Transcription
Come on, Debb. Yeah. I don't think that squirrel's going to come back. Come on, Debbie. Come.
It was three years ago when I first decided that I wanted to try my hand at YouTube. And I really had no idea what I was getting into. I just knew that I needed to find a way to supplement my income. I had changed careers late in life, gotten a divorce, and my savings were depleted, and so I needed a strong plan B to get me through to the next stage in life, to go through retirement. And hopefully I could find something that would engage me strongly enough that I could pursue it well into retirement just as a side hustle or a hobby or something that I could do just for fun.
Now, at the time when I went into YouTube, I believed that my experience as a health coach and a personal trainer would be the most valuable thing I could talk about. And so for six months I put up I don't know maybe 50 or 60 videos and did not get a lot of traction. Then I took 9 months off and I came back in I think May of 2024 and uh dedicated myself to doing it for at least one year that I would continue pursuing YouTube as a uh option for 12 months no matter what. no matter what happened, I would give it a year. Well, at the three-month mark, things started to take off. So, in August of 2024, I started to get some traction. Not on a topic that I thought I was going to be getting. I thought I'd be talking about fitness. Ended up talking about marriage and relationships and divorce. And then by September, I was monetized. So today I want to go through a little bit of my journey, what my thought processes were, what I learned, and um if you're thinking about a YouTube channel, hopefully you can take something away from this that gives you a realistic view of what being a successful YouTube creator really is about. This is life 2.0. Let's talk about it.
Like most people, I found YouTube a long time ago looking for answers to questions to solve problems in a business that I was running. How to, you know, format Excel spreadsheets to perform specific tasks, how to program a router, whatever. It was a place to find answers. So, when my daughter decided that she wanted to become a YouTube creator, I thought, "What are you talking about? What do you know? What can you do?" And uh and what she can do is she can build a a camper van and drive it around the country for a year. And she did just exactly that. And she did quite well with her channel. Now, she's doing something else. She's building cars on YouTube and selling them. And she's doing quite well with that. So, she has not only some skills, but she also has some personality and she's a pretty young woman and she's very smart and she's driven. And I thought, "Wow, isn't that cool?" And she always wanted to do that ever since she was 16 years old. So, when she told me she wasn't going to go to college cuz she wanted to be a content creator, I thought, "Oh my god." Yeah. Well, she showed me she's doing just fine. And I think that probably looking back on it, she made a pretty good decision because all that college money went into helping her get her content creation going. And that was a much better investment than a college degree is for a lot of people these days. How's the water?
I have found that when I put my back against a wall, I am more likely to succeed at something than if I think I have a ton of options. So, being in my late 50s, being broke, and having changed careers to something that I definitely loved, and was making reasonable money at it, but I wasn't putting a lot of money away. You know what I mean? Seeing my daughter be successful with YouTube made me think, if she can do that, I can probably do that, too. That might be an option for me to try. Obviously, I'm quite successful as a health coach and a personal trainer. I'm sure there's millions and millions of people out there who are dying to hear what I have to say on this topic. Yeah, they weren't.
Um, so the first thing I learned is when I started making videos is I felt like I needed to entertain people. I missed the reason I got into YouTube to begin with, why I first went to YouTube for um any purpose at all, and that was to find answers. And what people really wanted were answers. And what I was giving them was answers coded in a um entertainment. And it and the entertainment is part of the process. It truly is. But you can't put that out front. You know, the fancy editing, the flashy stuff, it just wasn't working for my audience. That's another thing. You need to know who your audience is. Now, when I first got into YouTube, I before I had any information to base it on, I decided who my audience was. And I thought it was going to be middle-aged overweight women. That's who I thought I was going to be talking to. That was not who I was talking to. As it turned out, um, most of my audience were guys my age and they were male, you know, they were just people like me. So, don't jump to conclusions about who you think your audience is because sometimes you're completely wrong. Um, make videos, let people watch it, and it's going to take a while for you to get enough demographic information, but eventually you will get enough demo and you will see who is actually watching your videos. then you can start customizing your videos for that audience. That's another thing. You think as a creator that you have creative license and you do to a degree, but at the end of the day, the audience decides what they're going to watch. You cannot dictate to the audience what they're going to watch. If they don't like what you're talking about, then they're not going to watch it. So, you need to be clear with yourself about who's really running the show. You're in a partnership, if you will, with your audience. You are um providing them with content from your experience or your research or however you're getting it. And it can't just be self-serving. It has to be something that solves a problem for them. Keep that in mind because that is really the underlying function of YouTube. Yes, it's entertainment and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, people go to YouTube to solve problems. Now, they may not be huge problems. They may just be, you know, wanting to find information about a particular topic. Maybe they're interested in, you know, something political or the news or maybe they're looking to buy a new car or they're looking to buy a new house or they're wanting to know about the economy. There's all kinds of reasons why people go to YouTube, but generally speaking, they're looking for answers. They're looking to solve a problem. And your videos have to be able to do that. They have to be able to solve a problem. And if they don't, you're not going to get very many viewers.
