Transcription
YouTube shorts do not convert very well in terms of subscribers. You get 20 million views on a short, you're going to get a lot of subscribers, but what are the quality of those subscribers?
Welcome to the Think Media podcast, the number one show bringing you unfiltered YouTube tips for building a profitable channel. I'm Nathan Eswine, one of the coaches here at Think Media. And today Sean and I are diving into some YouTube questions that just to be honest don't make any sense. I'm talking about this kind of questions that even as a coach I read it once and I'm like I'm reading it again because it's like what your sub you wait your subscribers are down and you think it's because of shorts like shorts are killing the subscribers or another situation that's like your subscribers aren't even watching your content like the people who hit subscribe aren't even tuning in for your latest upload. What's going on there? Or you've got a video that did really well like overperformed. You're trying to figure out how to reverse engineer it because they keep trying to remake that video or get that same sort of success and it's not happening. Well, none of this is made up. These are real situations that our students are facing that just kind of make you question everything you think you know about YouTube, especially at the beginning, right? Where you're just trying to find your way as a small channel. So, without further ado, let's jump right in.
First question here is from Jessica. She's asking, "My channel grew from 600 to,00 subscribers during a one-year pause. How do I properly restart?"
That's a great question, and I think there's three things that come to mind. First, this is actually really cool because I think the positive thing is you stopped posting, but your channel kept growing. I love YouTube. YouTube is the most powerful platform on the planet because it's the only platform where your content lives forever and where you can keep getting views and subscribers even if you stop posting. Here at Thick Media, we talk about ranked videos and it's clearly that you have a couple ranked videos because your channel grew while you weren't posting. So, I would celebrate and be grateful and excited that that happened and use that as some motivation that when you restart, you can build even more momentum that if you take a month off, 3 months off, a year off, it doesn't mean your channel has to stop growing. This is the story of so many of our students. Sometimes they've had health challenges, maybe they've had seasons off, they took a summer off, and yet we're still able to have momentum from YouTube. Other social media platforms do not give you that opportunity.
But I think the second thing would be I get it restarting is very overwhelming. And I think the second thing is it is first and foremost a mindset thing. I think what can happen with restarting is you overthink it. You're overthinking like I need to come back. People are expecting me. People have missed me. Am I do I still have what it takes? all this different kind of stuff like that. And really what you need to do is actually kind of just restart. People aren't thinking about you like you think they are. Good or bad. They they're just thinking about something else. You're probably overthinking restarting. And we have to acknowledge one of the most important words in YouTube, in business, really in life, and that is the word momentum. An object in motion stays at motion and an object at rest stays at rest. And so once you're in motion, you get into a rhythm. Sometimes we get into a real positive rhythm of creating content and it starts to feel a little easier. But when we lose that, and I've been there so many times. Sometimes I'm bumping out batch producing videos and it's like, man, I'm pumping out a couple a week and I can pump them out in a batch and I'm recording a lot. And then if I take a break, I sit down to shoot again and it's like I'm rusty. I'm dear in the headlights. I kind of don't know what to say. I feel like I have to restart filming a video over and over again. And that just speaks to the loss of momentum. So what's the action item is you have to just start it again.
So, I'd say number three, just like you had to punch fear in the face and punch perfectionism in the face at the beginning to build up momentum in the first place, I think it's accepting that you're going to in a way have to do it again. Even though you have the channel, you're going to almost have to start from scratch. And momentum is very much a picture of a train, a heavy multibbox car train that starts exerting all of this energy with its engine pumping its gears to just barely move forward. But eventually all the weight and momentum of that train once it picks up speed starts to kind of have an inertia of its own. You don't have that right now. So, my biggest encouragement to you is to just pick a date, start filming again, start posting again, and do not let the overthinking fear of like, "What if the quality drops or I lost my edge or I lost my mojo or like what if people like react now or I can't live up to what it once was." You're judging it by all these is overthinking. And the only way to start getting momentum again is to start posting again as soon as possible. Do not overjudge your first couple of uploads. And don't be discouraged if you post to kind of a ghost town because that audience, yes, you're getting some views, but like they're kind of checked out. It it's going to take a while to get the algorithm going again. So, it's kind of a grit mindset of I'm just going to start posting again, commit to the long haul. Thank god you've got,00 subscribers, but my mindset would be I'm starting at zero. I know I'm starting with an advantage, but I'm gonna treat it as if I'm starting at zero because the same grit it took to start back then, you're going to need right now.
Oh, that's so so good. I love that. I love the mentality reminder there because yeah, while you're starting with you mean you essentially doubled your subscribers in a year. Like that's epic, right? But it's still a start nonetheless. And so I love that. And I love the glimpse of hope that's right there, too. It's like that is the power of YouTube, man. You could like disappear for a year. Stuff still happens. what gets to happen after there's no more pauses, you know, and you're able to get after it and get into that rhythm that Sean was talking about. So cool, Jessica. We're cheering you on.
Okay, Sean, this next one, a little bit of a different direction, but we want to hear from Kimberly. She has a video that shot up in revenue and she's trying to figure out how, why, and just trying to figure out how to reverse engineer it to do it again, I'm sure.
Yeah, that's a great question. So, what you want to get familiar with is your YouTube analytics. And for any individual video, um, I'll actually walk through it. You would click analytics. You're going to click over to revenue or you're going to click your content, find the video, click analytics, click over to revenue of the specific video. And inside of that video, you're going to be able to see video performance and it'll say RPM. That's the revenue per,000 views. And actually a recent video, Nathan, that you and I did on the Think Media podcast channel has a $15.36 RPM, which actually really good. The Think Media podcast channel um does pretty good. The range of RPM could be around 1 2 3 4 5 and then if you get into educational content like we're creating finance, different things like that, it could be a lot higher. That number there is going to dramatically affect how much money you earn per video. And your channelwide, topicwide, nichwide RPM will be affected by such things as the niche itself. Real estate is much higher, health is much higher, business is much higher. And then if things are like entertainment, that's going to affect it. Your age and really the spending power of your audience is going to affect things. If you had a a video all about health and retirement for baby boomers, it's going to be a more affluent group than maybe entertaining videos for Gen Z. So these macro concepts would affect, if you will, channelwide RPM, but individual videos can fluctuate. So on the Think Media podcast channel, we've had maybe five bucks RPM average across thousand views and we've had 30 $40 RPMs on a particular video. So the question then becomes as far as studying it, what happened here? What was the topic that I talked about? To get even more specific, if you talked about some of the people we interviewed in the past that did um ecom e-commerce, they talked about Amazon drop shipping a few years ago or they talked about how to set up e-commerce stores or Shopify stores for a season. That was like some of the highest RPM type content. So, while that's not my niche, if I bring on a guest that is an expert at e-commerce, which I've done, and then they talk about that, so it's like how this YouTube creator um you know, succeeded and that's their niche, then I would benefit from bringing that subject matter, those keywords, and essentially what advertisers want to advertise on onto my channel. So I might be like, whoa, sure enough, me bringing on that guest or talking about that subject matter tapped into a much higher RPM. So that's what you want to reverse engineer. What about the topic of this highest earning video could you replicate by making a follow-up video or doing a whole series on that topic because you've identified that it is more lucrative? And if you're passionate about it, why not double down?
