How to Start & Grow a YouTube Channel in 2025 | FULL COURSE

I'm about to teach you everything I know about YouTube. To help, I brought in seven top YouTube experts and strategists who've collectively generated billions of views. Together, we have 83 years of YouTube experience, and today we're sharing it all with you. Those are the areas where I see retention problems. It is the one thing you need to learn how to do.

Actually, really think through what you make and don't just make. If you watch this video from start to finish, you'll learn everything you need to know to start, grow, and scale a YouTube channel. Because this is YouTube, and I want to make this video as tangible as humanly possible, I've broken it all into conveniently numbered lists. We'll cover the fundamentals of YouTube growth first, then get into making killer YouTube videos, before rounding it off with advanced topics like analytics, algorithm flops, and so much more. By the end, you'll know everything that's taken us collectively 83 years to learn, and I promise you will be changed. So let's jump straight into it with Part One: How to Grow on YouTube.

By far the most common question I get is, "What's your best advice for growing on YouTube?" To answer, I brought in the world's most sought-after YouTube strategist, Patty Galloway. Patty's worked with clients like MrBeast, Ryan Trahan, Jesser, and Noah Kagan, but today he's here to help you. Because growing on YouTube is broad, and advice changes depending on your journey stage, I've broken it into four main stages: your first 1,000 subscribers, 1K to 10K subscribers, 10K to 100K subscribers, and 100K to 1 million subscribers and beyond.

How do you get your first 1,000 subscribers? Yeah, it'll sound contradictory, but I don't really think about growth at that size. I just focus on repetition and solidifying the channel's niche. If you get too caught up in YouTube strategy with 100 subscribers, you'll jump around on trends, studying outlier videos, and get too caught up in your head. You're probably not at the level to produce really good content. So, my biggest focus is what I call the "triple Venn diagram" of niche selection: what you love, what you're good at, and what people demand. I know it sounds simple, but people often do what they love, even if they lack a unique advantage. Or, they do something they're good at but hate, so they can't stick with it. Sometimes, people love and are good at something nobody cares about—that happens. In that case, one part of the Venn diagram is unsatisfied. I try to get people to imagine the middle of those three things and pick that as their niche. Then, the analogy I always use—a business mentor explained this to me—is like a sushi restaurant also serving burgers. You'll probably think it's not a very good sushi restaurant because the best sushi restaurants just do sushi. The same is true for YouTube. Too early in the journey, people experiment with different things and jump around. Some of that's natural, but I like the "sushi restaurant mentality": we make sushi, and we only make sushi. We'll get good at it. In those beginning stages, get your niche right, focus on that niche, and don't get caught up in growth hacks. Just think, "Can we post two or three videos a week?" It sounds like a lot, but a big part of my approach is quality. We don't need quantity, but you need quantity to get quality. I like posting two or three videos a week until we have maybe 30-40 videos under our belt. That gives a good foundation to get good at YouTube. It's like any skill; my coach is drilling fundamentals. For YouTube, those are editing and thumbnails. You need volume to get good at those.

How do you grow from 1K to 10K subscribers? I think at that point, let's say we have 50 videos, making content for 20-25 weeks. You've got some traction; trends emerge. You see which videos got 1,000 views, 100 views, 2,000 views, 300 views. You see your top and bottom 5-10% videos. The key is eliminating weaker performers, even if you enjoy making them. This is the internal battle of YouTube strategy versus creative expression. There's a beautiful analogy: artists follow passion, distributors distribute content. The best balance is in the middle; you're still creative but have a distributor mindset. It's immature to say you shouldn't think about strategy. If you want to take this seriously, you need a balance. Looking at what videos perform better is a good idea. Start making more like your top 10% videos. The biggest difference between 0-1K and 1K-10K (or to 100K and beyond) is that ideation becomes a bigger factor. Earlier, it didn't matter; just make what you want. Now things get serious. We look at what's working and study other niches and outlier ideas on similar channels. If your schedule is 40 hours a week (not realistic, but for example), at 0-1K, you spend an hour or two on ideation. At 1K-10K and beyond, spend 5-10 hours a week. Actually, really think through what you make and don't just make.

Does the quality versus quantity trade-off shift after 50 videos? I think so. You can take a deeper look at quantity. I often recommend one video a week. There are exceptions; a friend posts a video every month or year and does great. He probably hasn't posted 50 videos. Generally, though, get the frequency, then build your schedule. I still like posting one a week because you're learning and building foundations. Going from two or three a week to one a week increases quality. It's a mistake to go from posting many videos to spending a month on one video; you probably don't have enough traction. I'd change it to about one a week after 50 videos for most people.

How do you grow from 10K to 100K subscribers? We still want the same fundamentals, but the biggest difference is—and not everyone likes to hear this—building strategy around a format (or "buckets"). You've posted many videos, spent more time on ideation. You have clear outliers (a million views, or 10K when others get 500 views). It's about how many times the average is that video. A video five or ten times your average is an outlier. Can those videos become your strategy? Can the bulk of your future videos be around one to three formats that work really well? I broke this down in a tweet thread about a channel called Golden Kobe Family. They found a format that worked: their Golden Retriever reacting to a puppy. They can't get a new puppy every week, but they can have the dog react to other dogs or animals at the zoo. Now, about 50% of their uploads are around that format, growing them from 10K to (I think) 30K; they'll likely hit 100K by year's end. Focusing on a few formats is key.

What if your outlier formats aren't what you want your brand to be? Good question. So long as they're within your niche, they attract the right audience. You can use them to build momentum, like a slipstream. Then, when you want to experiment, you have an audience. It's situational. Sometimes people feel trapped. You can always not double down and look at your second-best performing bucket. It's the classic dilemma of the band that goes viral with a song outside their niche. It's the artist's dilemma: are you an artist or a distributor? It's a real concern, but if you see it early, you can avoid doubling down. It's easier to get views that way, but if it doesn't feel like your identity, you can build around something else.

How do you grow from 100K to 1 million subscribers? At 100K, you've probably gotten there through a few formats and hard work. What gets you to a million? First, do you even want a million subscribers? Are you happy maintaining a smaller channel? You don't have to grow, of course. With me, I want to grow everything. At that point, we're probably looking at one or two formats that got us to 100K. To get to a million, we probably need four or five different formats. More effort on ideation. Some exceptions exist, but it's rare to see a channel doing the same format all the way to a million subscribers. That initial traction fades, and you need to ideate different formats. Even with the Golden Retriever channel, I'll wait for them to hit 100K, then say they need to think about other formats. You won't get to a million doing the same thing again and again. If a million's the goal, think like an entrepreneur. Build leverage. For most creators, that's not editing or thumbnail design. We often outsource those. That unlocks more time for ideation, vision, and strategy. I still recommend creators put time into thumbnail concepts. The return on time is huge. Editing might take 10-20 hours, but someone else can do that; the leverage isn't the same. Getting better at ideation is important. Adopt that mentality, get into a rhythm and schedule, and enjoy the process. I struggle with creators putting time limits on hitting one million subscribers. That takes the fun out of it. Set goals, but don't make subscriber count the goal. The goal should be sustainable channel growth, average views per video, monthly revenue, not subscriber count. Don't have a time limit; it's just a status signal. Enjoy the process.

Patty is a YouTube genius. If you want to hear more from him, follow him on Twitter. Now that we've covered growth, let's dive into making killer YouTube videos, starting with ideation.

Part Two: Ideation. How do you come up with a good video idea? I have an entire video on this, but here's an abridged version. First, start with the topic. If I want to make a video about YouTube thumbnails, that's my topic. There are many ways to get inspiration, but topic generation isn't the hard part; most people have more topics than they know what to do with. If you're struggling, there's logical ideation and inspired ideation. Logical ideation looks at past and potential future performance. Look at what others are doing, Google Trends, comments, subreddits, Twitter, and your past performance and outliers. Inspired ideation comes from brainstorming, mind maps, constraints (videos taking less than a day or zero dollars), shower thoughts, or late-night thoughts. A diverse content diet is important for inspired ideation. Read, watch, and listen to things that fire you up. Once you have topics, validate them. Verify they have the potential for views. Look for proof of prior success: are there many relevant videos with views above your goal? Also look for outliers: videos significantly overperforming a channel's average. I use One of 10 to find outliers. Many outliers are a great sign. I'll link all tools and resources in the video description. If you found proof of prior success and outliers, your topic has potential. Now turn it into a full-fledged idea, considering remarkability: how you stand out. In today's climate, you need to stand out. Doug Doug talked about this; I recommend his video. Imagine a food court with many burger joints. If you make food just like Five Guys, nobody will eat at your knockoff. But if you add your own twist—like a burgerito—you have something original. People who like it will keep coming back. When thinking about your offering, consider your goals and how many people like the same things. If your offering is super niche, that's an important factor. Ultimately, be remarkable by being significantly better or significantly different. Most of us can't do better, so we need to be different. The best way is to lean into your strengths.

That's how Aristotle grew his channel. Think about your strengths. If you're a top Fortnite player, lean into tips and tricks or gameplay clips. Or, if you're funny in chat, lean into that. Slater (I can't remember his channel name) plays Call of Duty with a voice changer, so he sounds like a 10-year-old. It's funny because of the contrast. He leans into being hilarious while being good at the game. If you're not great at the game or funny, lean into your creativity. I showcase parts of Mario games nobody's ever seen before. Your strengths could be discovered over time through comments. It's not an overnight thing; it can take years. My most popular video is remaking the Mario Wonder trailer in Mario Maker 2. I could only do that because of skills acquired over years. The longer you do it, the better ideas you'll have. One of the best ways to incorporate your strengths is by leveraging a format. There are six main formats: tutorials, challenges, breakdowns, commentaries, vlogs, and interviews. I go into more detail in my ideation video (linked below). That's how you come up with topics, verify their potential, and create new ideas.

How do you decide if an idea is worth it? Everyone should have criteria. I've seen six main categories: feasibility, new audience interest, existing audience interest (at least 80%), view potential, brand alignment, and packageability (title and thumbnail). I also add personal excitement (a 7/10 floor; otherwise, it doesn't get made). My criteria might be different from yours. Not every video has to follow every criterion. This goes for every piece of YouTube advice. We're sharing best practices, but leave room for experimentation.

Part Three: Titles. Titles can make or break a YouTube video. To help, I brought in Jake Thomas, the creator of the Creator Hooks newsletter, a YouTube title expert.

How do you make clickable titles? The simplest answer is the three click-worthy emotions: curiosity, fear, and desire. Boring titles don't make you feel anything. Curiosity is the most important. Pat Flynn and Daryl Ease both said that. If you can make people curious, they'll click. It's the gatekeeper. Most people think about questions, but bold statements are more attractive. Polarizing statements make people agree or disagree. The easiest way to build curiosity is to open a loop (a cliffhanger or curiosity gap). Start a story but don't finish it. A title like, "This is the best way to write YouTube titles in 2024" is a bold statement; it makes you want to know what the best way is. Or, "If you're not getting enough subscribers, do this." It's a cliffhanger. Bold statements encourage the idea that someone will solve your problems. That's why I don't love questions. An open loop is the most common way to build curiosity. Other ways include contrast (like MrBeast's "$1 vs. $250 million" series). Pairing opposites makes you do a double take. Another favorite title is "Luxury fashion is for broke people." It doesn't make sense, but it builds curiosity. There are countless ways to open curiosity gaps. Jake has a list of methods and formats (check out his Creator Hooks newsletter—linked below). He also advises finding niche-specific ways to evoke curiosity. When I start a new channel, I build a list of adjacent channels. For example, for a lawn care channel, I'd look at pool care, fitness, and other educational channels. See what works for them; look for outliers and model their titles and frameworks. Some will include curiosity; others might include desire or fear. When I first wrote titles, I never came up with anything new; I always looked for what worked. We had a fishing channel, and I looked at finance education titles ("10 best credit cards of 2024") and wrote "10 best trout lures of 2024." Model, then eventually come up with your own ideas.

