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Ecom Youtube Challenge - Building a channel with 120 videos in 120 days

Phikey

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bro the "yeh yeh oh yeah" is getting on my nerves ahahahha.

Nice video, short and direct to the point.
haha yes, getting some consistent feedback on that one. I had my editor fix that up last night and all future videos will have the bumper video updated. It's way cleaner now and I think it will be way better. It might not show up for a few vids because we're a bit ahead so I'm getting the editors to go and adjust it for their vids they've already edited and we've approved.
 

Phikey

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Day 6 vid 6

We have a cleaner and less annoying intro edited now and we're editing all videos with this now. It should be in there in all videos in 2-3 days but I don't want to miss my daily posting challenge just for the intro.
All about that consistency!
 
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NateKruse

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Haven't taken the time to go and watch but subbed regardless to support and follow your journey! (Also in the same market so I'm sure I'll find your content helpful + inspiring.
Kudos to you for going after it. Keep it up.

I’m not a YouTube expert but I’ve heard that the YouTube algorithm is primarily based on watch duration and clicks per exposure. So while subscribing to someone to support their channel is well-intentioned, if you are presented with their videos in your feed and you don’t actually click them and watch them for the duration you are actually making the algorithm disfavor their videos.

If I’m completely off on that, please let me know.
 

lowtek

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I’m not a YouTube expert but I’ve heard that the YouTube algorithm is primarily based on watch duration and clicks per exposure. So while subscribing to someone to support their channel is well-intentioned, if you are presented with their videos in your feed and you don’t actually click them and watch them for the duration you are actually making the algorithm disfavor their videos.

If I’m completely off on that, please let me know.

That's correct. The only exception is when the person drops a new video, you'll probably see it in your freed. So if he's executing daily, he'll get a chance every day to show up in subscribers' feed, even if they rarely click.
 

lowtek

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Good luck with this, I look forward to your success. I don't think there's any way I could match the volume of output in my niche, but I definitely need to produce more content.
 
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Andy Black

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Agree with Andy, do what Valier is doing.
Actually, I wasn't saying to not produce daily.

I see what @Phikey is doing, and I'd do the same - create lots of short videos that answer specific questions I see all the time.

I'd also spend a lot of time creating some evergreen high-level videos that may get traction more how Valier has (although unlikely as I don't have those insane skillz).




I also wrote this in Valier's thread:


So here's some of my take-aways from this thread:

There's often an argument of quality vs quantity.

Quality beats (lower quality) quantity, and this thread and MJ's books show that it's not even close.

However, there's threads in here (including mine) where I give myself a challenge to do something once a day for X number of days. I still stand by those challenges for a few reasons:
  1. They get you started.
  2. When it comes to creating talking head videos or recording podcasts, they help you get over yourself.
  3. You learn blazingly fast.
  4. You get into a habit and a rhythm.
  5. You develop and hone an end to end process.
  6. You can learn things when you make "mistakes" and do something different and get a different reaction.

Rapid production can improve quality.

There is a famous parable in the book Art and Fear that goes like this:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.



My personal strategy is to do both.

If I want to learn or get into something new, then I want to do it many times and I want to cycle through the process as rapidly as possible. I set myself a 30 day challenge with a goal to putting things out there daily for public scrutiny, but I'm not too bothered about growing a big following or getting "traction". My goal is to get better at it, and observe the market feedback to see what works or not. My goal is to come up with a process, and to "get" it.

It's a vastly different thing to do something ourselves rather than just read it in a book or follow someone else doing it.

Once I've done something a multiple times (and am even getting bored of it) then I have a much better vision of how it should be done best. Now I stop and think about how to make the best version I can.


Personal example: Creating little Google Ads videos on YouTube.

I created quite a videos on my personal YouTube channel. One suddenly got a lot of thankful feedback. I was surprised. I put ad spend behind it, and it got more views and likes, for tiny spend.

I've retired to my bat cave to mull over how to create the best version of that video I can, so it's super short and to the point (which is a common theme in the feedback I get from my videos and course).

I'll do it again and see if that can generate email signups. If it does then I have the bones of a replicable strategy.

I'll THEN create a brand new channel where I use those learnings from scratch... without the library of a few years worth of random videos.



So yeah, strive for perfection, but consider getting there sooner by getting out there sooner.

Super inspiring thread Valier.
 

