kinds of other channels. This is me, I'm meeting total strangers. So people feel overwhelmed, like I can't break out, I can't grow. It's not true. But you want to be talking about the right topics, thinking about this is a little bit of having aware, being aware of the zeitgeist in your industry, being aware of the psychology in your industry. You don't chase trends unrelated,
Starting point is 00:42:40 but talking about the new and the now and understanding how to do culture surfing is important. And so YouTube is recommending brand new channels. But here is the painful part for you listening to this. If you get a chance on this free platform to get in front of a complete stranger, are you going to miss that opportunity or are you going to get it? Good news is stranger. Are you gonna miss that opportunity or are you gonna get it? Good news is it doesn't just come once in a lifetime, but what I've noticed is that sometimes
Starting point is 00:43:10 when those channels get recommended, I'm like, that title doesn't really grip me, that thumbnail is not that great. And those are gonna be the two metrics. Actually, there's three metrics. It's title, thumbnail, but the biggest one is topic, because what is included in that topic, right time, right place.
Starting point is 00:43:29 So it's the topic itself and then a good title that makes it even more interesting. Like that's an irresistible video. And so you want to get the click and those are what you're optimizing for. What videos am I talking about? What title, what thumbnail? And then you want to keep, hold the viewer's attention. Now, the question might be, what's a good click-through rate? It's actually kinda unanswerable
Starting point is 00:43:50 because actually a good click-through rate, your most viral videos will have ever-decreasing click-through rates because YouTube continues to expand the amount of people it's giving you impressions in front of which drives the click-through rate down. It's similar to social. Engagement rate always goes down as you get bigger.
Starting point is 00:44:07 Yeah, so I've got videos with millions of views and click through rates 3%, but I'm glad I got the millions of views. Some people go, I got a 75% click through rate. How many views did the video get? 33. It's like, well, yeah, because your 33 subscribers are super engaged,
Starting point is 00:44:19 which is awesome. And you shows you're really resonating with them. But if you want to go broader, it's going to drive the click through rate down. Now, if you could get a click through rate above 10%, and then here would be the key. If the staying power, if it stays high, as it's increased to more people.
Starting point is 00:44:35 This means, psychology wise, starting to think about, one of the ways you could open your videos is like, hey guys, welcome back. Well, cold traffic, people who don't know you, they're not hey guys and they're not welcome back. They've never been there. So thinking about not just talking to who's here now, but is your video positioned to be digested,
Starting point is 00:44:57 to build a relationship, to build bridges with people who are just discovering it for the first time? How broad appeal is the topic and how effectively does it connect with new people? That'd be kind of a key to hacking the algorithm. So then how do I get the click? How do I keep people watching from a good hook in the beginning
Starting point is 00:45:17 to the way the content's optimized? James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, said a quote that really changed my life. It's something I've applied, but it can be applied to us as YouTube creators. And it really reminded me when I'm in a rush. And the quote was that, often times the difference between good and great
Starting point is 00:45:37 is an extra round of revision. Now to be clear, James Clear wrote Atomic Habits, which is like the best-selling book in the last decade. It's like the best-selling book every week, and it'll probably be the most perennial seller for years to come. So we're talking about someone who didn't just do shallow work and just try to rush their social media content for this week or their podcast episode or their video. They went deeper.
Starting point is 00:46:00 But just an extra round of revision can give you exponential results. When Mr. Beast was interviewed on the Joe Rogan podcast, he said, if people would just put 20% more effort into an individual video, they could get 10 times more views. So I think there's something about when I say, how can you keep attention, spending some time in editing, trimming the fluff.
Starting point is 00:46:22 Right about that point, I got a little long winded. For the YouTube student, as you continue to post videos and commit to getting 1% better with every upload, what it would mean is actually going back to your audience retention curve and noticing if there's any significant dips or if there's any points because then it starts helping you say, okay, maybe I should cut those parts off or I'm going too long. But you want to be brief, be bright, be fun and be done. You want that content to hold attention. And if you could have an over 10% click-through rate and an over 75% average percentage viewed,
Starting point is 00:46:53 then you can really trigger the algorithm. The other thing that is interesting is longer form videos, if they're generally good, call it an hour or two hours, can also just get 15 minutes of watch time on average. That'd be the average view duration. And that's not a bad thing. The percentage is pretty low. The percentage is much lower, but minutes matter most.