In the last section, we talked about angles, and one way they manifest is through title variations. If you have a YouTube education channel, there are only a few things people want, but how do you say the same thing 50 times? Let's try to…

Curiosity-based titles, like "Do this to get more views in 2024," aim for increased views. Fear-based titles, such as "This small mistake is ruining your channel," leverage anxiety. Desire-based titles, like "Here's how this creator went from zero to a million subscribers in 12 months," tap into ambition. These could all address the same core concept.

If a specific approach works for your channel—generating views and conversions—focus on those topics. Most channels have five to ten key topics; attack them with varied titles using curiosity, fear, and desire angles. Assess which angles best suit your channel's vibe and goals.

Fear-based titles often perform well, but they might not always be suitable. Some creators avoid fear-based content due to negativity concerns. Consider incorporating curiosity or desire-based approaches for balance. The core idea remains central, attacked from multiple perspectives using click triggers. Generate many titles and refine them.

Several methods help refine title variations. Gut feeling ("What feels best?") is easiest. Collaborate with others in your niche for feedback. Form a group for mutual support; it's incredibly beneficial. Alternatively, seek feedback from friends, your audience, or those whose judgment you value. Analyze your channel's history, competitors, and similar channels. Check if your title angle has proven effective. Completely novel approaches are high-risk, high-reward—potentially groundbreaking but possibly irrelevant. Experience influences risk tolerance.

High-risk, high-reward titles are viable if you're confident in the content and idea. Conversely, if your channel is struggling, safer, proven titles are preferable.

Do capitalization and length matter in titles? All caps hinder readability, reducing click-through rates. Selective capitalization can emphasize words, aligning with your channel's brand. A hype channel might use capitalization; a casual channel wouldn't. Capitalization conveys emotion. Capitalizing the first letter of each word is safest; avoid all caps.

YouTube allows up to 100 characters in titles. Should you use them all? The average title length is 54.5 characters. Optimal length depends on audience and traffic source. Younger audiences prefer shorter titles; older audiences tolerate longer ones. Search traffic allows longer titles as viewers actively seek answers. Homepage views require shorter titles for quicker comprehension during passive scrolling.

How important is SEO in titles? SEO (search engine optimization) is crucial because YouTube receives significant search traffic. Keyword research—identifying high-volume, low-competition keywords—optimizes titles for search results. Title optimization for search depends on goals. Going viral hinges on YouTube's recommendation system. Browse-based titles emphasize curiosity, fear, or desire. Search-optimized titles prioritize clarity. Search ranking provides consistent, high-quality leads and a robust back catalog. Viral success prioritizes browse optimization.

Part four: Thumbnails. Clickable thumbnails require a compelling reason to click, evoking curiosity. Five thumbnail types evoke curiosity: moment, story, result, transformation, and novelty. Scroll stoppers—faces, familiarity, money, numbers, bright colors, danger, movement, emotions, aesthetics—capture attention. Thumbnail construction uses three Cs: content, composition, and contrast.

Content divides elements into main and supporting characters. Composition strategically places the main character (center in symmetrical thumbnails, or on the rule of thirds in asymmetrical ones) using visual cues like arrows, leading lines, and scale differences. Text should be concise (five words or less), readable, and add new information, avoiding overshadowing the main character. Contrast uses luminosity, saturation, and hue. Hue contrast isn't essential; most successful thumbnails lack perfectly complementary colors.

Three thumbnail tests check readiness: clarity (viewability in smallest size using a tool like Click Pilot), contrast (standout among similar thumbnails), and glance (instant comprehension in two seconds). YouTube's A/B testing compares multiple thumbnails, measuring total watch time share, combining CTR (click-through rate) and AVD (average view duration). High CTR with low AVD suggests clickbait; high total watch time share indicates effective thumbnails. Test different thumbnails; even minor changes yield substantial differences.

Should you design thumbnails first? Many top YouTubers prioritize titles and thumbnails before video creation. This prevents wasted effort on unclickable videos. While challenging, early thumbnail planning is crucial. Have mockups or concepts ready, even placeholder images. Finalize them as early as possible to avoid wasting a good video on poor packaging.

What software do I use for thumbnails? Figma, although Canva and Photoshop are more common.

Part five: Research. My research involves information collection and connection. Information collection gathers data from primary sources (interviews, online posts, podcasts) and secondary sources (videos, Twitter threads). I explore tangential industries for unique insights. Timestamps aid note review. Information connection groups related data into buckets, combining buckets with overlapping themes.

Part six: Scriptwriting. George Blackman, a scriptwriter with over 25 million video views, offers insights. Effective scripting starts with knowing your audience, creating an audience avatar. The scripting process must be sustainable; avoid burnout.

Level one scripting outlines key points; level two adds setup, tension, and payoff to each segment; level three fully fleshes out these points. Level two, focusing on payoff for each segment, offers a sustainable and effective approach.

The three Ps of plot (promise, progress, payoff) structure engaging scripts. Setup establishes audience concerns and promises solutions. Tension builds anticipation without revealing solutions prematurely; visuals build excitement. Payoff delivers solutions or progress, potentially serving as a stepping stone to a larger goal.

Entertainment video setup is simpler; it highlights the ultimate goal and outlines steps to achieve it. Tension maintains excitement without prematurely revealing the outcome. Payoff delivers incremental progress or smaller wins.

About the payoff, really, it's just—it's just the thing you've been building towards happens, and then you very quickly move into the next setup. Um, and that's really the key. Just why we are talking about payoffs is those—those moments between when you've paid off the last segment and when you set up the next one; those are the areas where I see retention problems.

Apart from the hook, they are like the—the most problematic area for people dipping out. Because essentially, it's like you reach the end of a segment, and your head comes above water for a second—to—to use, well, not to use a recent pun—but as a viewer, your head comes above water because it's like, okay, I've been kind of involved in that segment; I've been emotionally invested in it, but I've come up for a like—you've got a second or two seconds to capture their attention again and let them know why the next segment is important; to remind them of the overall importance of the video. And if they feel outside the loop of what that structure is, it's all too easy to think the YouTube homepage is just one click away. I don't really know why I should care about this next segment yet; I've kind of forgotten why I clicked on the video in the first place, and I'm out of there. So making sure that that gap between paying off one segment and setting up the next one is minimized is—is critical.

Yeah, George has an absolute wealth of knowledge when it comes to script writing, and he actually has a free 5-day email course about it, which I will link in the video description if you're interested. How can you make your scripts sound more human and less robotic? I often find myself sounding like ChatGPT sometimes, and I have no idea how to fix it, honestly. I think it comes back to kind of a mixture of what we've spoken about already, um, in terms of uh these like levels of scripting. So a level two script is probably the point that I'd want to aim at initially, which is again where we—we've got the kind of key payoffs figured out, and then we break those up into setup, tension, and payoff, like we've been talking about. That leaves you enough room to kind of riff your way through the rest of it. So I would always encourage you to write word for word the setup and the payoff, because those are like the most—where you can write. If it's an entertainment video that doesn't allow you to do that, then fine, but particularly with education stuff, um, you—the setup is so important for every single segment of your video; write that word for word if you have the time and inclination to do so. The payoff is super important; making sure that that's like—it's delivered in the right way; write that word for word. But the tension bit at a level two script tends to be more bullet pointy, and that's totally fine. It's like, okay, I know where I'm starting; I know where I'm finishing. I've heard songwriters give this advice as well; it's like the start and the end of the song are the most important bits, and then you can kind of figure out the way to get there, um, in between. It's fine to leave that middle section as kind of more bullet pointy; start riffing it; see how it feels on the day. If it feels like a complete uphill battle, and you find that you're really not as good at riffing as you thought you were—which is probably most people—it's—it's not as easy as—um—as people I think think it is when they get into YouTube. But then it's about fine-tuning the amount that you script and kind of leveling—you thinking, okay, last time I tried to record with just like three bullet points between the setup and the payoff, I just felt stressed, and I rambled, and the editing was a nightmare. Uh, next time I'm going to write maybe 10 bullet points and just see how that affects the riffing. Now this is kind of cheating because this isn't teaching you how to actually write a script in a way that doesn't sound like a robot, but it is just basically—I think as much as possible if you can just give yourself the guardrails to get from A to B, and then you know, bullet point it up to the point where you feel comfortable riffing it; that's a nicer way to just still sound human but with the benefit of having thought out a really robust structure. And I think what—what you see over time, um, is—is that once you've done that enough times, like we were talking over the course of two, three, four years maybe, you start to figure out like, after listening to yourself time and time again, seeing which riffs come out quite naturally, it just becomes easier to—to kind of find your voice.

George's advice here is great if you're someone who doesn't like scripting word for word. I am definitely a word for word scripter myself, so for any other word for word scripters out there, I have three pieces of advice. First, write more; the more you write, the better you'll get, and I don't just mean YouTube scripts; for me, journaling helps a lot. Whenever I journal, I stream of consciousness write, and that writing sounds exactly like I talk, so the more conversational tone that I develop there carries directly into my YouTube scripts. Second, you can try dictating your video out loud and then using the transcript for that as the basis for your more human-sounding script. And the third piece of advice is more so for a later pass of scripting when you're into the script editing process; I'll read my script over out loud, and then any sentence or phrase that I trip over, doesn't feel natural for me to say, I will rewrite in a way that does feel more natural or is easier to say.

