Creating a Thriving Personal Brand w/ YouTube - A Journal & A Personal Guide.

[Valier]

Let's get this started with a basic introduction.

Hi, I'm James. 19 y/o from the UK, chose not to go university since there wasn't any subject I wanted to study that would suit my direction in life. The big goal is to be semi-retired by 30, but that's okay if I don't get there, I'm focusing on the process and journey above all else.

I recently started up my new business which if you are a FLF INSIDERS, you can find my thread here:

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/progress-starting-an-online-finnacial-learning-platform.91864/

So then, what's this about a personal brand & a YouTube channel?
I came to a realisation that I wish I had come to a few years back: a personal brand is an incredibly powerful thing. Especially in business, and especially if you are trying to go fastlane.

With just 100 loyal fans you can do so much to promote your other side hustles, and/or monetise that audience.

This realisation drove me to conclude that I wanted to start building up my own personal brand - right now, with no hesitation, and do my absolute best to get this thing up and running because let's all be clear here: the odds are not in my favour. There are so many channels out there, that it's damn near impossible to be seen amongst the crowd...
or is it?

A Guide as well as Documentation
The purpose of this thread is to not only document my process and journey, but also provide a guide for what is working/isn't working and how you can learn from whatever mistakes I make.

Provide value above all else, as always.

Keeping it Honest and Real
Like in my INSIDERS thread, I want to be entirely transparent with everyone and keep it as real & as honest as I can.

If one day I decide to just quit the whole thing I will document it on here. I'm in this till I either succeed, pivot, or quit, and you'll have a clear picture on where this process will take me, and where I may have gone wrong/gone right.

What's Been Done So Far...
I already have my channel up and running, and as a matter of fact, you can check out my first video here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg6CGNoynDI


How the First Video Went.
Keeping up with the theme of transparency: I was very nervous when recording and releasing this video.

I've done a lot of acting throughout my childhood - teenage years, and making this video was more nerve wrecking to me than any audition that I've done in the past. But this is the first barrier that people will face if you're trying to make it on this platform: THE FEAR OF POSTING YOUR FIRST VIDEO.

Once I posted that video, I felt a slight sense of relief. I sent a few messages out to some close friends who I had told I was starting this channel up, and they went on to watch it. And a few of them shared the video on their Instagram stories.

Let me be clear here: I was too nervous to post this video on my social media. That's why I just DM'd some friends, in the hopes that I can land maybe 80 views on the video to get me started off.

But once some of these friends posted it to their story something amazing happened: other people started sharing it on their story. Some of these people were friends, but there were also some that I hadn't spoken to or seen in a while that shared it. I even had some really kind messages about how they found the video really helpful and well done.

I really didn't think it was a great video at first. I thought it was bad, and kinda boring because the nerves really stopped me from bringing the energy to the screen that I usually could do with acting. My only intention was to post the first video no matter how nervous I felt about it.

After I felt that positive feedback, I finally made the leap and posted it to my own socials. In total the video sits at around 260 views, 32 likes, and 8 comments. I was more than impressed by that as a debut video - I genuinely didn't think it would surpass 100. I earned about 35 subscribers in total from that video, and a few new followers on my Instagram.

The Goals.
My goal isn't really to be 'internet famous' or anything like that. It's simply to get a personal brand started up, have my name put out there, share some genuine advice from someone who is passionate about entrepreneurship, and self development (no 'woo-woo' selling my $1500+ course shit), and see where it goes.

If you're looking for some specific targeted goals, here's my main objective for the year:
Reach 1,000 subscribers by 2021.

That's all. For now. The reason why I say this is that the subscriber count is really just a vanity metric. I'm more interested in improving things like watch time, and Click-Through-Rate (CTR) - y'know, the metrics that actually count. But until I have some data from my own videos to work off, I can't set those targets as of right now.

My aim is to post once a week. Although it may be once every two weeks every so often. Truth is, I'm balancing three things here: the channel is one thing, the full time job is another, and my other side hustle which I've been working super hard on is the third. Ideally, the latter two are working hand-in-hand, but that doesn't deviate from the fact that my full time job as an estate agent has some ungodly hours that can really eat into free time.

But again, all will be documented here.

Conclusion
That's about it for now.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me them.

And most importantly: ALL feedback is appreciated, the good, the bad, the ugly. All of it.

Have a wonderful weekend folks

 

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[Valier]

Update 9. Reflection, & My Complete Story [this one is going to be long...]

Well well well, look what came in the post today:
​

Since I'm almost finished with everything for this next video, and it's been a fairly good day, I figured there's nothing better to do than to tune in to my favourite community, and give you guys another update on things, and reflect on all that's happened.

But I also realise I haven't given you guys a whole lot of context behind everything that I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and what led me to here in the first place.

This one is going to be a long, and I apologise if it feels like I'm rambling, but here it is:

***

I mean it when I say this: without MJ's works, I doubt I would be here right now.


"I WANT TO BE THE WORLD'S BEST ACTOR"​

I dreamed of being an actor. I don't know where this dream initially started out - I think it might have to do with my Mum taking me to theatre classes on a Saturday when I was young to keep me busy with something.

I also loved writing - I can vividly recall my Mum getting me blank notebooks when I was younger (before I even knew how to write properly) and I would just start scribbling lines, imagining what I would be writing about. When we got a computer for the family, I did the same thing on Word - just smashing away at the keyboard, not writing actual coherent sentences, just imagining the story that I was writing.

But by the time I was 11/12, my dreams of being an actor went to the forefront of my mind - I think the catalyst for this was being complimented on my acting ability in drama class, and constant comments like "you should be an actor" that convinced me that I really should be an actor, and that it shouldn't just be a dream.

By the time I was 15, I was taking it far more seriously. I started considering what Drama schools I would audition for, I started learning more about how the industry works, etc etc.

When I was 17 I failed that year to get into drama school, forcing me to take a "gap year". I knew that it was a tough game - the UK has some of the best drama schools in the world, and those were the ones I was going for, it wasn't going to be easy. Thankfully, I was accepted into a Gap Year Diploma course at a reputable Drama School (this would be a one year course designed to help me get into drama school, whilst teaching me more about the craft).

GOING BROKE IN PORTUGAL​

That summer holiday (just before starting the course) I went on a trip with some friends to Portugal. I had around £400 cash, and £600 in my bank account. I came back to the UK with 0 cash, and 15p in my bank account, as well as a broken phone.

I needed money.

And just like that, a desire had sparked that I hadn't really thought about before: a desire to make money. When you want to be an actor, I guess you just accept you'll be broke, until you make it. But now I had lost all my savings in one holiday, and something needed to change.

I started searching online for help, came across people like Gary V who convinced me to sell/flip items on ebay. I first started by selling items in my own room: video games, consoles, etc etc. Then once that was done, I went down to a car boot sale (garage sales of the UK) with a friend and went about looking for items that I could flip for a good profit. After 2-3 months of this, I had about £1000 in my bank account. And suddenly I felt this weird feeling: something like... freedom?

THE FIRST TASTE OF MONEY​

I didn't have to ask my parents for travel money, I didn't have to ask them to buy me clothing items, or any item for that matter. I felt independent. I was hooked to this feeling.

As I started my Drama course and began progressing with it, I grew more and more interest in money, personal finance, and entrepreneurship. Then two things happened: I started listening to what I consider to be bad advice from "fake guru's" who would bombard my YouTube recommendations with dreams of financial freedom, working on the beach, being my own boss, etc etc. I started hating the concept of having a job.

"Make your money work for you" I would often regurgitate, as Kiyoaski had told me. And I continued plowing through the typical personal finance books constantly reccomended to me.

Suddenly the desire to have money turned into desperation. My parents came to this country to give me huge opportunities, I needed to make money to give back to them all that they had given me.

LOSING MY PASSION​

Then the second thing struck: I started to lose my passion for acting. Maybe it was the constant grind of non-stop rehearsing, or maybe the final straw was when I got into the final round of auditions for the Drama School I had so despereately wanted to get into, only to be told "thank you, that's all for now" after I was only JUST beginning to get into the scene for my monologues that I had to perform. Maybe it was realising that I only got into this industry from a childhood dream, and validation from when I was a young teen. That I was only doing this for the fame, and egotistical reasons...

Either way, a combination of these two things led me to desperately seeking the help from these "guru's" online. I couldn't afford their courses, so I pirated them, and it led me to wanting to create a Social Media Marketing Agency.

I called up a good friend of mine asking if he wanted to start this "venture" with me together, and he agreed. We had dreams of making so much money from it. "It'll be easy" is what I had told myself, "just 10 clients paying us £1,000 a month means a six-figure salary".

THE BOOK(s) THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING​

Then I picked up a book that changed everything for me.

This "Millionaire Fastlane " book had been recommended a few times now, and although I didn't like the title and thought it sounded super cheesy and scammy, I decided to make the purchase.

I can still vividly recall being sat on a train where I was about to go and get my acting headshots done, and opening the first page and reading, then continuing to read, then realising that I had stumbled upon a gem.

I started realising the faults in my thinking, and how my mindset surrounding money was so foolishly deluded. And I also felt angry: angry at all the other personal finance books that never talked about something so simple as solving problems in a market, or that you are paid in proportion to your perceived value - why didn't these "business gurus" tell me this? Why did they make me think business is about catching the next fad/trend? Of course, later in the book I realised that they were the ones selling the shovels, MJ's words helped me see that.

Shortly after reading TMF I went on to Unscripted , and enjoyed it just as much.

Around this time I had finally grown to accept that I had lost my passion for acting, and as my drama course concluded for the year, and I said goodbye to my actor friends I went back to my friend who I had started this marketing business with and told him that we needed to take this seriously.

Despite MJ's advice, I felt like I had to try something. I knew that the premise for this business was built on a desire for money, not an attempt to solve anything. And yet I continued with the business because I had nothing else.

We didn't get far - although we tried. We made cold calls, cold emails, set up meetings, but never landed a single paying client in the end. Only a "free-trial" client that ended up ignoring us after we spent a month working on their socials.

It was time to call it quits. He knew it. I knew it. And so we did (this was around October 2019).

SWALLING PRIDE & GETTING A JOB​

From there I swallowed my pride and got a job as a customer service assistant and at a call centre.

It felt good to be earning money again, and the jobs weren't that bad. I met some really nice people. But boy did I hate the idea of doing this for a living.

