The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Building A Successful YouTube Channel - The Journey

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

CasualFriday

New Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
67%
Apr 8, 2021
9
6
How I Got Here
Stumbled upon this forum, dont really remember how I found it to be honest, lurked around quite a while. Found the forum to have a great sense of community, overall a positive feel but a place that also provides feedback, eventually found my way to ‘The Millionaire Fastlane ’. I can’t lie, I was skeptical at first just due to the sheer amount of cr*p floating around nowadays that basically ends up being 200 pages of “just believe in yourself and get rich!”. After doing some research into the book I found that it wasn’t that and decided to give it a read. The ideas resonated with me, it wasn't offering some magic “secret” it just gave a different perspective, which realistically provides much more value. And after some deliberation and planning I decided to make an account, officially join the community and dive in. That’s a little bit about how I got here, now onto the purpose of this thread.


What I’m Doing
I’ve decided on starting a YouTube channel as I feel it can be grown to fall inline with the CENTS Commandments.


CONTROL can be gained through brand partnerships, affiliate links and future potential businesses that leverage the audience/attention garnered.

The barrier to ENTRY is technically low, but based on the research I've been doing many of the people attempting to start YouTube channels are producing very low quality content. There is no specialty in production value or knowledge and therefore are providing very little value to their viewers. In this perspective I feel as though the barrier’s to entry are not necessarily ‘high’ but higher than initially expected due to the requirement of skill and expertise to actually create videos that could compete with larger channel’s content. Because realistically, the people who have very poor video & audio quality, dont follow any sort of script or outline, say ‘ummm’ or ‘uhhh’ for every other word and put little to no time into editing aren’t even in the running for creating a successful channel or garnering user’s attention.

You can fulfill NEEDS by creating content that people are searching for especially if you are answering questions or providing insight to new topics.

And lastly this very much has the potential to detach earnings from TIME. While it does require an initial unpaid time investment (as just about everything other than most jobs do), with ad sense, affiliate links and other opportunities that may be pursued, time could easily be removed from the function of earnings. This is also supported by the fact that an editor can be hired in the future.


Purpose of This Thread

So the idea here is to track my progress, share what works, what doesn’t and what I’m learning as I go. I’ve played around with the idea of starting a YouTube channel for a while now and decided that this would be a good time to start (now is always better than later).

The overarching goal of this is to get this channel to a point where my earnings are not restrained by time, and I plan to reinvest the time saved into other ventures in the future that replicate this framework. Essentially the goal is to get this channel to a point where it can cover my personal living expenses and provide me with enough income to invest into a future venture which has higher barriers to entry, provides a greater earnings opportunity and even more time; although that is much further down the line.


My Channel’s Value Proposition

Perspective
My channel will be focused on creating business-related videos but with a slight twist, I want to stay away from simply explaining how something works in it most basic form but instead give it perspective. For example my first video pertains to NFTs, but while there are many videos posted by larger channels simply explaining what NFTs are/How they work, I decided to make a video about how the NFT market compares with the traditional art market. The video also explains what NFTs are, but provides more context as to what effect they might have/how they may fit into the current climate of the art space. This brings me to my next point. Relevance.

Relevance
Whenever possible I plan to make videos that pertain to current trends/events, such as my first video coinciding with the timing of NFTs making headlines. This not only provides value through providing insight into newly developing situations, but also gives my channel a better chance to grow through ‘news-jacking’. Essentially this is just putting yourself (or your content) where people will be going. Whenever there are trends or news events such as this, the amount of people searching for the topic on google/YouTube increases, this provides an opportunity to put your content where you know there will be a large influx of people and can help you compete with larger more established channels.

Entertainment
I want my videos to be as entertaining as they are informative. There have been many times where I am looking for educational content on YouTube and find what I am looking for but ultimately click off of the video because of how dry the presentation of it is. With this ive decided to use movie clips and editing techniques to make my videos more entertaining. Movie clips are used to support the topic of the video and other visuals will mainly be used to simplify and highlight certain aspects.


Metrics to Focus On

Through the research I’ve done, I have found that the 2 most important metrics are click through rate (CTR) and average view duration. Basically, how many people are clicking on your video after seeing your thumbnail and title and once they have done that, how much of the video are they watching.

Looking at it from YouTube’s perspective, it makes sense that these are the metrics they deem to be the most important. Ideally they want people to find video’s that appeal to them based on the title/thumbnail and once they do that they want them to watch it for as long as possible so that they can show them more ads.