Now, there's another factor and that's also going to be the length. So, we had a recent video on Think Media podcast with Neil Patel, which um got quite a few views. It grew to over 100,000 views in a short time. Neil as a he owns a digital marketing agency for business owners. In fact, even his clients are like Fortune 500 companies like Nike and companies like that. So he even kind of he himself in his agency and his name is going to kind of be a higher RPM. Then the conversation was also over one hour and so around 100,000 views. We made $2,500 in about a week here on the Think Media podcast conversation just from the ad revenue on that video. Couple things, Neil, his niche, the subject matter. And let's clarify, it's what advertisers, the reason we make money is what advertisers are willing to pay for on this particular content. And I don't really know the algorithm algorithmic backend, but YouTube's like, "Oh, okay. We have identified Neil Patel's in this. We've identified that the topic is social media, digital marketing, and advertisers that would want to advertise on that type of content are willing to pay more. That's the bidding uh war, if you will, of that particular niche. But then you also add on length and the video was over an hour. So it's how many ad spots played. If I would have only talked to Neil for 10 minutes and it still got the same amount of views, it wouldn't have made $2,500 cuz there wouldn't have been multiple ads that played during that video. Which the third thing to check out would be you could go in and inspect the video to look at how many ad spots showed up in your video. And what I'm guessing is you're probably just letting YouTube determine where the ad spots are, which is a great way to do it. You also might be shocked where you're like, "Oh my gosh, there's like 22 ad spots in there." But you always need to know that just because there's an ad spot that YouTube add, it doesn't mean an ad will play. They are always trying to optimize for viewer experience. But saying that, it could be the case that if somebody watches an hourong video, there could be I think about if I watch an hourong show on Hulu, there's like a solid four breaks. And Hulu is going to be like break at 15 minutes and like three or four ads in a row and then another one at about the 30 minute mark, the 45minut mark. YouTube's a little bit different. 30 minute or 30 second or a one minute ad plays every 5 minutes or whatever it is. And so these are the things, these are the levers that are affecting, wait, why did that video earn more money? What is the actual RPM of the video? What's the subject matter? How long was the video? Essentially, how many ad spots? And then going in and looking at those ad spots and realizing you can manually adjust them. YouTube did some recent updates saying they sort of changed what it was. And they hopefully their algorithm picks the best place to place the ads to not interrupt viewer experience. You might want to get in there and do it manually. everything I'm saying could be a little bit overwhelming, but that's why your revenue shot up from an a particular video. And knowing those things, I would finalize by saying the strategic YouTube creator might be thinking about one two things. Here at Think Media, we think about actually first and foremost diversifying your income away from YouTube ad revenue because it's going to be bigger opportunities to create your own products, do affiliate marketing, uh brand deals, sponsorships. We actually have a class if you go to thinkmasterclass.com. We have an ondemand class that talks about some of the best ways to make money right now. And so we'll link that up in the show notes and you could um check out that class. But as your channel evolves and as your channel gets monetized for everybody listening to this, YouTube ad revenue is incredible and I you should double down and optimize for it. And so why not audit your library? Look at your highest earning videos. Look at how long they are, what subject matter they're about, and think about making series or part twos to them because previous success can then inform your ability to post 5, 10, 15. You could probably double your ad revenue in the next 45 days or 90 days by really intentionally covering certain topics in strategic and creative ways.
So good. So good. The thing I would love to hang on here for a second, Sean, is because this happens a lot in coaching, right? If so, someone will I'll get a DM or we're on a Zoom call for one of our sessions and it's like, Nathan, okay, this video it's just it's like it's an outlier. It's it's going it's going crazy. It's like whatever, whatever. Super exciting. But a thing that I find is they usually the the the student thinks that we need to go a different direction. Okay, so that just popped off. Okay, what do we do now? It's it's a good question. Like what do you do when you've got some momentum? When you've got a video that pops off, overperforms, sometimes we think we need to go do something else to recreate the success. And so I just wanted to say for everyone listening like just like that that idea of what was the topic like what did you do in the video? It's probably a good idea to make a part two, right? To just same topic, stick with what you did. Maybe there's different angle or a part two that you could go into. But I think that's a really key point, not even for just, you know, trying to reverse engineer revenue, but just like views. Oh wow, I'm just like a small channel starting. This video got a 100red views. I usually get like 25. What did I do there? Topic is a worthwhile thing to look at and how you structured that video.