At the same time, I felt a sense of freedom. Leaving the marketing business allowed me to really start applying what MJ's books taught me and to start looking for an actual problem I could try to solve.

I remember coming to this forum so many times and reading some incredible threads to keep myself motivated during this period. I remember printing out @Envision's thread on how the forum changed his life, and reading it during my lunch breaks feeling inspired and motivated as hell to do something with myself.

NEW IDEAS & BEGINNINGS​

One thing led to another and I found myself with the business idea for Quidemy - an online finnancial learning platform that taught finanncial related subjects in a clear, concise, and digestible way.

As I started progressing with the idea, arond Nov/Dec the idea of starting a YouTube channel popped into my head frequently.

I wanted to "build up my personal brand" I told myself, I wanted to also indirectly promote Quidemy, and I knew the entrepreneurship niche on YouTube was crowded with so much snake oil, bad/misleading advice, and ingenuine people [the problem] - I guess I kinda understood how MJ must have felt seeing all the books about money/finance regurgitating the same slowlane dogma, and feeling as though I wanted to give my own genuine voice into the mix [my solution].

And so, leading up to the creation of the channel I started learning how to edit videos - after finishing a course on Udemy I gathered the bare basics, and just figured I'll learn things as I go along.

STARTING YOUTUBE & GOING ALL IN​

By the end of January I had started creating my first ever video, and was nervous as hell. All I could think about was what people were going to say behind my back ("James is starting a YouTube channel? Ahahaha, good luck wiht that..." etc etc) but I had to brush aside these thoughts and persevere.

Once I uploaded it I breathed a sigh of relief - I had finally gotten the first bit of content out of the way. I was too scared to post the video to my socials at the time, for fear of what people would say, I chose not to. I only sent it to a few friends. And then they started to share the video on their own socials, and overall people were supportive (contrary to my irrational fears of being mocked).

The story from here on has already been recorded in this thread.

I also had gotten a job as an estate agent after that first video was released, a job that I burnt out on within 2 weeks because I hated it so much. The people were fine, the job was fine, but I hated every working hour thinking "I could spend this time working on Quidemy, or a YouTube video".

My least favourite video on the channel is my Instagram video - just because of my mental state when filming it: I had come back from a day of work, it was late at night, I was feeling incredibly stressed, and yet I forced myself to make that video because I knew I couldn't make an excuse to delay it any longer.

Then I quit the estate agency job, lockdown happened, my focus turned to the channel and Quidemy - and shortly afterwards I dropped Quidemy and focused solely on the channel realising that it combined both my business side, and my creative side together almost perfectly.

IT ALL HAPPENED FOR A REASON?​

Leaving us to the crazy events that transpired over the last month and a half, and just an overall realisation of "wow, there were so many seemingly unrelated events, hobbies, or 'faliures' that have brought me to where I am right now":

- Always loving to write.
- Practicing the craft of acting.
- Losing my money in Portugal.
- Going under the "fake guru" spell.
- Reading MJ's works.
- Getting rejected from drama school two years in a row.

Even now, I wonder how things would have been if I had gotten into drama school... a reality that I think would not have been as great as the one I am living in right now.

But without a doubt one of the biggest events was reading MJ's work and discovering this forum.

The values and principles taught in those works were what led me to where I am right now, not a single part of me doubts this.

I'm so grateful for the incredible people on this forum that have helped keep me motivated with their threads and their own journeys - to add my own journey to this forum is an honor, and to have had one of my videos dedicated to MJ's works go viral is little in comparison to how much your work has impacted me MJ.

I am also grateful to the many people who came to the channel and felt like what I had to say was worth their time. The last few months have been some of the best months of my life.

Not necessarily travelling around the world, living in a mansion, at a party...

...but sitting at my desk, in my room, during quarantine, editing these videos, and knowing that I have provided value into other people's lives, and that by first providing that value, I am now able to earn an amazing income from it.

I have so much more planned, but I think that I will always cherish these memories and remember them to be the start of something incredible.

***

CONCLUSION
​

Ah, and before I sign off this update, here are some of my personal goals that I've been writing down in my journal for the last few months and figured it was worth sharing:

- Become a Millionaire by 25.
- Become semi-retired by 30.
-Retire my parents.
- Travel around the world.
- Buy my first house by 22
- Own a Tesla by 25 (LMAO, yeah - I'm a Tesla fanboy, have to admit)
- Have my YT business generate £100k/mnth in the next 3-4 years (more on how I plan on doing this to come)
- Teach/promote entrepreneurial values to children/teens in the form of some sort of charitable work.

Much love to you all! ​

And with that, I'm off to bed (this post took me damn near 3 hours!!)

 

[Valier]

Update 8. The First Paycheck (Understanding YT Monetisation) …

First Paycheck
My first paycheck from YouTube arrived yesterday (in the form of an AdSense deposit) and, as promised, in this quick update I’ll dive into how YouTube monetisation works, and break down my own stats.


Getting Monetised
Pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before, but in order to monetise your videos on YouTube the requirements (as of June 2020) are that you must have 1,000 subscribers, and 4,000 hours of watch time (in the last 12 months).

Once you hit that, YouTube will tell you to open up an AdSense account, and once that’s done, you have to wait for YouTube to review your channel before allowing you to monetise videos.

If you get the go-ahead, then you’re free to monetise your videos as you wish.


“Controlling the Ads”
You don’t have any say in what ads will appear in your videos (since this is determined by looking at the metadata of your video and deciding which ads would be most relevant to that video).

But you do have control over how many ads you want.

Here’s a little look at the monetisation settings for one of my videos:


Typically, people will keep all types of ads on, and will place an ad before the video starts, as well as after.


Mid-roll Ads
If you upload videos that are 10 minutes or longer, you’ll be allowed to run “mid-roll ads”.

These are the ads that run mid-way through a video (and you can apply multiple midroll ads per video).

An example of what the settings for a midroll ad look like on my video:



Although it’s not been confirmed, the common “rumour” is that midroll ads will actually make the algorithm favour your video much more, as well as allowing you to make more money from it. (Makes sense, since YouTube is a business and wants the videos that are longer and have more ads in them to be promoted for the benefit of their advertisers).

Whilst some people fear putting midroll ads in because it could “annoy” their audience, I still don’t think that’s a good enough reason to leave it out (unless you’re going completely overboard).

Most people on YouTube (including myself) are used to seeing ads by now, and it’s only 5 seconds worth of hinderance to your viewers – not to mention if you’re spending hours and hours creating these videos, then you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not trying to get the algorithm to push your video more favourably, and make a little more money from it!


“How much does YouTube pay you?”
Ahhhh, the age-old question of how much YouTube pay… well, the answer is it completely depends on the content of your videos and overall channel.

Here’s how it goes :

YouTube will pay you an amount of money per 1,000 views. (This is otherwise known as your CPM. A CPM of £2 on one video will mean you get paid £2 per 1,000 views on that video).

The massive variable here is your CPM. Because everyone’s going to have something different depending on their niche. (You can find your CPM in your back-end analytics).

A niche that is likely to have more advertisers throwing money at it, is going to have a higher CPM.

For example: the personal finance niche has a high CPM of usually £10+. I have also heard that the beauty/makeup niches have extremely high CPM’s as well, since advertisers know that someone watching a makeup tutorial has a higher chance of pulling out their wallet and spending money on beauty products.

What’s important to note is that every video you post will have a different CPM. If all your videos are within the same niche, then they’ll likely have similar CPM’s per video. Whereas in my case, one video can have a CPM of £6, whilst another can have a CPM of £17.


Monetised Views [IMPORTANT]
Youtube will pay you as soon as your viewers see the ad. Whether they watch only 5 seconds, the full thing, or whether they click on the ad, it doesn’t matter.

Once they see it, you are paid, and this amount doesn’t change depending on how much of the ad they’ve watched (this only effects the advertiser themselves).

What’s important to note here is that you are paid when they actually see the ad. So if someone is running ad-block, you are not going to be paid.

YouTube allows you to see how many of your views were “monetised views” in their back-end analytics (which I’m going to show you in just a moment).

CORRECTION: ​

There's a lot of misleading and conflicting answers on this subject, but what seems to be the most plausible explanation is: you are paid depending on what the advertiser’s goal is.

If they are running an ad with a selected goal of getting impressions, then you are going to be paid as soon as someone sees the ad.

If they were running an ad with a selected goal of getting clicks, then you will be paid whenever someone clicks you ad.


Breaking Down My Stats
So, I’ve been monetising my videos since the 17th of May (26 days ago from this post).

My average CPM across all videos is currently £14.29.

My estimated monetised playbacks are 2.6M.

Unfortunately, multiplying these two numbers together will not give an accurate result on my earnings since they are just estimates and averages.

My total “estimated” earnings (since monetising) has been £21,233.


YouTube pays you based on your previous month’s earnings. In the month of May I made an estimate of £11,722.21:


YouTube paid me a total of £11,677.36 directly into my AdSense account (only £44.85 shy of the estimated earnings).

SIDENOTE: YouTube will only allow you to withdraw any funds on your AdSense account if they exceed £100.


Conclusion
I hope that answers some of the questions you’ve had regarding YouTube monetisation.

And yeah, that first paycheck was more money than I’ve earned in my life.

I’m not planning on withdrawing it into my bank account yet, until I register as a limited company so I only pay corporate tax on it, allowing me to pay myself as an employee and strike that off as a business expense

I’m nearing the end of this next video, and I’m pouring the majority of my waking hours on editing this thing, but I’ll occasionally pop by the forum on my breaks and answer any questions you have!

 

[Valier]

[MILESTONE] Update 7. The Algorithm Answered My Prayers, Insanity Ensued…

“Wait.. what’s going on? Has it finally happened? Has the algorithm picked up one of my videos?"
Those were the first thoughts I had that morning… just before sh*t hit the fan, and everything changed.​

An Early Update
My intentions were always to post updates on this thread after the release of a new video.

But with what’s been happening in the last few weeks – things have had to change.

On my last post I reported we were at 214 subscribers, and labelled this as “exponential growth”.

Now, roughly a month after that post, the channel stands at 20,092 subscribers.

And for those of you just following this thread right now, I know what you’re thinking: “what the f*ck? How??” – at least, I know that’s what I was thinking.