Starting point is 00:47:14 So YouTube just wants time on the platform period. And so of course, percentage viewed would also help if it was a 10 minute video and most people watched till eight minutes. But if you could just keep people on videos for 20 minutes, the average excellent amount of time on YouTube is around five. So it's 4x the typical short video. So when YouTube's eyes are just like, who cares if the video is long?
Starting point is 00:47:37 This video on average, people are watching 20 minutes in a world where there's a million other things to do. So as we recap and we get to the final one, number one, watch history, previous viewer behavior. This is why you don't have to copy the famous YouTuber. You just got to be yourself. We have people in ham radio niche, people that are doing collectible cars, collectible train sets, people that are doing obscure personal development,
Starting point is 00:48:02 breathing techniques. You don't need to be fancy have fancy editing computer But you need to know your niche because once people start going deep Yeah, like I said Bible study some different things what people are looking for maybe the quality of the information I'm not looking for like Fancy b-roll you're looking for somebody who's really studied or whatever. It's knowing What are the other successful channels? How can I get recommended with those two? Click through rate,
Starting point is 00:48:25 how can I have the highest click through rate possible through topic, title, thumbnail? Then how do I optimize my content for keeping the viewer watching the video for as long as possible? Average view duration, average percentage viewed. The fourth one almost nobody knows about, and it's viewer satisfaction.
Starting point is 00:48:41 And one of the things YouTube does is surveys. And here's why this is interesting. They don't always do them, but what they realized was, okay, in some cases, maybe somebody will watch 30 minutes of a video. However, when they're done with the video, they're mad because the video maybe was really good at keeping you watching, continue to promise you value, and we've probably all been in something like that,
Starting point is 00:49:09 where maybe somebody was like, and I'm about to tell you the secret. How you can lose 50 pounds in two seconds. Trust me, in just a second, but before we get there. And then once you get there, like the payoff is a letdown. So what they use these surveys for, here and there, and I mean, small data leads to big data, they're wondering satisfaction and the surveys let them know not just how many minutes did you spend on the platform but how
Starting point is 00:49:33 did you feel afterwards and this is cool when you think about the developers at Google and YouTube. What they want to happen it's not just time on platform long as possible. So minutes matter most. Get people watching your videos, keep them binging your videos. There's tactics like creating series. They don't just watch one video, they watch multiple. That's another metric that's kind of more obscure. Average video viewed per viewer.
Starting point is 00:49:56 They don't just watch one video on your channel, but on average they watch four. It's a better signal because it's not just the minutes, but they binge your content. They go deep in your library. So if you can connect through end cards and different things and series and part ones and part twos, but the satisfaction is interesting because the final thing they want is they want to know that if they've spent all that time that they're satisfied after and check this out, they want you to come back. So the worst possible thing that could happen in YouTube's eyes is that your experience
Starting point is 00:50:26 after hanging on the platform made you not wanna come back. So if you're also a channel, my friend Neil Patel, all star marketer, also talks about YouTube is very happy if you send external traffic, and when you have a good email list, blast that list, boom, a bunch of external traffic is sent to your video, YouTube's pumped because you're assisting in them reaching their goals
Starting point is 00:50:49 of keeping people on the platform, getting them to come back to the platform. And so if they're satisfied, my experience was good in that viewing session, other people's videos included, and I come back later. And then furthermore, this is why you can go in your analytics and see return viewers and new viewers is now isolated in the analytics. If you are satisfying people, and I might add of less weight, but they look at viewer
Starting point is 00:51:19 signals like like comment, 99% of YouTubers say smash the like button and comment for the YouTube algorithm. That's actually not that big of a signal, but it is of satisfaction. Like or dislike, even dislikes is engagement, what YouTube likes, but they, again, they want that satisfaction. It's a lot to process,
Starting point is 00:51:41 but if you think about those four things and optimize for those. And then the final thing is this, replace the word algorithm with people. You're not optimizing for the algorithm. You're optimizing for people. If they get a video, you start getting into a new hobby. You start getting into running. How do I train for a marathon as a woman in her forties?