Part seven: Production. What's your video production process from ideation to publish? So I always start out with the topic of the video that I want to make. Then I'll think about different formats or angles that I want to incorporate into the idea. I will go through my ideation criteria process as well, but usually that's something that's more so happens within my own head as opposed to written down in the spreadsheet. Once I've picked an idea to work on, I'll try to get a couple of different title and thumbnail variations in my mind first before I start working on it. If I'm being 100% honest with you, I am not as good at that as I should be, but I do try to have at least one promising direction in mind before I move forward. Then I'll start video prep; the level of prep looks different for different types of videos. For my deep dives, I will launch straight into the research process. For other types of videos, I might start by writing down all the bullet points of everything that I might possibly want to include in the video, and for this video, that prep was asking people about what questions they had about YouTube and then compiling all of those into a gigantic Google Doc. After I have some sort of organized prep, whether that's my finalized research buckets or some groups of things to include in the video, I will start outlining my video. Also, I do get feedback from my group of YouTube friends at every step of that process, starting with ideation and then going into their thoughts on the title and thumbnail. I'll get their thoughts on my research; I'll get their thoughts on my outline; every single part of the process I'm getting their feedback on so I can iterate and make changes as I go along, which has been so incredibly useful. After my outline, I head into scripting, and depending on the script that I'm writing and how hard it is, my script can go through anywhere from—from 3 to 22 different rewrites. Once my script is finalized, I will annotate my script, and this is a super important part of my process that I added last year that has been an absolute game-changer for me. In the annotation stage, I will go back through my script and comment out what is happening on screen during every sentence or phrase, and that will be broken into talking head, full-screen text, animations and visuals, screen shares, and B-roll. Then I'll turn all of my required B-roll for the video into a shot list. This becomes super helpful for me during my filming stage because then I know what lines I need to deliver directly into the camera as a-roll versus what lines I can just read as voiceover because I know it'll be covered up by B-roll or screen shares or something else in the finalized version of the video. It also takes a lot of the mental burden out of the editing process. So for me, editing is—is more so about execution versus about the decision-making in the moment. After I have my annotations and my shot list done, then I will film both my talking head a-roll and any B-roll that I'm filming as well. Then comes the edit, which I'll talk about more in the editing section; for now, I'll just say that I do my rough cut first, so that's kind of cleaning up my main talking head footage. Then I'll add my B-roll; then I'll add my music; then I'll go through and do the visual edit from start to finish; and then I will add any sound effects. After my edit is done, I will send it off for feedback with friends and then make adjustments as needed. At that point, I will finalize my title and thumbnail; I'll usually try to have a couple of different variations to A/B test, and then it's time for upload. I don't really do anything special for uploading besides just making sure that all my timestamps are all in place and that any credits or links that I want to add to the description are all good to go.

How do you get more comfortable speaking in front of the camera and developing your own speaking voice? Is it all reps or is there more nuance to it? So I'm a lot more comfortable on camera now than I used to be, but that has not always been the case. When I was just starting out, I did not like being on camera at all; I didn't even like taking pictures of myself, and the editing process felt like torture because I hated the sound of my own voice, and all editing was—was listening to my own voice over and over again for hours. The hearing my own voice thing was something that unfortunately only got better with time, but when it comes to getting more comfortable speaking on camera, I do have some more concrete pieces of advice. Oh, also, I do have a full video just dedicated to this very topic. Tip number one would be that after pressing record but before going into the content of the video, I would kind of stream of consciousness talk to my camera for a while just to warm me up, and this would be things like as random as, "Hello, I am here, and I'm ready to film, and I'm staring into a glass lens completely alone in this room, and that feels awkward, but that's okay, 'cause we're doing it anyway," and then I'll just keep talking like that for a while until I get more used to it and my voice kind of returns back to normal speaking cadence. The second thing that I did was use my camera as my webcam for taking video calls, which I could do using a software called Sony Imaging Edge because I have a Sony camera, and that made me get a lot more comfortable talking to my camera during video calls because I was talking to actual people on the other side as opposed to just talking by myself—myself in an empty room. And the third main thing that I did was practice, so I would speak through my entire video at least once or twice either the day before filming or right before filming so I'm more used to everything that I am saying. I also discovered that I was more comfortable when I scripted out my video word for word. Now, not everybody works that way; some people are much more comfortable with just bullet points, and scripting everything out word for word throws them off. It's really just something that you have to try out both options and see which one works best for you, but for me, that was scripting word for word. So I had my script all right next to me on my laptop, just out of frame of the camera, and I'd go, and I'd read one or two lines and then deliver those one or two lines into the camera and then go back and forth and put everything together in post-production. And because it might be helpful for someone out there, I'm going to include some of the raw footage of what this video looks like so you maybe feel less alone because I am definitely by no means perfect at my camera delivery. Everyone should have their own criteria set up for whether or not an idea is worth making. From what I've seen, there tends to be six overall main categories of criteria.

Part eight: Editing. What's the process or order for editing a YouTube video? What are the main ingredients of an edit you should focus on? My own personal process starts with script annotation and then the rough cut of the a-roll or talking head footage, then placing in any filmed B-roll, then the music edit, then the visual edit from start to finish, and then rounding it off—off with any sound effects. Script annotation front-loads all of the decision-making of the edit, so going into the edit for me, I already have an idea of what's going on on screen at any one time. Then I do my rough cut of my talking head footage and my voiceover where I cut out any silences, mistakes, or bad takes. I usually prefer tighter edits with my more higher-produced stuff, so I will also cut out any breaths in between sentences as well. For this rough cut, I really like using a tool called Glint, which automatically removes any silences for—for you; it seriously saves so much time. I'll link it in the video description. I'd recommend using Glint mostly for fully scripted-out content or talking head content; I don't think it's as useful for other different forms of content or formats, mostly because the edit tends to come together in a different way. So my rough cut gives me an estimated video length. Then at that point, I'll come in and put in any B-roll that I filmed. There's no real reason why I do B-roll at this point; for me, it's mostly because I usually don't have—not that much B-roll, so just getting it all out there in the timeline feels like I can just give myself a check mark on something and have a sense of progress early on, which I like. Once my rough cut is done and my B-roll is in place, then I will move into music. I used to save music as the very last thing that I did, but I realized that two negative things happened if I did so: one, because the music step was the very last thing I processed in between me and uploading my video, I tended to rush through the process because I wanted to get the video done—done and published as fast as I could; second, doing music last made it harder to edit to the music, which I normally like doing because it helps make the video feel better. Music is honestly such a huge part of any video, and yes, even educational videos, because music really helps set the tone, style, and energy of a video. So for me, I would listen to the entire video with just the rough cut, any filmed B-roll, and just the music, and if it felt boring or repetitive in places, I would go back and change the music first, because when the music is good, the visual edit is better, and then I can also edit any sort of visuals to go with the music, which helps the entire video feel more cohesive and put together. For this particular video, because it is so unreasonably long, I didn't treat music as intentionally, but I really pay lots of attention to it with my more highly edited stuff. After the music edit, I will start on the visual edit, starting with the intro, in which I will front-load a lot of the higher-quality edits to give viewers a sense of what they can expect moving forward and kind of hopefully blow them away with the quality right out of the bat. The visual edit for me is mostly just a combination of talking head footage, B-roll, any screen shares, motion graphics or visuals, and full-screen text, and because I've already planned everything out in the script annotation, all this really is is just about execution. And then once the visual edit is all done, I'll go back and add certain sound effects to line up with certain visuals, like mouse clicks, pops, swooshes, and keyboard typing, and that's my process. And just to be clear, I am not a great editor; I do not do everything the most efficient way, and there are tons of different features in my editing software that I have no idea how to use, but I just do what makes the most sense for my brain, and for me, I think that's what's most important.

Your editing is top-notch. What advice would you give on editing a video? My biggest piece of advice is probably just to try stuff. It took me a long time to find my editing style, and even now it's still evolving. Look for cool things that you see other creators do, and instead of thinking, "Wow, that looks so cool, but I'm sure I could never do anything like that," just try. Look up tutorials; experiment. You may not be able to perfectly replicate it, but you might be able to come a lot closer than you think. My own editing style for motion graphics came because I started with a more simpler editing software that didn't have a lot of fancy features, so I just did what I could with the slide transition, cropping, and the zoom, position, and opacity keyframes; that's literally it. So just try everything; I think that's the biggest piece of advice that I could give you. In the long run, it may take you forever to edit one 10-second sequence, but you'll learn so much in the process, and the next time you do it, you'll be much quicker.

What advice would you give to someone who's editing their first video? Keep it as simple as possible, and I know that I just laid out this huge complicated process, but for your first edit, I would really just focus on making cuts, adding text, adding visuals like screen recordings, pictures, or clips, and maybe trying to add some light background music; that's it. And then with each subsequent video that you make, try adding something new, like a transition or keyframes to make something move or color grading. Over time, your skills will add up until you're editing like a pro, but in the beginning, keep things as simple as possible.

Is it possible to succeed on YouTube if you don't have fast editing or animations? Absolutely, and there are plenty of examples of that happening as well. Jenny Nicholson and Sam Suck are great examples of this, among many more. And as with most things, it ultimately comes down to audience. If your audience is a bunch of four-year-olds, then yes, they may want faster edits, but not every audience wants that. It also depends on what the goal of your content is. If it's strictly to entertain and you want to serve a younger audience, then yes, faster editing is in fashion now, but a lot of people are getting fatigued with super-fast edits and a zillion things happening on screen all at the same time. Sometimes you just want to feel like you're hanging out with a creator, and slower, more minimal editing can be preferred because then you get to see more—more of their quirks and personality. And if you're trying to teach things, edits should be optimized for the best transfer of information; this often means including visuals to help reiterate points but not putting so much on screen that it distracts the viewer from the information that they're trying to learn. Basically, it's all a giant "it depends," and my best advice would be to try out different styles and see which ones work best for both you and for your audience.

As a beginner YouTuber, do you think I should invest in an editor rather than editing myself? No, I'll explain. I am very much so on team "learn how to edit yourself," and for a few reasons. For one, you'll learn what kind of editing you do and don't like; for two, you'll learn the basics and fundamentals to help you better communicate with your editor and know what to look for in an editor whenever the time to outsource comes; and the third reason is the most important, which is that you'll be able to develop your own style. If you start outsourcing right away, you won't know what your unique style is. You might know that you like the style of certain other creators, and your editors might be able to emulate that, but it will always only be a shadow of the originals. Plus, anything extra will always be based on the editor's own style, which will be the same across different projects that they're working on. Let me tell you a story. Back when I started my first channel in 2021, I taught myself how to edit; I wasn't very good, but I learned quickly, and I grew. Once my channel got monetized and I started bringing in some sponsorship money, I hired an editor. At first, it was great; it freed up a ton of my time, and the quality of my videos shot way up. But the thing is, the quality of my videos then stayed at that level even as I grew as a creator and my own style evolved, and even with me requesting changes to my editors, they just couldn't see my vision, and so the quality stagnated. When I eventually took back my own editing, the quality of my videos first dropped because I am not a professional editor, but over time, my videos got better and better until they eventually surpassed the quality of my old outsourced videos. And it's not because I'm a better editor than the editor that I used to hire; they are much more skilled than I am, but it's because as I evolved, my editing style evolved too. My feedback loops were tighter; I could make a change and immediately see how it impacted the video, and over time, my style became my own. One day I will hire an editor again; the difference is it'll be after I know what my own style and creative voice is so I can teach that to the editor. They'll still make more changes, and the style will evolve, but the foundation of that style will be my own creative voice, not that of another.