I’ve had heart palpitations over the last few days because of the craziness that has just ensued, which meant I was up late in the evening unable to sleep, and lost my appetite due to the sheer adrenaline that has kept my body in a 24/7 alert state.

But today I woke up and things were better, I felt more focused, calmer, and ready to make this post as well as taking this YouTube channel to a whole new level.

This one is a long post, but I think it’s necessary.

Without further ado, here’s what happened since the last post, and my explanations as to why it happened:


The Algorithm Takes Notice
About maybe two weeks ago, I woke up and ran through my usual morning routine – and upon checking the channel stats, I noticed a sudden increase in views per hour to the channel.

Overnight, my average viewers to the channel (per hour) went from 1-6 to 20-40.

“Huh??” was the immediate thought. Initially I assumed that someone may have posted the video somewhere online, on a subreddit maybe, which must have brought some surplus traffic to the channel.

But then I checked the analytics and saw that the views were coming from “browse features” – meaning the video was being shown on the homepage/recommended tab for audiences.

Even then I was so shocked and surprise to see the influx of viewers… it blew my mind like nothing else.

But then things continued to snowball…


My First “Viral” Video
It continued to grow, hour by hour, day-by-day - more and more average views on the channel per hour, more comments (some very endearing ones too) started pouring in.

The “Fake Guru” video was, of course, the main powerhouse. The algorithm had picked it up and started pushing it out to a bunch of people… but gradually i.e I would have maybe an average of 100 views per hour on the fake guru video, and then after a day it would suddenly shoot up to 500 views per hour, then the next day it would suddenly shoot up to 1,000… etc etc. Currently the video averages about 1.5k views per hour (I’ll explain what this pattern is all about in just a moment).

To cut the long story short, at the time of writing this the video stands at 208.4K views.

What’s even better is the fact that I have set the channel up in such a way that I wanted to create a “catalogue” of videos (as mentioned in my previous post), and so once they finish watching one video, my audience would be curious to watch another – which in this case, was my “toxic world of self-help” video (makes sense, considering the topics of self help and fake gurus can be closely related).

The Self-Help video is at 63.7k views right now, the Money video is currently at 36.4k. And the others are in the thousands – tens of thousands. Yeah… pretty insane…

So, I want this to emphasise how powerful the “catalogue” concept is when building a YouTube channel. Everyone is told to pump out content like crazy, but someone who commented on my video made an amazing point: if your favourite artist was releasing an album every three month, would they really be that special anymore?

The principles of abundance vs scarcity play a part here. When something is abundant it has seemingly less value because after all, there’s plenty of it. But when it’s scarce, it’s far more valuable (I think I already mentioned this on the last post). But when a channel that posts once a month, people are far more inclined to think “Oh! I know that they’re not going to post a video for a long while now, and I know what I’m about to get is high quality”, which not only urges them to click the video, but also entices them to watch right through to the end.

Notice those two factors? “urges them to click the video”, and “entices them to watch right through to the end” – two factors that the YouTube algorithm heavily prioritises.

Not only that, but if all the content on your channel is on par with the same level of quality as that video, they’re more inclined to binge watch, meaning more views (that make up for the long gaps between uploads), and in my personal opinion a more loyal fan that trusts your work far more than the YouTuber that’s uploading 24/7. Pretty cool, right?


So, What About the Sudden Increases In Average Views Per Hour Every Day?
As I mentioned: once the algorithm picked up my video, I would get a consistent number of views per hour, then after a day, that average number would suddenly shoot up (not gradually), it would quite literally just shoot up.

I wish I could find the video that explains this, but here’s why:

From what I’ve heard/seen with my own eyes, once the algorithm picks up your video it will begin to split test it against someone else’s video to an audience of let’s say 100.

So it’s: Video A VS Video B.

Based on whichever video does better during this split test (calculated by looking at the click through rate, watch time, engagement rate, etc) it will then progress the video on to the next split test to an audience of let’s say 1,000.

If Vid A won, then it becomes Vid A VD Vid C.

And the trend continues until your video eventually gets beaten, and from there on the views start to stagnate and return to normal (it doesn’t necessarily die out, it’s just that the algorithm stops pushing it out as much).

I wish I saved the screenshots of this taking place live, because seeing it in person is far more powerful than just writing about it.

This also explains why you will suddenly get recommended a video that seems a little irrelevant to your interests – because that video has beaten enough split tests to be spread to a completely new audience.


Other Consequences of a Viral Video, and an Exploding Channel.
A few many other incredible things happened once the algorithm picked up my video – stuff that seriously blows my F*cking mind:

• Last post I mentioned a Patreon account. That account now has 12 amazing Patrons, and I gross £47 a month from that at the moment.

• I also received donations on my one-time donation link which has totalled since the last post to £133

• My Instagram has blown the hell up. Before everything went crazy I had about 400 and something followers. Now I’m at 986 followers, I’ve got hundreds of message requests that I’m trying my best to get back to… although it is quite overwhelming, as someone that ghosted social media quite a lot (more on how this is all changing in a bit)

• I’ve had a few “companies” approach me via email requesting video editing services, and an opportunity to have a zoom call with them – which I’m going to get back to. But I am most likely going to decline all of them (depending on the offer) due to the fact that I have built a strong momentum with the channel, and the best long-term strategy here is to ride that momentum out as much as possible. But this has given me a great idea in the far future for expanding the channel out and creating a media company that takes on clients and creates incredible content for companies (i.e presentations, advertising material, etc, that are designed to engage and hook employees/potential customers). If the channel continues to put out amazing content, then the channel itself becomes marketing material.

• I even had the former CMO of Just Eats, Ash Ali, reach out to me via email congratulating me on my videos, and saying that it touches on many of the things discussed in his new book “The Unfair Advantage” – and that he would love to send me a free copy of it. To which I, of course, agreed to. What’s even more crazy is the fact that I attended a networking event (a few months back) days before making my first video that had Ash as the headline speaker!! (I don’t even think he knows this… crazy).

• I’ve had many people reach out offering to work with me for free – which I’ve explained to them that I am incredibly grateful for the offer, and as soon as I start to create a bit more of a process with how I want to run the channel, and the community of followers I will start looking at how I can bring in outside help (paid, of course).

• I’ve had several others reach out to me offering for me to go on their podcasts. I still need to respond to them, but I haven’t gotten round to it yet.

• Others who have reached out to me have given me amazing tips on growing my social media pages, on improving my video production (in terms of the lighting of the videos when my face is present). It’s so mesmerising to have all of this advice & support, and they all do it for free. Incredible…

You can imagine that since the last post, going from slow and steady growth to the F*cking insanity that has happened over the last 2-3 weeks, this has been overwhelming.

So… now let’s talk about the future plans:


Main Priority
At the end of the day, one crucial thing has allowed all of this to happen: having good quality content.

Yes, I targeted a niche subject that was rising in popularity with the Fake Guru video, but many others have done a video on the same subject – and yet my video is perhaps one of the most viewed when it comes to this subject (with the exception of Coffeezilla’s – a YouTuber that exposes guru’s- videos).

If the video wasn’t edited good enough, researched well enough, and presented well enough, this wouldn’t have happened. People wouldn’t have wanted to click to see more videos and binge the channel, people wouldn’t have bothered leaving incredible comments about how much they’ve enjoyed the content.

And so, my main priority is and will always be to put out great quality content.

Oh, and if my audience has been enjoying the content from the last few videos… they have no F*cking clue what is about to hit them with future videos.

I’ve learnt even more editing techniques, tried to make better scripts, etc. The game is going to be stepping up to a whole new level. And I have a “mastermind” plan for how to get this next video to be another banger and go viral (but more on this when the video gets finished).

But of course, as per the title of this thread, we’re trying to build a thriving personal brand. And so, I think it’s time that I tell you guys how we’re going to be changing our old ghosting on social media ways to creating some flourishing social media accounts


Social Media Presence.
So, the Instagram is popping off right now, I’m currently trying to reply to as many people as possible who message me – something that I’m doing that I think is incredibly effective is I send voice messages in my responses.

It’s quicker than typing a message, and it adds a whole new level of interaction with my audience. I can only imagine what it would be like watching someone that I love on YouTube respond to me with a personalised voice message. I’d be very impressed. So, I think it’s a tactic that I should absolutely adopt.

And it’s been a fascinating experience!

Some of my audience have responded to my voice messages with their own voice messages, and it’s so amazing to hear what my “fans” sound like.

I’m also going to be expanding to Twitter, and eventually, TikTok. I think Twitter is great to post re-purposed content and potentially have it blow up – and I think TikTok is such an untapped market at the moment for my niche, relative to other platforms, and I think it can bring a younger audience to the channel ( we can have both a mature and younger audience combined together… why not?). Still need to study how TikTok works and what sort of content I can put on there that could possibly do well… I’ve had someone on Instagram reach out to me who’s had a viral video on TikTok before, and I think I’ll set up a zoom call with him to get to know more.

Also, I’m going to be working on my LinkedIn for the sake of building more professional relations with people that may be in the entertainment/film/video production industry (all a part of a greater vision I have for the channel and business that I will not share for now because I don’t want to get too ahead of myself… although I will be executing on this vision right from the get-go because my God, this goes far bigger than just a YouTube channel, and I’m slowly starting to realise this).

Feel free to add me on LinkedIn – “James Jani”.


What Type of Personal Brand I’m Trying to Build
Rightly said by a few people in this thread, and in my older “Quidemy” thread.

A personal brand is just who YOU are at the end of the day, it isn’t really “built” per say, it’s your reputation.

So here’s the sort of reputation I’m hoping to translate through to my socials:

Most important to me is being someone genuine and relatable to my audience. No flexing content or anything of the sort.

Much more down-to-earth advice, and a documentation of my journey. I’ve been getting quite a bit of advice from some of the people that have reached out to me regarding how to execute content that displays this in the best way possible.

I think Ben Francis (founder of Gym Shark) does a brilliant job of this on his YouTube channel – he’s a super inspirational businessman, and has built up an incredible company at only 27 years old, definitely someone I look up to.

And I do intend to start distributing content to all my social channels, with teasers of videos and other such videos in the aim of increasing my reach to new audiences drastically.

Gary V has quite an amazing guide on this that I have saved somewhere, but I’m definitely going to be digging it up as soon as possible and executing on it.