Like Mr. Beast is just pure pure entertainment. Um, I don't know that most of us are going to be able to make a living like that because we just don't have the resources to do it. Number one, and number two, his creativity to come up with these ridiculous ideas is really just off the off the charts. Now, you might be the next Mr. Beast, so I don't want to take that away from you. But for the vast majority of us, we need to find ways to solve problems for our audience. And if we can do that, we're going to be successful at YouTube.
Now, the biggest mistake that most new creators make is they spend way too much money on gear. H Yeah, I would be a lot better if I just had the right gear. No, I think my first year or two years at this, I spent I don't know how many thousands of dollars. I wasted thousands of dollars. Not spent, wasted thousands of dollars on gear that was not correct for what I was doing and what I needed to accomplish. I had lights and all kinds of microphones and um cameras and uh I even bought costume gear so that I could do skits and like that. Oh, it was ridiculous. It was ridiculous. Um, keep it simple, stupid. That that rule really really applies when it comes to YouTube. The purpose of getting into YouTube, of course, you know, as a content creator is you've got something to say, but also it's to make some money. And as someone who spent a lot of years in business, somehow I forgot this lesson. I thought, okay, I've got to spend money to make money. And to a certain degree, that's true. But you can't waste money. Wasting money will not earn you money. Wasting money is always a negative. So don't waste money on stuff unless you absolutely know that you need it, then it's an investment in your business. But if you think that by acquiring some device or some camera or some light or some microphone is going to um improve your presentation um without any strong evidence to suggest it, then I would not do it. Don't gamble on, oh, I'm going to buy the fanciest camera I can get and that's going to make a difference because it won't. Um a lot of people are very successful just talking into their phones. I have an Osmo Pocket 3, which I think, you know, the whole creator kit costs like $500 or $600. God knows I've spent way more money on, you know, APC cameras and stuff like that that I like. I mean, they're fun cameras, but they're not very practical for how I use my um my gear. And uh so it's just a waste of money on a lot of stuff. So, you don't need to spend much money. I use a lot of drones in my work. And I have a collection of drones. You wouldn't believe. I got drones to do every kind of thing you can think of. I only needed one drone. I probably have 20. I guess I probably need one, you know, primary drone and one as a backup just in case I crash it. You know what I mean? That's probably all I needed, but I have been the uh the king of drones. I've kept DJI and all these other companies afloat. They I should be investing in them. They should be paying me dividends. They're good drones, but um I've got way too many of them. So, don't waste your money on crap unless you know you need it. Once you know you need it and you know it's crucial to your success, then absolutely go all in on it. But don't waste your money on stuff that isn't going to really make a difference.
The first time I turned the camera on, I was standing in my own little garage gym with a camera sitting on a tripod aiming at me in front of a flat screen TV that I had hooked up a iPad to so that I could do illustrations and make a point like I was teaching a class. Yeah. Oh man, I could feel the sweat under my armpits. Woo man. It might have been I It was probably 65 70 degrees in that garage that day. It could have been It felt like it was 120. I mean, I was just dying. And I think that video was like seven or eight minutes long. It felt like it was 3 hours. It felt like the longest 3 hours of my life and it was all of, you know, 8 minutes. And uh the sense of relief I had once it was complete was like oh god thank god that's done you know but at the same time there was a sense of exhilaration so it wasn't just like the uh stress of it you know it wasn't just a negative experience it was difficult and it was u a teaching experience a learning experience but it was also exhilarating to have done it to have got it completed and then I just wanted to get it on the computer I wanted to see the footage I wanted to piece it together I wanted to see what I do to make it better. I wanted to throw in some special effects, you know. I wanted to add some titles and stuff like that. I wanted to see what I could do. Yeah. And uh then I was hooked, you know. Then I had to make another one. I started thinking, what can I talk about next, you know, then what's the next thing? And what's the next thing? And um I remember after like three or four videos in, I had talked about weight loss the whole time and thinking now what am I going to talk about? like I think I've already talked about everything I know. Now what am I going to do? Yeah. So then I had to start getting more creative and that's where the creative part of content creator gets gets very valuable.
