Transcription
What if I told you that you could take your YouTube channel from 30k to over $500,000 per month? Well, that's exactly what happened when I helped my client Shawn. I helped him implement my exact system that got me to a million subscribers and also making multiple seven figures with my YouTube business.
And when Shawn first came to me, he had a solid YouTube following teaching Amazon KDP, but he was struggling with monetization and operations. Fast forward just 9 months, and now Shawn has the number one KDP Channel on YouTube with over 300,000 subscribers. Plus, he's generating over $500,000 a month from his course alone. His AdSense has more than tripled to $22,000 a month, and he even received a single affiliate commission of $73,000 and much more affiliate commissions after that.
And in today's video, I'm sitting down with Shawn to break down exactly how we transformed his YouTube business. So let's jump in right now. And if you appreciate me doing these types of case studies and really just breaking everything down in detail, let me know by gently tapping that like button and also subscribing to the channel. All right guys, welcome back. Today I have an interview slash case study with a client of mine and also a friend of mine, Sean.
Um, when Shawn first came to us, he had a pretty good following on YouTube, and he was getting a lot of views, but he was having trouble monetizing those views, and he was having trouble, uh, just with the amount of time he had to spend on YouTube and the monetization side of things. And we helped Shawn, uh, you know, really take his YouTube channel to the next level. So Sean, thanks for coming on, really appreciate it. Um, could you just give yourself a, you know, a quick introduction to the audience, what you do, and um, you know, what what you what your coaching program is about and all that type of thing?
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. And, uh, so my name is Sean. Basically, I teach people the Amazon KDP business model, and KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing. So basically, you publish books on Amazon and make money even if you're not a writer. You can hire other people to make books, so it's a really cool business model, and I teach that on YouTube. And, uh, yeah, I've been I've been doing YouTube for a couple years. I think when I started working with you, I was around 100K subscribers. I think I wasn't even at 100K subs, right? Um, and I was kind of having trouble monetizing my audience, uh, or actually maximizing the income, you know, for my audience. So that's why I wanted to reach out to you and work with you.
Awesome. Okay, so besides from the monetization, were there any other issues you were having? Like I know that you kind of had issues, um, with with sort of like the workflow, like the amount of time and effort it takes to both, you know, have a YouTube channel, but also like the backside, the monetization, you know, hiring your team, all that kind of thing. Were you having issues with that as well?
Yeah, so the main thing for me was I've already had the back-end monetization, like I already had, you know, I had affiliate programs that I was promoting too, but I had my course as well, right? And, uh, so I had that set up, but I had a really, really bad partnership with this agency, uh, that pretty much took all the profit, uh, so my cut was like really small, even though we were, you know, making some sales here and there. So that was one issue. The other issue is that I didn't really have a lot of direction in terms of my YouTube strategy, right? Like I was doing YouTube for I think three years at this point, so I had a decent idea of, you know, what works, what doesn't, but everything was based on me just guessing, you know, taking action is not really a problem for me, but knowing exactly what to do because I never really took YouTube courses or coaching before, um, I was kind of going in blind and, you know, trying to guess everything myself, and I had decent success, right? Like close to 100K subscribers, but I thought it was about time for me to actually have some strategy and structure to it, you know.
Got it. Got it. Okay. Okay, so when you first met me, you were having trouble with monetization. You did have some decent success. Um, what were the numbers you were doing right when you first started working with me?
Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but I I remember AdSense was like 6K, and from and the affiliate commissions were probably like $15,000 a month average, and for my coaching program, I was just getting like 10K a month because the agency really, it was crazy, uh, they just took everything. So overall from the coaching business side, um, that is like 30k a month or so.
Got it. Got it. And I remember when we were when we first talked to each other, when when you reached out, we were on the strategy call with each other, you were telling me about, you know, you had a bad experience with the agency. I think you said you potentially had a bad experience with a different agency in the past, and then also some coaching and that kind of thing, and I think that was kind of one of the objections you had. You were a little bit worried about working with me because you'd had bad experiences with people in the past. So could you take me back to that time? Like you, you know, you were thinking about working with me, uh, what what made you take the leap?