Phikey

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  1. They get you started.
  2. When it comes to creating talking head videos or recording podcasts, they help you get over yourself.
  3. You learn blazingly fast.
  4. You get into a habit and a rhythm.
  5. You develop and hone an end to end process.
  6. You can learn things when you make "mistakes" and do something different and get a different reaction.

Yep I agree @Andy Black
I see it like going skiing. You can go once a year for a weekend or you can book a cabin next to the slopes and ski every day for 3 months. The first way (1 weekend per year) is going to result in incredibly slow progress on your skiing skills. You'll get there eventually, but if you can ski every single day for 90 days then you'll quickly learn from your mistakes, improve your technique and be the king of the slopes by the end.

My goal here is constant and quick improvement. I can already see a huge difference in my videos since I started. I've been filming for 3 weeks and have 50 videos now filmed and in the editing stages/SEO stages with my content manager and editors. I present in front of the camera a million times better in the recent videos. I also have spent more time on my lighting, audio and how positive I present in the videos. I know that I should smile now, and that I should pause after filming a sentence so it looks much better for the jump cuts.

Later, I definitely want to explore the high-quality and more entertaining ecommerce videos. Right now I'm learning the ropes and getting some foundation content on the channel. The thing is, when people do enjoy those entertaining videos that I spend a lot of time on, I want them to be able to go to my channel and then have a tonne of other tutorial videos to work through. Ones that provide massive value to their Ecom business and not just entertain them. This way I build also authority as an actual expert which is powerful for my brand.

Video 7:
 

Andy Black

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Do you think the funny faces people currently pull on their thumbnails is a fad? The YouTube coach I had wanted me to do it but I passed. Actually, I often just pick one of the three suggested stills as a thumbnail and end up caught mid sentence anyway.

I wonder if it will get to a point where everyone’s doing it, and what would then stand out? I tried some videos with bigger writing and no face on them.

Are you going to run any ads to get any of the videos “going”?

Also, while I was learning, I wanted to create and publish one video at a time, to catch mistakes earlier, and to adjust quicker.
 
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Phikey

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Do you think the funny faces people currently pull on their thumbnails is a fad? The YouTube coach I had wanted me to do it but I passed. Actually, I often just pick one of the three suggested stills as a thumbnail and end up caught mid sentence anyway.
It's recommended because it improves the CTR of the videos. I know it looks silly, I'm going to be testing out different thumbnails to see what works. I'll start with these ones and then try out other designs and see what sticks. I started with these ones because it was so easy to get started - I spent 10 mins taking 80 photos of myself with different expressions and then paid someone on Upwork to cut them out and make them transparent. Now my content manager can create new thumbnails for each video with the transparent pngs that were created and they're very versatile.
The TubeBuddy software has a feature that does A/B testing of thumbnails automatically and I'll explore this later but for now I'm just trying to get the videos up! We're also going to try taking a frame from the actual video and using this as the thumbnail but also adding text to it. I like this too because it stops having a big wall of crazy faces on my channel and people also want to know that the thumbnail is an actual reflection of the video content (more or less). I think if everyone sees my thumbnails and that it's the same type of thing for every one, it makes them much less enticing to click, as it's hard to judge the contents of the video.

I wonder if it will get to a point where everyone’s doing it, and what would then stand out? I tried some videos with bigger writing and no face on them.
That's a good point. I saw a channel where the thumbnails were just large bold white text on a black background. I think they were testing out new ideas for thumbnails to see what works. You'll never know what works best until you give it a go.

What's worked so far with your videos @Andy Black ? Do you have any data on those with bigger writing/no face?

Are you going to run any ads to get any of the videos “going”?
I'm incredibly hesitant to push ads straight to the videos. I did a lot of research into this and the risk is much higher than the potential reward (in my opinion). What's the risk? Well, Youtube really really values the engagement stats on your videos. Stuff like the average view duration, whether they subscribe after watching, session time, if they click to other videos on your channel afterwards. So if you push paid traffic to your videos then you could potentially tank these stats big time. You'll get a lot of views but if those people don't stick around then Youtube gets data saying that your content isn't valuable.

I've seen this happen with a bunch of channels throughout my research phase.

I saw one channel where the guy had run Facebook Ads directly to a youtube playlist. The playlist had a lot of views (because he pushed so many people to it) and he now has 33,000 subscribers.. but when he posts a new video on his channel (and he posts daily) he gets 40-50 views per video... that's insane. Either all those subscribers are fake or not active, or Youtube just isn't even pushing his videos to his subscribers (let alone recommending them to fresh viewers or showing them in the search results).