Now, Time To Talk Money…
Let me just say, I don’t even care that much about the money right now, I have an amazing vision for where this channel/business can go, and that is what is motivating me to get up in the morning and work non-stop at this.

I’m super F*cking pumped.

But with that being said, the numbers and the potential earnings of this channel are… incredible, to say the least.

And when I started doing the maths, my heart really started beating like crazy.

In the upcoming months I hope to release a course on video editing - something that many people have been asking for in my comments and messages (the market is sending clear signals to me, that’s for sure). And so I hope to release a “beta”/MVP version of the video editing course soon,

At the start the course will be priced pretty cheaply (I’m thinking like £30), but over time I’m looking to get feedback from the customers about what they like, don’t like, what they find confusing, what they want to see more of, etc and continuing to develop the course until it hits the right sort of quality that is worth charging anywhere between £100 - £300 for (which is a fair price in comparison to other video editing courses on the market).

But what I want to do is create a course that is on the same level of quality as a “masterclass” course – if you haven’t seen how masterclass create their courses, I highly recommend looking at the trailers on YouTube… they’re incredible, to say the least.

I’m confident I can create perhaps one of the best video editing courses to exist in the market within 2 years time.

Also, the course encompasses EVERYHTNG, to take someone from a complete beginner to a pro (with that being said, I’m not a pro myself, and hence why the course will be in a constant state of development as I grow my skills as a video editor along the way) so when the MVP version is realeased it will go over the foundations, then down the line I will release another expansion that covers things like animations and what not, and then another expansion down the line that will introduce other elements, etc etc.

Now let’s look at the numbers, and why this is something insanely profitable:

Let’s assume that we get 1,000,000 views a month to the channel (so not necessarily on ONE video, on the channel as an entirety), a VERY plausible number considering the fact that I’ve received about 180k views in the last 48 hours, and that’s only been the last three months (imagine in 1 – 2 years time if I continue producing quality content, which I have every intention on doing!).

Let’s say we convert 1% of that audience.

That’s 10,000 customers.

If the course is £150, then that translates to £1.5 Million in revenue…

If we convert .5%, that’s still £750,000….

A month.

Yeah… easy to see why I was getting a bunch of heart palpitations when I started running the maths.

That doesn’t even include things like ad revenue (we’ll talk about that in just a second), other products (i.e I want to make a course on starting up a YouTube channel once the channel gets even bigger), sponsorships, donations, etc etc…

The opportunity here is beyond ridiculous…

As for ad revenue: I’ve started monetising my videos, and I’m just waiting to see what my CPM is (how much I get paid per thousand views), which is taking YouTube a little while to process the data for me to see.

I’ll probably expand on this in a later post, but your CPM on YouTube depends on many factors, but one of the biggest factors is your niche.

Gaming channels suffer low CPM due to the nature of their audiences likely being teens who don’t have money to spend on the ads that are presented to them. They’re likely going to have a CPM of £1 - £2.

But when it comes to the finance, business, entrepreneurship niche… things get a little more interesting.

Of course, I can’t confirm this for my own channel yet (and as soon as I do get confirmation, I will post about it), but some personal finance/entrepreneurship/business channels get reportedly a cpm that can range from £6 - £15.

So, if their channel gets 100,000 views every month, then they potentially earn between £600 - £1,500 a month). These aren’t crazy numbers, but then again, that’s only if they get 100,000 views a month.

If that number is 1Million, then the earnings are more like £6,000 - £15,000 in revenue.

Much better.

Again, without confirmation of CPM on my own videos, I’m not going to comment on it further – but it’s definitely worth noting that earnings potential could be huge when it comes to ad revenue as well.

***

Conclusion
A lot has happened in a very short period of time.

A lot. And I’m still trying to comprehend it.

But I wanted to say that I’m glad my videos have set people down a better path when it comes to business and entrepreneurship, I’ve put quite a few people on MJ’s works now, and I’ve got more of my audience thinking about solutions to problems, and not just blindly chasing money.

At this point, I have no idea what’s going to happen, who knows? Maybe the whole thing crashes and burns…?

But I don’t know about that…

I think I have something special in my hands right now, and you can bet everything that I’m going to work my a$$ off to make it into a reality, including that big vision I have that I will expand on in the future.

We’re only getting started.

Till the next update.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

You're impacting lives my friend, even mine!

Got this via email...

 

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[Valier]

Update 12. That’s a Wrap!

Well, it’s been a little while (and 2 videos) since the last update – for which I apologise for, but things have been super busy as of recently.

Thankfully with the release of my last video, I’m able to take a step back for a Christmas break and reflect on everything that has happened this year with the channel, and what a wild ride it’s been. As well as a run down on the finances of the channel – which I’m sure you’re all super interested in finding out

But first: we hit a huge milestone!!!


Which I guess brings us to the first thing I wanted to talk about:

My goals when I started this thread.

***​

REFLECTION ON MY GOALS FOR THE YEAR.
Here's what I posted on the 31st of January, 4 days after posting my first video to the channel:

Valier said:
The Goals.
My goal isn't really to be 'internet famous' or anything like that. It's simply to get a personal brand started up, have my name put out there, share some genuine advice from someone who is passionate about entrepreneurship, and self development (no 'woo-woo' selling my $1500+ course shit), and see where it goes.

If you're looking for some specific targeted goals, here's my main objective for the year:
Reach 1,000 subscribers by 2021.
Click to expand...

I think we can safely say we've ticked off that 1k milestone ahahaha.

But I think that's an important thing to note: I was in this for the long run, and I still am.

My fear is that someone might look at how quickly things have progressed over the second half of this year for my channel and think that this is how they should approach something like YouTube. Please don't. This is a long-term game which 100% requires consistency and the willingness to accept you may not make any strides during your first 1 - 2 years doing this. The Same thing applies to any sort of venture.

Another point: much of my goals and visions have changed.

The overarching goal remains the same:

Valier said:
The big goal is to be semi-retired by 30, but that's okay if I don't get there, I'm focusing on the process and journey above all else.

But the vision for how I'm getting there has shifted entirely.

I began this channel initially thinking it would act as a way to indirectly promote Quidemy (the online financial education platform I created just at the end of 2019, but the channel swiftly turned into my main hustle after about 5 videos in, and Quidemy was abandoned for the most part.

I also never realised just how important my creative background would be to achieving what I have at the moment. I mistakenly had separated my creative side and entrepreneurial side when first getting into all of this, and that was very silly. I realise now: my creative side mixed with an understanding of entrepreneurship is what's going to get me to my goals faster than I could have imagined.

Which brings us to...

***​

EARNINGS FOR THE YEAR (and how it has affected me).
Let me make it clear that this still blows my mind.

I started this year off working briefly as an estate agent with a base salary between £11 - 15k. So to see where we've ended up is just insane to me.

It reminds me just how important it is to: 1) find something with huge scale/magnitude. And 2) separate yourself from the "hours worked = money earned" equation as soon as possible.

So here is the run down (as of the 23rd December) - I've rounded these figures down a little for simplicity:

Earnings from YT Ad Revenue: £114,900
Earnings from Sponsors: £6,300 (Skillshare)
Earnings from Affiliate Stuff: £720 (Amazon links in description for gear used, books read, and others)
Earnings from Patreon: £2,500
TOTAL: £124,420

This is all revenue, of course.

Granted, my overheads are incredibly low, and most of my spending is done for the sake of write-offs.

But there we have it.

Calling it surreal is an understatement. I get moments of imposter syndrome as well, because this has come about in a fairly short period of time from when the channel begun, I almost feel as though I don't "deserve" it. But in many ways, this makes me want to work harder to shift those thoughts into "of course I deserve it".

In many ways, this money hasn't changed much. I still live with my parents, and I've decided I'm going to be staying here for 1-2 years longer because I still have that excuse at my age and it saves a ton of money.

In many other ways, however, this money relieves a lot of stress for me. Whether it's just a matter of needing to replace a broken piece of equipment, or paying for a subscription service needed to find stock footage/templates, I no longer have to really feel the burden of the price tag.

That feeling is incredible.

I've always been frugal, and my expenses haven't really changed at all from what they were at the beginning of the year, but it's the security of having that money coming in that is really what gets to me.

***​

Future Goals.
With all this being said - this next year is going to be an even bigger one with lots of developments for the channel, and overall business.

I'm in a bit of a debate when it comes to hiring a video editor for the main channel - at the moment, I think I'm going to be the sole editor of the main channel, but will have my Patreon videos outsourced.

I've started getting much faster at editing videos - especially with this recent video which at a length of 27 minutes I managed to get done inside a month.

This may be subject to change, it just depends on how the search for an editor goes (I've recently sent out a few applications and currently looking over the applicants).

But it's also important that I continue improving as an editor because I aim to release a video editing course at some point next year, and I really want this course to deliver in value. Taking someone from the basics of video editing on Premiere and After Effects, to being able to create in-depth visuals and motion graphics for anything that they want to.

I know the market for this course is huge right now, with constant comments and DM's asking how I edit, or whether I'm going to drop on a course on it. And I think I'm near the level where I can truly deliver on something.

Still deciding what to price it as. I'm thinking $250 to start with. I don't want to exceed anything in the thousands because I couldn't possibly justify that price, especially given my criticisms of other "business gurus" charging insane amounts of money for their courses along with unethical marketing. It would just seem really off-brand for me to do so.

I'm also going to continue developing and building my Patreon up, as it's really starting to kick off now that I've begun doing monthly editing tutorials (which is helping me build my confidence to teach this stuff as well as giving me bonus content to include in the full course). By the end of the year I'm hoping to get my Patreon to a solid £5k/month mark. It may be tough, but I'm sure that we can hit it.

In terms of earnings, I'm going to be pushing for the £250,000 in revenue. If we can get an editing course out, and maintain the current growth of the channel - this goal should be very reachable. Time will tell.

And of course, at the end of the day: the content is what reigns supreme, and it's what I will continue to be getting better at. Turning these videos into a real experience for people. Or, in essence: a productocracy.

***
​

Conclusion.
That pretty much wraps it up for this year, and what a year it's been - for so many reasons.

At this point, I really have no clue what the future might hold because God or whoever knows that this was not how I anticipated this year to have ended. But I have no complaints.

I'm still blessed with young age, and a ton of energy, and I intend to make use of both!!