Yeah, so what I told you was basically my experience that I had multiple high-ticket coaching programs in the past, like I paid one dude 25k, I paid another guy 25,000. So that's two occasions of 25k each, and I've also done kind of, you know, business model that requires a lot of capital upfront, and within that business model, I've paid coaching for another 20K or something like that. And, you know, every single time the value that I actually got was way less than what I paid for. So the strategy all these coaches that I hired was taken was basically, you know, jacking up prices just to increase the perceived value but not the actual value, right? So that was super shitty, and none of them worked out. So I just wasted a lot of money. So although, you know, you were way more legit in how you appear on, you know, YouTube and stuff because, you know, you got a huge channel, you're obviously doing the work, um, when we talked everything sounded sounded good, but I just had, uh, a little bit of doubt based on my my past experience in terms of the agency, uh, that's a little different, right? Agency is just the the setup that they had. It was more so one of those agencies where they seek you out, uh, they seek out influencers, and they will help you create a a program like a course, and they take a cut, uh, in this case, they will help you create the program, they'll help you market it, do everything like fulfillment, customer service, you just have to be the face and create the lessons and teach it once in a while. And so with that setup, they were taking, um, 75% of the profit, and I will get 25%, but the issue is that they said they would run paid ads for me, and they did, but the paid ads weren't converting at all, like zero, compared to that my YouTube traffic, you know, my YouTube videos were converting a lot better, right? So basically, I was making pretty much all the sales to the course, and then they were taking 75%, and honestly, like I feel like that is the case for a lot of people who do this kind of deal with an agency, you know, the agency because in my KDP business too, right, in the Amazon KDP space, there are agencies out there that do the same thing, like they seek out, uh, authors, and they sign a book deal where, you know, hey, I'll market the book for you, do all the work, um, and I'll give you a cut, right? So a lot of authors do the same thing, and it's basically the same story, like the marketing that these agencies and these companies do, it rarely works from, you know, what I what I know of. So I was just kind of the the same situation.
Yeah, yeah, I totally get it. And, uh, there's a lot of people that share this same frustration with agencies. Of course, there's a new thing, it's like growth operator, you know, that came out a few years ago. It's essentially like an agency, but just you get a percentage, and sometimes you invest in the business, and and yeah, it's like, to be honest with you, most of my experiences with agencies have been bad. I get people that come to me all the time asking me to do YouTube agency work for them, and the unit economics just don't really make sense. Like for that to make sense for me, I'd have to charge like $330,000 a month, right? But what what does make sense is for me to just teach you how to do the thing that I already know how to do and then just give you some guidance and some high-level strategic advice and that kind of thing, right? And plus, that's a lot more fun for me too, and my lifestyle is a lot better, right? And and so like there once in a while I do work with people, you know, in an agency setting, but it's like it's going to be extremely expensive if I do that, you know, because the unit economics just don't make sense. And and that's why most of the time people don't have a a good experience, I think, with agencies. But um, you you decided to work with me, and I know you were looking at some other YouTube coaches, and I I think I remember maybe it wasn't you that said this, but I think I remember, uh, somebody said, uh, basically every other YouTube coach that they were looking at working with, their their main YouTube channel was teaching people how to do YouTube, whereas with me, my main YouTube channel is has nothing to do with that. It's like a completely separate business, and so I learned how to do it with a separate business, and then I started a channel teaching people how to to do YouTube, right? So that's and that's kind of the same with you, like you started a successful KDP business, except in fact several successful KDP businesses, and then you started teaching people how to do it, whereas a lot of YouTube coaches, they basically teach people how to do YouTube by teaching people how to do YouTube, right? So it's like they're learning how to do YouTube while they teach people, and I and I think like that was you that said something like that. So yeah, it's it's it's a weird business, and that's kind of why I I had to get into this this because I think that a lot of people are teaching methods on YouTube that might get views and it might get subscribers, but it doesn't actually make any money, and different different like the type of content they make and also the way that they monetize, you know, and very very few people out there actually teach people how to make YouTube in a sustainable way that where you treat it like an actual business and you're not just getting views but you're also making money from YouTube, right? And so it's sustainable so you can keep doing it repeatedly, and that's kind of what I like to teach people is to teach, you know, to show them how they can actually, you know, treat YouTube like a business and make real money with it so that you you know you don't have to worry about only making money from AdSense or affiliate marketing and that kind of thing, stuff that goes up and down, stuff that can actually be taken away from you. You can actually launch a business using your personal brand on YouTube that someday you might be able to actually separate from your YouTube channel and sell and have other traffic sources that are getting, you know, traffic to that business, right? So kind of what I I really focus on teaching people, and I'm very passionate about doing this because I just think like most of the stuff out there just is, you know, it's not the best advice. And, uh, I really like I've worked with a lot of people like you that have just had so many bad experiences with agencies and coaches and stuff like that, and that's why I'm so passionate about teaching this. But yeah, um, let's let's talk about once you joined us, what what do you say was the most valuable part of what we taught you and what we worked with with you?