What I would prefer to do is to take my best videos and reupload them onto Facebook (so they're not on youtube) and then buy traffic to them there. I would use Facebook almost like a separate youtube - where I'm just adding as much value as possible and not doing any CTAs until someone has consumed a lot of my content and demonstrated interest. I'd keep the viewers on Facebook and not try to pull them off of the platform to go over to Youtube. I think this would be better overall.
If I were to send them to the youtube videos, it would be a bigger workaround like creating a blog post summarising the youtube video, embedding the youtube video on that blog post, and then sending Facebook traffic to that blog post.

Anyway, these are just my own ideas that I'm still researching and working through. I won't know what works until I test it and run some ads. In the meantime I'm just working on pumping out as much great content as I can to build a base so that if someone were to find me on Facebook then they'll have a mountain of great content to consume once they find me.

If anyone has experience with this side of things, please chime in!

I took a break over the weekend from work (Friday to Tuesday) and went on a trip. I still logged in to youtube to publish the videos. It's been great to have my content team still editing and approving videos while I've been gone.

2 new videos:

 

Phikey

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Day 10, video 10 !

Most of my videos so far have been quite technically focused on specific problems. I'm now also working on videos that are broader for Ecommerce that will help a lot of people with problems they are not specifically searching for.
These technical videos will be great for getting traffic to my channel from people searching for specific problems, but to build up my brand and audience I want to provide a lot of value on top of that.

E.g.
  • A full in-depth video on setting up Google Shopping Ads (basically a full course in 1 video right there on Youtube)
  • A full in-depth video on setting up all the ecommerce email marketing flows
  • Videos on mindset, hiring VAs, operations, fulfillment, etc
 

Phikey

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Today I logged into Youtube to post my next video and I got some incredible feedback on my channel in a comment.
33423

I had a feeling this was the case and hearing it from an audience member really drove it home. I've been focusing on technical tutorials that might be great for getting keyword traffic but I'm not really providing value to the complete newbies finding my channel. The video I released today is more directed to the new-to-ecommerce audience, but it's still not for the total beginners. I'm going to now direct more attention to getting these beginner videos up and into a good playlist called "Start Here - Ecommerce Beginners", so that people just starting out have a clear starting point and path to follow.

My response:
33424

Wherever you are Seattle Sideshow, I appreciate it! I've got a lot of technical videos already made and ready to be uploaded, it's time to create some great beginner tutorials ASAP so I can get them up and start helping the new people.

Here's the video for today:
Day 11, video 11!
Subscribers: 70
 
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Phikey

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Day 12, video 12

Consistency is key. Posting every day, taking feedback from my audience, and working to improve what I'm doing. I'm learning a lot and the quality of my videos has increased a lot.

After yesterday's comment from a member, I planned out a heap of beginner video topics and recorded 3 new videos yesterday afternoon. They're all with my editors right now. I'm going to make sure that my channel has some foundational beginner content ready for people when they come in. Very important!

 

Phikey

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NEW WIN!

Ok I logged into my analytics today and saw something really exciting:
One of my first videos is now starting to rank for the targeted keyword.
Here's the video amongst my other videos:
33457

202 views might not look like much but this is just in 1 week and just 1 video but it's standing out from the others posted around the same time. The 1st video, "Ecommerce Google Ads Audit - Shopify Supplement store", has 254 views but I'd say that's because I had it featured on my channel and a lot of people clicked it in this thread to check out what I was doing.

Here are the view analytics for the "How to Fix Disapproved Products" video:
33458

Youtube is now ranking this video in search and it's just been 1 week.
Most of my videos are keyword targeted - trying to solve a specific problem for my audience.

This screenshot here of my tags shows it's doing exactly what I planned!
33456
I'm ranking #1-#3 for my main terms!! I know it's just the first week but if this delivers 100-200 views per week, that's 10,000+ views per year. If I have 50-100+ videos on my channel with highly targeted keywords doing the same thing then that's a crazy amount of reach each month and year. I'm basically building a mini video-army that generates traffic perpetually, for free, for years to come (as long as the videos don't go out of date).