Um, I guess the crucial thing I could tell you about the beginning is that it's like anything else that you're trying to learn. And unfortunately with YouTube the only way that you learn it is by doing it. You cannot practice this. I mean, you can practice it and you could guess, you know, shoot videos and look at yourself and evaluate yourself, but you're really not a fair arbiter of your own um uh performance. You're going to think you suck all the time. You're always going to think you suck. You're always going to think that you're not good enough and you'll never post it. So, you're better just to do your best knowing on that given day it was the best you had at that moment and just post it and see what happens. You're going to get some feedback. It may be bad feedback, but that's okay. Just keep doing it over and over and over and over again because every time you make a new video, you get a little bit better. You get a little bit smarter. You get a little more creative. Your delivery becomes smoother. You become more comfortable with the camera being in your face like this right now. And it no longer is a impediment to you communicating your message because the thought of the camera being on and the microphone being on and that millions of people may one day watch this video is not important anymore. It's really just about you in a very meaningful way trying to communicate something that you think is valuable to someone else. I like to think of it as just talking to a best friend.
Now, I shoot my videos out in the woods because I enjoy it out here. I got to take the dogs for a walk anyway. So, I'm killing two birds with one stone. And um I remember when I was a teenager, my best friend and I would walk around in the woods and just talk. And since I'm talking about relationships and marriage and all that sort of stuff, it's the kind of thing I would do if I was still hanging out with my best friend when I was like 13 or 14 years old. This is exactly what we would do. So, it puts me in an element where um I feel very at ease communicating about very complex topics. And for whatever reason, being in nature allows me to relax to a degree that I am able to access those thoughts much more easily. It's like I get into a zone and information just comes streaming through me. And I think if I was sitting in my office with a camera in my face in front of my computer, I think I'd be a little stiff. You know what I mean? I mean, I just feel a little uncomfortable with that. So, I think it's really critically important that you find the right spot, the right place for you to communicate from because it's so easy to set up a whole um studio and to put all this time and energy and money into it and maybe the best thing you can do is just take a walk outside your house. You know, maybe just getting outside is going to make all the difference in the world. Um, novelty really goes a long way in with YouTube. So, I think the reason why a lot of people like watching my videos is it's not just me, but I've got my three dogs with me. I'm out here in the woods all year long, you know, summer, fall, winter, spring. So, they see me in all elements of this thing. And um and I think there is a uh a longing to for a lot of people to have this natural uh experience brought into their homes or into their lives. It reminds them of what it's like and they can hear the sounds in the background. Of course, there's a plane flying over now, but they can hear the birds and they can hear the animals and the crickets and the frogs and all that stuff in the background. And I think it provides them with a little bit of um additional interest that might be missing from a lot of other people's presentations. So, think about that when you're trying to decide where you're going to shoot your videos and how you're going to do it. Um, where are you most comfortable? That's the first thing that's most critical. And then secondly, is there some place that you can go or some kind of an environment that you can be in that's going to provide additional interest to your viewers because that's going to be an essential element because it takes a little bit of the pressure off you. So, as long as the forest is still here and it's doing all its thing with the deer and the birds and the stream, as long as it's here doing that and it's been here for hundreds, if not thousands of years, then um my viewers will have something to focus on other than me. So, I don't need to carry the whole show, you know what I mean? Like, I've got I've got some co- uh co- actors out here, you know, co-stars that are working with me. And I think that makes a big difference. It makes a huge difference.
YouTube is a business as you know. They're owned by Google. They are in it to make money. Do not have any illusions about this. They care about you in so far as you can help them make money. It's a business relationship. They may talk about the partnership program and they try to warm it all up and make it fuzzy and it is a little bit. I mean, it's nice. They pay us. That's great. And I I am a great appreciation have a great appreciation for YouTube and everything they've done for me truly. However, they are looking out for YouTube's interest first. And that means they're looking out for the audience's interest. They are going to make decisions based on what they believe is in their best interest as it pertains to their ability to sell advertising to the audience. Understand that your creations, the product of all of your love and passion, is only a delivery vehicle for advertising. That's it. That's it. What you are doing, you could be pouring your guts out. You could be, you know, talking from the from the heavens if you want. You know, YouTube just sees it as a vehicle for delivering advertising to people. That's it.