What software do you use to edit your videos? It doesn't matter. I currently use DaVinci Resolve, and for most people, it does not matter. Up until recently, so for the first two and a half years of YouTube, I used an editing software that no one has ever heard of called HitFilm Express. I made my most viewed video ever in an editing software that no one has ever heard of. I only started using it because back when I started my first YouTube channel, I Googled "best free editing software for beginners," and a random SEO article popped up that recommended using HitFilm. I will say I am definitely happier now with DaVinci, though. Most YouTubers and editors now use either Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, or DaVinci Resolve, and while there are minute differences that professional editors will be able to notice, for 99% of—of us, any one of them is fine. I personally like using DaVinci Resolve because they have a free plan that absolutely rocks, and then I also use Figma to make all my visuals, and I use Epidemic Sound for all my music and sound effects. I'll link all those in the video description. At this point, we've covered all of the individual elements that go into creating a killer YouTube video. Now we're going to transition into more advanced overall YouTube concepts, starting with everyone's favorite: Part nine: Analytics. Analytics is a topic that can get pretty deep and pretty complex, so to help me cover it, I've brought in Chris Galletta, an incredible strategist who's worked with Patty Galloway and who knows more about YouTube analytics than nearly anyone in the world. Getting Chris's input on anything is an absolute treat, so enjoy. What analytics do you find the most helpful, and what steps would you recommend based on those numbers? So with YouTube Studio, I think if I could just look at two things, um, in its entirety, I would get 80%, if not more, of the value that—um—I would need if I was a creator. I could look at just these two things and be totally fine; the other stuff is like, you know, little hidden gems and nuggets here and there, but—um—if you basically have the views graph—the homepage views graph that shows the blue line and the gray bar—and if you have your retention curve, that should serve 80% of anything you would possibly need out of YouTube. Um, the reason for that is the retention curve, probably most obvious—granted, sometimes it's hard to interpret, and so there's a question of putting in reps to understand how to read these things—but that's going to give you the most actionable feedback and understanding of your audience—of what they end up liking, don't liking, where did you lose people, where did you hold people really well, and yeah, what is overall resonating with them. Um, and then the views graph, uh, itself will basically just tell you, was this video successful or not? Um, as well as it's also aligning with the expectations that you go in with, such as if I publish a video that is very specifically for a smaller pocket of audience, you know, I don't expect to see that shooting off going crazy, but I'm seeing it benchmarked against, you know, how do videos typically do on my channel. Should be able to give me most everything that I would need to know in terms of diagnosing a problem with a video. The way that I generally approach it and where basically you can end up using these two things is that the YouTube algorithm very simply could be broken down into sort of three aspects: is satisfaction, CTR, or the click, and AVd—the watch time—and aggregate. And so satisfaction is probably the thing that we have the least visibility into, but—but—um—is something that for the most part shouldn't usually be a problem. And what's going—if it is a problem, what you'll probably end up seeing is that your attention just plummets, you know, at the beginning; people are just like clicking off of it, and like it's just not a very good video, so people didn't even have time to like be satisfied by it, or that maybe there is a higher amount of dislikes or—or something along that way. But satisfaction in general usually is kind of just like, okay, it's fine as is, unless we see something egregious. Next, I look into the AVd—or watch time—um, as a whole, and judging, is this video basically—does the AVd have more or less watch time than typical on my channels? And if it's less than—um—normal, that is something that is important for the algorithm in some way because it does weigh watch time—um—a bit heavier than, you know, some of these attributes. Where if you have a video like—taking a step back when it comes to AV and AP percentage—AVd is the more important thing, barring that your attention isn't dog. If you have a video that is maybe only like four minutes long, comparing that to a video that's 30 minutes long, the 30-minute long one will generally probably have much more watch time and overall, probably on average if everything else is held the same, will end up performing better. But if your AVd looks fine and your retention looks fine, then that usually ends up meaning you have a CTR problem or a click problem, meaning it's a title, title, thumbnail, or topic. The reason that I don't start with CTR or even look at CTR is because CTR is a very muddled and muffled metric overall. The thing about CTR is that it's the thing, in some ways, which YouTube can control the most because it can control who it sends an impression to, and you can kind of see this in an interesting way when you look—um—across niches where if you take, for instance, a gaming niche, gaming niches will tend to have very high CTR, and one of the things about that is that within gaming—um—let's take a game like Overwatch, for example—you either are into Overwatch or you're not into Overwatch; there's very gray area. If we look at your YouTube watch history, I'm banking 99% sure that like you don't have an Overwatch video in the last 365 days or ever, right? But if we think about art, right, art is something that across the board will tend to have a very low CTR shown in YouTube Studio that doesn't—again, it's not a representation that like, "Oh, Overwatch thumbnails are more clickable than art thumbnails." What it is is that if we look at both of our watch histories, chances are you and I have at least one art video in our watch history in the last 365—5 days, so there's a lot more people out there that are maybe potentially interested in art, and so somebody saying like, "Oh yeah, I have a video with 12% CTR on like a very hyper-niche game," doesn't mean really much anything to me as like an art channel that maybe has like an average of 4% CTR across the channel because art itself is going to behave fundamentally differently than other niches. But basically, the best way to do it is like rule out everything else that we sort of know with more confidence, and if those things are good or sound in place, then you can probably say like, okay, this is the click problem, in which case I evaluate the title of the topic or the thumbnail.

How do you read a retention graph? I ask this question just as much for me as for all of you because those things can be really tricky to interpret, and I volunteered a video of my own to use as an example. What's interesting when looking at videos, especially ones that have chapters—one of the first things that I look at aside from the intro and, you know—would want to look at your other retention graphs to benchmark—how do we feel like this did overall—um, you know, this here says that it's typical, which is—uh—good, but you—you know, we're always going to be hypercritical of intros and figuring out how to do those better—um—because that will usually indicate—again—what is possible for the rest of the curve. Um, but then looking at the chapters, so each of these little dotted lines here represents chapters that you have in your videos—um—it can sometimes indicate where is their peak interest for people and what are segments that people really didn't—um—find too much interest in. Uh, and you can think of your chapters as many titles—giving that away—so like if we look here, we have like a large sludge that happens there and then there as well and then like drop off, but what these little bumps usually represent when you have chapters is people skipping ahead to these areas to want to know like what this is about. And the fact that this section doesn't end up having any—um—skips, and if anything, there is a slight U-shape to it—um—shows that people actually maybe didn't care that much about this section—um—as compared to some of these other ones. So that's like a quick thought. So if we just look at like what these were, so this is 10—so the remarkability segment versus part two and part three, right? Killer angle, killer format. And intuitively it feels like that makes sense, right? Like these two—naming it part one and part three—um—feel like, okay, yeah, these are like the essential bits of your formula of how to come up with it. The remarkability, just in the fact that it's absent of a part, feels like it's a bit more of a footnote—um—and maybe doesn't have as much of a purpose versus also like killer format and killer angle gives you like the direct value position. Um, so that's like one interesting thing of just like looking at this quickly—um—especially with chapters. I like to look at—um—the other bits is that we're looking for—um—one of the first things is we're looking for holds, so what are the sections that seem to be as flat as possible—um—not even really with spikes; you can, you know, look at spikes, and they're definitely good to revisit, but like the first thing I'm seeing is like, where do we have very nice holds? So—um—from 11:22 to looks like 12:21 looks like it's probably one of the flattest parts—um—of this video, so wanting to understand what were we talking about here in this section of remarkability. So like again, maybe it was something that as advertised wasn't getting people to click because these are basically like mini titles, but of the people that were there watching it, maybe they ended up, you know, really liking that segment—um—and so maybe there's something to take away from that. Um, and then yeah, I would just like kind of come through and see like what of their flat parts—like this looks like again like a little bit of a flat hold here after some drop-offs, so like maybe something interesting happened there, but then we can see these consistent patterns of like towards the end of segments these drop-offs, so there's a drop-off; there's another one; another one. So like understanding how are we ending segments and tying it into the other thing—does this mean that we sort of like made our point maybe 10 to 15 seconds earlier than the transition to the next segment is coming, and that we could have done like a smoother transition from the end of one into the next one—smoother or quicker—um—to yeah, help retain those—those people or—or keep them interested. Um, and then the last bit would just be the—the fall-off at the end, which I think knowing your content video and having watched this like I think is expected but also is fine because I think these endpoints end up resonating really well with the people who end up like staying to the end and watching. And like a lot of people are always saying, you know, "Cut off the end if you see this giant dip off and stuff," but it's like—again—it's about what is the—the purpose of that thing. Sometimes like we can be a little bit soulless, I think, in saying to cut out certain dips in things because if we feel—so say for instance, right, we went from 15% to 12% here, so a 3% retention loss, but we had a total of 12% people, you know, by the end. If for 12% of people this last 30 seconds—um—or minute was very impactful and meaning and like, you know, moving for them and inspiring, why in the world would I want to cut that out to just plate, you know, 3% here that was like dipping down? Um, so I'm always trying to evaluate when we have dips; can we understand why they happened, and are we okay with them? Because sometimes it's, you know, uh, something that is core to you and your content that you want to keep in there that does cause a bit of a dip, and you just at least want to be aware of it and then actively be making a decision of like, "But am I cool with this because I know that like my core viewer base, based on who I'm talking to, really loves this aspect?" Um, yeah. Yeah, that retention breakdown absolutely blew my mind. Chris is great. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I would highly recommend following him on Twitter, which I'll link in the video description.

Part 10: Audience connection and engagement. What are some ways to gain engaged fans rather than passive viewers? I want a high-quality audience rather than a high-quantity audience. I love this question. I came across some writing about this from a strategist called Wano, and I wanted to share his framework because I found it very helpful. Essentially, not all viewers are the same; there are blue viewers, which are viewers that have never seen your videos before; there are yellow viewers, which are viewers that have seen your content maybe once or twice before; there are orange viewers, which are viewers that will watch a video of yours if it's one that they're particularly interested in; and then there are red viewers—your ride-or-dies, your true fans. The problem with most standard YouTube advice is that they just focus on the blue viewers; there is this big focus on getting as many views as possible on your videos, blowing up, and bringing in lots of viewers who have never seen your videos before. Getting views is obviously very important on YouTube, but not all views, and not viewers, are the same. If you focus on making videos with the broadest appeal and getting the highest number of views every single time, all you're focusing on is bringing in blue viewers,

Who wanted to learn how to grow from zero to 50K subscribers? But because the packaging is more "me"-oriented—how *I* grew from 0 to 50K—it'll appeal more to people already familiar with me. A yellow viewer, who watched both my intro and thumbnail video, might see that video, already be familiar with me, already know they like the way I convey information, and decide to click. That video would be more personal, giving me an opportunity to share more of my own personality.

At that point, the yellow viewer will evolve. They've already watched three of my videos and are quite familiar with me. Maybe they realize they only like my deep DIY videos and don't like my "me"-centric videos, so they become an orange viewer, watching only one type of content I make. That's completely fine; I'm okay with that. Not every video has to be for every viewer.

Some other people watch that video and think, "Hey, this girl is awesome! I love her content, and I can see a lot of myself in her," or "Hey, I can really learn a lot from this person, and I really like the way she thinks and breaks down information." They go on a binge and watch a lot more of my content. For those people, I can make content like Q&As, where I answer their questions, or behind-the-scenes videos, where I share much more of my own YouTube journey. If someone doesn't know who I am, they probably wouldn't click on a Q&A or a behind-the-scenes video. But for people who already know and like me, those videos deepen my relationship with them, evolving them into red viewers—my true fans. By the way, if you're a red viewer of mine and made it this far, leave a red square emoji in your comment so I can give you some love! I really appreciate you, and I'm so happy you're here.