Oh, and I'm going to be completely renovating my room over the Christmas holidays, turning it into an actual studio/office space - so keep an eye out for that

Thank you all who have followed this thread, and I really hope you've gained some sort of value, or inspiration from it - if so, then my job with this thread has been done.

Till the next time.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

***​

 

[Valier]

Damn! For those not familar with GPB, that's around $170,000 USD.

You still live with the Ps... what have your parents said about your venture? Are you earning more than them?

Ahahaha - yeah, they've been over the moon about it!

Initially my mother didn't even know you could make any money from YouTube, and thought people just uploaded videos for fun - it's definitely been a pleasant surprise for her.

My parents are both immigrants that fled from their country during a civil war and had to sacrifice a lot when coming to the UK - including working insanely hard to raise me up.

Being able to finally show them that their sacrifices are starting to pay off is another amazing feeling that's come about from all of this.

 

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[Valier]

Update 10. The 8th Video.

Finally, after almost 3 months of craziness, the 8th video premiered yesterday and went live on the channel...

View: https://youtu.be/4bkk8oG9HRA


Now, let's talk about my strategy with this one...


INITIAL PLAN​

When I scripted this video and began the early stages of editing, I didn't have the 99% of the audience that I have right now. It was my initial plan that this would be the video that could propel my channel forward.

My intentions with this video was to target a few different markets, Tyler1's fanbase, the Twitch community, and the League of Legends community.

My ideal hopes were that if the video was good enough, it would be watched by other live streamers on their streams and it would expose the video and the channel to thousands of other people. Of course, I was ideally hoping that someone like Tyler1 would react to it on stream himself.

It was a risky video, but my thinking at the time was: "hey, I don't have much of an audience built up, I'm fine to experiment and take some risks..."

That was the plan. But there are some clear faults with strategy, especially considering what happened to the channel after I began creating this video.

THE UNEXPECTED ​

During the creation of this video, the channel had started to blow up.

I went from someone with about 200 subscribers, to over 250k by the time this video was wrapping up.

Although it was amazing to see, there was a slight concern in the back of my mind: I initially started creating this Tyler1 video with the idea that I didn't have a huge audience, and could make that gamble. Now I had a massive audience, a lot of momentum, and it probably wasn't the best time to be taking risks with my content, it would be best to ride the wave of that momentum...

...but after writing a 24 page script, and already sinking in hours of work on editing, I felt like I was already beyond the point of return. And so I sucked it up and said "alright, we'll have to take this risk and see where it gets us".

Another flaw in the strategy here is fairly obvious from a marketing standpoint: would anyone from those communities I was targeting even be interested in subjects related to business, money, finance, etc?

Probably not.

Why I didn't emphasise this concern in my mind is beyond me... I think I was blinded by the idea of someone I've been a fan of (Tyler1) and a community that I had been fairly active in (Twitch) seeing my work, and enjoying it. In other words, I was thinking with passion and love, but not about the target market and the audience my other videos were collecting.

Yes, if this video blew up I could have expanded my audience into a whole new market, but if they're only there for one video - what's the point?

But once I had made that decision to continue with this video, and see how things go, I had to brush aside those thoughts and focus on creating the best video I could.

THE PREMIERE​

I also wanted to test out using the premiere feature on YouTube. Once my audience grew, I figure it would be really amazing to turn this video's release into an actual event. I can hype it up, release a trailer (as I did), and get people pumped up for it...

So how did it go?

Pretty good! Leading up to the video's release, I stayed in the chat room and interacted with my audience, answering questions, etc.

And as the video was starting, I realised that another Twitch streamer was watching the video live on his own stream to an audience of about 3.8k - 4k viewers.

That combined with the notifications sent out to my subscribers gave the video a consistent 1k viewers at the premiere throughout (amazing!!). Overall the video seemed well-received. The streamer who was watching it live on his own stream enjoyed it a lot, and I'm sure some of his viewers came on to the channel and subscribed + liked the video afterwards.

We totalled about 4k views on the actual video itself in the first hour of its release, and by the time I woke up today we were at about 13k views on the video, and as I write this the video currently stands at 20k views.

PREDICTIONS ​

There's a few things that can happen here, it's just a matter of whether the algorithm finds the right audience to target the video to.

I think the video can definitely hit around 60 - 100k viewers in the next week or so.

However, this has potential to go even bigger than that if the algorithm starts pushing the video out to Tyler's audience (which I'm hoping the metadata of the video will be able to help with).

Right now, I am sure that the algorithm is pushing this video to my audience, and others who are similar to my audience. Although it could take a while for the algorithm to start testing it with Tyler1's audience.

But I believe once Tyler1's audience start picking up on the video, and more people from that community grow aware of the video, the algorithm will adjust and it will begin to be promoted across to that audience which I'm sure it will do well with.

Of course, if Tyler1 himself actually reacts to the video, that will be an immense boost.

But all I can do for now is play the waiting game with this video and just focus on the next project. The algorithm took 3 months after its release to start pushing my Fake Guru video to the right audience, so who knows? Some other YouTuber friends that I've made recently have had their own videos start getting pushed by the algorithm 5 days later. It really is just a matter of letting the algorithm do its thing and hopefully it adjusts and starts targetting the best audience for this video.

If not, then the video will sit comfortably at roughly 60 - 100k views.

REFLECTION​

I definitely don't regret making this video, not at all. I learnt so much during the creation of this video, and all of these skills are going to translate through into my other videos!

However, would I have created this video if I had the audience I have right now? Definitely not.

But that's okay - I have to remind myself that I only have 8 videos-worth of experience on YouTube. Mistakes are bound to be made. And besides, we still haven't got enough data points on this new video to really determine whether it is successful or not.

Based on the comments, and likes, my core audience has enjoyed it for the most part (even those with no interest in gaming or Tyler1), which is something I'm quite proud about. I think it's proven to myself that I'm able to take something/someone fairly niche and be able to present that topic/person in a way that others who have never heard about it can enjoy. That's a really great achievement in my eye!

Also, in terms of watch time and average view duration, this video has done very well (which I expected due to its insane length). It's currently got an average view duration of 13:44. That's more than any of my other videos which gives me hope that the algorithm is going to keep pushing this thing out and will and on the right audience at some point in the next few days/weeks.

CONCLUSION​

Now, it's time to rest my brain and imagination for 2/3 days and recuperate from this project, and then we're straight on to the next one!

This next one is something I'm pretty hyped about since I know my core audience has been asking for a video on it, and it's a fairly huge subject/industry with quite a lot of controversy. I'll give you a hint, it starts with an "M" and ends with a "Marketing"

There's also a lot more I want to tell you all regarding my plans for the Patreon page, and the longer-term vision for the channel (boy is it exciting!!!).

Oh, and just to end with a bang, my pay check for the month of June came up to an insane £24,088.03.

Yeah... more than double last month. What the f*ck. But again... the majority of that is going right back into the business, nothing to do with me personally

 

[Valier]

Update 1. The Two Metrics that Matter Over EVERYTHING.

The Second Video is Out
Already had it scheduled for today - and it's officially out:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Gpr7PEnbs&feature=youtu.be



Had a really fun time creating that video - it's all about the business model of some of these 'online gurus' when it comes to selling their courses + programs, and how their marketing can be incredibly deceiving and taking advantage of people in a vulnerable position financially.

Check it out if that interests you. But more importantly...

Researching the Algorithm
So I've been doing quite a bit of research and have found some amazing videos that can help you if you're trying to understand how to grow on Youtube.

The overall rule at the moment is this: the Youtube Algorithm is Your God.

Youtube's algorithm is what decides whether or not your video should be suggested to other users on the platform. It's like God passing a judgment over your video - if the algorithm favours you, you'll get some good views, and if the algorithm loves you, then you'll have a "viral" video.

But what does the algorithm even look for?

The Two Metrics That Matter the Most
Watch time.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR from now on).

These two single metrics will give the algorithm a good enough idea of how much they want your video to be promoted.

Watch time is the total amount of time, on average that viewers spend watching your video.

Click-Through-Rate is how many people who have seen your youtube video appear on their search/suggested videos/any other location on Youtube (otherwise known as impressions) and have actually clicked on your video from there.

These two single metrics explain what the algorithm favours.


I will create another post with a little more information. But check out these amazing videos that are incredibly insightful for growing a Youtube channel:

This guy explains how one of his videos went viral (side note: that viral video is now at 42MILLION views).

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8


Here is a video by Devin Nash:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBNpgKkjTpU


Seriously, this guy has some awesome videos on business, but some gold dust on building a Youtube channel/personal brand. I highly recommend you go through some of his videos.

Here is a good look into how Mr.Beast (the fastest growing Youtuber at the moment) managed to build his success:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ-ogw8AZ3o

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Would like to make mention that the response to @Valier videos, the swelling of subscribers is a perfect example of the feedback loop.

The market has reflected an indication of value and I'm sure James is feeling intense feelings of passion -- it's terribly hard to produce videos when you have no audience, or the audience doesn't like your content.

With a fired and connected feedback loop, I'm guessing that producing new videos won't require much motivation now and that the drive to push harder is now easier. That's the power of a feedback loop which fires passion.

 

[Valier]

Update 1. The Two Metrics that Matter Over EVERYTHING.

The Second Video is Out
Already had it scheduled for today - and it's officially out:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Gpr7PEnbs&feature=youtu.be



Had a really fun time creating that video - it's all about the business model of some of these 'online gurus' when it comes to selling their courses + programs, and how their marketing can be incredibly deceiving and taking advantage of people in a vulnerable position financially.

Check it out if that interests you. But more importantly...

Researching the Algorithm
So I've been doing quite a bit of research and have found some amazing videos that can help you if you're trying to understand how to grow on Youtube.

The overall rule at the moment is this: the Youtube Algorithm is Your God.

Youtube's algorithm is what decides whether or not your video should be suggested to other users on the platform. It's like God passing a judgment over your video - if the algorithm favours you, you'll get some good views, and if the algorithm loves you, then you'll have a "viral" video.

But what does the algorithm even look for?

The Two Metrics That Matter the Most
Watch time.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR from now on).

These two single metrics will give the algorithm a good enough idea of how much they want your video to be promoted.

Watch time is the total amount of time, on average that viewers spend watching your video.