Starting point is 00:52:03 And YouTube figures out that's your ambition. So then YouTube starts sending you running shoe videos and nutrition videos and training videos from all kinds of different creators and you're pumped because you want to run your first marathon in your 40s. So now you're watching all that content. You're pumped. You're clicking on certain videos. So that thumbnail looks good.
Starting point is 00:52:20 That title looks good. They start recommending you more and then again you then also realize the mindset, the psychographic of that person is also into Andrew Huberman and is also into Rich Roll and then you start going down these rabbit. The reason those people get recommended is because they're talking about running and they're runners and there might be some different nutrition things and even other things completely unrelated because people are weird. They have different clusters of interests, but ultimately you're optimizing for people. So if she's satisfied, if she clicks on the video
Starting point is 00:52:52 and then enjoys it and then is satisfied and comes back and now you become her go-to expert, go-to helper, go-to friend that is helping her reach that result and all the ancillary things that would come around that goal, then people like result and all the ancillary things that would come around that goal, then people like her and all kinds of other runners of all different ages as well, start getting recommended and boom,
Starting point is 00:53:13 you've hacked the algorithm, your channel is growing, views are increasing, and you're continually optimizing for those metrics. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Young and Profiters, my company, YAP Media, is growing fast. We're onboarding client after client. We're landing a ton of huge deals. And my team just can't keep up. I knew we needed to hire new employees to support my team, but
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Starting point is 00:55:17 You don't want it to be a complicated thing that nobody can understand because that's what it was like in the past, but now we're in the future in 2024. We have Porkbun and we can customize our link in bio name. We can get our very own dot bio domain name. So in the past, link in bio is where this random set of letters and numbers, nobody knew what they were clicking. Now you can be really specific and you can create a dot bio domain name. And Porkbun has an amazing offer up for grabs right now.
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Starting point is 00:56:22 for just $5 from Porkbun at porkbun.com slash profiting. That's porkbun.com slash profiting for a $5.biodomain and linkinbio bundle. Porkbun.com slash profiting. I love what you're saying because algorithms change all the time, but if you think about people and human behavior, that stuff never really changes. And so it's a way safer, more sustainable strategy. So the other part that I wanted to talk to you in terms of growth was actually paid ads on YouTube, because I see a lot of people like Dan Lok, Louis Howes,
Starting point is 00:56:57 they're all doing paid ad strategy to grow their channel. I know there's some pros and cons to doing that. Could you just walk us through what you think about it? First of all, typically it's not a very good idea if you just want views. There actually though is a new way inside of YouTube to pay for views that they added. That's like better than Google AdSense
Starting point is 00:57:17 typically used for marketing. 99% of the time though, paying for views via Google AdSense is not effective. The reason why is you didn't earn the subscriber, you didn't earn the trust, you didn't earn the person. So even if they're like, that's cool, maybe check it out later, it's kind of like how many things have you're like,
Starting point is 00:57:34 well, that download sounds cool, but it's lost. Whereas if people discover you on their own merits, this would be the organic traffic piece of things. When their pain point is highest, they discover you. They come to you not because of an, if you will, intrusive ad, but because of them on their term. They knock on your door. You didn't knock on their door.
Starting point is 00:57:53 Hey, do you want to buy this vacuum cleaner? They knocked on your door wanting to buy the vacuum cleaner. Hey, do you have a vacuum cleaner? What's the best vacuum cleaner for 2024 for a small apartment? Boom. I'll tell you about five of them. Affiliate links in the description. This person's so awesome.
Starting point is 00:58:07 And then your expertise. So that's thing one. Thing two is you should absolutely use paid ads across platforms when you have a converting offer because if organic is slow and steady growth like a garden, paid is jet fuel. But I'm a big proponent of direct response brand building. So brand building period is let me pay for views and awareness and a billboard let's say by the way if you're louis vitton respect you know if you're nike.
Starting point is 00:58:38 Yeah you should have billboards this is a different game or playing but if you're a small startup. have billboards. This is a different game we're playing. But if you're a small startup, even if you're doing eight fig, like you're still a small startup, I'm just like, why not pay for direct response brand building, which would simply be this. You're just doing paid traffic on YouTube, Meta, X, Pinterest, add a profit and getting millions of impressions in the process and millions of earned followers. Now the depth of those followers, like for example, when we do like a promotion, I always grow like 4,000 Instagram followers.