Obviously, this progression of specific videos is very specific to me and my niche. The blue, yellow, orange, and red viewer videos will look different for everyone, depending on their channels. But the concept of making sure you're not ignoring returning viewers in favor of appealing to new viewers is something everyone can apply. How would you work on improving viewer engagement? Often, you can just ask people to like, subscribe, and comment. For example, right now would be a great time to subscribe if you haven't already and leave a thumbs up if you've been finding this video helpful. We'll talk more about how these actions affect a video algorithmically in the next section. One of the best things you can do for viewer engagement is also just ask for comments. For example, I could ask everyone right now to comment with the tip that's been most helpful to them thus far. Seriously, do it! Or, if you don't want to think, I will also accept a comment just saying, "Apriline is the best!" But don't just stop with asking for comments; then go on and actually engage with the comments you get. I'll be the first to admit that the YouTube comment system isn't the most conducive for having long discussions or forming a super engaged community, but that doesn't mean you should ignore it. Instead, reply to comments; try to reply to every single comment you get, especially at the early stages. And if that's too much for you, you can have a window—like you'll reply to every comment you receive within the first 3 hours of a video going live—or you can ask people to include a certain emoji or phrase in their comment and then do your best to reply to every comment with that certain emoji or phrase. Your viewers will love hearing from you; it's already incredible that they're taking the time out of their day to not only watch your video but also comment on it. One of the best ways to evolve a viewer to the next stage—whether that's yellow to orange or orange to red—is by replying to their comment. Oh, also, YouTube Community posts are great; seriously, they are so underused. I also have a Twitter account that I've grown, and the engagement on the YouTube Community posts is so much better than on Twitter. I will say, too, that I think I just have the best viewers in the world. I mean, seriously, I feel like I lucked out so much in that department; everyone is just so thoughtful and kind and smart, and I just think that I won the viewer lottery.

Part 11: Algorithm. The YouTube algorithm can seem like this big black box of mysteries, and sometimes it feels like all you can do is just pray to the algorithm gods to shine favorably down upon you. So, to help clear things up, I've brought in Renee Richie, who is the official YouTube liaison and works at YouTube to serve as an advocate for creators and help creators better understand how YouTube works. If there's anyone who can crack the YouTube algorithm for us, it's Renee. How does the YouTube algorithm work? Yeah, I love that question because I've been a creator since 2008 and I've had all of these questions, and it's nice to be inside YouTube and able to sort of poke people to get the answers. I think the first big thing that creators have to realize is that YouTube doesn't push videos for creators. We always think we make a video, we post it, and then YouTube takes it and pushes it in front of a bunch of people. That's not at all how it works; that's the opposite of how it works. I mean, except for notifications; notifications do go out to people who have subscribed and hit the bell. But what YouTube does is pull videos for viewers. So if you imagine you open up YouTube on your browser or you open up the YouTube app, what it does is, in that instant, it tries to figure out the most satisfying videos for you—videos that you would love to click on and watch, hopefully to completion, and then maybe watch another video. So it's viewer-centric, the algorithm, not creator-centric. The way it works—my favorite current explanation, it's very concise—is from Todd Bopr, our senior director of growth and discovery: it's almost like automated word of mouth. So if I go see a movie and I love it, and I know that you love similar movies to me, and I tell you and two other friends who also like those kinds of movies to go watch it, and then you watch it and enjoy it, and you tell three or four other friends, and it just grows and grows from there—that's how the YouTube algorithm works. It puts the video—like when people pull the video, if they see that video, if they click on it, if they watch it—it says, "Oh, I know who enjoys this video," and then it tries to find other people with similar watch histories who haven't seen that video, and it tries it with them. The more people that like it, the better YouTube understands the audience, and the more people it knows could enjoy that, and it just keeps going until people stop responding. Because at a certain point, almost everyone who's been offered the video multiple times will have either watched it or just decided to ignore it until it goes away, and then that sort of audience pocket is exhausted. But the algorithm doesn't give up; it'll keep sort of offering those videos if someone searches for it, someone links to it from social, if a new story comes that gets people interested in it, if another creator posts a video that's similar and it shows up in suggested, and people like it—that helps it find these new pockets of audience to explore. So that's sometimes why you see videos like pop off once, but then like a while later pop off again, and then maybe a while later pop off again. How can I optimize my video, if at all, to make it easier for the algorithm to find the right audience for my video? People will worry about like keywords or hashtag tags or stuffing the description. There are things that can get pulled from, like just like writing a good description, having a good thumbnail and a good title are like most of it, like have—like just in terms of getting people to click on and watch the videos—but the videos have to be good, and there's no amount of like keywording or description hacking that you can do to make a video better. And I think like sometimes people will spend a day or two days carefully researching keywords when that time would be so much better spent just working on the content itself, because that's what's most important: the thumbnail, the title, and that the video delivers on the promise made by both of those things. And I think if you focus on that, if you just pick one thing you want to improve every video and work on improving that—get 1% better a day—like you'll get stratospherically better results than if you worry about like optimizations. It's audience psychology at the end of the day. So there are titles—like especially some channels have like title formulas that have been successful that they use over and over again. Like Real Engineering will do like "The Insane Engineering of the SR-71 Blackbird," "The Insane Engineering of the, you know, stealth fighter," and people love those titles; they do it over and over again. MrBeast will do "I survived, you know, 50 hours or or seven days or something on a raft in a cave." Like there are things that are successful, and you can do over and over again. So like finding those things that really resonate with an audience—it's not so much that they're tricks or hacks or optimizations—it's just they're compelling; they peak interest; they promise like a great experience, great entertainment. So those sort of things are really worthwhile, but it's not what I would consider like a trick; it's just like good audience psychology. What should you do if the algorithm isn't serving your videos to the right audience? So I think there's two things. I think sometimes people look at suggested traffic and they see that the topics don't relate to what they're making, and then they panic and think that for some reason YouTube doesn't understand their audience. But again, YouTube for those systems is thinking about the viewer, not the creator. And if you go and click on, you know, one of my videos, you'll probably see my video in the main window and then maybe two other videos of mine and then maybe two videos on a similar topic to mine and then maybe a few videos on topics that you watched before my video or a couple days ago. Because humans like multiple things; no one just watches—well, very few people watch just one thing over and over again. Most people like a variety of formats. So when you see suggested traffic that doesn't represent at all who YouTube thinks your audience is, that represents the viewers' interest. And I might watch like two basketball videos and then a carpentry video, and it doesn't mean that, you know, basketball people are watching your video; it just means people with multiple interests—one of their interests happens to be the topics that you make. For the other question for demographics—again, YouTube follows the audience. It's very hard to say, "No, no, don't don't watch those videos; we're going to exclude you from watching those videos." It just means the videos you're making are appealing to that audience. Now, your idea of your ideal audience might be different than that, but the content you're making is appealing to those to that audience; otherwise, they wouldn't be watching, they wouldn't be retaining, they wouldn't be coming back. So I think that's an opportunity to look at the analytics and see, "Hey, why am I skewing this direction instead of the direction I want?" And then maybe find some creators or like watch some YouTube people who do appeal to that—see what they're doing differently. Maybe it's language, presentation, areas of focus—and talk to your creator friends, especially people who are hitting that demographic, because maybe they'll tell you, "Hey, yeah, you like—" If you're a tech creator and you want to appeal to women, it's very different; like you can't just be a woman talking about tech the same way Amanda is because that's the same audience; you have to talk—talk about things that in general—not to be overly generic—but in general that appeals to women and tech creators who do that, you know, they get much bigger women audiences. So I would just say it's an opportunity to sort of troubleshoot what's going on there. Why does YouTube stop giving me impressions even when the video is performing well with a good CTR and a high AVT? Yeah, I think one of the issues here is that statistics are really, really hard, and like I went through all the same anxiety before I joined YouTube and started to really not just better understand YouTube but better understand statistics. For example, like is a high CTR and a high AVT good? Yes, but as a video goes viral, those numbers go down, not up. And people might see them and say, "Hey, why did my low-per—like my low metrics video do so much better?" And it's just that, you know, like 3% of a million is so much more than 10% of a thousand—that the views are going up even if the percentage of people—the absolute number versus the percentage—I think is a little bit hard to understand. So when a video performs really well, especially when it goes viral, clickthrough rate and watch duration actually go down because, like, there's just so many people getting eyes on that thumbnail that the quality of the match gets lower. Basically, like 90% of the first group of people are a match, 80% of then the second group of people, 70%, 50%, and it gets to a certain point where there's massive amounts of impressions, but the percentage is lower, but still that means massive amounts of views. So conversely, if your numbers are staying high, that typically means like your most engaged audience, your superfans, are loving it; they're instantly clicking on it. But when YouTube tries to go to a broader audience, they're just not interested; it may be too niche a topic; it may not have been relevant to them, and so they stop clicking really fast, and that means that you don't really see a slow deceleration; you just see that sort of drop. So it's like superfans, highly engaged, keeping that CTR and AVT real high, and then the much bigger, more massive mainstream audience is like, "Pass," and so the impressions just stop because there's nowhere to go once you've gotten through that superfan audience. And sometimes you'll see a video that's like flat—the opposite—it's totally flat, and then it takes off, and you'll see like, "Oh, my core audience didn't like this at all, but YouTube found a massive mainstream audience that loves it," and both those numbers are going to be really low, but the video is going to perform super, super well. So that's again just a paradox of how statistics work. How important are likes, subscribes, and comments, really? So it's difficult to say like how important something is because the systems measure so many signals—like billions of signals—and the exact weighting of each signal can depend on a lot of things. Like how important is a subscribe? Well, if it was recent, then it's probably pretty important because someone liked your video enough to hit that subscribe button. If they subscribed 10 years ago and haven't watched the channel in years, that subscribe is probably less important because, you know, they're they're way older, and they're probably—they might have different interests. Likes are a good signal of satisfaction; the algorithm doesn't really focus on raw watch time because you can have regrettable watch time; like you can watch something that you don't like, and it bums you out. So we really try to focus on satisfaction, and people liking the video is a good sign of satisfaction. We do try to figure out if someone would comment on a video—like YouTube basically tries to predict how people will engage with a video when it makes those recommendations and whether they'll comment or not is is one of the factors that's considered—same way whether they'd like it, whether they might subscribe to it, whether they might watch all of the video. But, for example, whether you moderate comments or not—like whether you want to have every comment stay up, whether you want to remove comments that you think are toxic, that kind of stuff—YouTube doesn't consider because we would never want to sort of make a creator leave up comments or take away comments that, you know, that that it's not good, it's not what they want for themselves or their community. So we're careful on how we balance all these things as well. So would you say it's still worth it for a creator in their video to maybe have like a call to action saying, "If you like this, make sure to put a thumbs up or like leave a comment saying this is that something that is helpful to them in the performance of their video?" I think like you can do anything you want, and it depends on what your goal is. Like maybe you want to get subscribers because you want to get a feature unlocked or you want to get a play button or you want—like you need a certain amount of subscribers to get a certain brand deal. Like there's always going to be different reasons for people, but I think in general you don't want to give people too many jobs because if it feels like you're giving them a lot of jobs, they might just choose to do none of them—like it's a lot of work at the end of the day. So if you were to say like, "Like, subscribe, go to my newsletter, go to my website, download my audiobook," like it just starts feeling like a job, and people like, "No, no, no, I just came here to be entertained." If you want to grow your channel, I think one—one of the best calls to action is just when you get to the end of the video, give them another thing to do—like another video to watch—because they're going to be bored at that point; they're going to want something else to do. And if you say, "Hey, if you love this video, here's a deeper dive, here's like a bigger picture, here's like part two," like if you can give them that, they're going to maybe watch that other video. And when people start watching multiple videos, that's a really strong sign of satisfaction. If you get them binging and coming back to your channel, that's a really strong sign. So if growth is is what you're after, I think less "like, subscribe, comment," and more like, "Hey, watch this next video."