Click-Through-Rate is how many people who have seen your youtube video appear on their search/suggested videos/any other location on Youtube (otherwise known as impressions) and have actually clicked on your video from there.

These two single metrics explain what the algorithm favours.


I will create another post with a little more information. But check out these amazing videos that are incredibly insightful for growing a Youtube channel:

This guy explains how one of his videos went viral (side note: that viral video is now at 42MILLION views).

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8


Here is a video by Devin Nash:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBNpgKkjTpU


Seriously, this guy has some awesome videos on business, but some gold dust on building a Youtube channel/personal brand. I highly recommend you go through some of his videos.

Here is a good look into how Mr.Beast (the fastest growing Youtuber at the moment) managed to build his success:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ-ogw8AZ3o

Update 1. continued...

So, let's take a look at one of the first few most important aspects of creating a Youtube video:

Your Content is 5th on the list of priorities.
Yup... the actual content itself is not that important to YouTube - or to phrase this in a better way that doesn't sound like I'm recommending you to post garbage content: your content is irrelevant if nobody is going to see it.


Unfortunately, the YouTube Algorithm hasn't got a way of detecting how good a video is - and after all, that's incredibly subjective to begin with. But let's assume you have a really good video, how do you get the algorithm to promote it?

Improving CTR w/ Thumbnails
Yes - one of the most important ways of doing this are YouTube thumbnails.

Here's a good way of finding some good thumbnails:
1) Find your favourite YouTube channel that has some mild success,
2) Sort their videos by MOST POPULAR
3) Identify any of their videos that clearly 'broke' the YouTube algorithm, and have a good look at the thumbnails that were used.

Graham Stephan's most popular video on how he purchased his Tesla, has a thumbnail with the title "The $78 Tesla" slapped right on accompanied with a picture of him in front of his Tesla, arms wide, mouth open.

It's designed to get your curiosity. It breaks your pattern. It gets you thinking "I wonder what that is all about...?"

Something that I've been doing is when I get the temptation to click on a suggested YouTube video that is unrelated to what I am trying to do - I study what they did to entice me to click that video in the first place. These are the best types of videos to study because whatever the creator did with just a thumbnail/title was enough to break you out of your pattern, and cause you to engage with their video instead.

While researching Mr.Beasts channel, I found myself clicking all sorts of videos that I hadn’t intended to watch, simply because of the clever ways in which the Thumbnail had been designed.

Analysing My Own Thumbnails
From now on I'm going to take a much better look at my own thumbnails - and they have to be able to spark a sense of curiosity that breaks somebody's patterns.

In the next part of this continued update, I'll talk about Titles on YouTube - and what my research indicated about the importance of titling your video when increasing CTR as well as looking at my own titles and what I feel like I could have improved upon - even though I only have two videos up at the moment anyway.

 

[Andy Black]

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 people give themselves 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 learn things when you make "mistakes" and get a different result.

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 trying to grow a following or get "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 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 few 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 ad 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 positive 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.

 

[Valier]

Would like to make mention that the response to @Valier videos, the swelling of subscribers is a perfect example of the feedback loop.

The market has reflected an indication of value and I'm sure James is feeling intense feelings of passion -- it's terribly hard to produce videos when you have no audience, or the audience doesn't like your content.

With a fired and connected feedback loop, I'm guessing that producing new videos won't require much motivation now and that the drive to push harder is now easier. That's the power of a feedback loop which fires passion.

Yup - can confirm that I'm now working to produce higher-quality videos on the back of all the positive feedback I've gotten.


Whereas before I would end my days playing a video game, or doing some YouTube binging - I'm now watching videos on Premiere Pro and After Effects to help me learn new techniques and tricks.

Also, I'm reading a lot more during my 5-minute breaks between video editing. (For those that are curious, I’m using the pomodoro technique to keep myself productive).

But I'm also making sure that I don't get burnt out.


I'm clocking in about 12 hours a day of working, which I can keep up for a while, but I know that the gas tank will likely last for a year or so until it "breaks" and some form of recuperation will be needed.


Which on that note, if anyone has any advice on how to avoid burnout/recover from one, would love to hear it!

 

[Valier]

Update 2. Prioritising Searchable Content When Starting.

Third video is out!
Took me a little longer because of work commitments, but it's finally done:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglIiiGj8Bs


Now, a few things that I've been learning that I now realise are incredibly important for starting out a channel.

The Problem w/ Watch Time & CTR as a New Youtuber
Whilst watch time and CTR are incredibly important for the algorithm to begin spreading your content to a wider audience - it's not hard to imagine that as a new Youtuber you are going to STRUGGLE to achieve getting substantial watch time (will just abbreviate this to WT) & CTR.

It makes sense - you don't have a following, nobody is really paying attention to your stuff, therefore making it harder for people to see your video, let alone watch it.

The Exception
The only exceptions I can think of for this are people that leverage a previous fan base and take that traffic into their channel. (Think celebrities coming to Youtube like Zac Efron, Jack Black, etc)

A Solution
From the research that I have done, it seems like one of the best ways to solve this problem of not having an initial fan base is to create searchable content.

In other words, this is content that is not necessarily discovered by Youtube suggesting your video, but by users who actually search for it.

If you are a tech channel for example, you may create videos that review new bits of technology that comes out, or -even better- niche bits of technology that people are still searching for reviews on. If you are a gaming channel, you may do the same for a new game.

The idea behind this is to create content that is 'ever-green' on the platform, in other words it exists 'forever' on the platform. If you've done your research right (we'll touch on that in just a second) then your video should come up each time someone searches "[insert x product] review". This one video gives people the chance to discover your channel.

If your content is good, then some of the people who have discovered you there, will go on to subscribing/watching your other videos.

Where I Went Wrong...
My second video (and to be completely fair, my third video) are not really good searchable content...

Nobody is searching for "The Rise of Fake Guru's". But there will be people searching for something like "Is Dan Lok a Scam?"/"Are Online Courses Worth It?" etc.

With my first video, I'm still getting views everyday from it (albeit 1-2 views), and I can see from the analytics that a lot of these recent viewers are coming from Youtube's suggestions.

But what does Youtube even use to determine whether or not your content comes up in a search...?

Keywords
To those of you who are familiar with SEO will already be aware of how Youtube uses keywords to determine where your video is going to show up.

The algorithm will scour your video's title, and description, and tags (but we'll talk about tags a little later because I found a video that may suggest tags don't actually do anything).

For example: you search up "The Rise of Fake Guru's", and my video will likely be within the top 5 suggested (I always recommend using Chrome's incognito mode to get the most honest search results from Youtube).

Pretty simple stuff...

So how do you begin researching?

Researching Keywords + a VERY Powerful Tool for Youtube
I struggle with this myself.

And it seems like the best choice is a balance between keywords that are searched often, but have a low amount of competition.

The two most powerful tools you can use right NOW are: TubeBuddy OR VidIQ (these are chrome extensions)

You have to pick one. But generally, they do the same thing. I am personally using VidIQ, and it seems like an even split between which one people prefer so just make a choice and go with it.

Vid IQ does a lot of things, one of the things it can do is help with researching keywords - the traffic a keyword gets, and the competition that exists for that keyword.

Here is a great video by VidIQ themselves explaining what to look out for, and how to do this:

View: https://youtu.be/T3nU2laBHnA



Moving Forward...
I'm going to be paying more attention to creating searchable content from now on.

The same rules still apply to the thumbnail and title of course - they can't be boring, they do have to be somewhat interesting (enough to want to make you click) yet still searchable.

We'll have to see how my videos do with this in mind, and go from there. But I highly recommend using VidIQ, it helps so so much with creating videos.

 

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[Valier]

[MILESTONE] Update 5. The Journey So Far…

The Best One to Date
Been sitting on this video idea for a while – and I finally got down to business and finished it up. Hands down the best video on the channel so far, super proud of this one

View: https://youtu.be/dmLTLkCBSN8


Now time for a recap of how this journey has gone since starting on January 27th:

Recap in Numbers
After 2 months at the time of making this post, here is where the channel currently stands:

Total Impressions: 9,700
Subscribers: 132
Channel Views: 1,900
Watch Time: 165.7
Average view duration: 5:09


My Best Performing Video
In views, my “Is University Worth it Anymore?” video has done the best. But this will soon be overtaken by my “The Rise of Fake Guru’s” video.

The Fake Guru video has by far outperformed the other videos on my channel. With a total watch time of 74.2 hours (which accounts for 44.78% of the total watch time on the channel), and an average watch time of 8:11. It has also gained me an increase of 28 subscribers.

It has been consistently getting views since its release, and has really begun to climb – which is a pleasant surprise, considering I thought this video hadn’t done very well when first publishing.

I actually believe that I did do a good job of targeting keywords with this video, contrary to my previous thoughts.

“Exposing” fake gurus has become a bit of a niche of its own right now (see channels like Coffeezilla, and Mike Winnet as examples).

And targeting a fairly niche topic with some good keywords is actually one of the best ways of picking up an audience (at least from my observations and research).

I can see from my analytics that I have been ranking in some of these terms, and been recommended on some other more popular videos around “fake gurus”.


My Worst Performing Video
Contrary to the Fake Guru video, my worst performing vid has been “The Insane Story of Instagram”.

And I think I saw this coming even as I was creating the video.

At the time I was fairly stressed out as I began working full time at the estate agency (which I am no longer working for, which is a topic for another time), along with that I pressured myself to get this video done in a single week. Not great.

The actual vid is subpar when comparing it to the others (with the exception of my Universtity video). Even so, I tried targeting the keywords for “story of Instagram”, which unsurprisingly I didn’t do well in…

The only reason it even hit over 100 views is because I promoted it on the Instagram subreddit (a tactic that I will talk about in a bit)

Looks like I’m going to have to take some lessons from @Andy Black when it comes to finding keywords to target.

So let’s now talk about what has/hasn’t been working:


My Not-So-Secret “weapons” to Getting Views & Subscribers as a Beginner.
Now, given that I am currently not doing the best job when it comes to keyword targeting, and generating views organically on Youtube, all of my videos have reached above 100 views, with almost all except one getting over 200 views.

“How is that” I hear you ask?