So essentially the the program came with the course, the video lessons, and obviously I had access to you and your team, um, where I can shoot over messages anytime, right? So that was valuable too. In terms of the the actual like lessons itself, um, it was cool in a way that I had better, uh, I had a better picture of what kind of video topics to go after instead of because before this I was basically just looking at, you know, my like other K channels, seeing what videos did well for them, and I'm like, all right, let me try to recreate that, right? And that's my whole strategy, you know, um, but with yours, uh, it was it was a little more of a formula to it, so it improved my keyword research process, and thanks to that recently I had my first 1 million view video. It's like 1.1 I think right now, so it's definitely yeah, thanks man, definitely grew my subscriber count a lot. But another tip that you had was to to maximize the AdSense, and that was probably the the quickest ROI that I made because like I was doing 6K a month in AdSense, which so I had a pretty good, um, base, right? I had a lot of videos, so obviously if you're just getting started with YouTube, this is not going to happen, but you know, since I had, uh, solid view counts, solid base of videos, uh, and you gave me the tip of maximizing the AdSense, like immediately after doing that, it went to like 12K a month, you know, so just like that doubled, um, my AdSense, and just from that pretty much made ROI of the the coaching that I paid you in like two months, right? Um, so that was cool. But besides that, being able to ask any questions specifically, I don't know if you still offer this right, but I had access to, right, uh, like during the coaching, I separated from the agency, so I had to recreate the entire funnel and, you know, all the tech stuff, I had to transfer over and, you know, set it up again, and for that it was really cool to have access to I think it was Toby, uh, one of your, you know, tech tech guy that I can, uh, like have him help me with that. That was super super valuable. Um, and lastly, the fact that you hired like scriptwriters for me, um, the first guy that you hired, he he was like so he scripted a couple videos for me where some of those videos are at like almost 500k views, like multiple of those videos that this Filipino VA scripted for six bucks an hour is, you know, freaking like hundreds of thousands of views, right? Multiple times. And and then I you hired me another one, and this other guy is like even better. He's he's working super hard and super smart, and you know, I can see him moving up in the position in my YouTube team. So overall, a lot of different value that I got from the coaching program, but those were the main ones.
Awesome. Awesome. So, um, I know that, you know, there there was a little bit of a process there where I was helping you with some high-level strategic stuff, you know, you kind of ask my opinion on, you know, what you should do with the agency and all that kind of stuff. We don't have to get too far into that, but once we cleaned up that side of things, how fast were you able to, you know, ramp up the amount of money you made?
So I think I think it was around maybe six months we worked together, so in the first six months or so, you went from 30k to how much were you doing after about six months?
After six months, I forgot the I I forgot the exact amount, but what I remember is like immediately after separating separating from the agency, which obviously like, you know, having you, uh, and your coaching as a backup gave me a little more confidence to do so, right? Because I had a guy that would show me, you know, exactly what to do and stuff, but after separating the first month literally I I went I went up to like 70k, 80k in a single month, and that wasn't even a full month. The first full month, which was month two, I think we did like 110k or so, and then I had a couple 150k months, and then I believe I finished the six-month mark at around like 200k, uh, in a month or so.