Part 12: Flops. It's happened to us all: we pour a lot of work and effort into a video, we get really excited to release it, and when we do, it flops. What should you do next, and is there any way to save it? Let's talk about it. When do you consider a video a failure, and what factors do you consider when coming to that decision? First, in order to consider a video a failure, you have to first define what success is. And the thing is, a video doesn't need to get a million views in order to be successful. I like to establish three different categories of videos, each with their own definitions of success. There are banger videos, where the goal is to get as many views from new viewers as possible. There are also connection videos, with the goal is to connect with my audience on a deeper level and perhaps convert some of the casual orange viewers into loyal red viewers. And then there are soul videos, where the goal is to purely give myself the opportunity to say something I want to say or to stir up that creative spark. And even within those categories, there can be subgoals as well. There can be the goal to learn and implement something new. If a video is sponsored or if you have an offer of your own, the goal might be a certain number of conversions. Your goal might even be to get a certain type of comment. And I really do believe that establishing goals for certain videos is very important and not driving yourself insane because if we make a video with the intent of trying out something new and then the video doesn't perform as well and we view that as a failure, it's very easy to get discouraged and stop experimenting or even just stop uploading on YouTube altogether. So first, I would get realistic into what your goals actually are on a video-by-video basis. But if your goal for a successful video is to get a certain number of views and when you release it it's a bit of a flop, it may not be completely over. To talk more about this, I brought in Chris Galletta again because if there's anyone who can do a data-driven postmortem of a video, it's Chris. When do you consider a video a failure, and what factors do you consider when coming to that decision? Good question. Um, depends again on the context of the channel. Um, for instance, a channel that is large enough usually has an easier time for YouTube knowing where their audience is, and so that video should be distributed pretty quickly um to the audience, and YouTube shouldn't have trouble, you know, finding the audience. For a smaller channel, um, say someone that only gets like a couple hundred to a couple thousand views um in the first few hours, that process can take quite a while, um, especially if there may be pivoting. So I'm going in originally with a mindset of understanding what is the channel's content, what is their normal 24-hour distribution um or one-day distribution, and then is this a piece of content that fits very cleanly and nicely into the channel, or is this something that is deviating a little bit into, you know, something that we would classify maybe as like a different niche? Um, where I think like Ali Abdal is actually an interesting example—this of a channel that is pretty large, but because he—I feel like—touches on like three big demographics of audiences, his videos actually can sometimes take a bit of a time to really pick up or take off in certain spheres because he has a bit of a mix of content. Um, so when you have a channel that pivots content constantly, um, that stuff can end up taking a little bit of time. So usually I'm a bit more patient; I'll usually never write something off until I see the retention curve because that will also be an indicator to me of like, you know, was this a failure because of the clickability or was this a failure because of the watchability of it? Um, and saying like, "Okay, cool, I got the topic right, I got the thumbnail and title packaging right—like I felt that that was good; I just did not follow up on the content that well," um, and that's something that I could learn from, or is this something that um the retention looks really good um and the AV looks good, but it's just not getting the views, in which case it's like, "Cool, that was a swing and a miss, possibly on the idea topic itself or the title and thumbnail," which might mean it's salvageable. You know, sometimes you can just—just like repackage something, and it'll take off as long as the AVT and retention are still good on it. Um, usually means that it has gas left in the tank. One thing I do want to add on here is that look, everybody gets flops. If your goal is to avoid ever getting a flop, you're also going to avoid experimentation, which can dramatically decrease your pace of learning and improvement. Yes, we always try to make good videos, but if you make a video and it gets fewer views than expected, just know that it's normal; it happens to everyone; you're not alone. And the best thing you can do is just diagnose where things went wrong to learn for next time. How can you revive a dead video? One of my favorite things to do is, if there—especially a video that's maybe old in the catalog—um, if you all of a sudden, you know, sometime down the line you just have an aha moment of like a type of thumbnail or title that would really work well for that, and you make the change. Sometimes I like to throw it in an end screen from a video that is still getting traffic to try to give it a bit of a boost, or sometimes there's a way to um create a short uh either from that content or related to that content that you can direct traffic to. But anything to like give it a little bit of a jump start can end up being a good way. But um, yeah, I think end screens are really valuable and useful tools for when you're making those catalog changes, seeing what can happen to it. It doesn't even have to be much; it could just be a few days, even a few hours, depending again on the size of your channel. Um, but yeah, so that was for like older catalog video. What about like, you know, when you first release it and maybe being on the first day and didn't get the views that you wanted to—should you go into like starting to make title and thumbnail changes immediately? Yeah, I mean, especially now with thumbnail A/B testing, I think there's always a lot that can be learned from that of what concepts are working—in like is this like fundamentally changing the click pattern in any way? So like always having some concepts prepared for that for the title. Um, I would always have some backups, especially ones that can really try a unique or differentiated angle. So maybe use a title that is like a proven title or format that like a lot of other um channels and niches have done, but what you're not realizing is that this topic has been touched on so many times that there's now actually a bit of exhaustion and like, if anything, maybe aversion to that title, but coming at it from a new angle could be something that um is really unique or, you know, like just peaks people's curiosity. One of the newest formats um that I saw recently that I really liked is "You don't understand XYZ." So you can think of like—um, I saw for a Dragon Ball Z video something like "You don't understand Gohan," but then um after I saw that it like struck me—it's like, "Wow, I really like that title," and then looking into other niches and stuff saw that this title has had outlier success quite a few times—of like "You don't understand EQ," "You don't understand GTA 5 story," and all of these things are fundamentally just a rewording and resmithing of the entire GTA story, you know, from beginning to end, you know, "Let me tell you about EQ" or something like that, but they're just using a different angle for the same exact topic. How long would you wait to change the title and thumbnail of a video if it doesn't have a good CTR? I'd usually start out with a thumbnail A/B test right off the bat. Typically, I'd wait around 2 to 3 days before making any title changes. It's also worth considering what your typical view patterns are. For some channels, your videos might all take off around the one-week mark, so I wouldn't make any changes until after that window has passed. The exception, say, is if right off the bat the video flops—if as soon as you had access to your analytics right after upload the views and click-through rate are much lower than they normally are—something about your video isn't resonating with your core audience, and I'd make a packaging change as soon as possible. At what point do you stop trying to save a video by changing the title and thumbnail? I'd usually try for a couple of weeks afterward. I'll either keep running it until I run out of variation ideas or I'll set a limit for myself—like one change per week. It's pretty easy to drive yourself crazy constantly monitoring the analytics and making a bunch of tiny changes hoping that one of them will make a difference, so it can be quite effective to set a cool-down period for yourself after making each change to help you not go completely insane. If a video does not go well, is there any problem deleting it? I really wouldn't delete it unless it's a video that you really don't want other people seeing. For one, even if a video doesn't have a broad appeal and doesn't perform well, it doesn't mean that the people who do see it don't appreciate it. Some of the best comments I ever received came from videos that performed the worst for me because even though the video didn't blow up, the people who did see it loved it and it had an impact on them. Additionally, even if a video doesn't do well at first, there's always the chance that it might get picked up later—either out of the blue or because a future video of yours taking off could affect it. That's what happened to these two videos of mine. When I first published them, they flattened out at around 1,000 views, but then later on, after my intro video started getting some traction, they took off and now have over 200,000 views each. I really wouldn't ever delete a video unless your video is getting a ton of negative feedback and you just don't want anyone to ever see it in the future.

Part 13: Business and Sponsorships. How do YouTubers make money? I often get asked how I make money or how YouTubers in general make money, so let's break it down. There are four main ways YouTubers make money: AdSense, affiliate links, personal offerings or products, and sponsorships. Starting with AdSense: once your channel hits 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, you can qualify to start earning money off of the ads that YouTube places on your videos. The money that you make is measured in something called RPM, or Revenue Per Mille, which is the revenue that you make per 1,000 views of your videos. RPM also takes into account things like channel memberships and Super Thanks, but for the large majority of you, your RPM will be primarily driven by ads. This RPM is dependent on a lot of factors, including niche, geography, time of year, and much more. Different niches have different RPMs, and even different individual videos within those niches can have different RPMs. In general, RPMs are driven by how valuable an impression is to an advertiser. The more money an advertiser can make from an impression, the higher the RPM. As a result, niches like personal finance or business tend to have higher RPMs, while niches like personal vlogging tend to have lower RPMs. RPM is also driven by geography; videos with primary audiences based in the US will have a higher RPM than videos with primary audiences based in India, for example. An RPM can also fluctuate with the overall ad market. In general, advertisers tend to have more money to spend at the end of the year when they're using the remainder of their budget versus at the beginning of the year when they're a bit more frugal. As a result, we tend to see higher RPMs in the last quarter of the year and lower RPMs in the first quarter of the year. So that's AdSense. There's also affiliate links. When I mention a product and put the link in the video description, those links are often affiliate links. This means that if anyone buys the product through my link, I will get a small commission. The viewer will pay the exact same whether they use my affiliate link or not, but I will get a small reward if they do use my link. For instance, I mentioned a tool called Gling in this video; it's a tool that I regularly use, and I also have an affiliate link. A subscription to Gling is $10 a month, and if someone purchases it through my link, I get $2 a month. I know it doesn't sound like much, but over time, it can really start to add up. And as a hot tip, affiliate links from software products with a recurring membership can be better in the long term than affiliate links from one-off products because then you get that monthly recurring affiliate revenue for as long as that person is subscribed to that software product. And in a world where income fluctuates a lot from month to month as a creator, having that monthly recurring revenue can be huge. Next up, we have personal products and offerings. There are a lot of different types of products or offerings that a creator can offer to their viewer. A classic example is courses. If you're a YouTuber with a personal finance channel, you can make a course about personal finance and offer that to your viewers. YouTubers also tend to offer things like consulting, memberships like Patreon, books, digital downloads, and even physical products. When offering products of your own, the biggest thing to keep in mind is trust. The most valuable asset you have on YouTube is not views, not revenue, but trust. If the trust is broken, everything else fails. I've seen some YouTubers lean so far into their paid offerings that it feels like every video they make is just a long infomercial for their course, and it ends up leaving a poor taste in your mouth. No one likes to be sold or shill to. I'm not saying that you shouldn't offer products; in fact, it's one of the absolute best things that you can do for your YouTube business, as it helps create revenue that's a bit separate from the views that you get, which can lead to a much healthier relationship with YouTube. But if you do make a product, it's very important to consider who the product is for, why they would buy it, and how you can talk about it in a way that does not erode trust. And finally, we have sponsorships. Besides personal products and offerings, sponsorships are usually one of the biggest sources of income for creators. In its most basic form, a sponsorship involves working with a brand to market or advertise their product or service, usually through the form of talking about their product or service in a video of yours. I get a lot of questions about sponsorships, so to help answer them, I figured I would bring in Justin Moore, who is an absolute wizard when it comes to everything related to brand deals. Justin has helped creators land a total of over $5 million worth of sponsorships and today is here to make sure that you're not leaving money on the table. When should you start looking for or accepting sponsorships? A lot of creators ask me, "When is the right time to start looking for or accepting sponsorships? Is it 10,000 subscribers? Is it 100K? Maybe more than that?" And the real answer is that there is no threshold. Maybe one brand, one time, told you like, "Oh, we only work with creators who have 10,000 subscribers," and so you thought, "Oh, I guess every brand is that way," but that's not the case at all, especially if you have a very specific niche that might be valuable to certain brands. So the way that I think about this is that in the beginning, when you were just starting out, and let's say you have a thousand subscribers, right? If you were to reach out to a brand and say, "Hey, let me talk about you on, you know, in integration on my YouTube channel," and you get, let's say, hundreds of views on average, that's likely not going to move the needle for them; let's just be real here, right? And so instead, let's say that you did an audit of their overall social presence, right? You look at their social media, and they're not posting super regularly, or they don't have a YouTube channel, or they don't have a podcast, or they don't have a TikTok page, or their blog is really is dormant, right? And you can reach out to them and say, "Hey, look, I can actually create some content, some videos for you on autopilot that you can use and repurpose on your social media brand or your website or used for paid advertising. And, oh, by the way, go take a look at my YouTube channel because that is my portfolio," right? And so the beautiful thing about this reframing is that the amount of money that you can charge is completely detached from how many views or subscribers you have, right? And so what you pitch has to change in the beginning. So that's at—at the very beginning—when you don't have a ton of influence or a ton of experience or or anything like that, right? And let's say you grow. Now let's say that you're getting thousands of views on average now, right? Okay, well, maybe what you pitch is a combination of content for the brand to use, um, maybe there's some consulting in there, and maybe, yeah, syndicating or amplifying that content on your platform starts becoming meaningful, right? So it's it's a hybrid pitch now. Let's say you achieve some serious scale, right? You're getting tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views on your videos. Yeah, the thrust of your pitch can now become, "Hey, I'm going to do an integration on my YouTube channel in—in a video that's going to become very, very meaningful—meaningful for you," right? Um, and so this is what I call the sponsorship continuum, and it—it's very liberating for a lot of creators because they realize, "