Well, Nathan, I would add to that just to say one of the phrases we say at Think Be all the time is success leaves clues. Make part twos. And recently though, it's been rerun the play. And one of the most advanced business owner online business owner topics that is going to sound so simple but listeners I think all of us suffer from missing the financial opportunities hidden in plain sight wanting to just chase new and novel ideas and thus leaving a lot of money on the table. And it's this. The mistake that so many creatives and entrepreneurs and YouTube creators make is constantly doing new things instead of actually repeating the proven things that work. That might sound simple, but let's take it to just a different category. Maybe as a business owner, you figure out that like there's one website you have for content creators. You have maybe a free gift you give away that grows your email list. You've got a couple digital products, but there's like one product. And and if you look at the 8020 rule, which is typically that 20% of our efforts lead to 80% of our results. For some more advanced listeners, they maybe have like five different things they offer people for free they could download. Like you could download my free guide or you could go watch this free class or you could get you could do this quiz or you could do this uh you know check your weight cheat sheet for your plant-based recipes. Out of the five things, four of them kind of limp along. like they're all right and they've gotten some results or maybe they made some money, but there's like the one thing that disproportionately is pro provided results. 99% of creators and business owners don't look at the one thing and like triple down, quadruple down, 100x down on one thing. They just start making something new. I'm guilty as charged. We're coming up on year 10 here at Think Media. And for about five years in the middle, we suffered from distraction and shiny objects syndrome. And when I say we, it would be me that suffered like, you know, oh cool, we've got a cool YouTube course, like let's create another one or let's answer this question and turn it into this. And it added a lot of complexity to my mind and stress, but it also it it these things got results, but it was also diverting energy away from that main thing, that main campaign, which for us, you know, eventually we're like, wait a minute, like video ranking academy, our signature program is like the transformational vehicle for our students disproportionately. What if we tripled down? And one year it it flipped and our statement became, you know what, actually all roads lead to VRA and we sunseted some of our other programs that were actually being effective. Applying this to videos, the fear I think people have is they're afraid of repeating themselves. And it's not that you're just going to copy the video and it's boring and it's regurgitated. But the thing is like you find something that's hot on YouTube, stick with it. And I mean to the point where maybe you do repeat yourself to a point where you're comfortable with the criticism. If you study some of the top performing YouTubers, critics would say PewDiePie at his peak. They'd be like, "Man, all he's doing is like doing these meme reviews over and over. All this creator is doing is doing these reaction videos over and over." Has this person done like a hundred reaction videos to Reddit story forums? has this person done like a hundred reactions to Love Island and and the critics are like man all they do and yet those reactions to Love Island are getting a million views each or even the diminishing returns they got like a million views talking about like top 1% YouTubers then 950,000 and then 800,000 and then 700 and and then it's like oh it's going down it's still got 700,000 views you milk that thing how far do you write want to write it down and So, if we're talking about new creators, if you've got a small channel and you typically get a 100red views, but you have some type of a topic or video and it gets 4x that, 10x that, milk that thing. And don't be afraid to keep repeating certain topics, keywords, titles, packaging, and recognize that while on the one hand, it's a tension between the people upset are going to be your closest super fans, your most diehard subscribers. And upset's a strong word. They you might ask yourself like they might not watch or they've already seen this before, but you're also a small YouTube channel. The point is to grow. You have to let go of the mindset. You're 300 subscribers while you love and honor them. You're on a mission to get monetized and get 1,000 subs. You're on a mission to get 10,000 subs, 30,000 subs, which means you're going to need to talk to strangers you've never met before that don't know you right now. So, guess what they definitely do not think you're doing? They're not thinking you repeat anything because they've never even heard of you. So when you start thinking about that mindset, it's a whole different energy with just not being afraid to probably repeat yourself, repeat the winning formula, run the play again. There is a point when you probably should pivot, but I would say majority most don't even get close to that edge. They just they they take the offramp so much sooner because it's also the creative trap. As creatives, we want new and we want novel. And we want that freshness in our branding and our marketing, of course, but rerun the play. Find something that works and keep working it to death to criticism to a point of way past where you're comfortable and you'll be shocked by how much results you can get in terms of growth with your channel.
No, it's so good. I'm adopting that phrase going forward. Run the play. Run the play. makes me think of uh something you've said for a long time, Sean, that when the student is ready, the teacher appears on YouTube, right? So, this is why you can't be afraid to repeat yourself, right? Because every day, depending on your niche, depending on what you're doing, especially in the educational space, there's always people, sure, people leaving that thing that they wanted to learn from you, but for every person that left, there's like five people who are dipping their toes in and would love to jump into your niche. So, good. So good.
Okay, next question from Edo here. Subscribers are not watching. What do you do?
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Okay, good question. I know we're talking about kind of like the strangest and weirdest things that happen about YouTube and like how YouTube could be confusing and I got these subscribers. Why aren't they watching? I feel that. And these man, these sub these subs ain't loyal. You know what I mean? I got 99 problems and my subs are are one of them. Like what what's going on? Well, a couple things. Number one, on Think Media in the last 30 days on the Think Media podcast channel, our views only came from 30% of our subscribers. About a million views, too. As the channel continues to grow, 70% of the views of those million came from nonsubscribers. So, one, there's some real data just based on our experience that only three out of 10 of people that watched the channel in the last month were actually subscribed. And yet, seven out of 10 are not were not subscribed and are not subscribed. Which leads to an important epiphany that we all need to have about YouTube and it's this. In 2025 and beyond, consumption is more important than subscription. Many people have said social media is dead and now we've moved to interest media. What does that mean? It means that in social media we subscribed and followed people we wanted to continue to hear from. And when people say dead, people always get offended like people say subscribers are dead. Well, how what do you mean subscribers are dead? You still need a thousand. Well, no. You still need to build a base and build a following and build your subscriber base. It doesn't invalidate that. The point is trying to break through with like a light bulb moment. that is this that the way that most people are consuming on social media right now is they're expressing their interests to algorithms across platforms and on YouTube and then they're letting algorithms deliver content that they will love basically to their homepage. That's where the majority of views are. Of course, on YouTube, people type in specific searches and videos rank. But even after they do that, the continuence, like if you go to YouTube and you type in how to start, you know, the plant-based diet without hating your life and, you know, giving up the foods you love, if you express that intent, one search will then lead to an onslaught of YouTube following up with you with suggested and recommended videos about plant-based diet. they might start figuring out, oh, you're in your 40s and the reason you want to do it is because it actually is so you could stop medication and you could start getting on to not needing medication but using food to heal yourself, etc. YouTube starts figuring this out about you and it starts to recommend videos. So, the way we get views on YouTube when it comes to the majority, I'm not saying all because consider 30% or from subs from Think Media, but 70% are because of what people are consuming. When people express for us intent to want to grow a YouTube channel, learn about social media, how to get views on YouTube, how to get subscribers on YouTube, our videos then start being recommended to them, even if we've never met them, and the relationship oftent times could be multiple months before someone subscribes. They see a oneoff video, click on it. Oh man, those guys were all right. I mean, Nathan was super cool. Sean was kind of hard to listen to, but like they were there's some good information in that video. But then a week later, a couple, by the way, as soon as you consume a creator with any amount of watch time, the algorithm is quick to start putting more of their best videos on your homepage in your feed. And thus, the more consumption, what's another way to put it is what you're consuming, whether subscribed or not, is what's going to continue to be recommended to you way more than what you're subscribed to. Because for most of us, we've also subscribed to too many channels. I am not invalidating subscribers. I'm simply saying that's why your subscribers are probably not watching. And and it's a mindset to understand.