I have heard that longer videos are favoured by the algorithm (< 8 minutes) due to the fact they can include mid-roll ads as opposed to just pre and post ads. Although I haven’t confirmed this, it would make sense and I plan to make videos longer than 8 minutes regardless, given my topics and the opportunity to include mid-roll ads which have shown to greatly increase overall income from ad sense vs only having pre and post roll ads.

Given these key metrics I plan on putting a lot of focus into the thumbnail/title, YouTube is all about judging books by covers (or thumbnails rather). I believe using colours that stand out against YouTube’s themes and other palettes typically seen on the platform will allow my videos to stand out. And overall the quality of the video, because a thumbnail can be perfect, but if the content isn’t worth watching then nobody is going to stick around for very long. With this I will be making videos that use catchy music, explain more complex ideas in simple terms and use short clips to maintain attention span.

The Plan

I have committed to posting 1 video every 2 weeks. I initially planned on posting 1 video every week, but there are multiple reasons as to why I ultimately decided on a bi-weekly posting schedule.

1. Quality, I would rather put out 1 great video than 2 average videos. Not only is this a personal preference of quality over quantity, I believe it will be beneficial in the channel’s growth. If each piece of content that you put out is great then it increases the likelihood of someone finding it, enjoying it/ find value in it and subscribe and watch more of your content. Inversely, if the first time someone happens to click on one of your “average” videos, you may have just lost that person and not only will they not be exposed to some of the “better” content in your library but they probably won’t be interested in any of your content moving forward.
2. Scarcity, I have found many people saying its better to post as much as possible on YouTube but im taking a different approach. Personally I find that I am more inclined to watch a video from a creator that posts less frequently, it feels more valuable as there is a lower supply of content. Inversely, for the creators I do follow that post daily, if I miss their posts for a few days it doesn’t feel like a loss as I know there will be a new video tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.
3. Time, I believe I can get the entire video production process down to 1 week which will then provide me with more free time to pursue other ventures or spend it any way I may wish. Obviously this only applies once the channel starts generating revenue, but I believe that the benefit of scarcity as listed in the second points aids in getting it there more efficiently.

So Where Am I So Far?

I created my channel and posted my first video 3 days ago which can be found here:


So far the video stands at 103 views, 11 likes and has gained me 6 subscribers.

I shared the video amongst a couple friends and shared it to the NFT subreddit. This brought in a few views but not many, the reddit post itself didn’t do particularly well. A few hours after posting it though I began to see an increase in views, nothing crazy but it was increasing by a few views every 15 minutes or so for a few hours. I initially assumed that my reddit post was gaining some traction although when I checked it turns out that someone who had seen my original reddit post decided to share the video to a bunch of other subreddits pertaining to NFTs and digital art, claiming that it was the best videos explaining the topic that they have yet to see. It was nice to see that people were finding the video entertaining enough to watch through and informative enough to share. Although I enjoyed the process of producing the video it did take a lot of work, so the positive feedback was appreciated.

I am looking into more ways to market my videos without being spammy or annoying, the idea is to get the videos infant of people who would be interested in the video. There’s no point in having 1,000,000 people click on your video only to click off after the first 10 seconds. In YouTube’s eyes and as far as channel growth/ video progression goes, this would be a dud.

I’ve considered making shorter versions of my videos to post on Tik Tok, almost to act as a hook, but upon further investigation there seems to be 2 problems with this.

1. The conversion rate is fairly poor. One example was a Tik Tok that received 10,000,000 views and ended with “link in bio for part 2” with a link to the user’s YouTube channel on their profile. The YouTube video received 10,000 views compared with the 10,000,000 views the original Tik Tok received.
2. Apparently Tik Tok doesn’t seem to keen on promoting videos that may lead users away from their platforms. Users have reported having their videos taken down or becoming “shadow banned” for including YouTube, instagram, link in bio, or other words/phrases both written and audible in their videos.

Therefore ultimately, it doesn’t appear as though Tik Tok is worth the time.

I plan on interacting in the comments section of creator’s who’s viewers may also be interested in my content. I do not plan on posting anything spammy such as ‘just posted my video” or “check out my channel” as I don't believe this will do any good, and honestly it’s just annoying. But I think by having genuine interactions on the platform it will increase the chances of people finding your channel and watching your videos


That’s All For Now


Well that’s all for now. I will be making follow-up posts after each video I post, or potentially if anything remarkable happens.

I’d be happy to field any questions and there seems to be a good amount of solid feedback provided here so I welcome any of that as well.

