Transcription
Over the last 5 years, I've worked more than 700 YouTube channels, and I've helped generate hundreds of millions of views and tens of millions of dollars in sales, picking up a couple of silver play buttons of my own, too. But along the way, I started to realize that nearly every struggling channel makes the exact same avoidable mistakes that massively hold back their earnings. So, if you're frustrated with advice that doesn't seem to work, here are 19 of the most important lessons that I've learned along the way that will actually make you money from YouTube.
Number one, so most people quit YouTube and they waste all of the time they put into it because they are so frustrated they're not seeing an instant result. But have you seen The Incredible Hulk? When Bruce goes from being a regular man to the strongest being on the planet, his entire body has to break so that it can be remade into something remarkable that is capable of saving the planet. Making money from YouTube is the same. At the start, you don't know how to film. You don't know how to edit. You can't do strategy. You don't have to build a sales page, sell, market. And what that means is you're just not a person who is yet capable of generating big views and sales. And in order to become someone who is, you have to break yourself, then remake yourself into that remarkable being. And just like Bruce's transformation to the Hulk, that's going to mean you have to put yourself through an absolutely insane amount of growing pains. So don't allow the frustration and the pain that you are guaranteed to feel beat you on this journey. You have to embrace it because really it's just a sign you're becoming the person that you were one day meant to be.
Number two, so I've seen this pattern across hundreds of channels and I've experienced it myself and that is that making $10,000 a month is harder than making $100,000 a month. Now, I know that sounds crazy, but think about this. When you're new, you know nothing at all and you have to do everything on your own and you probably have to try and fit all of this work around your business or your existing job and nothing you do seems to work. So, the pain you feel is just off the charts. But by the time you get to 20K a month, you usually can spend money to get some extra help and have some tasks taken off your hand and then you can go all in on it and quit your job and so things get easier. Then to kind of jump up to the 100k a month, really all you do is refine your system and focus more on the thing that's making the most money. And you can jump up quite quick, but there is no doubt that the first $10,000 is the hardest and it will get easier.
Number three. So the pattern I've noticed with the most successful channels is they all think in the same way which enables them to stick with it no matter how hard it gets. And that is because they all fail as fast as they can. Now what that means is they don't make a video or a sales page or an offer or write an email and just expect it to instantly change their life and blow up their business. What they're actually more interested in is how fast can I fail and then learn a lesson that shows me what the next step towards success is. Now, the only people who really fail on this platform are the ones who can't take action because they're so terrified of things not working. So, if that sounds like you, just understand this is a game of failing until only the right option remain. So, take some action. Which leads us onto the next lesson.
Okay. So, imagine your business and your YouTube channel is a champagne bottle. And every time you fail, you stand there shaking it. As a result of this, what's going to happen is there's going to come a point where you finally get a win. And because of all of these failed attempts, the bottle is going to erupt and champagne is going to fly everywhere. This happened to me in 2021. I'd been failing as fast as I could. I was in max pain cuz nothing seemed to be working. And I posted one video that absolutely exploded in views and it brought all of my other failures with it. And after that, it changed my life. So although going viral is only powerful if you have business systems in place to capitalize on it, at a certain stage, one big win can change everything.
So, pretty much everyone I've ever worked with has the same problem. They have to make videos, film them, spend ages with the editor on feedback. They do their own sales calls. They have long team meetings. They make their fourth product when the third isn't even selling. They post to every social media platform. And for some reason, everyone seems to think they need to start a podcast, too. And it's just impossible to focus in so many places at once. So, they get no results anywhere. So, if you really want a success, this is what your goal should be for your diary. That's mine. and you want to do everything you can to get into a position where you do content for YouTube in the morning and then in the afternoon all you do is work on making your product better is see how little I have to actually do to generate millions. That's what it used to look like when I didn't make much at all.
Number six, so many of you are going to have a product you sell and you're going to be thinking about making something bigger and better and you're going to be worrying about what will happen to the old product sales that you have when you launch this new thing. Now, I was the same. I used to rely on these one-to-one calls, but I realized I couldn't scale it. So, I built a course hoping to replace it, but also lived in fear that it might go wrong. The thing is, within 30 days, I made more from the new course than I did in those 1:1 calls. So, just realize this, business is like a rose bush. Sometimes you got to cut it right back to a level that might scare you so it can grow back bigger, faster, and better.
Number seven, have you ever looked into making something to sell your audience? Watched videos on building funnels and complex campaigns to promote them? Tried it and it didn't work at all? This is a very common problem I see. But a few years ago, I accidentally realized that everyone's making selling way harder than it needs to be for some reason. And I discovered it when I was planning this massive Black Friday campaign. But because I was just juggling too many other things at once, I didn't end up having enough time to build it. So the day before Black Friday, I just thought I'll stuff it. And I decided to post one short community wall post, one tweet, one email. And all they really said were, "Hey, if you buy my course, I'll give you another one for free. Offer ends in 48 hours." So, I hit send and at the time I thought maybe I'll make a bit of money. Eight hours later, $14,000 had appeared in my account. And that's when I realized that sometimes the simplest option is just the best. So, I tend to recommend people now before you build something complex, why not try the easy option first? If it works, you win double.
Lesson number eight. Do you want to know the secret to making money from YouTube? So, this is one of my clients who had it in abundance. They did $50,000 in a week, no sales calls, just emailing their viewers to show them they had a new offer because of this, too. And the secret is not the offer. It's not the marketing. It's not the email. I've seen a lot of people do a really bad job of these and still make a lot of money because of it. It's actually how their videos make their viewers feel. Now, I know that sounds like mumbo jumbo, but your channel is a fire that warms your viewers up. And if you get so good at making videos your viewers love you to pieces and become redot, all of the work needed to convert them to buyers can be done in the content.
