Transcription
The year was 2022. I was sitting at my desk and I was doing what I had done thousands of times before. I was a freelancer and I was, well, I was either checking orders or working on one. Uh, when I saw something that basically changed my life. In that moment, I knew that it was over, that the business that I had built up was on its last legs. It was just a matter of time.
In this video, I want to explain what it is that I saw, what I was doing at the time, and the lessons I've learned from that experience. I was working as a freelancer through a marketing, or through a, a marketplace app called Fiverr. I started doing that in 2018, uh, kind of as a side hustle, I guess. Um, and by 2019, I had grown it into something pretty substantial. Uh, by 2020, it was a six-figure, uh, revenue stream for me. Um, so I was pretty successful at it.
So, what Fiverr is, it's, it's a marketplace that allows you, as somebody who works for people, uh, to find people to work for. On the flip side, it allows companies or people to find workers that will do things for them. Okay, so it's, it's a marketplace. It's, uh, Upwork would be probably its closest, uh, rival, I guess. Uh, but Upwork tends to be for bigger ticket items than Fiverr does. Uh, Fiverr got famous for, for being a place where you could go offer your services for $5, right? And, and there were a lot of gag gigs. So, so they're called gigs. Like, when you, if you advertise something that you can do for somebody else, uh, that's called a gig. It's something that you will do. Um, the gig economy kind of rose from it, right? So, people doing basically small jobs for other people who would otherwise have to hire somebody, uh, maybe even full-time, uh, to do these small jobs every so often. So, uh, that's what Fiverr is. Um, and so, yeah, so at the time, I was looking for something to do and I created a business where what I did is I offered to add subtitles to other people's videos. All right, not necessarily YouTube videos. Um, could be Instagram, TikTok, uh, right now. Some of those make it fairly easy to add your own, uh, subtitles or captions. Uh, TikTok being the first. Um, but, you know, there were people that would come to me, or, or not necessarily come to me, they'd find me on Fiverr, uh, notice that I was advertising. "I'll add subtitles to your video for $5," right? That's how I started. Um, and, and it kind of grew from there.
And you might be thinking, "Whoa, wow, $5. How can you possibly grow a six-figure business off of that?" Um, there are ways, right? There are ways. Uh, you, you offer to do things faster than your standard delivery, uh, for a premium. Okay, that was probably the number, the number one way, uh, to increase the price. Um, you offer, you know, bulk discounts. Uh, actually, that wouldn't increase the price, but anyways, there, there's creative ways around doing it. And the busier that you get, uh, the longer you could make your standard delivery and therefore more options you can offer to offer it faster, and, and people would pay. People needed that. And if you can think back to 2020, uh, that was pandemic time, right? Lots of people had to start staying home and looking for other things to do, other work to do. Uh, and a lot of people would, I mean, it kind of went both ways. A lot of people went to Fiverr for, for work, but other people started creating their own businesses and needed workers to help them, and they would turn to Fiverr to find the people to work for them. Okay. So, it was something that was really starting to take off back then, and I was part of that. So, I, I again, I started in 2018. By 2020, uh, it was a great business that I had going on.
But something happened in 2022, uh, that kind of shook me, um, opened my eyes. And what it was, was a message from a regular, okay, like a regular customer that I had. And again, at the time, I, I, I think I was doing like 14 or 1500 jobs a year. Like, that's small jobs, right? But, but several jobs a day. And it was very busy work, right? So, uh, and I relied on some regular customers coming back. And I got a message from, from one of my regulars that basically said, "We don't need you anymore." Right. Um, and I understood why. Right. I understood why, uh, a lot of what I had been doing. And I noticed a lot of what I had been doing, I noticed was, was becoming easier. I was finding easier ways to do it, uh, because of AI and automation, right? And one of the, one of the things that happened was all of a sudden, editing software, video editing software was including automated captions or automated subtitles. So, it became easier for people to do this themselves, and fewer and fewer people were requiring me to do it.
What I want you to understand, though, is I didn't really panic. Um, I mean, maybe for a split second, uh, but, uh, I didn't quit. I, I didn't give up. I, I started looking for alternatives, for other things to do. What else can I offer? Now, I want to say something here because there's an irony that I don't want to skip past. AI automation killed my business, right? It took a couple years, but it eventually killed that Fiverr business that I, that I spent years building up. Um, so you think I might be the last person in the world to embrace AI? Uh, and, you know, there's an argument for that. I could be bitter. I could be upset about it. Um, but I wasn't. Uh, it's just, it was a roadblock, and I needed to figure out how to get past it. The tools themselves, they aren't the enemy, right? Sitting still is. If you choose to do nothing, if you choose to, uh, stay away from advancing technology, you're going to get left behind. And I did not want that to happen. Right? That's, that's what I had been doing for over 20 years as an entrepreneur is looking for opportunities. Okay? So perhaps one door was closing, but, you know, perhaps there were several other doors opening up.