Starting point is 00:59:12 Now sometimes I lose a thousand, but I'm like, that's fine, like of course. They like during it, they follow me, they decide they don't like me. Good, it's a self-filtering system. Like I had to vibe with him or I didn't wanna stick around. But then mind you, that promotion was profitable. meaning we are going to have 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X, 6X, ROAS, return on ad spend, and I grew with 3,000 followers.
Starting point is 00:59:33 That's direct response brand building. Whereas if I just paid to grow 4,000 followers, I'm still going to probably lose one or 2,000 and I'm out of the money. So all day long, I am only really a proponent because why wouldn't? If I can grow my brand at a profit, then it's just how much can we scale that profitably? And that's how I would approach it.
Starting point is 00:59:56 The final thing, and this is New School 2024, there's what's called the self-sustaining funnel. And Ravi Avuvalo is just breaking this down. Some of the top YouTubers like Iman Ghazi, top entrepreneur YouTubers, young guy, huge. We're living through a trust recession. Lowest level of trust in like 40 years. Less people are opting in,
Starting point is 01:00:18 less people are going through sales processes. And so this is a new wave. People are just putting their web class on YouTube and selling on YouTube. No opt-in, value-based, 30 minutes of value up front, 20 minutes of a sale, doing the whole stack. Organically letting that video serve people, just being like, hey, if you want more,
Starting point is 01:00:39 here's the deal and this is what it is. Not behind an opt-in page, not anywhere else, but then they run ads to that. And what you have happen is you have cost per view, you also have cost per earned view because the video is public, so you start getting organic lift. So the video gets organic lift, you get cost per view.
Starting point is 01:01:01 Now you're not getting a lead, although you are if you're smart and retargeting. And so ultimately you can retarget, you don't have their contact information first party, but you can retarget people who've consumed the video. So you can at least with further paid follow up on a warm audience that's been created off of that video. But all that to say is if I'm doing paid ads,
Starting point is 01:01:23 that's kind of a hybrid of thing one. Don't do it to just get views. You'd be doing it in a dark post method, which is how most people run YouTube ads. This pre-roll can only be seen as a pre-roll. And now mind you, you're not just uploading like, hey, don't skip this ad. I'm about like that kind of, you're not doing that. What you're doing though is you're taking, in a way like a free web class, free value, really good valuable content that really serves. And like a YouTube video with a great title and a great thumbnail that people would want to watch
Starting point is 01:01:55 on its own merits and would do well on its own merits organically. But rather than being like, okay, and then go watch my class and whatever else, and then pivot and you just go into your offer. Because the YouTube ad can actually be really long, right? YouTube ads can be as long as you want. I've seen two-hour YouTube ads.
Starting point is 01:02:12 It's a public video that's now also, it's getting both. And we did have this debate, and I don't know I have a clear answer, but it was also do paid ads hurt the organic on your channel. And YouTube employees have said there are two algorithms. Meaning if you start running ads on that video, the metrics are gonna be separate because here's what would happen too.
Starting point is 01:02:31 If you talk about just like watch time and click through rate, you're gonna really push that down with paid ads. And if then by pushing those numbers down so dramatically, it was harmful to you, then it would hurt the organic. According to YouTube employees, it's two different algorithms. They're sort of like the paid side of what you're doing on that video and would hurt the organic. According to YouTube employees, it's two different algorithms. There's sort of like the paid side
Starting point is 01:02:46 of what you're doing on that video, and there's the organic side. That's a new wave, new school thing to test. Think about that. And it's sort of back to like authenticity, vulnerability, radical transparency. It's like, hey, here's some free stuff. Later on, I'll tell you about my other stuff.