---
EDIT: I also know that this might be Youtube pushing my video out more to see if people like it. The views might keep coming indefinitely or they might be something short-lived. We'll see!
---

This thing is a marathon, not a sprint. Going to keep chipping away at it with the long-term view of 4-6 months of work here.

But another quick win is that I've received 4 leads for my marketing agency. That was the long-term goal but I didn't expect to get any leads or traction for the first 2-4 months so this was really encouraging.

Here's video 13 for day 13, another video audit of a google ads account.

I took a lot of the advice I received yesterday by a helpful commenter and I've been working on some new videos targeted specifically towards beginners in Ecommerce. I've already filmed 3 of them and they're now with my editors and will be pushed to the front of the publishing queue next week.
 

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I'm testing out different lengths. For these ecom marketing videos, a lot of videos by others are getting a lot of traction when they are 1+ hours long. I think if I'm providing value throughout then people will stay on for the long haul - especially if it's a very targeted video towards a specific problem that the person searched for on Youtube rather than just stumbling upon it via the suggestions in the sidebar. I'll see how they go!

This is just what I heard and what I see many of the youtubers I follow do: they have videos with at least 10 min (they usually have a bit over 10 min, when they don't have too much to say about a subject). They say that it helps the algorithms to push your videos up.
 
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Phikey

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Day 14, video 14!
Just hit 81 subs.
43 more than when I started. Really exciting stuff! This thing is a marathon and most people give up in the first 2 weeks. I'll still be here in 3.5 months when I hit 120 and it will all be worth it.

A mega value drop today. I didn't realise how long this video would come out to when I was filming it. 26 minutes of talking about Google Shopping. I think this one could go either way. Could flop or could go well.

When I'm looking at the quality of the videos I'm filming now (which are weeks ahead in the queue) they're so much better than these videos that I started off with. I present way better, way more positive, confident and engaging in front of the camera. My script writing is 10 times better. I cut out all the fluff. Yesterday I was reviewing a new video and I found myself glued in and forgot I was meant to be reviewing the final version. I think that was a good sign.
 

Phikey

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Day 15, video 15.

Getting about 4-5 new subscribers per day at this point.
Looking at my analytics I'm getting a greater amount of views and watch time every single day. The first videos I uploaded are still getting views (slowly) but it's this little army of videos that will keep getting exposure now!
Really exciting to see it all on the small scale. Can't wait to see how it's going in 2-3 months after consistent work.

 

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Hey man, first of all respect for the grind so far! You have a solid streak going on, keep it up!

Secondly, I have a few pointers if you don't mind (I’ve spent the last 1.5 years editing videos for multiple channels, all of them 500K+ subs)

People have praised the editing quality here, I have to disagree. I think it’s alright at best, and absolutely needs improvement if you want people to stick around.

So here are a few things that I think are hurting you big time:
  • The music is very loud. It’s distracting. You guys need to dial it waaay down. It’s an informational video, not a dance party. Especially when you switch to sharing your screen and your voice goes even quieter, the music overpowers everything and it’s very hard to concentrate on the info. Background music should only be as loud as to break the awkwardness of silence and/or overpower background noise. (You could also switch up the genre of music and have something more neutral or fitting to the topic.)
  • Same for the sound fx. Too loud. It should be more subtle.
  • Speaking of sound fx, too much. Adding a whip whoosh sound to every single cut not only accentuates the cuts, but it gets annoying real fast. Especially when that same whip whoosh is added to every graphic element too. Too freaking much. It’s annoying, distracting, and quite honestly screams “cheap overseas editors.”
  • I generally think you guys should keep everything more simple. Sound fx for the graphics is fine but totally not necessary. Even the zoom in-zoom out transitions (which intend to hide the cuts by looking like camera switches) are unnecessary and can get annoying if done too much. There’s nothing wrong with jump cuts, this is youtube, not some corporate documentary.
  • Now, I didn’t watch all your vids, but in the last one “How to get a Custom Domain for Ecommerce store” at 0:50 there are 2 takes left in (and both of them are illustrated with graphics lol) which is something to take up with your editor. I’m pretty sure it’s a language thing, they probably didn’t realize that it was the same thing twice, but in any case they should pay more attention to stuff like that.
  • Also, some of the effects are just unnecessary and distracting. Like that matrix number stuff at the IP address line at 1:00. I see the intent, it could be a fun gag, but without the sound and it should end at the end of the sentence, no need to let it run for another.
So, bottom line is: you get what you pay for when hiring cheap editors lol. It’s fine though, these should be easy fixes and actually requires less work from them. To recap here's what I'd have them do:
  • No sound fx, unless absolutely necessary for some gag (like the explosion) or an actual scene transition (like talking head to screen sharing) and never louder than your voice.
  • Jump cuts instead of zoom cuts.
  • Bring down the music by like 20db at least and maybe find something less dancy and more chill. You can really set the atmosphere with music (I mean have you seen @Valier's vids?!) so why EDM and not jazz or hiphop or classical?
And finally (this is where my technical expertise ends and I just give my opinion) I honestly think your thumbnails could be cleaner too.