Got it. Got it. And then a few months after that, you really started to ramp up, and what are you doing now? Like like last month, for instance, what did you do?
Yeah, so a couple months later, last month we did 500k revenue from the course alone, and that's not even counting all the other stuff, right? And actually, I had a huge month with affiliate commissions too from YouTube. I have this affiliate program, uh, that I'm part of that gave me the biggest affiliate commission of my life. It was like $73,000 for a single commission because I helped I helped, uh, this brokerage company, uh, sell a 4 million dollar Amazon FBA business. Somebody clicked on my link and did it, so I got a commission for that, uh, and then my AdSense also is like $22,000 a month right now, you know, so my YouTube AdSense is like averaging 20K a month, um, huge affiliate commissions. So basically, I had like an extra 100K, a little bit more, uh, from YouTube and, you know, not even counting the course side. So last month was huge, man, overall like over 600k, I think.
Wow, you are we're gonna have to do another interview here in a few months. I think you're going to be part of the eight-figure club. I think you might be like, let let's see, number eight, I think somewhere around there of of, uh, my students who made it to eight figures. That's awesome, man. Congrats. That is amazing. Wow, that's that's awesome. You're going to have to tell me what that affiliate was too at some point. You can tell me off-camera. I need to know who they are. That's a great commission right there. That's awesome.
Yeah, I think you'll crush it too with that program. That's awesome. Sweet. All right. Well, um, so for anybody that's like on the fence, they're thinking about, you know, should I work with Shane, you know, because basically I get two different types of people that I work with. I get busy business owners that want to grow and make money on YouTube, and then I get YouTubers who are doing okay on YouTube, they're making money, and you know, they're trying to do business, but they haven't quite, you know, figured it out yet, and they basically want to ramp up the views, get their operations dialed in, and then just like make more money from YouTube, um, so if to those two types of people who are watching this video and they're thinking, you know, should I work with Shane, um, should I jump in? What would you say?
Yeah, I think it Shane's probably the best guy to work with. He has everything in a in a system, so that was huge for me, like the a lot of YouTube gurus that you see on YouTube, they may be knowledgeable about like different types of businesses, uh, perhaps like monetizing through AdSense, affiliate commissions, maybe they're in like the entertainment niche, they, you know, gaming niche, different niches, but if you're in the business niche, if you're trying to monetize through your course or, you know, coaching, uh, services, I do think Shane, uh, probably has the best approach to it, um, just because the way you teach people how to do YouTube, the way you teach monetization, um, it's really geared towards business owners, right? And so both like if you're busy, like if you're a busy business owner, um, and you need help with a system that helps you create content real quick, you know, like for me, a lot of my videos are scripted by my scriptwriter right now, and you teach that right, like you can hire Filipino VAs, can script it, and normally you will think like how can you transfer your skill set to a a Filipino VA that you hire at a a pretty good rate, you know, it's it's not easy normally, but you have a system for it, and it works, you know, which is pretty…
Pretty damn cool, because that was one of my main things. I needed help with scripting because it takes so much time. But how can somebody else, uh, first of all, learn my Amazon KDP knowledge and script a video that, you know, teaches it the way I teach it and the way I talk and those kind of things? It's super hard, but you had a system for that, and then it—it works. Like I got multiple videos hitting hundreds of thousands of views, right? So, um, that's definitely huge.
And then obviously, if you are already doing YouTube but you don't know how to monetize, you don't have, you know, like—like the backend offer, you were super knowledgeable about that as well. Like you gave me a lot of tips, so I think either way, yeah, it was—it was definitely worth it. I made ROI real quick and obviously way, way more, so, you know, thanks to you. Awesome, awesome, cool. Um, what was—was there anything surprising? Like, was there anything about the program that just really surprised you? Not necessarily like the best thing about it, but just something that really surprised you that you didn't see in other programs?