Well, it’s been primarily by tapping into different audiences via external (not YouTube organically promoting the video) means . Here are some examples:

1)On my Instagram I have always posted whenever I am releasing a new video, along with a teaser of the video to get people interested. Doing this has definitely allowed my channel to gain traction, especially when people have been kind enough to share it. This has definitely helped me gain subscribers at the start of my channel, and continues to bring in views. It’s also been really nice when someone who I haven’t spoken to in a while messages me with support for the videos – so that’s an added bonus.

2) Posting to relevant subreddits. I started doing this with my “Story of Instagram” video. I went to the Instagram subreddit, and created a post with a title along the lines of “this is the story of Instagram’s creation – thought you guys might like it”.

The post didn’t even do that well, but it got enough people curious to click – and thankfully gained me more views than it would have initially as well as gaining me an extra subscriber. But by far one of the best videos this has worked on has been my “Data Brokers” video, which ironically was shared on a subreddit by someone else. But I will come to this in a second.

It’s important to note that you should only do this if you are actually posting content that you think is actually valuable, and not just spam.

3)Other relevant communities. Admittedly, the Fastlane Forum has also gained traction to my channel, which I knew would be a side effect of creating this thread. But I have made it at utmost importance to provide value throughout this thread, and make it interesting to read, and as non-spammy as possible.

Doing the same with other “niche” communities you may have access to can also help, especially if you already have credibility built with them.

4) Other YouTube Channels. So, there is now a common tactic of changing your channel name to a format like “[insert your name] – investing videos”, and then commenting on other channels that are relevant to that content, and then if your comment rises to the top of the video, people will see the “investing videos” part of your name, and will (hopefully) be curious enough to click and check out your channel.

This tactic has become fairly common right now, and if you check out some personal finance channels, you will find many others replicating the tactic. Now I personally tried this at the start of my channel, by calling myself “James Jani – Business & Self Development Videos”, and I managed to rank at the top of various different videos of Youtubers that I watch.

But I have to say, that this did not work that well for me. I didn’t see any particular influx of traffic to the channel, if any. And so I ended up changing the channel back to its original name.

But with a recent video on a channel from a Youtuber that genuinely inspired me to create my own channel, I commented along the lines of “Been watching you since [old video that I discovered him from] and wanted to say you genuinely inspired me to start my own channel”.

And very shortly, I started gaining a huge influx in viewers, subscribers, and comments.

An influx that I hadn’t seen before. This all happened on my “Data Broker” video, which deserves its own story on how that video managed to go from something that I thought completely bombed, to getting well above the average amount of views for my channel.

Having said this though I will once more emphasise: DO NOT SPAM. Only post a comment like this if it is GENUINELY true. I’m not just saying that for etiquette reasons. YouTube’s algorithms have ways of spotting if you are just spamming this stuff, and will block you from commenting. Honesty and value first, always.


The Explosive Video
After posting the “Data Brokers” video and sharing it on my Instagram, I noticed that it wasn’t doing that well.

Referring back to my tactics I made the decision to post it to /r/Privacy as I think it was very relevant to that sub reddit’s content – unfortunately I had issues with keeping the video up, and it was eventually taken down. And that was that. I sort of didn’t think much of it…

And then a surge in viewers started occurring – far more than I had been expecting. Realising that something must have happened, I watched as the view count started to surpass what I tend to average around those hours after releasing a video.

And finally, someone commented saying that they found the video posted to the “/r/bitcoin” subreddit.

From there I went to check it, and alas: it was true. The video was on the “hot” page of the subreddit, with around 14 upvotes, if memory serves me correct.

In some sort of ironic twist, after my failed post to the /r/privacy subreddit, another person who I assume must have found the vid enjoyable enough went to post it to a community they thought would be more interested in it.

And if that wasn’t enough, the very next day a Youtuber that had inspired me to make my channel posted a video, and I thought “hell, why not just comment and let him know that he inspired me to create my channel” – of course, I knew that this would definitely gain traction to my channel if the comment landed to the top comments on that video… which it did.

And just like that another influx in viewers started coming to the channel, and along with them came more subscribers.

Before that video I had around 80 subscribers, after these two incidents occurred, I now sit at 132 subscribers. Quite the leap for a beginner, I think.


The Plan Moving Forward
We’re off to a good start, and I don’t intend on stopping. I love making these videos, and I’m starting to get some good ideas on how I’m going to monetise this channel – as opposed to just asking for donations via Patreon or PayPal.

One thing that I definitely want to improve is my average view duration. For many of my videos, with the exception of the “Fake Guru” video, this duration has remained low and typically 4 minutes or below (which considering that all my videos are above 10 minutes, I think it can definitely be improved).

Doing this will also get me closer to achieving 4,000 hours total watch time on my channel (the amount needed to begin putting ads on my videos).

I think I have also settled on the “style” of my videos being in documentary fashion, with somewhat of a narrative, and I’ve consequently changed the banner of my channel to reflect this.

Being in quarantine has also allowed me to continue focusing all my attention on the channel which has been great so far, and I can afford to do so at the moment.

And if you’re following this thread, I want to thank you dearly. It feels like we’re only getting started with this journey, so onwards we go!

 

[Valier]

Thanks for answering my previous question! I'm really quite impressed with the video editing quality and improvement in video editing from your first video to now.

I've found the learning curve for video editing is quite difficult to overcome. I know you're thinking about releasing a course, but any general tips?

A huge game changer for me was when I started actually looking at the video editing of other videos/doccumentaries/advertisments.

When I actually kept my eye out for anything that made me go "oh wow, that's cool", I would screenshot it on my phone/save the link (these can be anything from a random YT video, a Netflix doccumentary, an advertisement, etc).

Then I'd try and replicate a similar effect in my own video by watching YouTube turorials - and although sometimes I may not get exactly what I had wanted, I will have definitely learnt about a new tool/technique that I end up using in the future.

Sometimes it's not the fault of the persons' video editing skills, moreso than it is their imagination when video editing. A great many effects can be achieved with just a solid grasp on the basics of your video editing software!

Let me know if that helps

 

[RazorCut]

Just came across your channel today James. Very impressed with every aspect of your production. It’s easy for me to see why it’s blowing up....

...The second job I ever had was working in a butchers shop when I was 14. There was one lesson I learnt there that stuck with me. My teacher, the owner, told me not to sell the prime cuts but all the others first. I asked why.

His reply

“The best always sells itself”.

Your content is some of the best I’ve seen on YouTube. Keep up the great work.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

45 minutes long

I haven't watched it because I view the material as different from just some standard video.

It's not something I watch on my phone or sit at my desk to watch, it's more like I Airplay it to my Big screen, sit on the couch, and grab a bag of popcorn...

 

[Valier]

Just a quick update for you all:

Tyler1 officially reacted to the video on his stream!

There's a video of his reaction on YouTube, but he enjoyed it thoroughly. In fact, I don't recall seeing him enjoy any other video about him more so than that one, which was incredible to see. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

That also gave us a spike in viewers for the video, so we'll see if it's enough to get the algorithm to start pushing it to the right audience.

Either way, I've been doing more research and have got big takeaways for the future content of the channel. Namely, the importance of the subject/topic covered in the video.

Right now, I have the quality of the content sorted - as long as it's a topic that I'm somewhat interested in, and has some good "meat & bones" to it, then I can whisk up a great doc on it - the only thing that will cement that into a highly viewed piece of content now is the subject itself.

Whilst I'm still going to be improving the quality of my videos with each upload, I'm also going to be taking a very big analytical role with studying what subjects to cover next.

There are a few ways I'm going to be gathering more data points that'll help me decide what sort of content to explore next, but more on this to come!

 

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[Valier]

Update 11. Momentum.

Currently writing this whilst on a mini-vacation, but I had the latest video drop yesterday which I'd been working like crazy to get finished. Happy to finally have it up:

View: https://youtu.be/He1bgJ0sqtw



In this update I wanted to talk about a few more things that I've learnt are of huge importance from what I've observed on both my channel and others...


Momentum.
YouTube seems to be a rollercoaster when it comes to growth for the most part. There are moments of insane growth, and moments of stagnated growth.

I remember watching this video when starting my channel, and everything he talks about still holds true having now grown my channel so much over the last few months.

When three of my videos started getting pushed by the algorithm, we had hit an incredible momentum whereby the channel went from 200 or so subscribers, to 250k+.

These "momentums" usually hit when a video is pushed by the algorithm, and in order to keep the momentum going you must continue to release videos that do incredibly well.

It can be tough to keep the momentum going for prolonged periods of time, but if you have a great understanding of what works with your audience and what would work with the YouTube algorithm you can ride the wave of that momentum out for potentially years.

Mr Beast is a YouTube channel that has been riding a momentum for years, with videos that never seem to drop below 10M views, and this has benefited him greatly as one of the fastest growing channels on the platform.

With that being said, when you break the momentum by releasing a video that doesn't perform as well - your momentum breaks, and you have to rebuild it by once more creating a video(s) that do well in comparison with other videos.


Breaking My Momentum
I've been riding out a momentum over the last few months thanks to those 3 videos being pushed simultaneously by YouTube's algorithm, although this momentum was recently "broken" with the release of my Tyler1 video which didn't perform nearly as well as the other videos.

This is of course a small set back, and I'm not too annoyed or disappointed by this fact. On the contrary, it's given me a lot to learn about with regards to the importance of picking the right subject and content for your channel.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, the Tyler1 video was far too different, and unlike any of the other videos that I had already built an audience around (first mistake). It was also a very niche topic, without as much interest around the subject as my other videos (second mistake). I had also foolishly assumed that it would bring in a new audience to the channel, but didn't consider that that audience would most likely not be interested in the majority of the content on my channel (third mistake). The video also took me 3 months to upload, meaning the momentum I had built had nothing more to go on except the 3 videos that were already being pushed.

Combined, these mistakes caused a break in momentum for the channel.


Rebuilding Momentum
With that being said, it's time to rebuild that momentum once more.

To do that, we need content that we can expect will do well with the algorithm.

I trust in my ability to create good content on a subject (arguably the hardest part), the important thing now is picking the right subject and advertising it (through the thumbnail and title) in a way that allows for a really good click-through-rate.

I've run a survey out to my subscribers through a community post last month, as well as taken a look at the data from past videos, and from what I gathered, people really like content that's either about money, or some form of "exposing the truth" (i.e Toxic World of Self Help, Rise of Fake Gurus, etc).