They are high quality, but not very interesting and often very cluttered. They don't jump out on youtube. They look like generic guru thumbnails and most of them have so much text that I don't even want to start reading it. So personally when I see them at first glance here's what I think: "some ecom guy talking about setting up some complicated google whatever thingy" and I bet you that's most people's thinking too.

By far the cleanest looking one is the How to Build a Shopify Brand one. That's a banger, dude. I think you should strive for more of that clarity. Basically as little text as you can get a way with, and make sure people can read it and understand it in an instant.

Also, I think you could even drop the funny faces, because you're not a reaction channel and nobody knows who you are, so your face doesn't really add anything. I understand that this is a daily challenge and time is limited, however I'd encourage you to experiment with more creative stuff. Put yourself in the mindset of someone looking for your videos. What would grab their attention? A pile of money? A fancy car? An analytics graph? Some big bold words on a solid background? You could even do a search in your niche, take a screenshot of the top results and photoshop your thumbnail in there, see if it stands out or not. (Mr Beast does this all the time and he's doing all right.)

Anyways, I'll stop there, I feel like I'm just rambling now. I hope this helps and sorry if I come across as kind of a d*ck - I can get emotional about bad editing lol.

Best of luck dude, keep up the grind! I'll be watching! ;)
 
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Phikey

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Hey man, first of all respect for the grind so far! You have a solid streak going on, keep it up!

Secondly, I have a few pointers if you don't mind (I’ve spent the last 1.5 years editing videos for multiple channels, all of them 500K+ subs)

People have praised the editing quality here, I have to disagree. I think it’s alright at best, and absolutely needs improvement if you want people to stick around.

So here are a few things that I think are hurting you big time:
  • The music is very loud. It’s distracting. You guys need to dial it waaay down. It’s an informational video, not a dance party. Especially when you switch to sharing your screen and your voice goes even quieter, the music overpowers everything and it’s very hard to concentrate on the info. Background music should only be as loud as to break the awkwardness of silence and/or overpower background noise. (You could also switch up the genre of music and have something more neutral or fitting to the topic.)
  • Same for the sound fx. Too loud. It should be more subtle.
  • Speaking of sound fx, too much. Adding a whip whoosh sound to every single cut not only accentuates the cuts, but it gets annoying real fast. Especially when that same whip whoosh is added to every graphic element too. Too freaking much. It’s annoying, distracting, and quite honestly screams “cheap overseas editors.”
  • I generally think you guys should keep everything more simple. Sound fx for the graphics is fine but totally not necessary. Even the zoom in-zoom out transitions (which intend to hide the cuts by looking like camera switches) are unnecessary and can get annoying if done too much. There’s nothing wrong with jump cuts, this is youtube, not some corporate documentary.
  • Now, I didn’t watch all your vids, but in the last one “How to get a Custom Domain for Ecommerce store” at 0:50 there are 2 takes left in (and both of them are illustrated with graphics lol) which is something to take up with your editor. I’m pretty sure it’s a language thing, they probably didn’t realize that it was the same thing twice, but in any case they should pay more attention to stuff like that.
  • Also, some of the effects are just unnecessary and distracting. Like that matrix number stuff at the IP address line at 1:00. I see the intent, it could be a fun gag, but without the sound and it should end at the end of the sentence, no need to let it run for another.
So, bottom line is: you get what you pay for when hiring cheap editors lol. It’s fine though, these should be easy fixes and actually requires less work from them. To recap here's what I'd have them do:
  • No sound fx, unless absolutely necessary for some gag (like the explosion) or an actual scene transition (like talking head to screen sharing) and never louder than your voice.
  • Jump cuts instead of zoom cuts.
  • Bring down the music by like 20db at least and maybe find something less dancy and more chill. You can really set the atmosphere with music (I mean have you seen @Valier's vids?!) so why EDM and not jazz or hiphop or classical?
And finally (this is where my technical expertise ends and I just give my opinion) I honestly think your thumbnails could be cleaner too.