Okay, So, what can we do about it? I think there's a couple things. The first is you can try to educate viewers that they should subscribe. I think about, you know, one of the biggest podcasts in the business space is called Diary of a CEO. And he in his videos has this cutaway. The video hook hits. There might be like an introduction and then it's like, "Hey, before we get into the episode, I was shocked when I looked at my YouTube analytics and saw that 86% of people that watch the diary of a CEO are not subscribed. So, could you take a minute and click subscribe?" There's two insights there. Number one, he's given a call to action early in the episode, actually. Number two, that some of the biggest shows have 86% of people not subscribed. So, you're actually you might feel like, "So, what's wrong with my channel? What's wrong with me?" Nothing. It's like what everybody's experiencing. And of course, there's outliers, but like that's the main thing. My friend Rouslon does that all the time. He has like this continual ad spot he puts in. He's like, "Hey, I just learned that on my channel most people aren't subscribed." And consider I think about Rouslon who covers a lot of trends, news stuff, faith, culture. There's a lot of people I I'm one of them. I happen to be subscribed to him, but I'm one of the types of people who there are certain creators that like I'm not looking for a subscriber relationship. I'm looking for a one-off information that comes to me and I'm like, that's great. Love them, respect them. I assume they just covered one story I was. I don't even want ongoing stories like that. I just want the one-off story and I'm really glad they covered it. So, you're not alone. You can give a call to action.
The second thought is based on all the above, I just wouldn't worry about it too much. I would focus on making great content. I would focus on just understanding these facts and realizing it's okay and understanding that consumption is more important than subscription and just living with that fact. But then two more tips. Three, I would say you can target audiences with specific videos and you should. What does that mean? It means we're living in a world because it's interest media that even when you have a niche, we have a niche called YouTube. You could target audience, YouTube education, you can target audiences with like we had a video that said over 50 question mark. Here are some tips for starting a YouTube channel and it was an interview I did with one of our awesome VR students, Denise Jordan. Understanding that again the way algorithms work is then chances are that video is going to be found by other people that are 50 cuz YouTube knows that or above and you could start targeting audiences with your titles realizing you can this is why subscribers don't matter and it's kind of a level playing field for everybody listening to this right now. If you make the right video with the right title with the right content positioned the right way, you can just cut straight into the algorithm to get in front of your ideal and target audience. And I don't want to cause confusion because we talk about niching down or you just saying make random content. I'm not saying that. But there's niches within the niche inside of to talk about our niche. How to grow a YouTube channel. People of different ages, ethnicities, channel types. If you want to grow a gaming channel, it's a one-off video that could find its way to gamers and gaming channels. That's a very specific thing that a lot of people wouldn't be interested in. Everybody listening to this I think could benefit from that level of strategy. And then there was one other point that came to my mind. Okay. Yeah.
The kind of the fourth big idea would be this is why you need to also build your audience off of YouTube. What does that mean? This is why you need to build an email list. Email is still the gold standard, but if you want, you can build a text message list. Hard to do for free. There's a cost to, you know, an SMS service typically, but this is why people do it. Hey, do you want to join our text line? Do you want to join our newsletter? There other things you could do. You could join, you start a Discord group. The reason you want to do this is what you're saying. My subscribers are not even watching. Let me encourage you this too. They probably want to, but they don't know you're posting. Why? Cuz a lot of people don't check their subscription feed or they don't check it when you posted and your videos got pushed down. And the way algorithms work and how busy the world is, you want a way to talk to the small percentage of the audience that you're building that wants to go deeper with you. So, it's understanding kind of the purpose of YouTube. Of course, build the audience, try to build a strong as audience as possible that is engaging with each upload you post. But where things become incredibly powerful is where you have something like an email newsletter or something. And that's a mindset shift that then I am doing these modern tech tactics that we're talking about here. This is like pretty fresh thinking in the sense of target specific audiences with your videos. Moms if that's relevant, women over 45, different audiences you could tap into. In the video, you can then articulate. And hey, by the way, if you are interested in this particular transformation or this particular deeper level of engagement, check out my email newsletter or join this private group. And then in that place, you have a chance to further the conversation. I'm not invalidating. Still get subscribers on YouTube, still grow your YouTube channel. YouTube subscribers are still awesome and they still are an advantage. If we do, it's it's been overplayed and we we're guilty of it as well. And I know it it's ethical for us to do this because the point is true of like subscribers don't matter like in context. But let me frame that they also do matter. Like you have an advantage if you have subscribers. You have an initial push and initial advantage still grow them but like both people are right. Well, who's right? Do they matter? Do they do they not matter? Both. Like they they they don't because it's interest media and channels that are brand new are blowing up because they're cracking through the algorithm. But still, anybody with subscribers does have an advantage and of course you can get monetized and you still want to build that audience. I hope that makes sense, but it's a little bit it's not either or. It's both and and I hope some of those uh tips are helpful.
So good. I I love that Sean and I appreciate you actually taking it to the next level there because it's it's attention to be managed for sure. Uh and I think that I just think about my own viewer behavior if I'm watching YouTube or whatever. I don't not really subscribe to a lot of channels because I kind of just trust YouTube at this point, right? like I've whenever I hop on the homepage or I I trust on the homepage that the channels that I've been consuming, not even subscribed to, are going to be the things that pop up, right? So, I got to say too, like as a coach, very rarely are subscribers a big metric that we're really tracking and we're really pushing for, unless we got someone we're rocking with who's like, "No, I want to be monetized. I want to get into the partner program." Well, yeah, subscribers matter. We want to make sure we hit that thousand. But it's also, I think, just remembering what you're trying to solve for in the moment. And just I think that's that's the key thing to take away is consumption is what matters more than subscribers. While at the same time, subscribers do have their role. So, hey, hopefully uh we didn't just do some sort of weird Jedi mind trick on everybody right there, Sean. But next question actually is about subscribers still. If we want to hang on this for for a second, this is very interesting. Uh Aaron said that our subscribers have went down 70%. 70% over the last two months. That's a big percentage quick time frame. He's asking could this be because of shorts?