Recently, Tik Tok became a big thing a couple years ago, a few years ago. YouTube took a look at that and said, "Hey, look at all that short form video. They are making tons of money. I bet we could do that." And so, they started doing it as well. and they started pushing the short form content more and more and more. Now, YouTube had been a long form content channel and I think they're going to continue to be, don't get me wrong, I think that's going to continue, but there's a lot of money to be made in short form and they want to dominate there as well. And so, in order to dominate there, they needed to put resources towards short form video. And so, over the last couple years, they've been doing exactly that. Now, they pay us a lot less for short form video. First of all, they get a bigger portion of the number of the of the dollar. I think they get 55, we get 45. Well, long form is the other way around. Um, but also as an individual short form video, you're just in a stream with hundreds or thousands of others. They just want people to get into that doom scroll. They just want them scrolling, you know, just one thing after another after another. And if they think they can keep a certain segment of the population on YouTube, on the platform, seeing their advertising while they scroll through one a one video after another after another after another after another, well, they're winning. They're making money, you know.
Now, when they went all in last summer, I think it was in um August, late August, they changed the platform around so that YouTube was presenting more short form content than long form content to people when they logged on to the platform. This caused long- form content creators to take an enormous financial hit. So, my income dropped by 35%. From um August to September, and it continued to drop until I figured out a strategy to start getting it going the other way. At first, they don't tell you why what they're doing, why they're doing it. They're not they didn't expect for this to happen. I don't think maybe they did, but they certainly weren't explaining it to us. They weren't keeping us in the loop. We weren't really partners. They weren't saying, "Look, partner, we're going to do this. Brace yourself, you know. Brace yourself, Matilda. It's coming. Anyway, so it took everyone about 3 or 4 months to figure out what the hell happened and uh finding a way to improve your content and focus in on where your advantages are as a content creator in the marketplace so that you can exploit those advantages and um retain your viewership and your income is critical. Um, this is more advanced stuff obviously because you know when you're first starting you're not thinking that way, but I wanted to put it out there because I don't want you to be naive getting into this. Yeah, there's money to be made and a lot of money and it can be really really great. Um, but it's not as steady as you might think. So, you've got to insulate yourself. What I mean by that is you've got to be doing long and short form videos. You're not going to make a ton of money on shorts mostly, but you might you might hit it off. Um, some people are really great at making shorts. I just cut mine up through Opus Clips and you cut up my long form and put it out there. And my average short gets between five and 10,000 views, you know, and I just, you know, put one out every day, you know, so I just let it go. Well, my long form's average, you know, over a course of, you know, 24 hours is probably 20,000 views, but then over the course of a month, it may be 50,000 or even 100,000 views. So, um, the long form is going to pay a ton more for 5,000 views than the short will for 5,000 views. I think my entire shorts, um, revenue, uh, is less than, I don't know, less than a couple hundred dollars a month. Well, my long form is, you know, a lot more than that. You know, I probably average between I do average between 8 and 10,000 per month from the long form. So, it's an enormous difference. Um, but you need to insulate yourself by going on other platforms. So, if you're going to do YouTube, you're going to be posting on YouTube, and you're going to be making shorts because you have to, you might as well post those shorts on Facebook, and you might as well post them on um Instagram, you might as well post them on Tik Tok, you might as well post them on X, you know. And Rumble's kind of a iffy thing. I I've messed around with it. their platform is not nearly as refined or put together as YouTube's is and they don't really have much of an audience and it's sort of a pain in the ass to have to upload to them. But it's something I'm considering doing too just so that I have a a backup. You know, you've got to find a way to continue making money. And also, if you can convert your um your videos into a um podcast and get them up on Apple Podcast and and Spotify, do it. Do it. find every single opportunity to make revenue that you can. Do not just depend on YouTube to carry the day for you.
Now, this insulation thing is probably something you want to consider once you've gotten to the place where you're monetized on YouTube. Um, splitting your time and energy up is a danger. And it really, really is because in the beginning, there's just so much focus that's required just to figure out yourself out and try to get yourself to the place where you are um feeling successful. like you're getting to that place where you're starting to get some momentum and you're seeing that this is working for you. Um, but once you get to that place and you start you're monetized, you start making some money from YouTube, start insulating yourself, start creating different streams of income. Um, get as many streams of income as you possibly can. I would recommend that you go for like 10 or more because the opportunities are there. Um, but you've got to you got to strike while the iron's hot. You got to put those things out there so that your viewers have a way to express the fact that they enjoy watching your content. So perhaps having some, you know, hats or shirts that you can sell. There's lots of ways you can do that. Um, write a book. Like I wrote a book. People bought that. That was cool. Um, I do coaching. That's another stream of income. I definitely recommend it. If it's something that fits into your niche, absolutely you should do it. Um, even um, having private live streams. I know that on a lot of people use Patreon for income. I meddled with Patreon. I have not um exploited it really, but I probably need to go back to that and see what I can do and make it more valuable to my my viewers. Um got a website, you know, where I sell services and clothes, and of course, I've got, you know, lots and lots of platforms that are paying me. I get paid on on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram, on um X. I'm not getting paid from X yet, but I will be getting that soon. And then from Spotify and from Apple um podcasts. So now all those other things are not nearly as much money as YouTube pays me, but it is a nice way to supplement my income. It gives me a few hundred bucks, you know, for each one of these things every single month and it's growing. So it's really really important.