And if you’ve made it this far, thanks for tuning in!
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Crawls2

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
529%
May 30, 2019
7
37
Sounds like you have a plan! One recommendation, look into Instagram Reels to posting and IGTV. Instagram is trying to compete heavily with TikTok and their boosting the crop out of Reels posts. That and there is actually money to be made on a decent sized Instagram account.

Be sure to stick with it for a while, YouTube is a hard grind in the beginning.

Best of luck!
 

CasualFriday

New Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
67%
Apr 8, 2021
9
6
Sounds like you have a plan! One recommendation, look into Instagram Reels to posting and IGTV. Instagram is trying to compete heavily with TikTok and their boosting the crop out of Reels posts. That and there is actually money to be made on a decent sized Instagram account.

Be sure to stick with it for a while, YouTube is a hard grind in the beginning.

Best of luck!
Thanks, that's actually a great point and I completely agree that an instagram account with a strong following is way more valuable than a tik-tok account of the same nature. There definitely seems to be potential for tik-tok especially with the growth of it's user base but its certainly a different use-case/opportunity than instagram.

And honestly I kind of caught myself before posting my first video, I was pretty excited to do so and then prepared myself for the fact that this video I had put so much work to probably wont have any immediate results. So luckily my expectations were settled prior to posting, but yes I know its the long game and do plan on sticking with it.
 

EVMaso

Calm Seas
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
283%
Apr 28, 2019
189
534
Vancouver, Canada
Your vid is great! If you can pump these out bi-weekly, you'll be golden. I've seen "long form" channels that deep dive into a singular topic like your blow up in less than a year. Look no further than James Jani from this forum, but there are several others too, some even of comparatively lesser quality:


I wouldn't bother with trying to promote outside of YouTube, maybe some careful posts on Reddit, and sharing in Facebook to your circle or some groups you're in, but mostly you're just going to have to wait until the algorithm kicks in. But again if you can keep making vids like this initial one, it won't be long.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

CasualFriday

New Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
67%
Apr 8, 2021
9
6
Your vid is great! If you can pump these out bi-weekly, you'll be golden. I've seen "long form" channels that deep dive into a singular topic like your blow up in less than a year. Look no further than James Jani from this forum, but there are several others too, some even of comparatively lesser quality:


I wouldn't bother with trying to promote outside of YouTube, maybe some careful posts on Reddit, and sharing in Facebook to your circle or some groups you're in, but mostly you're just going to have to wait until the algorithm kicks in. But again if you can keep making vids like this initial one, it won't be long.
Hey thank you for feedback! Yes, I've found reddit to be a fairly fickle beast; somewhat understandably so. There are some subreddits you can stumble upon where just about every post is "check out this thing I did" whether it's a business, video or product and the whole sub pretty much just becomes a cork board for self promotion. Anytime I do post on reddit though I plan on doing so in a way that can actually add value or add to a conversation.

But of course unless you have a pre-built following I think the best you can do it put out quality content, share it with people who would be genuinely interested in it and hope the algorithm takes notice and favours your video.
 

EVMaso

Calm Seas
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
283%
Apr 28, 2019
189
534
Vancouver, Canada
Hey thank you for feedback! Yes, I've found reddit to be a fairly fickle beast; somewhat understandably so. There are some subreddits you can stumble upon where just about every post is "check out this thing I did" whether it's a business, video or product and the whole sub pretty much just becomes a cork board for self promotion. Anytime I do post on reddit though I plan on doing so in a way that can actually add value or add to a conversation.

But of course unless you have a pre-built following I think the best you can do it put out quality content, share it with people who would be genuinely interested in it and hope the algorithm takes notice and favours your video.
Just remember it can take months.

Example: The "Worth the Hype" channel I linked to above.

He posted 5 videos over a span of 5 months with no major views before gaining any traction, and then he blew up.

Also his videos are more budget than yours, and he's doing well. Keep at it!
 

Attachments

  • wth.jpg
    wth.jpg
    74.8 KB · Views: 6

CasualFriday

New Contributor
Read Fastlane!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
67%
Apr 8, 2021
9
6
Just remember it can take months.

Example: The "Worth the Hype" channel I linked to above.

He posted 5 videos over a span of 5 months with no major views before gaining any traction, and then he blew up.

Also his videos are more budget than yours, and he's doing well. Keep at it!
I've committed to at least trying it out for 1 year (26 videos) and if there is still no traction at that point, I may have to reevaluate or pivot. Hopefully in this time I can become monetized and realize some results/growth indicative of potential.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

Latest Posts

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top