Okay, great question, Aaron. And a couple thoughts. Um first big thought is you're not alone. The longer you're on YouTube, the more emotional damage and trauma you're going to experience as a human. Um, there's a book from Darren Hardy called The Entrepreneurial Roller Coaster. And I should steal that title and write the book called The YouTube Creator Roller Coaster because it's basically the same idea. Uh, what's a roller coaster, right? You're like, we have highs. We have times we're like, woo, we're spinning upside down. This is incredible. like we're going up and up and up and then we have times when our it we drop off a ledge and our heart sinks. We're terrified for our lives. We think and the decline is one of the hardest emotional things to deal with. This is so real because first of all, the fact that YouTube even exists is wild. meaning small town anonymous kids like myself who grew up on 6 acres in Arlington, Washington with goats and cats and dogs and horses start posting videos online like I did randomly in my bedroom and started to do it consistently over years and then eventually got a thousand subs and then eventually got 10,000 subs and then eventually got a silver play button and a gold play button. What are we talking about? like small town kid, college dropout, a million people have subscribed to Think Media, no Hollywood connections. Like that's a level of growth. I heard it said on one podcast, too. What's also weird about the creator economy is I don't want to like overemphasize that like growth in a million subs or a million followers is super common, but what this person said on the podcast was almost everybody knows somebody now. There's like maybe someone in their circle these days, maybe it's younger, but like there's somebody they're like, "Oh yeah, that person has like a 100,000 followers on TikTok. Oh yeah, I know I know somebody that's got like a million subs. Oh yeah, that person I went to high school with. like yeah they have like a a truck channel they got like a quarter million subs like and so so that's insane and then you start thinking about the fact of what the rise of that feels like on YouTube if you get a one out of 10 you get the green you have the months so we don't know what Aaron's numbers are but let's just go back to when the when it wasn't it wasn't down 70% it was up 70%. What the heck is happening? Like, I'm just making videos at home and I have a hundred subs, but I just had a month where I just doubled my whole channel. Got a 100 subs in one month or one week or one video. We're talking about real brain chemicals. We're talking about you're getting hit with, you know, dopamine. You're you're experiencing the the up and the high of the roller coaster. I would say this and it's proved true in business and YouTube and content and life every business the stock market I mean what goes up must come down and there's businesses who've over the years have maybe their trend has been up and up and up or channels but guess what's also happened along the way we could look at you know Elon Musk and Tesla especially in this area era one of my friends is a massive massive investor in Tes uh Tesla. He was so early. He bought the first ever Tesla. He was on a waiting list. I didn't even I didn't even know who Elon Musk was. He was the biggest fan of him. I was like, I've never heard the name this whatever year ago this was. I remember he got the auto driving. I made a video. So, his name's David. He lived. He's like, I was just so pumped. And I was like, dude, who even cares? Electric cars this like 10, eight years ago or something like that. 10 years ago. And so, he bought stock super early. Well, what's so funny is whenever I'll see a thing, it'll be like, "Yeah, so we just had the biggest drop in Tesla stock of all time and I'll and like a billion dollars of revenue was just erased instantly." I was thinking about David as I'm I'm like he's sitting there and he's probably he's up and I'm like David just lost like $250,000 in five minutes like yesterday like as far as his stock value. I can't personally I'm not a big investor like that. It's more just retirement account. I'm like, I don't know if I can emotionally handle that. Like, what are we t what like then you have to have the emotional resilience. Okay, that's stocks. YouTube is the same. So, what can happen I I guess this is the OG talking of being on YouTube since 2007 is I've just had to develop the emotional resilience and just seeing seasons, cycles, ups and downs, and trying to have the right mindset to even allow myself to come back to baseline. Because there's a couple thoughts here. one, of course you want to only go up and up and you don't want to drop, but sometimes when it drops, it drops 70%, but like it's still growing it. Your views might be down, but you're still getting views. And this ties into human nature. It's like as soon as we settle at a new baseline of living, it's one of the wor experience that before, but now that we've lost it, we're losing our minds. I think it was like I heard this comedian once who who said uh like Wi-Fi on airplanes and he was like I've what's so hilarious to me is that they invent this thing that you could get Wi-Fi on airplanes and so he goes the other day though I was sitting next to somebody and they announced and they said hey we're happy to announce that today we're actually able to offer Wi-Fi on airplanes. He's like the guy next to me was like oh wow awesome I'm going to log in and start working. So the guy pulled out his laptop, he started and then he said 10 minutes into the fight, they're like, "Actually, there's there's some technical difficulties. We're super sorry the Wi-Fi doesn't work." And the guy was like, "What is this?" He's like, and he just lost his mind. He just flipped his top. And he was like, "Bro, you you didn't even know you were going to have access to Wi-Fi. You started it." Even just the tech, the fact that we're flying in a plane in a chair in the sky accessing the internet and you got to do that for the last 10 minutes, but now that they're taking it away, he was like, "I'm going to write a complaint. I can't believe this. How ridiculous." When he had brought a book with him, he wasn't going to be on Wi-Fi anyways. But as soon as we establish a new baseline standard of life, a new baseline standard of views, it flips our psychology. So that's why I'm going deep on this is like half of YouTube success is just mental resilience, emotional mastery, of course diagnosing the issue, but just understanding, okay, if you shot if you took 10 steps forward, but four steps backward, you're still six steps forward and you're still making forward progress. Be okay if there's months of decline. The inevitable nature of one out of 10 multiple in a row is how long can this last? Meaning how many one out of tens can you get like in perpetuity or you're gonna have to have some 10 out of tens and any with a couple bad months of YouTube it'll reset your analytics and eventually it'll baseline again and then you'll start going for green again. And so those resets are okay.