Creating a brand for yourself is what is the way you have to kind of think of it. And getting into all these places and to have a a message that's consistent is really really critical. One of the things that I think I did really well is stumbling into this relationship niche was um not intentional, but it uh is a great thing because I will always be identified with life 2.0. Life 2.0 can be a lot of things, but really is targeting middle-aged guys who are struggling in their lives and trying to um figure out what comes next. You know, the clock is ticking. They're trying to find out how do they make the most of the time they have left. A lot of these guys are divorced. A lot of these guys are dealing with dating after divorce or they've gotten to midlife and they want to do a career change. All of these topics are really really great for my overall genre and I can even split it up into smaller and smaller segments. So start looking at your genre and how you can piece together lots of different topics underneath an umbrella that will appeal to a similar audience. Even though everyone that watches my videos will not want to watch all of my videos, you know. So, there will be some guys that are much more interested in u me um talking about divorce and divorce recovery. There'll be other guys who just want to hear me um do comedy skits on the nature of women and just telling women jokes. I know some people say, "Oh, John, you're a misogynist." And I've been down that. You should watch my video from last weekend. It was hilarious. But, um I have found a way to communicate with a large group of people on many different topics. Even though every topic doesn't appeal to all of them, I have different segments of that population. And every once in a while, I'll stumble across a video that hits a broad version of them, a broad array of them, and they will go nuts. They will love it. So, I um I recommend that you focus really clearly on your niche and think about how does this look in the long term. How many videos can I make from this topic? How many subtopics can I see? Because that's really, really important.
One of my secrets to success, and this is a secret, don't tell anybody, is I go for quantity over quality. Yes, I make a lot of freaking videos. I make a lot of freaking videos. Look, I'm out here in the woods anyway with my dogs and I got this little camera. I can hold it in my hand. I'm not even shooting drone footage today because I don't have my drone. Well, I have a drone with me, but I don't know if it's going to be right for this. But anyway, um I shoot typically four videos a week. And I've been doing that for over 26 like two over two years. That's a lot of videos. I'm well over 500 videos so far. It's starting to rain. That's one of the drawbacks to being outdoors. The reason I do so many videos is because some I remember reading or watching some YouTube uh coach talk about just keep making videos, keep doing it. Just do make as many as you can and once you make a certain number, you'll get better and you'll get better. And um so I just started on um how many videos can I make? So I started with one and then two and then I could fit three in, I could fit four in and sometimes do five. So, I could make a video almost every single day. And that's a tough pace to keep quite honestly. I mean, it really is coming up with content, um, doing the editing, the whole nine yards. I mean, it's a lot of work. And I dedicated a ton of time to it. I kid you not, it is hard work. Do not believe this is easy. This is not easy in any way at all. This is not an easy way to make a living. This is not any easier than anything else that you will do. In fact, I would get tell you it's probably a lot harder than most of the things that you're going to do. So, don't think this is going to be some easy road to riches. I don't think that's the case for most of us. It's going to be a lot of hard work, but it's a lot of fun, and it's a lot better than sitting in some office somewhere with some lights hanging over your head and some idiot boss telling you what you need to do to to keep your job. You are self-employed. There's a lot of opportunities. There's a lot of fun in it. In order to become successful, I decided I was going to make a ton of videos, and that's what I've done.
Anyway, I'm going have to call this short, I'm afraid, because it is starting to rain pretty good and uh I am about a mile and a half from home and I'm probably going to be soaked by the time I get there. Anyway, I'm going to post some more videos like this from time to time. Please let me know what you think about it in the uh comments. And uh till next time, I'll uh I was going to usually say stay healthy and if you can stay single, that's the way I end all my videos. But since this is a different kind of video, I'm going to say um just stick with it. Just no matter what, if this is your dream, push through. It's going to be hard, but I tell you, it's going to be worth it.