Lesson number nine. So, these next three lessons I recently discovered after tracking sales from 300 million YouTube videos. It's my software, Rev Track. It does it for all of the users and then we can take all of that data and find patterns. And the first pattern we discovered looking at this was probably the most surprising, but it gave us something that is very easy to fix to help you generate more sales. So, what we discovered is this. If your average video gets a 0.5% click rate on your sales page link below it, and you increase it to 2%, you 4x your sales without needing any extra views or changing your offer at all. So, the click to view percent of the link below your video to me is the most powerful metric because it's so easy to increase the amount of people click on that link because all you want to do is promote your offer and say it's in the link below and you just get more clicks.
Lesson number 10. And the next lesson we learned from these patterns is that if all your videos perform like your top 25% for sales, your dollars earned from your content would more than triple. So, what that means is if you're not identifying which videos are earning the most per view and then repeating what is working in them to get that result, you're potentially growing your business three times slower.
Lesson number 11. We can also see from the data that currently the average video earns $4.92 per thousand views, but the top 5% earn over 132. So, what do the top 5% have in common? Well, these top performing videos tend to have an offer and a channel that solve the exact same problem. They have more targeted content to problems their viewers have and they just have higher converting calls to actions in their videos. That's it.
Lesson number 12. We also discovered that on average, every five to six videos results in just one conversion. A conversion being an email or a sale, which is just way too high if you want to grow an email list or a business, every video you make needs to impact your business in some way, shape or form. So that needs to be one, not five or six. So just promote more. Which brings us on to the next lesson.
So over the years, so many people have come to me going, "Ed, I want to go in my business. How can I get more views?" And when I've looked at their data, they have nobody clicking the links to their sales page, no real website traffic, and the conversion of the people who do make there is very, very low. The truth is, when you've built a baseline return viewership, views are no longer the most important metric for your business. Working out how to create the path of least resistance to your product from those videos is. Otherwise, you just make YouTube more ad revenue and you miss out on all the money you actually deserve.
Lesson number 14. So many YouTube channels have come to me because their viewers are just not buying their product or service. And often the reason is because they've not gone through enough of the breaking and then remaking required to become a person who is capable of charging $5,000 for something. Because in order to sell high ticket products, you need to be an amazing communicator. You need to have a lot of experience, credibility, and you have to have a red hot audience who are ready to buy from you before you ask them for it. So, if you want to sell high ticket, first you need to make sure you can actually sell something cheaper. Because if you can't get $150 for someone, you can't get $5,000.
Lesson number 15. So many people I work with seem to think that every video they make would get more and more views than the last forever. But that's not how this works. What will actually happen is this. Your niche has a view ceiling which is fully dependent on the total addressable market in your niche. And I met people who get super frustrated trying to break through this ceiling when it's not possible unless they pivot to mass market content which will in turn wreck their sales. So the smartest move is to get to a point where you go, do you know what? I have enough views. Just going to maintain that baseline and work on the business more until they're optimized and bring in consistent sales and leads. And then you can think about if you even need to try and get more views.
Lesson number 16. Have you ever dreamed of selling an on demand product to your audience and then waking up in the morning of sales that came in overnight even though you did no extra work for it? The truth is most people I've worked with eventually felt like that and realized it's not the most fun way to make money and they kind of get demotivated because of this. So let's imagine you're in a niche with a view ceiling on every video you make is 50,000. When people hit that ceiling over and over again, the sales of their on demand products will then plateau because their growth velocity has stalled. And when you're used to seeing month-on-month growth, that's not a great feeling. So although you'll get the passive income you wanted, people quickly realize that to earn more, they then have to make more new products to sell to their capped audience. So it's never passive anyway. The other option is then to start thinking about making a bigger and more expensive offer. But the con of that is the next lesson.
So about 18 months ago, my friend decided to jump up to the next level by building a high ticket program. And they just happened to do this at the exact same time I did. It was really cool. We'd chat with each other and we'd share what we'd learn each week. And then for a few months, things went amazing for both of us. But pretty much at the exact same time, four months in, we started to crack and every day we messaging each other like, "Ah, why is this so hard?" And problems we'd never dreamt of started to appear and both like it was so much easier how we used to do it. Eventually, they actually decided to stop and go back to their old way because they looked at the monthly money they spend and how much they really needed earned and realized that the old way provided way more than they needed and that really they were excited by doing things they loved every day rather than making millions doing something they hated. And that's the thing eventually what I see is a lot of creators make a lot of money, but they still feel like they have to earn more because of the big numbers that get thrown around online that kind of make you feel like a bit of a failure if you don't chase more. So the real challenge is working out what you really want from life and not getting caught up in the money for the sake of it.
Do you have a client who causes you a ton of annoyance and problems and lives rentree in your head all day? I get a lot of people obsessing over these and I tend to tell them the same thing. So let's say this is your focus and you have to get it to 10 clients to do a great job. This one who you can't stand will take up this much head space. Meaning everyone else who's a great client gets less of your focus and attention and as a result that could impact their experience and hold back your business. So, if this ever happens to you, just fire your bad clients. But when they freak out, well, no, over the years, I've fired quite a few. And two things always seem to happen. Firstly, they just change their tone and they ask you not to fire them. They admit they're being a pain and then they kind of reveal the reason why, which is usually pretty small. Or they're happy to go and actually respect you for refunding them and sending them on their way. Both are a win for your mindset and business. So, go on, fire them. You know you want to.
Lesson number 19. So, in this same time period, I've made hundreds and hundreds of videos. So, if you want to learn the most important lessons from them, watch this video next and I'll teach you how to grow a YouTube channel the less slow way. That was a bad end.