And your engagement rate and all that stuff, and then they spit out a number. Um, and in my opinion, those calculators are not accurate because you are missing the other 50% of the equation, which is the brand's objectives.

This is where the ARC framework comes into play. When a brand decides to run a campaign with a creator, they will 100% of the time always have one of these three objectives in mind, or two of them, or all three: A is awareness. The primary reason the brand wants to hire you is to spread the word. Maybe they've got a new product launch or they're launching in a new territory—they were available only in the UK and now they're in the US. They want to spread the word about that. R is repurposing. The primary reason the brand wants to hire you is to take the content you generate and publish on your YouTube channel and use it in other ways—maybe on their YouTube channel, on their social media, on their blog, for paid advertising, and so on. The C in the ARC framework is conversion. The main reason the brand wants to hire you is to drive sales—drive, you know, trial signups for their software program, app downloads, something like that; something very attributable and measurable.

The reason you need to ascertain what the brand's objectives are is that your pricing has to change. Let me explain by working backward. In a conversion-focused campaign, the contact you're negotiating with has this math, this napkin math, for what's called CPA, what's called cost per acquisition metrics. They know that, okay, if we're going to pay, you know, Justin, let's say 5K, here's how the math has to work out for us. So we know, let's say he gets 10,000 views on average, okay, and we know that we're conservatively assuming that let's say 10% of the people who watch this video are going to click on the link in the YouTube description box. Right? Right, that's 1,000 people. Of the 1,000 people that click on that link, let's say that 25% of the people sign up for a free trial, so that's 250 people. Right? Of the 250 people that sign up for a free trial, let's say 20% of those are going to convert into a paying plan, so that's 50 people. Right, okay, so we've got 50 people that converted from that. And we know that our software program is $10 a month, and we know on average that people stick around—our retention rate before they churn is 10 months. So the lifetime value, the average lifetime value of our customers is $100. Okay, and if we're able to acquire 50 customers from that partnership with Justin, that's 50 times 100, that's the max they're going to pay me, that $5,000. And by the way, they don't just want to break even; that's the break-even point. They want to turn a profit; that's the entire reason they're doing influencer marketing. And so in reality, they're going to want to pay you a fraction of that—50%, 25% of that, maybe lower; it depends on their risk tolerance.

This is the reason in these scenarios where a brand has a conversion-focused metric or success metric, that's why it's so hard to negotiate with them because they have this math, and they've got their boss breathing down their neck saying, "Okay, hey, we can't exceed this number." Contrast that with an awareness-focused campaign. What are the success metrics in that scenario? Right, it's eyeballs, impressions, comments, engagement. Did we spread the word, hopefully? Right. And so what I like to say is that the metrics are squish here. That person doesn't have their boss breathing down their neck saying, "Hey, how many sales did we drive with that campaign with Justin?" And so your negotiating leverage in an awareness-focused campaign is stratospherically higher than a conversion one. This is the ARC framework, and why it's so critical that you understand that. The second part is the DO rule.

This is where you have to scope the deal, the deliverables. That's what the D is: "Hey, how many videos do they want you to make? Is it integrated? Is it dedicated?" That's a very critical, critical piece of this. Do they want you to amplify this on social media—Instagram, TikTok, etc.? Do they want you to do a sponsored community post on your YouTube? The U in the DO rule is usage rights. Does the brand want to take your content and use it in other ways? Maybe for paid advertising; that's something you should charge them for. And for how long do they want to do that? The E in the DO rule is exclusivity. Are they saying that you cannot work with their competitors in a certain category for a certain duration? That represents actual money out of your pocket. One of their competitors could come to you three, four, six months down the line and say, "Hey, we'd love to…" Here's a giant bag with a money symbol on it. You say, "Can't do it. I agreed to exclusivity a year ago," or something like that. Quick anecdote: I know a creator that agreed to five years of exclusivity for a free mattress—a free mattress. Okay, so don't be that person.

At the end of the day, like I mentioned, it's an art and a science, but you really need to learn this stuff because it can have a profound impact on your pricing. How can you tell if you're dealing with a real brand or a scammer? One fear that a lot of creators have is when they get an email inquiry from a brand: Is this a legit brand, or is it a scammer? This is actually a real concern. Creators have had their channels hacked through, you know, kind of these fake brand deals. So there are a couple of simple steps you can take to protect yourself. The first is looking at the domain of the sender. Often times, if it's coming from a Gmail or, you know, a .PL, or some of these random domains that don't really look legitimate, that's a real quick and easy way to determine that, "Hey, this is probably not a legitimate brand deal." The challenge is that sometimes the domain might look legitimate, so it says like NikeDPRdte.com or something like that. Some scammers will actually go out of their way to buy domains that seem like they're from a legitimate brand, but when in reality, if you do a little bit of digging, you'll actually see that, oh, the brand actually doesn't control that domain; they would never have a domain like that. In reality, it would be coming from nike.com or something like that. The thing that makes this a bit murkier is that oftentimes larger brands will hire outside advertising agencies to facilitate these types of influencer marketing campaigns on their behalf. So you may sometimes have emails that come from an agency like Edelman or Ketchum, or some of these smaller influencer marketing agencies or something like that. So it can be a little tricky, but looking at the domain should be the first thing that you do.

The second tip I have is looking at the email signatory. If they are signing it off like "Nike Marketing Team," and there's actually no one's name there—like first and last name and their phone number and their email address, things like that—a brand will almost never reach out to you without identifying themselves. Like, it's an actual influencer marketing manager or maybe account coordinator at the agency or something like that. So that's another red flag. The third red flag is that if they're asking you to download an attachment that is like an executable file, and download something onto your computer to view the contract, that is almost always a sign that they're trying to gain access to your passwords, your social media accounts, your YouTube channel, and things like that. So never, ever, ever do something like that.

What advice would you give to someone looking for and executing on their first sponsorship? If you're a creator working on your first sponsorship, I have a quick piece of advice that's going to be a game-changer: be responsive, be communicative. I ran an influencer marketing agency for about seven years, and this was the number one challenge for us. We would execute a deal with a creator, and then we would follow up with them and say, "Hey, we need a clarification on something small," or, "Hey, can you make a quick edit or, you know, very small voiceover change to this integration that you did," and it would take us two, three, four, five days to hear back from them, following up over and over. What you have to remember is that the brand is likely not just working with you on this campaign; they're working with 5, 10, 15, 20 other creators. And so if you're the person that is a huge pain in the butt to hear back from on these very simple clarifying points, do you think the brand or that agency is going to want to hire you again? Likely not, because it's like pulling teeth to get every piece, every aspect of the campaign from you. And so if you can be the person that's on it, and you're responding within just a few hours, the brand is going to notice that and probably want to renew with you.

What are the biggest sponsorship mistakes you see people make? The biggest sponsorship mistake that I see creators making is working with the brand once and then literally never talking to them again. I made this mistake early on, you know, 15 years ago when we started out as creators as well, because I get it; it's scary actually reaching out to the brand and saying, "Hey, how did the campaign go?" Because what if the brand says, "Uh, it went really poorly. We hate you. Never talk to us again." That's what we think in our head the brand is going to say, when in reality, do you realize how much easier it is to convince a brand that you just worked with to hire you again, especially if you just did good work for them? In reality, the brand is probably not going to say they hated you. The brand is either going to say, "Hey, it went great," and then perfect, now is your chance to pitch them on the next campaign idea, or they're going to say, "Well, you know what? It was okay; it went average." And so now is your opportunity to say to them, "Hey, well, I'm so glad to have that feedback from you. Let me think about this and do some analysis on my own to think about why that might be," and then you can come back to them and say, "Here are the four reasons that I think that this campaign, you know, performed suboptimally, and here is what I think we can do to address that in the next campaign." This is something that I call the post-campaign report, and this is something I teach in my Brand Deal Wizard courses. It's an absolute game-changer when you can go back to the brand with this type of feedback because no creators do this. I feel so lucky that Justin was able to come on this video and share his advice. And if you want to hear more brand deal advice from him, he has a free weekly newsletter and an incredible course, both of which I will link in the video description.

Is YouTube your full-time job? I'd love insight into the business side of things for you. Yes, I am lucky enough to call YouTube my full-time job. For me, the exact revenue breakdown varies significantly from month to month, but on average it looks like this: 10% AdSense, 5% affiliate links, 20% course sales, 30% consulting, 10% speaking, and 25% sponsorships. My next video will be a full breakdown detailing exactly how much money I've made so far on YouTube, complete with all the numbers. So if that's something you're interested in seeing, now would be a great time to… well, you know the rest. But I will say that for me, everything—including sponsorships, consulting, speaker requests—everything so far has been inbound, meaning that they reach out to me first as opposed to me reaching out to them. Part of that reason is that for me, making money has not been my number one priority. Right now, I'm more so focused on making enough money to pay the bills and then pouring all my energy into making the best videos I can for you guys as opposed to optimizing everything for making as much money as possible. That being said, I could definitely be doing a better job. For instance, I can guarantee that probably 99.9% of you had no idea that I have a course because I don't talk about it. You may have seen the link to it in my video description, and if you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen it in my bio, but that's about it. And the reason for that is mostly because I don't want to annoy you, and I would never want to pressure someone into buying something that they didn't need or want to buy. But I have received emails from people saying that they've had to literally Google me in order to find my course, so maybe I could be doing a better job at that. We see I am also launching the pilot of a brand new offer, which is something that I'm simultaneously incredibly nervous about and also very excited for because it's something I've been thinking about for a very long time. I'll talk more about that in the next section, but that's my own breakdown of income.