Starting point is 01:03:01 Let me know. We can help you at a deeper level. You're gonna enjoy this regardless. And you're just putting it out there. And Ravi gave me a specific numbers on our podcast, which dropped an episode about those things. It was like normally doing some higher ticket stuff, end to end marketing agency. He paid like $30, $50 a lead for qualified leads. All of this to say, when I think about direct response brand building, what you're also after is brand lift. And what brand lift
Starting point is 01:03:35 means is when you think about like purple mattress, or there's the whole squatty potty thing, you have the direct response ad, whether or not that converted. But when you do that much spend at that level, you can search how many people search your brand name on Google. Why did the amount of just organic search of your name go higher at the exact same time you were running the ads? Well, obviously because you were running the ads, but the brand lift is the brand name and that could be your personal brand or the brand gets lifted because of the paid traffic. So the integration of all the above strategies
Starting point is 01:04:08 we just said would be the goal here. And that is, I think you could consider putting a value-based sales and then sales presentation on YouTube publicly, run ads around that, absolutely do paid traffic at a profit because why wouldn't you anyways, it's kind of a separate conversation.
Starting point is 01:04:26 But my personal advice, the way I would do it, some people have pulled off the ability to convert paid ads into viewers that care and subscribers that become long-form subscribers, but it's rare. I'd rather just run ads at a profit and with the brand Lyft, discover a percentage of people that are like, man, that's so cool.
Starting point is 01:04:45 The reason they discovered me was because of paid ads, but they stuck around, but I was able to run those paid ads at a profit. So I didn't just be like, hey, was that billboard, did it work or not? And I think what I like about this, it's all measurable. It's the two different worlds of the idea of, yeah, I don't know how we feel, like how are we measuring?
Starting point is 01:05:04 And we're living in a world with digital, right? Where we can track it, track spend at a profit and how we measure it. Sometimes maybe that brand lift is less measurable, but I'm okay with that because I already made a profit on the spend. So I go, yeah, I mean, we grew 4,000 followers. It looks like we lost 1500 on Instagram. I'm sure some of those were organic. It wasn't all from the paid cause we also were posting, but we grew.
Starting point is 01:05:29 We measured that people on sales calls mentioned they saw this here, this there. It's only one person that said that, but chances are we could attribute that to more. So I would never in a marketing conversation be comfortable with only if I was working with an agency or something with only that kind of language. So I'm like, okay, we talked to one person. And so that means thousands are being reached. I'd be like, dude, if you can't measure it, I mean, for sure that one. But I think that's what's cool is if you could figure out how to crack the code on paid ads
Starting point is 01:05:58 at a profit and track tangible and less tangible brand lift results, conversations, sales calls, feedback here at DMHERA, whatever, then you're just in such a win-win combo that you want to scale that to the moon. It's so good. And with the YouTube ad strategy, I was always told by other experts, don't do it, it will ruin your channel. You just said right now,
Starting point is 01:06:22 YouTube told you it's two different algorithms, so it shouldn't impact your channel negatively. And as I was mentioning, Ravi, Abu Valla and me, we're going to reconnect in six months because he's aggressively doing this. We're not doing that aggressively. We just run dark posts, aka unlisted YouTube videos that are just for the purpose of ads that again are actually less value based. And they're more like, hey, coming up or right now it's like for our event it's like hey our event's coming up
Starting point is 01:06:48 if you want to hear Dave Ramsey and Shalene Johnson then come out. So you're not publishing them but you're able to run them as ads and you can also publish a video and run it as an ad. You could also publish a video and run it as an ad because it's going to be in your YouTube library one way or another. It needs to be in your YouTube library if you're gonna run it with that account, which we do. And a lot of people do that unlisting strategy, right? Where you basically run ads on an unlisted video and then you publish it with views already on it
Starting point is 01:07:17 so that it has social proof. You could, I would never recommend buying views, but if all you wanted was social proof, like you just wanted the video to have a couple thousand or 10,000 views, it'd be way cheaper than using Google would be to buy views. That's not a recommended strategy, Brian, but like 10,000 views on your video would be like five bucks.
Starting point is 01:07:34 It would be like $2. You just dropped so many knowledge bombs, so really appreciate your time here. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests, and then we do something fun at the end of the year with it. So it doesn't have to be about the topic of today's episode. You could just speak from your heart.