They are high quality, but not very interesting and often very cluttered. They don't jump out on youtube. They look like generic guru thumbnails and most of them have so much text that I don't even want to start reading it. So personally when I see them at first glance here's what I think: "some ecom guy talking about setting up some complicated google whatever thingy" and I bet you that's most people's thinking too.

By far the cleanest looking one is the How to Build a Shopify Brand one. That's a banger, dude. I think you should strive for more of that clarity. Basically as little text as you can get a way with, and make sure people can read it and understand it in an instant.

Also, I think you could even drop the funny faces, because you're not a reaction channel and nobody knows who you are, so your face doesn't really add anything. I understand that this is a daily challenge and time is limited, however I'd encourage you to experiment with more creative stuff. Put yourself in the mindset of someone looking for your videos. What would grab their attention? A pile of money? A fancy car? An analytics graph? Some big bold words on a solid background? You could even do a search in your niche, take a screenshot of the top results and photoshop your thumbnail in there, see if it stands out or not. (Mr Beast does this all the time and he's doing all right.)

Anyways, I'll stop there, I feel like I'm just rambling now. I hope this helps and sorry if I come across as kind of a d*ck - I can get emotional about bad editing lol.

Best of luck dude, keep up the grind! I'll be watching! ;)
Man, this is incredible feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

You've confirmed a lot of things on my mind the past week or so.

I think with the novelty editing I've lost sight of how I can really help people. I'm making tutorials and educational videos - so getting the information across is the most important thing and what I should focus on. The production should be great but shouldn't try to take center stage or distract people from learning.

Here's what I'm going to work on:
  • Only have jump cuts (no zoom cuts)
  • Keep sound fx really subtle - not for every animation/transition or thing that happens. Only have it rarely when it actually adds to the video
  • Reduce the music volume so it just fills in the silences and covers background noise
  • Experiment with other music types - I agree too, I'd love to have some jazz in there. Awesome idea
  • Thumbnails - I've been talking about this with my content manager too. You confirmed just what I was thinking and we'll work on these
If you have any other feedback then please let me know, thanks for following along and this sort of advice is worth its weight in gold.

Day 16 today and a new video that targets a really big pain point for ecommerce: getting the product feed set up in merchant center so people can run Google Shopping ads:

The thumbnail for this one is just like the ones we've been doing because we've had it queued up for a while now. We're going to go through the videos now and improve the thumbnails for all the past and future videos.

We're now at 93 subs - so we grew 8 overnight. Really awesome to see this grow and the more we can perfect the style of our videos the better our content is going to be from here on out!
 

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Happy to help, dude!

I really think you have a lot of things going for you - you're consistent, charismatic, you speak very clearly, and you seem to know a lot - I really don't see why you couldn't grow this channel past 100k subs at least.

Curious to see where you take this in the next week or so with the changes. I'll keep an eye on you and let you know if anything else jumps out.

May the algorithm be with you!
 

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Day 17 vid 17, a simple tutorial video very targeted towards a fantastic keyword.

Subs: 96!

By the end of this week I'll have filmed 73 videos while only 20 will have been published on my channel. I'm way ahead of schedule and put in a lot of time at the start so I can now work on the other marketing systems around my content. We'll now go through and fix up all these thumbnails, build the website so it's another incredible resource for Ecommerce learners.
Even though I've just been publishing 1 video per day, I've been scripting and filming about 20 videos per week consistently over the past 4 weeks. This has been possible because I'm big on systems and have built a really nice little factory for making these videos. It's also helped me to quickly become comfortable writing content and being in front of the camera. My first video was so bad I was embarrassed to post it (still set to private on my channel). I am so boring that I put myself to sleep if I watch that video now. Even though it probably has some of my best knowledge content because it goes deep into optimizing google shopping campaigns on an incredibly high level.
I have this video set to be rescripted/filmed so it's engaging and entertaining too. This will come soon.