Yeah, the biggest one for me was the fact that you hired uh people for me. So that was—that was huge, cuz, you know, I was in the busy business owner bracket, right? Right. I already had my business; I was doing decent money, you know, nothing crazy, but uh, okay money, and I, you know, I was busy too. So the fact that you hired and trained someone uh was huge, and just giving me access to your team members when I needed, you know, tech help and stuff like that. Um, so those are the two that you usually don't really get. Like usually it's just, you know, the coach telling you what to do. So you had a little more of kind of a—it's kind of a hybrid coaching plus service, you know, kind of offer that you had. Um, and besides that, yeah, just I guess the—the biggest thing for me, like, you know, because you pretty much in your program, in the video lesson side, you know, you—you went over like the basic stuff, you were researching, so like if you're a beginner in YouTube, you would understand, but later on you cover like the advanced, you know, hiring the team and creating a system for it and, you know, for me that side was definitely more valuable because the automation was where I had issues.
You know, last year my whole problem was automation. I was doing everything myself; I was making decent money, but I—I really was trying to figure everything out. I—I wasn't very good at hiring and creating system—systems, but after going through your program, I feel like I'm a lot more mindful of what I—what I can do in my YouTube, but also in my other businesses as well. So, uh, the latter part of last year and also this year, my sole focus is not really to—to make more money, but to build out systems to replace myself so that I can just focus on YouTube full time, and you know, as a result of that, I feel like I'm going to make a lot more money, right? So I learned most of that from you, so uh, I think that's the main thing. Love it, love it, awesome.
Yeah, I—I think I'm one of the only coaches out there where I think I have like nearly 10 students now that have passed me up, and I'm—I'm happy; I'm super happy about that, you know. I'm super happy that my students have passed me up because yeah, I get—I get students that come in from amazing niches, and they're, you know, you just—like, you know, you get your students crazy good results, too, and you know that's—those are the types of people that I want to help blow up on YouTube, and you know you are—I would say you're probably like—would I—would I be wrong to say you're number one in the KDP niche now on YouTube? I think you're number one, right?
Yeah. Funny enough, a couple days ago I—I officially became number one. There was this one guy that was at 299k subs uh for like a year; he stopped posting at 299k subs; he stopped growing, and it took me like a year to catch up to him, but I—I crossed 300K subs a couple days ago, so I'm officially like, I guess the biggest KDP YouTube channel right now. Awesome, congrats, man. Good year; this is a good start to the—to 2025 for you, man. That's awesome. Um, yeah, so—so just to be clear, we worked—I think we started working together like less than a year ago, like nine months ago, somewhere around there, and in that time you went from like 100k subs or a little bit less to 300K subs, and you went from around making about 30k per month from YouTube—you were making more from your KDP business, but from YouTube about 30k per month—all the way to about 600k per month. So that's a pretty good transformation, guys, and we still got a few months left until we worked together for a year, so I'm going to try to get you to that—that eight-figure level. I'm actually really pumped to do that now, but then we have to do another case study.
I do have another question because this is one thing—like a lot of people don't realize—like everyone knows that that YouTube, right now, long-form YouTube content is the meta right now. Everybody—everybody in the business world that's being honest knows that, right? Like everyone's moving forward towards long-form YouTube content. With that being said, everyone knows you can directly make money; are there any indirect opportunities that you've gotten as a result from YouTube? And by that, I mean networking opportunities, um, getting opportunities to like meet people that maybe, you know, are like you wouldn't have been able to meet otherwise, opportunities to get equity in companies, etc., that kind of thing?