Starting point is 01:07:49 What is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Win the morning and slay all day. Your morning routine is critical to all day success, and your morning routine starts at night. So I often think tomorrow is more important than tonight. When my willpower is low, when I'm fatigued, when maybe I'll reach for food or beverage
Starting point is 01:08:17 that's not gonna serve me in the morning. If I get good sleep, write down my goals at night, it sets me up for a powerful morning, it sets me up for a powerful morning, which sets me up for a powerful day. And if you string together multiple powerful days in a row, next thing you know, you have a young and profiting life that is unstoppable. I love it.
Starting point is 01:08:37 And my last question is, what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business. My secret to profiting in life and this can go beyond business. My secret to profiting in life is reverse engineering everything back from what matters most. If I gain the applause of the crowd, but lose the love and respect of my children, I've failed. If I grow the biggest business,
Starting point is 01:08:59 but blow up my marriage in the process, in my definition, I've failed. So I wanna make sure that the people closest to me love and respect me the process, in my definition, I've failed. So I wanna make sure that the people closest to me love and respect me the most, and that more than anything, my relationship with God is close and that he loves and respects me the most, and that I'm living according to my highest values and principles.
Starting point is 01:09:16 Life's about order, and I wanna have the right things in the right order. I'm all about wealth building, business building, but it's not everything, but it comes down to the things that matter most, in my opinion. That's faith, that's, but it's not everything, but it comes down to the things that matter most, in my opinion, that's faith, that's family, that's relationships, and that's legacy. So beautiful.
Starting point is 01:09:31 And I'm sure that so many of my listeners wanna learn from you about YouTube. They wanna know about your courses, how they can learn more. So where do you wanna drive people to? Thank you so much for having me. Love the show. Sean Cannell, Rhymes with YouTube channel,
Starting point is 01:09:46 wrote a book called YouTube Secrets. The second edition is out now on either Amazon or Audible. And then other than that, we do have a free class that people can watch and you can link that up in the show notes. It's on the one strategy. We talked about so many tactics, but if you wanna look over my shoulder
Starting point is 01:10:01 and just see talking about the one strategy for ranking videos as we described and then three tips of how to implement that immediately, check out that free class. And then Think Media is the channel, Think Media podcast, Think Media is the channel and happy to connect with anybody on any of the platforms. Amazing, thank you so much, Sean,
Starting point is 01:10:20 for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Okay, guys, this was the second installment Thanks so much Sean for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Okay guys, this was the second installment of my two-part conversation with YouTube guru Sean Cannell. And he had so many great insights about how to turn your YouTube dreams into a reality. And here are just a few takeaways from our incredible chat. First, there are two big ways to get discovered on YouTube. The first is YouTube suggested,
Starting point is 01:10:47 the platform's recommendation engine. That's the true engine of virality and where about 75% of views come from. But Sean recommends focusing on the second less traveled path, YouTube search. Create practical evergreen videos that are search friendly. They may not go viral, but they'll accumulate views over time
Starting point is 01:11:08 and slow and steady wins the race. And if you can combine these ranked videos to another income stream like affiliate marketing, then you can really hit the YouTube sweet spot. But to make the most out of YouTube search, you need to get better at naming your videos. Sean says he does some of his own personal A-B testing, coming up with at least five options and then getting feedback on titles from the YouTube community tab.
Starting point is 01:11:33 Success on YouTube also comes from a better understanding of the platform's algorithm. For example, longer videos, even if they're not fully watched, can boost the total amount of watch time and boost your exposure overall. Just remember as Sean says, that ultimately you're not optimizing for the algorithm, you're optimizing for people. Don't lose track of who your audience is and what they want to enjoy, even as you get better at navigating the more technical aspects of a platform like YouTube. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast.
Starting point is 01:12:05 If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation, then please don't be shy about it. Tell your friends, tell your family. Perhaps you know somebody who's thinking about starting their own YouTube channel. Do them a favor and hit that share button and text a link to this episode. They'll be sure to thank you.
Starting point is 01:12:20 If you prefer to watch your podcast as videos, guess what? We're on YouTube. You can find us on YouTube. Just search Young and Profiting. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn, just search my name, it's Halataha. And as always, I always have to thank my production team because I'm just nothing without you.
Starting point is 01:12:38 I couldn't do this without you guys. I'm just a voice. Thank you so much for all you do behind the scenes. This is your host, Halataha, AKA the Podcast Princess, signing off.

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