So, I use AI. I use it daily. I use it to help run my business. Um, I use it to create shorts, right? I, I'm a one-person, a one-man show running this YouTube channel. Uh, and I film my own videos. I come up with the ideas with AI's help, right? But I film them myself. I speak to the camera. I don't use AI avatars or, um, AI voices, right? I use my own voice. I'm on, I'm in my own videos. Um, but I do everything myself. And the reason I'm able to do that is because I leverage AI to help me with this. And one of the things that I do is I use Nexus Clips to help make my shorts. Not just a help, but it actually makes my shorts for me. Now, I don't, I don't often post shorts, right? It's not, it's not the main part of my business, the main part of my channel. My focus is on long-form videos, right? But I, I do see the value in having shorts on my channel because the people who watch my videos typically, uh, are long-form viewers. But, but what do long-form video viewers do in their spare time? Speaking from experience, what I'll typically do is I'll go through shorts, right? I'll swipe up through shorts or TikToks or, or on Instagram, Instagram Reels, and for the most part, it's killing time. For the most part, it's looking for entertainment, right? That's what I do. Uh, but that's not what I do when I make videos. The videos I make, I, I try to make educational or helpful, that sort of thing. But when I'm winding down, I tend to, um, want to be entertained, right? So, so I watch shorts. And so, so part of my strategy then is, all right, well, what if I showed up in these shorts for my viewers, who I see them as doing the same thing I'm doing in their spare time? Perhaps they're killing time going through shorts. What if one of my shorts showed up for them, right? Wouldn't that help with my branding? And it does, right? So, so I see value in, in making shorts. I don't spend, I spend hardly any time making them. I use Nexus Clips because what Nexus Clips does is I get to upload my video to the platform, to Nexus Clips, and it then analyzes my long-form video and it, it uses AI to pick out the best moments within my video so that I can easily create shorts from them. So, so Nexus Clips will display me or will, will provide me with a whole bunch of choices as to what could make a good short. Uh, I'll go through them. I can edit them a little bit if I want to. Uh, right? Like I can edit some of the text or even change where, um, where the cuts are made. I can edit them and then I export them. I download them and I then upload them to YouTube as a short, uh, Instagram, and TikTok, right? So, very easy. Uh, it's leveraging AI, uh, but it saves me a ton of time, right? It allows me to focus on what I do best, which I think is make long-form videos like this. So, that's one way you can, you can, uh, use shorts to keep your face in front of the viewers you already have. I don't necessarily use it to, to gain new subscribers because I believe most of my subscribers exist in the, or on the long-form platform. Uh, but most of them are on the short-form platform sometimes. So, if I happen to show up, uh, when they are, you know, scrolling, great. That's branding. That's a branding opportunity. I'm not gaining a subscriber, but that's okay. Some people do shorts to gain subscribers, but, but not me. Anyways, if you're interested in checking out Nexus Clips, I've got a link below. Uh, uh, use my discount code to get a discount, and, uh, I hope you find it as useful as I do.
After I saw that message from that, uh, that client of mine, um, that was 2022. I did do Fiverr for another almost two years, I think, year and a half or so. Um, but business declined, right? It started to decline. I knew I was going to have to figure something else out. Uh, what I did in the immediate term. So, in 2022, actually starting in 2021, uh, I started offering other things. So, not just subtitling. Um, when you work through Fiverr, you can have several gigs that you offer, right? Offer to do several different things. So, so I added video editing to my, um, I guess, list of things I could do for you. Uh, typically small edits, like, you know, you, you film yourself and then send me the raw video, and then I can turn it into a 30-second Instagram Reel that looks good, right? Complete with, um, transitions and, and text and, and things like that. So, so that was one of the things I started to offer. Um, I offered, uh, uh, translations. Okay. Um, so, not just English, but other languages. Now, I don't know other languages. I know a little bit of French, and I have learned, picked up a little bit of Spanish along the way, but, you know, I know enough to, to know if something doesn't make sense or not. At least, I know enough to, or I knew enough, uh, to know how to, um, split the, uh, the text. Uh, right, like if I hear somebody speaking in Spanish and I see the text, I, I know when to cut the text off, like to match it up to the voice. Okay, things like that, uh, which came in handy, and that kept my business going for a little while. I started to offer, uh, tutorial creation service, right? So, where I would make software tutorials for companies, and, and I did that for quite a while, and that's kind of how I got into, um, video editing in general. Uh, voiceovers, that's something else I started to do. I started to offer voiceovers. Again, I, I looked at Fiverr and, and tried to see what else people were offering and tried to kind of marry that up with what else could I offer, right? And, and I would create gigs for that. So, kind of a jack of all trades, I guess. I was offering to do several different things, and, and it was going well. As I said, probably right around the time I got that message from the client, I, I was earning six figures through, through Fiverr. Over the next few years, it slowly declined down below $50,000 a year. Um, and at that point, I knew it's only going to continue to slide. I got to figure something else out. So, so, but what I did was, I didn't wait for that to happen. I didn't wait for the death to be to be complete. Um, in 2021, in fact, I started this YouTube channel. So, I was a full-time Fiverr, uh, gig worker, freelancer, whatever you want to call it, at the time that I started this channel. And that was one of the biggest reasons why I ended up taking breaks from this channel. If you've watched my videos before, you probably know that after my first month of making videos, I then took eight months off with no videos, um, you know, discouraged that my YouTube channel wasn't growing as fast as I thought it should, based on the videos I was, I was watching and people telling me, "Oh, you can grow your channel fast," and all this stuff. But also because I was busy with Fiverr, right? I was a, I was busy as a freelancer. Um, I took several breaks trying to get the YouTube channel going, and trying to get straight in my head what the channel was going to be about. Um, and it wasn't until 2024 that I got monetized, which came at a pretty good time, because 2023 was probably my last good year at Fiverr. 2024 was looking abysmal, and it was about halfway through that year that, uh, that YouTube started to take off for me.