Let's focus on some practicals though. So if you your subs went over, could it be because of YouTube shorts? Absolutely. Number one, YouTube shorts do not convert very well in terms of subscribers. That's universally understood. I can affirm that with my own behavior. I love consuming YouTube shorts. It's entertaining. I move through a lot of creators. Even based on my consumption, I'll still get being I'll get suggested the same creators. I would say almost never less than 10 times. And I'm a YouTube shorts consumer. Have I ever clicked the subscribe button on a YouTube short personally. I think a lot of people can relate to that. It's interest media. It's like the media is being brought to you. You're engaging with stuff. You might like it. You might comment. You might just move on. And those times, the power of YouTube shorts is there are moments where I'm like, "Dude, who is this person? This is interesting. Click through to their channel. Check out who they are." By the way, typically that for my case, the subscribe wouldn't be attributed to
The short. The it probably wouldn't even it would be because I clicked on the creator, watched some long form, and then got the subscription. So, it wouldn't even show you in analytics that the subscriber was led to a short in my case. So, just knowing that YouTube subscribers uh don't really convert that well on shorts. And that could be why if you went really heavy into shorts and then you have to ask yourself, are you okay with that? Should you lean more into the long form? What is your goals? What's your bigger form strategy? Uh, less long form content a lot of times is going to lead to less deep connection. Also, when it comes to shorts, you might you might I'm curious, are your views up? Your subscribes could be down, your views could be up because shorts can reach unargeted audience reach reach audience you don't want uh you don't want to connect with as much.
One of the funny stories from Think Media podcast channel is I interviewed a guy named Eric. So number one, think about this from a personal standpoint, like personal brand standpoint. This is a strategy conversation on Think Media podcast. There's a couple goals that I have. One, I want to build the brand, the Think Media podcast. Secondly, I also do want to build my personal brand, Sean Kel, and I'm clearly here a lot. I think a lot of people on the podcast recognize that. But thirdly, I want to build brands of individuals at Think Media, like Nathan, who's on here as well, and our coaches and different people at Think Media. On the other channel, we have Craig. We've got the other Nathan. We call him Nathan Mark 1 and Mark 2, by the way. There's two different Nathans at Think Media. And so, I'm I'm thinking about building a media company, not just an individual personal brand. Okay. And then I also want to build that around a particular type of expertise. YouTube advice, how to grow a YouTube channel, how to build an online business, online marketing best practices, unfiltered, YouTube tips for building profitable content. That's why you should click subscribe on this video.
So, back to the story with Eric. So, I interview somebody who's not me. We have lots of interviews, but he comes on the show. In the interview, we interact a lot, but I interview a guy named Eric. He's not me. He's on the show. thing one he tells a story about somebody else. In this case, it's Rob Deredict from Fantasy Factory and from Ridiculousness. So now you have somebody that I'm interviewing telling a story about a celebrity that is pretty well-known and he breaks down the story pretty well, but the entire subject matter of this clip is all about Rob Deredict. Okay, we clip that into a YouTube short. it goes crazy to the tune of over 20 million views. So that's that's wild. Now, by the way, the video earned actually $3,500, which is really good money, but that just tells you how many 20 plus million views to earn $3,000, which I'm not complaining about. Here's what I am complaining about. I'm okay with it, but here is the trouble with it. Is let's talk about what happened there in the video. Eric, who let me say like he's known and people like him and stuff, but like but nobody cares about Eric. People definitely don't care about Sean. I think the only time I'm in this this YouTube short is like I like look at him halfway through the story and I'm like like who's that guy? Like so he's kind of like a non-playable character. I'm a totally non-playable character from like GTA 1. Like just just a brain dead NPC in the video. M that's me telling a really interesting perspective clearly the video did well about Rob Deredict who is known and thus got shared in the algorithm.
So what's then hilarious is you get 20 million views on a short you're going to get a lot of subscribers. We did but here brings brings up the question what are the quality of those subscribers? Uh not very good for a couple reasons. One they're YouTube short subscribers. I don't want to put down anybody, but the quality of a YouTube short subscriber is nowhere near the quality of a long form subscriber. But even worse, what did they subscribe for? Definitely not Sean Kendall, the personal brand. Not really Think Media Podcast, the YouTube education brand. Not even if I was helping my friend Eric. Not even him. They don't know who he is, nor will they find him or look him up. Rob Deredict was already big and he's just as big. And like the story was interesting. And to be fair, you get that kind of views, yeah, there is legit growth that'll come to your channel to the fraction of like 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% 20 million views out of the 6,000 or 8,000 subs. We got maybe a few hundred or maybe 50. We're like, whoa, I stumbled on a YouTube education channel that I this is so cool. And I click subscribe and I keep watching to today. But it's like the law of diminishing returns is so extreme. I think this is an important mindset, Aaron, that shorts can reach different and unargeted audiences. And to that point, they also just might not want to subscribe. Maybe they discover that the nature of the short or why it popped off or what it was, they don't want the ongoing content from your channel or the mistakes people make. And you can almost call this a mistake. I still would stand on macro growth is generally fine. the YouTube algorithm is going to figure it out. It will inflate the numbers of our channel. That's a vanity metric for wow like your well your channel just grew 10k subs and I'm like yeah I mean kind of like not 10k deep committed like it grew. So even understanding vanity metrics I'll take it. That's my personal opinion. But that could lead to maybe why subscribers are are down. And if there's dissonance between your shorts and the core message of your channel, that could be a big problem. And so that could be a reason or algorithmic volatility as well as just maybe your channel in general. We also could be wrong. We talked a lot about this, a lot of nuggets in those shorts, but you also might be attributing causality to something that also channels in general are experiencing. You just maybe need to reinvent in general.
It might have just been summer. At the time of recording this, it was just July 4th weekend and I had a video that now is popping off. I actually posted it on Saturday morning. It's popping off on Monday. I did some tweaks. I did a second and third batch of thumbnail split tests. I did some stuff. I'm out here doing our seven-step system, but then I noticed on Monday when the holiday weekend was over that there also was a more consistent climb. And so consider this. I can't say for sure, but here's my speculation. People checked out on the weekend. Hot dogs. They were on the boat. The true patriots were doing ski shooting and shooting rifles. The people who don't believe in the Second Amendment weren't. there was, you know, people were shooting fireworks and doing their thing and they their consumption patterns. So, it's like, why did you just dock for 45 minutes? Well, I mean, it's I think there's a lot of strategy that comes into this, but Aaron, it also could just be like, relax, take a deep breath. There'll be ups and downs. And challenge yourself to consider all of these data points, but also like 70% over the last two months, your rate of subscriptions being down sounds like just normal YouTube life. It could be a lot of different things. Look at the math of your channel overall. Look at different windows of time. Look at the last 90 days. Look at the last year. Sometimes you're like, "Man, I'm down in the last two months." Yeah. You look in the last year, though, and you're up 300% still. And so the the the rise and fall of the stock, the rise and fall of the income and the P&L, the emotional mastery for a business owner is huge. We're we're we had a couple down months here at Think Media. I can lose my mind. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, what is happening?" And then I then you look back in history and you're like, "Oh yeah, it's like the same slump as last year. It's summer." Or, "Oh yeah, there was an election. It was a holiday weekend." So there's just different things like that to allow yourself to always be vigilant and looking at the details and and you know committing to conversations like this because all these nuances really matter for the professional content creator. On the flip side it's kind of like letting it go being able to just get back to it and then say okay let me make my next best content based on the information and not stress too much and that sheesh tap back into somewhat of the joy of creating and being like I'm going to take the ups. I'm going to take the downs and I'm going to commit to this over the long haul and not be as worried by these short-term metrics.