Part 14: Finding your YouTube friends and community. How do you find really good YouTube friends or a creator community? Something that has come up again and again in my conversations with other YouTubers and strategists is the concept of YouTube friends. I think something that really helped me accelerate my channel is when I created a group of other YouTubers who are in the same niche, and we just have these weekly calls. We review thumbnails, we talk about titles, we watch each other's intros, give feedback on what we think could be better, could be changed. Sometimes we take the feedback we get; sometimes we don't. But the whole idea is getting other eyes on it. Not only do you get the feedback from them, but you giving feedback also helps you become a better creator. So we're all getting better four times as fast because we're looking at four times the amount of videos. It's something that everyone seems to have in common: a community or group of friends that they're able to jam on titles and thumbnails with, get video feedback from, and overall just learn and grow with. Over the last year, I have been lucky enough to build up my own circle of YouTube friends, and I can honestly tell you that has been one of, if not the single most impactful part of my YouTube journey. But I remember what it was like when I knew literally not a single other soul who did YouTube and how incredibly hard that was. So I want to break down how I found my YouTube friends and how I structure my YouTube group so that you can do the same.

When it came to finding YouTube friends, there were four main ways that happened to me: introductions, cold outreach, communities, and conferences. One of my now closest YouTube friends was introduced to me by a mutual friend. She knew that I did YouTube, and she had a friend of hers who had just quit her job to go full-time onto YouTube, so she introduced us. We hopped on a phone call and instantly hit it off. We both have backgrounds in tech, we're both incredibly type A, and most importantly, we both shared the same attitude and level of commitment around YouTube. What we did not have—and this is important—is a shared niche. I make educational YouTube content, while she makes entertaining Japanese culture-adjacent vlogs and challenges. I highlight this because I see so many creators out there who think that they have to find YouTube friends who do the exact same thing that they do, and at least for me, that was not true at all. What's most important in a YouTube friend is a shared level of commitment and attitude around YouTube. If one person treats YouTube solely as a business while the other person treats YouTube solely as a hobby, it can lead to frustration and feeling like the other person just isn't getting it. The closer to your own niche you get, the more relatable your specific niche-related problems are, but there also is a huge benefit in talking to people outside of your niche because they do bring in an outside perspective and skills. My first serious YouTube friend was through an introduction—convenient for me, but not easily replicable for others, which brings us to cold outreach. Another YouTube friend of mine just reached out to me via Twitter DMs one day. She had been following my journey both on Twitter and on YouTube, and she also had a YouTube channel, so we chatted and we hit it off. Cold outreach is also how Aristotle met one of his closest YouTube friends. I cold-emailed a guy; I watched his video and I was like, "Hey, this is awesome," so I sent him a cold email saying, "Hey, I'd either love to do a collab with you or just hop on a call and talk to you," and now he's one of my closest YouTube friends, and I've met him in real life twice, and we talk every week. It's like you never know unless you try. The downside of cold outreach is that the hit rate or success rate tends to be pretty low, which is why I highly recommend online communities. I met a good number of my YouTube friends in online communities for YouTube specifically—for me, it was in an old cohort-based version of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy from Ali Abdaal and from something called Creator Now. Online communities can be a great place to find YouTube friends because they are large gatherings of YouTubers who have all shown some significant level of commitment to improving on YouTube, and many of which are actively looking for more friendships. Finally, I've met a lot of YouTube friends at in-person conferences like VidSummit and VidCon. Usually these friendships bloom because we're already in each other's orbits on Twitter and then we see each other in person and get into talking, but I've also met plenty of friends that I did not know at the time of the conference.

So that's how I found most of my YouTube friends. And while most of them I just have open message threads with, my closest YouTube friends meet weekly in something called a mastermind—essentially, a small group of us meet weekly for two hours, and we each bring something to the meeting that we want feedback on. It can be things like a title and a thumbnail or an intro or an edit or even larger-scale things like a new content strategy or a new storytelling framework. And each week in our mastermind, we give each other our thoughts and feedback. The first half of the calls are dedicated to items that are more tangible, like specific pieces of feedback, while the second half is more open for bigger conversations like quality versus quantity or a mindset shift. Our masterminds often will involve some element of creator therapy because, let's face it, this YouTube can get pretty hard sometimes. And when I tell you that this group has accelerated my rate of growth and improvement like nothing else, I am not exaggerating in the slightest. The quality of my videos has significantly improved, and when I'm hit with things that normally would have brought me down for a long time or even may have made me quit YouTube altogether, the group helps pick me back up. If there's anything that you get out of this mega video, it is to find YouTube friends and to start a small group.

Speaking of YouTube friends and small groups, I am launching a more community-based and personal offering of my own. It's something that I'm quite a bit nervous for but also very excited about because it's something I've been thinking about for a very long time. So if that sounds like something that you'd be into, I'm going to leave a link in the video description where you can go to learn more and be notified of the launch. I really hope that I can create something for you that is just as impactful as what I've experienced in my own YouTube journey because, man oh man, this whole YouTube thing is so, so much harder to do alone.

Part 15: Mindset. How do you not give up and stay motivated even when you invest so much effort and see no results? This is a question that I get very often. My biggest piece of advice is to focus on process and input instead of outcome and results. And I know that that's something that's much easier said than done, but ultimately not everything is within our control. You can make a great video, and maybe no one will see it, or maybe you'll make what you think is a great video, and then a year later look back on it and realize that it was actually not a great video, but you just didn't know enough to know it yet. Video flops are a part of the process. Every single person that I know, myself included, has had videos where they've poured so much energy and effort into, only to release it and not get the result that they wanted. But if you enjoy the process, it makes everything a lot easier. If you can get into a place where you can look at a video and say, "Man, I am proud of this video," and have that be enough of a motivator for you to continue, that's the place that you want to be. The motivation to keep going should be something that's mostly internal, not external. And I know that that's really hard because, as creators, one of the greatest joys that we experience is when other people view and appreciate our work. But if you base too much of your motivation on something that's outside of your control, like views, that's not going to be sustainable in the long term.

I do think it's still important to set goals, though, because without goals you can have no sense of progress; you can feel like nothing is happening, which in and of itself is very demotivating. So instead, I would focus on setting goals on things that you can control—goals like implementing a new storytelling framework or trying out a new editing technique or coming up with 10 thumbnail variations or spending one hour per week on ideation. When you do that, you'll feel yourself progressing; you'll feel some sort of momentum, and that will keep you motivated. I would also focus on the comments and positive feedback that you do get on YouTube. We deal with these crazy large numbers; we see other people getting hundreds of thousands or millions of views, and that is ridiculous to contextualize. I don't know what millions or hundreds of thousands of people look like; I know what 50 people look like. Look at your comments and screenshot the positive ones to look back on on days when things get rough and on days when you question whether or not it's all worth it. And as I mentioned in the last section, I would highly recommend getting together a small group of YouTube friends to help each other and support each other and to pull each other through those hard moments. I would also try to celebrate your wins when they do come. Those wins could be a specific subscriber or view count, but the wins could also be sticking to your upload schedule for three months or getting a comment that you really wanted to get or uploading your best video yet. Another thing that you can try, if you can, is to always have a queue of a few video ideas that you are really excited about. That way, if a video underperforms, you already have the next idea that you really look forward to making. And finally, do your best to keep the process fun, which is much easier said than done. So let's talk about it: How can you make and keep YouTube fun?

It's really, really easy for YouTube to become not fun, and for me, YouTube becomes not fun when there's a layer of pressure or worry over it. All this pressure or worry can happen in a variety of ways. For one, if I place too much pressure on a single video to succeed, in those cases making that single video becomes really, really hard. Or if I give myself far too much work to complete in a short period of time, that period of time then becomes very, very stressful. YouTube also gets not fun for me when I'm far too concerned about what the audience might think and when I get so scared of potentially having a lower number of views or worse feedback that I stop myself from making the types of videos that I actually want to make. So to keep YouTube fun, I try my best to do the opposite of those things. Instead of putting everything that I have into one video, which puts a lot of pressure onto that one video, we're going to start making a higher number of slightly lower-lift videos. On second thought, this particular video might not be the best example of that. Instead of assigning myself too much work, I'm going to be reasonable and learn how much I'm actually able to do and adjust my workload from there. And instead of obsessing over potentially getting few views, I'm going to focus on making videos that I'm excited about and that I know that other people will also be excited about, even if it's not the most broadly appealing idea in the world. Dr. K, the creator therapist, has said that creator burnout comes from making decisions based on trying to avoid potential negative outcomes as opposed to making decisions based off of what actually lights you up. So for me, sometimes keeping YouTube fun is about turning off that logical part of the brain, instead following the feeling, that spark and that creativity, which I know was a strange thing to say after an hours-long video about the most logical things that you can do to grow on YouTube, but everything is about balance, right? I am ridiculously type A, so a big part of keeping YouTube fun for me is battling my perfectionism, my urge to optimize everything to death, which I haven't exactly figured out yet. The original intent for this video was to be a chill 30-minute Q&A, and we all know how that went. But also, when I look at my favorite creators, I don't love their videos because they're perfect; I love their videos because they're unique, because I can get a sense of their quirks and personality. I'm going to keep experimenting, and I encourage all of you to do so too. And I will say that a big part of giving yourself the freedom to experiment is establishing income sources that are not solely dependent on views. That's the reason why you see creators offering things like Patreon or courses or consulting because it gives them a way to bring in money that's a bit separate from video views because, yes, if every single cent you make is purely dependent on how many views you get, of course it's going to be harder to let go a little bit and keep YouTube fun. That goes back to pressure: the more pressure you can take off of every individual video that you make, the healthier relationship you're going to have with YouTube.

How do I stop the fear that I'll never succeed on YouTube? Look, if you've made it this far in this gigantic video, if you've watched and paid attention to this entire thing, you are going to succeed on YouTube because what you've demonstrated is commitment—commitment to learning and growing and improving, and commitment to take your YouTube journey seriously enough to watch an hours-long video on YouTube growth. Because ultimately, that's all success on YouTube boils down to: it's not about being the best editor or the best storyteller or the funniest person; it's about a willingness to learn, even if it's easier to not; the tenacity to keep going, even if it's easier to give up; and the desire to keep getting better, even when it's easier to stay still. As long as you have those traits, which you've already demonstrated by watching this video, it is impossible to fail. You're going to succeed on YouTube; it's just a matter of time. We've covered a lot in this video, and I just want to take a second to leave you with some final tips. First, this video is a resource to you; feel free to come back to it as needed, but don't feel the need to apply everything all at once. This whole YouTube thing is a marathon, not a sprint; don't let it overwhelm you. Instead, embrace what you've learned today and try to apply just one thing to every new video that you make. Don't be discouraged by initial setbacks because it literally happens to everyone. Remember that every successful YouTuber started where you are now. Keep refining your skills, stay consistent, and focus on providing value to your audience while following your own excitement. If you do this, growth will follow. Check out the video description for any of the resources or links that I mentioned in this video. Keep creating, and I will see you in the next video.