After this week I want to stop and focus on just 7 videos scripted/filmed per week but increase the quality of those videos, big time. I have been targeting longer-tail keywords in the Youtube search that will be easier to rank for. I want to now go after the big mumma keywords like "Google Shopping", "Shopify' and other strong Ecom related keywords that have the potential to generated 100k+ views on a video if you create incredibly helpful content, rank well and play into the Youtube algorithm.

It's a marathon race here and I've come out the gate strong and learned a lot already. I'm honestly very happy with the results so far, 58 subs since starting. It's going to be slow goings at the start and I'm really excited to see how it goes after the 120 days.
 
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What's worked so far with your videos @Andy Black ? Do you have any data on those with bigger writing/no face?
I just use YouTube to host videos I embed in posts in the forum. I mostly don't even write a description.

I'm incredibly hesitant to push ads straight to the videos. I did a lot of research into this and the risk is much higher than the potential reward (in my opinion). What's the risk? Well, Youtube really really values the engagement stats on your videos. Stuff like the average view duration, whether they subscribe after watching, session time, if they click to other videos on your channel afterwards. So if you push paid traffic to your videos then you could potentially tank these stats big time. You'll get a lot of views but if those people don't stick around then Youtube gets data saying that your content isn't valuable.

I'd like to run ads to videos I post in my Andy Black channel. I'd figure out where people drop off and keep amending the video till I've dialled it in, then I'd upload the optimised video it to a completely separate channel. I'm not trying to rank for anything on the Andy Black channel.
 

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I'd like to run ads to videos I post in my Andy Black channel. I'd figure out where people drop off and keep amending the video till I've dialled it in, then I'd upload the optimised video it to a completely separate channel. I'm not trying to rank for anything on the Andy Black channel.
That's a good idea for testing out the drop-off in engagement on a separate channel/video so you don't tank the original. I want to explore youtube ads later - probably after 30 days so that I can get a good starting benchmark for the engagement stats on my videos so I know if I'm tanking them with ads. It's a tough call because I haven't found anyone that's done this well but maybe I can crack it with some testing.

Hit a big milestone today. 100 subscribers!
33578

I honestly thought it would take longer than this with my style of content. I'm getting good engagement and people asking questions on my videos which is really awesome.
I've also had people messaging me on facebook, twitter and here on the FLF with questions which has been great to hear what people need help with. It also provides some new video ideas too.

Today is day 18.

We've also started trying out some new thumbnail designs
Here's the first 2 from the designer:
33579

33580

I think we need to go even further and reduce the text on these because they're very wordy and just keep things really basic.
 

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Did you say you'd got some clients already out of doing this?
 
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I put a play-now button in some of my thumbnails.

Here's a mess about channel I created. I'll go back to adding videos to that sometime:

33582
 

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Phikey

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Did you say you'd got some clients already out of doing this?
I’ve had 4 leads so far but they’re either not qualified, not ready or not a good fit. It’s still early days but the fact that people are already reaching out to me when I’m barely starting is a really good sign that I’m building trust and authority in my space.

Eventually the work I’m doing will hopefully build up so much content and reach that I’m building trust with thousands of people and so I can easily filter and choose the best clients I’d like to work with. Ones that I enjoy working with, that fit my buyer personas, and I can get the best results for.
 

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I put a play-now button in some of my thumbnails.

Here's a mess about channel I created. I'll go back to adding videos to that sometime:

View attachment 33582
Awesome content @Andy Black . I think the subtitles on the screen work well and it’s nicely edited. You’ve already got a good amount of starting views already. Are you going to keep going with this one?

Btw, I’ve been learning a lot about self-liquidating offers to grow my email list recently and that’s something I want to tackle in the coming weeks.
 
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Awesome content @Andy Black . I think the subtitles on the screen work well and it’s nicely edited. You’ve already got a good amount of starting views already. Are you going to keep going with this one?

Btw, I’ve been learning a lot about self-liquidating offers to grow my email list recently and that’s something I want to tackle in the coming weeks.
I'll come back to that channel when I start those campaigns again. I paused the YouTube campaigns because I was getting more email signups from paid search campaigns, and then I paused the paid search campaigns when the MailCheat(Chimp) account got banned.

The write up is somewhere in here:
 

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I like this channel. I like how the funny faces look like stills from the video (kinda how a lot of mine are because I rarely bother creating thumbnails):



Ha.... you've made me go and look at what my videos look like on my Andy Black channel. What a mish-mash.

33583



How's this for video editing!

View: https://youtu.be/vC__I1ZjqdM
 

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