>> So good. I mean, so many gems were right there. I just wanted to point out a couple. The the time frame, I think, was the thing that stuck out to me there. 70%. It's a big number, but again, we don't know the numbers of the channel, but 70% it's a big number over the last two months. Not that that's insignificant. Like, let's look at that. Like, if I was coaching Aaron, like, yeah, let's crack open the analytics. Let's see what we can see. But I'm not going to leave that session without zooming out. I love that you said that. I think so many creators, I see it. So many creators, myself included, man, we get so caught in the roller coaster, in the ups and the downs. We don't know how to exist in that middle ground. And that's where like a lot of pieces found. And so pay attention to the analytics. 70% is a good number. The time frame, I don't think that we need to worry too much about that if we can zoom out further and get a bigger picture. But I will say, Sean, and I'm sure this isn't news to you, but man, the number of times that I could say I've heard a question that starts something to the effect of fill in the blank. Is this because of shorts? Whatever's happening, is it shorts? Right? Like shorts are a real thing and it can be difficult to understand. So, I actually appreciate that we just we we hunker down there for a bit because as a lot of these things, right, and these like interesting kind of questions that we're going through, it's a tension. There's actually a lot of truth on both sides and it's learning how to navigate that middle ground really based on the context to you Aaron specifically in that and his scenario. So, well, let's go to this next question here. We've got Daniel asking about the audience and his analytics. So, some themes here going on. This is this is fascinating though. The audience in his analytics, so I'm assuming what YouTube's telling him, the demographics and stuff isn't actually his target audience. So, YouTube says, "Here's what I got. They're not actually who I'm trying to reach. What do I do?"
>> This is a great question, and I think uh Daniel, I want to acknowledge you for having a target audience. You know, an action item for listeners is if you try and reach everybody, you'll end up reaching nobody. So, who are you trying to reach? Who is it for? Who is your channel for? What problem does it solve? And the the more fierce clarity you can have on your who, it's for people of this age, this gender, this background, professionals, singles, um, couples, Christian couples, you know, how all these different things. That's powerful. But then it brings up, okay, so you're studying that you're growing your channel, you're reaching people, and then the demos coming in. I've seen this a lot. Some people are like, my channel is for women. I'm trying to talk to women and 40% of men are watching my channel every month. Like what are these creepers doing? Like what the heck? Or you know I thought my channel I really I'm based in the US. I thought it's four people in the US but my biggest audience is in India or my biggest audience. So you might find that there's countries, locations, demographics. Psychographics harder to measure but you maybe find like I'm trying to reach business owners but it's like I'm reaching gamer kids like what you know all kinds of different things. So I think uh you've it comes down to like two different questions. Do you adapt your content to the new audience or do you double down on reaching the audience that you originally envisioned? Um there's a quote from an entrepreneur that says this, "No business plan survives its first contact with the customer." No business plan survives its first contact with the customer. Here's what I've learned a lot of times. A, it's good to have a target audience and something in your mindset that is what you're who you're committed to reaching. B, you need to be opening open to pivoting or at least open to considering it because you have to start making a choice as a content creator. And let's be clear and this is how we feel especially at Think Media. Content creators are entrepreneurs. The mindset you want to shift from you are a business and you are a business owner and you want to think like a business strategist and think like an entrepreneur. And so no business plan an entrepreneur makes a business plan. Okay, here's my kind of thought of what my content will be, who the target audience will be. But no business plan survives contact first contact with the consumer or the customer. Sean, what do you mean with YouTube videos? Well, you start publishing videos and your customer and your consumer is the viewer. So then you might have some success, but you this happens all the time. You'd be shocked how common this is. Like I started building a channel. It just became a community of people totally different than I thought. I thought I was going to reach these type of people, but I'm reaching a different type of person. So that just shows that your plan did not survive first conduct contact. So it's really up to you. you go, okay, do I push push push to try to reject is a strong word, but like reject that audience and pivot away from that and change my titles or change my content and try to show up differently um and reach a different audience or do I do I adapt and I roll with it? It's probably going to be the answer is probably a hybrid of both.
One of the episodes I'd recommend to listen to in the Think Media podcast library is my conversation with Nick Bear, the founder of Bear Performance Supplements. um and Bear Performance Nutrition. He is an awesome content creator as well. CEO, content creator. Um and he did a killer episode with like 10 branding and marketing laws every creator needs to know. We'll link that up in the show notes. Definitely check it out. Super super powerful. But one, his brand and his channel and who he wants to reach is really a reflection of him. A lot of personal brands will do that. If you're listening to this, usually the person you reach is you or you yesterday. Like a lot of us as creators, you're reaching people somewhat similar to you or who you were yesterday. I a lot of people that reach were reaching on this podcast are people who want to start YouTube channels. That's what I did yesterday. I started a long time ago, but yeah, you know, previously. And so like, hey, Sean, you've been there, done that, and that's and you also love YouTube. I'm getting into YouTube. We are a community on this podcast of people who geek out about YouTube, talk about analytics, love the creator economy, love this platform. So, we're reaching people like that, you know. And so, that's also pretty broad. There's also nuances as we get more specific. But here's what uh happened uh with Nick is he talked about from a product standpoint that they started realizing some of their products and this will apply to content were really for like these gym bro super ripped big guys that want to get huge gains in the gym. They had a product called um Endo Pump which is all about getting your best pump on for your muscles. They discontinued it. They stopped that product. Why? Because as their brand evolved, what they realized was that their brand was actually for hybrid athletes, people that want to run far and lift heavy and was you start learning about like niches in the niches, niches in the niches. You start learning about, okay, fitness is crazy diverse. You could have a CrossFit thing, powerlifting thing. It could be guys that just want to get big, could be people that just want to be marathon runners. In their case, they cut out this whole thing called hybrid athletes that's like, "No, actually we do want to lift and be." And so they started to steer their content to align with their content, their products, how they serve that group to align with the developing audience. And it's a little bit of both. And Nick himself was becoming that hybrid athlete, started to not just lift, but also started to to run and do ultramarathons and all of this stuff. How does this apply? It it just applies down to you being willing to take that data and say it's probably going to be a little bit of both. You letting go of maybe the rigidity with which you originally envisioned your audience and embracing while staying true to of course your core values, your ethics, the vision you have for the channel, being willing to pivot and adapt.