Yeah, actually, every single one of them happen through YouTube. So, um, just straight up making friends, people reaching out—that happens a lot. I'm currently in Bali, and there's a lot of entrepreneurs, digital nomads. I was in Thailand before this, so same thing. Um, whenever I post, you know, let's say on Instagram, but people, you know, find me on Instagram through YouTube, right? So uh, whenever I post I'm here, you know, a lot of people reach out saying, "Hey, let's meet up," and I—I never really talk to people; I—I do, but you know, I don't go and try to make friends, right? People come to me, so it's like—it's nice to be able to attract people by putting yourself out there. So it's not really a business benefit, or technically it is because they all—they're all entrepreneurs, and you know, we exchange ideas, but that's one, and uh, you know, speaking opportunities, this and that. Um, I do get offers like that. Uh, recently I got an offer to—to do an interview with uh Marco from Whiteboard Finance. I think they—he's like working with NerdWallet, and NerdWallet has like another subchannel and interviewing people, and they want—they reached out and uh, you know, it kind of got lost in negotiation, so it didn't happen, but there was another one where uh there's another channel called Upflip or something like that where they also interview entrepreneurs, and you know, they want to do an interview, so we might do that. But basically, like they start reaching out, right? Basically, by putting yourself out there on YouTube. And lastly, like a lot of affiliate programs, like as an example, you know, I do Amazon KDP, so I have Amazon KDP tools that I promote as an affiliate; they all give me free access, so I don't have to pay for it, so that's like a nice little benefit. But on top of that, um, there's this, you know, there are companies out there that reach out wanting to partner up, you know, so it's—so now I'm like the face of the marketing, or they basically want to do something where, you know, it's a revenue share, and I just promote them once in a while, and I get a percentage of revenue while they do all the work, so it's like an affiliate uh partnership but on steroids because it's not just affiliate commissions; it's rev share. And uh, so you—so opportunities, basically, you know, you get a lot of that, and it keeps growing as your channel grows. So I think building a personal brand like this is absolutely huge. Uh, I definitely think it's one of the best ways to make money uh, so yeah. Amazing, amazing.
All right, well, um, thanks for coming on, Sean. I really appreciate it. Um, any—any last advice? Any last words to anybody who's, you know, on the fence or anything like that, who's thinking about working with me?
I think the biggest thing to understand is like YouTube is always going to be, you know, a decent amount of work. Uh, there are ways to automate, but you still got to show up and, you know, film videos, so you still got to allocate some work. It's not—it's not like, you know, it's—it's completely passive, but I think it's an extremely high-paying opportunity, more than anything else that I've seen, you know. It's just—it's basically prints cash; it's—it's insane if you think about it, right? Like if you're a business owner, you can literally acquire more leads, more customers. Um, usually you have to pay for those, you know, doing paid ads and different marketing uh stuff, right? But with YouTube, you literally get paid to acquire customers through AdSense. Like—like I make money from my videos, you know, because I don't spend a—a ton editing my—my videos, spending, you know, a ton on thumbnails. Like it's pretty cheap, and so I usually make my uh investment in terms of thumbnails, video editing team cost for my YouTube videos in a day, right? And after that, everything I make AdSense-wise, everything I make affiliate commissions-wise is um like extra money. But on top of that, I'm getting leads for my course, which is, you know, how I make most of my money, right? So you really don't have anything like that um besides YouTube, social media, I guess. And I think more and more companies, more and more businesses are realizing the potential of YouTube, but no one really understands how to do it properly, at least to the level that you understand, you know, because I watch a lot of YouTube videos, right? Not just in the KDP space, but I listen to all the gurus, and I don't think they—they get it, you know, the way you get it. So uh, definitely recommend your coaching.
I appreciate that. Awesome, awesome. Yeah, we—I actually recently had like a nine-fig company reach out to—to work together, um, you know, is more of just like a—what—like a quick consulting type of thing, but—but yeah, it's—even—even like the biggest companies in the world are seeing how much of an opportunity long-form YouTube is. Um, people are—recently YouTube—this is something actually I—I forgot if I told you this—but recently uh people have been watching YouTube more on their TVs than even on their phones. So TV actually surpassed phones, and that just means that everybody who was watching TV, who was watching Netflix, um, now they're watching YouTube instead, right? So it's just like everything—like they've got the phone views, they've got the computer views, now they've got the TV views even, right? So everybody's watching YouTube, and it's just—it's just growing bigger and bigger, so yeah, it's—it's companies are seeing it's a huge opportunity uh both for entertainment as well as education and kind of like edutainment as well. Um, and yeah, it's just getting bigger and bigger, and I'm super excited to be in the middle of it. I'm super excited to be helping people, um, you know, especially educators, business owners, helping people grow their channels, and uh, yeah, I'm going to—I'm going to be doing this for a long time. So Sean, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it, and uh, we'll talk soon.
Yeah, thanks for having me; it was fun.