So, I've written down four lessons that I've learned. I just, I don't want to make sure I, I forget any. I've learned a lot of lessons through this. Uh, again, this has been a, like, it was 2022, I guess, when I, when my daughter was born, and, uh, uh, and I left the corporate life for entrepreneurship. So, there's been a lot of me kind of reinventing myself along the way. I haven't done one, I've done probably four or five different things in the last 20, 20, 25 years or so. Um, what was I going to say? Lessons, right? So, so the four lessons that I want to share with you. One is, there's no point in getting upset at tech. Okay, technology is going to change. I mean, by its very nature, almost, it, it changes, it advances, new things come along all the time. Um, and if, if you don't stay on top of them, they could bury you. Okay. It's, I think far better to understand as much as you can about, about new technologies that are coming up because you don't know what, uh, opportunities might be lying there for you, right? And I don't even know, like, there, there could be opportunities for me in the next year or two that I'm not even thinking about right now. But I'm confident that, that if there is something, um, I'll be open-minded about it and, uh, I guess available to accept the possibility of doing something new. Okay. So, don't blame tech. That doesn't help at all. In fact, it might hurt you if you, if you kind of run and hide from it as opposed to learn and understand it. Whether you end up using it or not doesn't matter. Um, right. That's a decision you can make once you understand it better. Uh, but to make decisions to just stay away from it before you even understand what it is. There's an osprey up there. Uh, I, I just don't, I think you're doing yourself a disservice by doing that.
Lesson number two, um, don't get too comfortable. Again, things change. As, as soon as you think you have a good business plan that, that, and then you, you start working on say, a five-year plan, 10-year plan, uh, that's never worked for me. Usually, one or two years into that, something changes, right? Technology has been changing so fast. Um, I guess this is very similar to the first, the first lesson, but tech has changed so much in the last five, six years. One could argue in the last 10, 20 years too, but particularly the last five years, say, especially with AI, things change, and you can't rely on things to stay the same. And there's a parallel here. Most of my videos are around helping people grow their YouTube channels. And one of the things I, I often say is, don't get too comfortable if you think you've found the magic formula to making videos that will be successful. Because as soon as you think you found that, it's not going to work on your next video, or maybe five year, five videos down the road, because things change. Um, and it's not just technology that changes. People change. And, and people, that's the biggest driver in the success or lack of success of videos, anyways. It's the people, not the tech. Um, yeah, YouTube changes their algorithm every once in a while, but they only do it based on what they're seeing from viewers, viewers' habits, and, and them changing, right? So, that's lesson number two.
Uh, lesson number three, think outside the box, right? If you can, that, that can be hard. Like, again, if you get too used to your surroundings or what you're doing, you might, you might cut off the ability to look outside the box and see what else might there be, uh, for you. Like, even if things are running smoothly, everything's going great, there might be something else. Um, like, don't ever stop learning. And maybe that's what this point should have been. Uh, don't stop learning, right? Um, like, why are we here? [laughter] I don't know. I, I don't mean to get philosophical, but, but I, I think there's something, um, amazing about learning new things and how things work, um, and, and how you might be able to, to use these things, uh, to help yourself, better your life, whether it's in work or personal life or whatever. Um, learning new things, I, I think is, is a wonderful thing, and I think YouTube, uh, helps with that. But, yeah, so the point was, think outside the box. Um, if you can, like, if you're looking inside the box for, for an answer to something, maybe that answer lies outside the box.