There's this quote from Eric Ree from the Lean Startup, which is a book about starting a business, and it said, "Startups that succeed are those that manage to iterate enough times before running out of resources." Let's let's apply it to YouTube. The YouTube channels that succeed are those that manage to iterate or pivot enough times before running out of resources. The people that are going to succeed on YouTube are going to be ones that start, look at the data, and iterate and change before running out of resources, which could be energy. Probably the biggest one because when you're doing this as a side hustle, how most of our listeners, you're like, man, do I mean, I'm I edited for seven hours. I only got seven views. How long am I going to stick with this? Well, you stopping is you running out of resources. You ran out of will and fight and energy. It also could be money. Maybe you're diverting money money to it. And if you're funding it with another job, maybe your other job's stable, which is great, but maybe you are starting this. And so, I love this quote. The ones that succeed don't quit. They keep going. But they don't just keep going with something that's not working. They're willing to pivot. And I do think many fall into the trap of being way too rigid and too romantic of I wish it looked a certain way. I wish it's a tension between is YouTube going to be a hobby and an expression that's just for you to share your creativity or is it going to be shaped around what the audience wants? Caleb Rston who's coming on the Think Media podcast soon. A lot of people don't know he he uh worked for Gary Vee, Alex Termoszi. Now he's doing his own stuff. He's really smart in branding and marketing. And we go all the way back to a small town an hour north of Seattle. we grew up in the same church uh like 20 years ago. Like so that's wild. And he uh he says though art is for you, content is for them. So you kind of have to make a decision if you if you're going to be an artist. I want to make art and videos that are romantically what I want. Cool content. This is a p a point of view, but it's like is it what the audience wants? And thus, as your audience is changing, you're like, it's not my target. But if it's if it's resonating, you then have a decision. Do I lean into that? And there's not a a right or wrong answer. But there could be a right or wrong answer if you're going to be successful. Because once your business plan makes first contact with the customer, you need to start pivoting. We just had Dan Martell on, and we'll link to that episode, also a must listen. and he said, you know, it's not 10,000 repetitions that'll get you to success. Too many people mistake the quote of Thomas Edison when he said, I tried I failed 10,000 times before I was successful. And so what people think is like the key to success on YouTube is I need to post a 100red videos, 200 videos, and the repetitions alone are going to make me successful. It's not 100 or 200 or a,000 repetitions. It's a thousand iterations. What does that mean? It means that you iterate enough times. I I'm just trying to go deep on this. Every single listener, including myself, could benefit from this. You got to be willing to change. Let go of the things you're romantic about. Let go of what you wish people liked or what you wish people accepted your product or your videos or your content or your brand. It's a both end. You got to stay true to yourself. You're not just selling out or you're not just but it's a it's a both. And so iterations mean all right. Well, I didn't think that series was going to be so successful. I didn't think that thing was going to be so successful. But if that's what the market is saying they want, then you have a decision to make. Do I lean into that or do I take the path of the artist? I actually I'll take less growth. You know, I don't even care about money. I'll take less growth. I want to express myself. I just want to put my own ideas and my own art and my creativity out there. It's my tube. It's your tube. It's YouTube. Cool. But this doesn't mean the market's going to validate it, especially with their finances.
There's one other quote uh from Paul Graham. Um don't make something people want to want. Make something people actually want. And so again, we could debate this and we don't have time to to do it. Um, it is a creative tension between, man, where's the soul of YouTube or the spirit of YouTube content creators? Are people just making stuff for the algorithm? Are people just making stuff for clicks? Well, the answer is yeah, people are doing people are making AI slop right now for faceless AI money. Like, how artistic is it? Arguably like negative five. like it is anti-art in by some respects. The question is what are we doing, you know, and why are we doing it and it's a lot of things to do some inner searching and and I do think being a creator of ethics and long vision and being built to last does weigh these concepts. Um, but that was a long answer uh as they all were to Daniel. You know, my my audience in my analytics isn't my target audience. So, what do I do? Your next mission, Daniel, should you choose to accept it, is to think through what we've laid out here and then to make a plan accordingly. What I wish people would do is actually be a little less critical and say that there's a right or wrong answer to the question. There really isn't a right or wrong answer. What I think there's an answer that is based on your goals, your ambition. I don't want to hate on AI slop too much. I mean, there's parts of it I might not love it. I might not It's not my favorite stuff. That's totally fine. I do think it could go too far or where like artists work is being truly ripped off and I understand that side but I mean I waited tables at Red Robin. You're going to work somehow to try to make money. So you could go work somewhere or you could go do construction or you could drive Uber or maybe you're good at figuring out a window of opportunity to use AI to make a a channel. We've coached creators. Nathan, you coach creators and inside of our coaching program, some people have had success with AI only content and they have self-expressed. It's like kind of going well for me, but like my soul's not happy. I would say I would affirm that. I'm like, okay, yes, but that's that's a self-awareness question. I wouldn't judge the person who's like, you know, I don't know. I mean I don't love it, but I love the fact that my family it's paying for dinners and I'm able to work from home. So, and and I'm ethically doing I mean I'm staying within ethics and my soul's neutral and I'm expressing myself over here. Okay, cool. I the person the aha moment would be if you're like okay after everything you've laid out my mission is so fixed. This is the target audience I want no matter what. But if you have that level of fierce clarity, I respect you, Daniel, because that would be the thing. And I don't disrespect if you're like, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to change the whole thing. I'm throwing out my business plan. Had first contact with the consumer. It pivoted." So, I pivoted with it. That's more the entrepreneurial mindset. There's the creative mindset. There's the artist mindset. It's going to be a blend of all the above.
Well, if you got value out of today, like, rate, share, review, wherever you watch or listen. This is the Think Media Podcast. I'm Nathan Eswine and I can't wait to connect with you in a future.