Transcription
Are you new to the YPP program here on YouTube, and now you're monetized and don't know how to ask people to sign up for your memberships? I personally think it is impostor syndrome. Today, Jen and I are going to talk about that very thing, as we got a message from one of you here on the Boost by VidIQ. Ultimately, my big question here is: What is the best way to let people know you have a membership, especially when you're first getting it off the ground?
So this message came in, and I think this creator has the same problem a lot of people do, which is trying to figure out what their value is to their audience. I think that you kind of just hit the nail on the head with imposter syndrome, cuz I think that that is the underlying cause here. When we think about what are strategies for actually moving forward with Channel memberships: How do I announce them? Do I make that separate video? Do I just make a community post? What do I really do to drive action to making the sales for my community to now become members? And I think that overcoming imposter syndrome—that's number one, that's got to be number one. And while I don't think you'll ever, like, you know, fully overcome it with this, but you have to make steps. And I think that identifying one very specific value that you're going to be giving away and feeling really confident in that is a great place to start.
So if we're talking Channel memberships, you of course have the ability on YouTube now to schedule all videos for members specifically early. If that's what your main thing is right now, then think about: How can I advertise this in the most organic way? If that's throughout content, that could be putting that one sentence out there: "If you like this video and you want to watch it early, check out my membership so that you can have access first." You know, little things like that. What do you think of that as like a first step, Travis?
It, it brings me back to a conversation we had with another creator about this exact same subject, and we told them that things like getting access to the video early might be good for them, and they weren't sure. You almost could feel through the message that: Who's going to pay for that? Well, the thing is, you'd be surprised at what people will pay for, especially when they want to connect with you closer. Now, if it means members-only live streams, are getting access to the videos first, so that you can comment on their comments first—let the viewer put the value on it and not worry about it yourself. Sometimes we think that, hey, I can't charge a 99 cents just to see my video earlier, $1.99, or I'm only going to put a couple Community tab posts out, so is that really worth $2, $3 a month? It's not up to you to decide that. You can set the price accordingly and make it, you know, whatever you think is worth it, but your fans are actually going to tell you what the value is. You'd be surprised. And I think we heard back from that same creator later on, and they were saying, "Yeah, I can't believe it, people are actually signing up for it; they love it." And they want that because viewers want to make a deeper connection with you. Give them access to that through your memberships.
There's tons of ways, as Jen said, again, you can do the members-only live streams if you have a couple of those, and of course, letting access to your videos first. As a matter of fact, we do that sometimes on the VidIQ Channel. I think that's that's a fun little thing. I also think that if you're a creator in the position where you're a smaller creator and you don't have a large enough community yet to have a standalone stream, you can offer playbacks as part of your membership. You can have those lives only stream to members, and then now they're paying to watch at a time that's convenient for them, whereas a smaller audience, everyone probably can't show up at the same time, and then that does put a lot of stress on the creator of feeling just uncomfortable and awkward. But there's tons of little things that mean so much to your community.
Personally, I focus on the emojis, the little emotes. I made it so that anytime I was in the comments, I only used those, and all of them were inside jokes to the community. So someone on the outside wants to be on the inside; they want to understand the jokes; they want to have access, and nobody wants to feel left out. Having something that makes people feel like an insider and feel like they are a special group of people and even closer to you—it's like the smallest, cheapest way and such a high-value takeaway. And you know what's funny, we actually have a lot of inside jokes here on the Boost, including candy corn. And if you want to know more about why we think candy corn and dead plants are funny, you can always check us out in the audio podcast link in the description of this video, then you can be part of the inside.
I'd also like to add two more things you can do that you can add value to your viewers. Number one, you can put their name at the end of videos. I've seen people do this before where you can say, "Thanks to my Patreons and thanks to my members," and just put them as like the ending scrolling credits at the end of your video. Or you can do this other cool idea, which I love because it's even more interactive, is give your members an opportunity to ask you a question that you will answer in video form on your next video. What a cool idea that is for a viewer who wants to connect deeper with you and gets access to your answers, direct to them in one of the videos they get to watch. You'd be surprised how much that delights people.
These were really good tips. I feel like we gave some solid ideas for people to think about and make their own. I would like to say we are geniuses, and uh, could be wrong. Maybe we don't keep that part in the video—not YouTube experts, YouTube Geniuses, YouTube Geniuses. Let me put one of those college hats on me right now. Thank you very much. If you like this video, we have others just like it. Check out this playlist, and we'll see you in the next one.