Ask yourself, how can I be of service to people? All right, that, that's the fourth lesson. And to explain that a little further, and I know I, I say that all the time, but think about it this way. How do I explain this so it makes sense? A lot of you out there are wanting to be successful with YouTube, right? That's why you're watching my videos. Um, and, and I get that. I understand that. That's, that's what I want to do. Um, but not everybody has the proper mindset to be successful with this. Not everybody is thinking about it the right way. Um, I think a, I think too many people think in order to be successful on YouTube, you, you got to get good at making videos, make a lot of them. Um, you know, if you can do that, then views will follow, and then money will follow, and, and that's basically it. And, and then they start struggling with, "Okay, I hear, you know, all videos have to be within a niche, so I've got to pick a niche. Okay, what's the best niche to pick?" Um, right? Those are all good questions to be asking, but they're all rooted in one thing that, that again, this might be an example of thinking outside the box. It's not really about picking the best niche and then making the best videos for that niche, right? You're, you're, you've got your blinders on, right? You're not looking at the obvious thing. And the obvious thing is, what do people pay for, right? Why? If people want something bad enough, they will pay for it. Okay, where am I going with this? Well, if you're selling something that is not valuable, no one's going to buy it. Does that make sense? Right? Like, if you open a store full of stuff that nobody wants, then nobody's going to buy. A couple people might pop in just because they're curious. "Hey, what are you doing?" Uh, and once they see what you're doing and they understand that it's not something that you're interested in, they'll leave. Another way to look at it is, people will pay for things that they want but they don't want to do themselves. All right, that, that's another example of a service that you could offer. Um, but ultimately, it's people, like, it's all people-driven videos. Sure, you need views, but what's behind the views? It's people looking for something, right? People are looking for something. That's why they're viewing your video. Um, you can't trick people to watch your videos. You can't game the YouTube algorithm to somehow get, you know, a whole bunch more views than you otherwise would because you figured out a trick and then expect that to turn into something successful. It won't, right? The only way it's going to be successful is if those views come from people who genuinely find value in what you are providing in your videos. Okay? So, that comes right back to, figure out how you can help somebody. Uh, and when I say somebody, I do mean one person. Okay? But, you know, there's probably a million people like that one person. So, if you can figure out how to help that one person and genuinely provide value to them, right? Another way to look at it is them willing to pay for it. And when I say that, I mean willing to spend time watching your videos. Okay, that's a cost. That is a real cost. If somebody is going to spend time watching your video, they have to spend their time, right? And time is valuable. Okay? So, you are asking for something from your viewers, right? And if you're going to ask them for something, you need to give them something back. So, give them something that they want, content that they want to watch. So, that should kind of dispel the, the, the thinking that to be successful on YouTube, all you got to do is make videos about the things you like and the things you want to make videos about, right? That just doesn't make sense. I, I know, um, I think a lot of people have sold that, and I think, uh, that that's almost part of the, uh, for lack of a better term, sexiness of YouTube. Wouldn't it be cool to, or sexy to, to be able to make videos and people just kind of throw money at you because you're making videos and that's it, right? I mean, the idea, or the idea that YouTube is a passive income business, it absolutely is not that, right? If, if you made videos and all your videos always got a thousand views a day forever and ever, then sure, I guess that's passive. But that just doesn't happen. You have to keep making videos because the videos you made yesterday eventually, they'll, you know, their graphs will flatten out and they won't be bringing in new videos or new views, right? That typically happens. Every once in a while, you might get an evergreen video that, that brings in search traffic and, and can deliver for for many months or many years, even many years to come. And that's great when that happens, but that's not the norm. Um, so anyways, I think I've probably, my iPad, my iPad died. That's all I got to say.
So, yeah, I, I basically wanted to share this story. Uh, some of you have asked what my backstory was like. What did I do before YouTube? Uh, and this is the answer. I was doing Fiverr and I was a, I was a freelancer, uh, fairly successful at it. But AI killed that. Um, as a result of that, I didn't get bitter towards AI. I embraced it. Uh, I switched gears. I did a pivot. I started making YouTube videos. Uh, and I use AI to this day. Um, it's unfortunate that it does take jobs from people, but I mean, that's kind of happened all throughout history, right? When a, when a new technology comes along, it's going to replace some people who used to have a job, like the people who used to, you know, light up the lanterns on the side of the street in the 1700s before there was electricity, right? They were out of a job once the light switch was invented. Anyway, you get my point. Um, thanks for watching. If you're new here, uh, uh, thanks for stopping in. Welcome. My name is Rob. Uh, and if you're returning, welcome back. Uh, thanks for supporting me and the channel. Um, uh, live. I'll be live on Tuesday. If anybody wants to stop in, I asked, I answer questions live in Tuesday's live stream, uh, every Tuesday at 1 o'clock Eastern. Uh, and I hope to see you there. All right. Thanks, guys. Talk to you soon.