It's these topics that my future videos will be centred around for now, but it goes without saying that I want to make sure any videos I make (especially ones about money) are providing actual value and not just fluffy advice or temporary motivation (this is really important!!).


The New Video.
This recent MLM video is a step back to the content that I believe does well on my channel.

It's also a video I've been wanting to make for a long while now, and it's been requested by many.

I'm going to be keeping a very close eye on how this video does (CTR-wise), and if I see that it's not performing as well as I expect it to, I will make changes to the thumbnail and the title to try and improve things.

Because of the way the algorithm works, I can't know for sure until we give it perhaps a week to determine how well this video has done (even then, sometimes the algorithm can take longer to pick up a video), but the CTR and watch time should give me a good indication of whether it's going to be picked up by the algorithm.

As a subject, I think MLM's were a great choice - a controversial subject, with a lot of talk around them. Now let's see how well the title and thumbnail do!

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Update 9. Reflection, & My Complete Story [this one is going to be long...]

Well well well, look what came in the post today:
View attachment 33819​

Since I'm almost finished with everything for this next video, and it's been a fairly good day, I figured there's nothing better to do than to tune in to my favourite community, and give you guys another update on things, and reflect on all that's happened.

But I also realise I haven't given you guys a whole lot of context behind everything that I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and what led me to here in the first place.

This one is going to be a long, and I apologise if it feels like I'm rambling, but here it is:

***

I mean it when I say this: without MJ's works, I doubt I would be here right now.


"I WANT TO BE THE WORLD'S BEST ACTOR"​

I dreamed of being an actor. I don't know where this dream initially started out - I think it might have to do with my Mum taking me to theatre classes on a Saturday when I was young to keep me busy with something.

I also loved writing - I can vividly recall my Mum getting me blank notebooks when I was younger (before I even knew how to write properly) and I would just start scribbling lines, imagining what I would be writing about. When we got a computer for the family, I did the same thing on Word - just smashing away at the keyboard, not writing actual coherent sentences, just imagining the story that I was writing.

But by the time I was 11/12, my dreams of being an actor went to the forefront of my mind - I think the catalyst for this was being complimented on my acting ability in drama class, and constant comments like "you should be an actor" that convinced me that I really should be an actor, and that it shouldn't just be a dream.

By the time I was 15, I was taking it far more seriously. I started considering what Drama schools I would audition for, I started learning more about how the industry works, etc etc.

When I was 17 I failed that year to get into drama school, forcing me to take a "gap year". I knew that it was a tough game - the UK has some of the best drama schools in the world, and those were the ones I was going for, it wasn't going to be easy. Thankfully, I was accepted into a Gap Year Diploma course at a reputable Drama School (this would be a one year course designed to help me get into drama school, whilst teaching me more about the craft).

GOING BROKE IN PORTUGAL​

That summer holiday (just before starting the course) I went on a trip with some friends to Portugal. I had around £400 cash, and £600 in my bank account. I came back to the UK with 0 cash, and 15p in my bank account, as well as a broken phone.

I needed money.

And just like that, a desire had sparked that I hadn't really thought about before: a desire to make money. When you want to be an actor, I guess you just accept you'll be broke, until you make it. But now I had lost all my savings in one holiday, and something needed to change.

I started searching online for help, came across people like Gary V who convinced me to sell/flip items on ebay. I first started by selling items in my own room: video games, consoles, etc etc. Then once that was done, I went down to a car boot sale (garage sales of the UK) with a friend and went about looking for items that I could flip for a good profit. After 2-3 months of this, I had about £1000 in my bank account. And suddenly I felt this weird feeling: something like... freedom?

THE FIRST TASTE OF MONEY​

I didn't have to ask my parents for travel money, I didn't have to ask them to buy me clothing items, or any item for that matter. I felt independent. I was hooked to this feeling.

As I started my Drama course and began progressing with it, I grew more and more interest in money, personal finance, and entrepreneurship. Then two things happened: I started listening to what I consider to be bad advice from "fake guru's" who would bombard my YouTube recommendations with dreams of financial freedom, working on the beach, being my own boss, etc etc. I started hating the concept of having a job.

"Make your money work for you" I would often regurgitate, as Kiyoaski had told me. And I continued plowing through the typical personal finance books constantly reccomended to me.

Suddenly the desire to have money turned into desperation. My parents came to this country to give me huge opportunities, I needed to make money to give back to them all that they had given me.

LOSING MY PASSION​

Then the second thing struck: I started to lose my passion for acting. Maybe it was the constant grind of non-stop rehearsing, or maybe the final straw was when I got into the final round of auditions for the Drama School I had so despereately wanted to get into, only to be told "thank you, that's all for now" after I was only JUST beginning to get into the scene for my monologues that I had to perform. Maybe it was realising that I only got into this industry from a childhood dream, and validation from when I was a young teen. That I was only doing this for the fame, and egotistical reasons...

Either way, a combination of these two things led me to desperately seeking the help from these "guru's" online. I couldn't afford their courses, so I pirated them, and it led me to wanting to create a Social Media Marketing Agency.

I called up a good friend of mine asking if he wanted to start this "venture" with me together, and he agreed. We had dreams of making so much money from it. "It'll be easy" is what I had told myself, "just 10 clients paying us £1,000 a month means a six-figure salary".

THE BOOK(s) THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING​

Then I picked up a book that changed everything for me.

This "Millionaire Fastlane " book had been recommended a few times now, and although I didn't like the title and thought it sounded super cheesy and scammy, I decided to make the purchase.

I can still vividly recall being sat on a train where I was about to go and get my acting headshots done, and opening the first page and reading, then continuing to read, then realising that I had stumbled upon a gem.

I started realising the faults in my thinking, and how my mindset surrounding money was so foolishly deluded. And I also felt angry: angry at all the other personal finance books that never talked about something so simple as solving problems in a market, or that you are paid in proportion to your perceived value - why didn't these "business gurus" tell me this? Why did they make me think business is about catching the next fad/trend? Of course, later in the book I realised that they were the ones selling the shovels, MJ's words helped me see that.

Shortly after reading TMF I went on to Unscripted , and enjoyed it just as much.

Around this time I had finally grown to accept that I had lost my passion for acting, and as my drama course concluded for the year, and I said goodbye to my actor friends I went back to my friend who I had started this marketing business with and told him that we needed to take this seriously.

Despite MJ's advice, I felt like I had to try something. I knew that the premise for this business was built on a desire for money, not an attempt to solve anything. And yet I continued with the business because I had nothing else.

We didn't get far - although we tried. We made cold calls, cold emails, set up meetings, but never landed a single paying client in the end. Only a "free-trial" client that ended up ignoring us after we spent a month working on their socials.

It was time to call it quits. He knew it. I knew it. And so we did (this was around October 2019).

SWALLING PRIDE & GETTING A JOB​

From there I swallowed my pride and got a job as a customer service assistant and at a call centre.

It felt good to be earning money again, and the jobs weren't that bad. I met some really nice people. But boy did I hate the idea of doing this for a living.

At the same time, I felt a sense of freedom. Leaving the marketing business allowed me to really start applying what MJ's books taught me and to start looking for an actual problem I could try to solve.

I remember coming to this forum so many times and reading some incredible threads to keep myself motivated during this period. I remember printing out @Envision's thread on how the forum changed his life, and reading it during my lunch breaks feeling inspired and motivated as hell to do something with myself.

NEW IDEAS & BEGINNINGS​

One thing led to another and I found myself with the business idea for Quidemy - an online finnancial learning platform that taught finanncial related subjects in a clear, concise, and digestible way.

As I started progressing with the idea, arond Nov/Dec the idea of starting a YouTube channel popped into my head frequently.

I wanted to "build up my personal brand" I told myself, I wanted to also indirectly promote Quidemy, and I knew the entrepreneurship niche on YouTube was crowded with so much snake oil, bad/misleading advice, and ingenuine people [the problem] - I guess I kinda understood how MJ must have felt seeing all the books about money/finance regurgitating the same slowlane dogma, and feeling as though I wanted to give my own genuine voice into the mix [my solution].

And so, leading up to the creation of the channel I started learning how to edit videos - after finishing a course on Udemy I gathered the bare basics, and just figured I'll learn things as I go along.

STARTING YOUTUBE & GOING ALL IN​

By the end of January I had started creating my first ever video, and was nervous as hell. All I could think about was what people were going to say behind my back ("James is starting a YouTube channel? Ahahaha, good luck wiht that..." etc etc) but I had to brush aside these thoughts and persevere.

Once I uploaded it I breathed a sigh of relief - I had finally gotten the first bit of content out of the way. I was too scared to post the video to my socials at the time, for fear of what people would say, I chose not to. I only sent it to a few friends. And then they started to share the video on their own socials, and overall people were supportive (contrary to my irrational fears of being mocked).

The story from here on has already been recorded in this thread.

I also had gotten a job as an estate agent after that first video was released, a job that I burnt out on within 2 weeks because I hated it so much. The people were fine, the job was fine, but I hated every working hour thinking "I could spend this time working on Quidemy, or a YouTube video".

My least favourite video on the channel is my Instagram video - just because of my mental state when filming it: I had come back from a day of work, it was late at night, I was feeling incredibly stressed, and yet I forced myself to make that video because I knew I couldn't make an excuse to delay it any longer.

Then I quit the estate agency job, lockdown happened, my focus turned to the channel and Quidemy - and shortly afterwards I dropped Quidemy and focused solely on the channel realising that it combined both my business side, and my creative side together almost perfectly.

IT ALL HAPPENED FOR A REASON?​

Leaving us to the crazy events that transpired over the last month and a half, and just an overall realisation of "wow, there were so many seemingly unrelated events, hobbies, or 'faliures' that have brought me to where I am right now":

- Always loving to write.
- Practicing the craft of acting.
- Losing my money in Portugal.
- Going under the "fake guru" spell.
- Reading MJ's works.
- Getting rejected from drama school two years in a row.

Even now, I wonder how things would have been if I had gotten into drama school... a reality that I think would not have been as great as the one I am living in right now.

But without a doubt one of the biggest events was reading MJ's work and discovering this forum.

The values and principles taught in those works were what led me to where I am right now, not a single part of me doubts this.

I'm so grateful for the incredible people on this forum that have helped keep me motivated with their threads and their own journeys - to add my own journey to this forum is an honor, and to have had one of my videos dedicated to MJ's works go viral is little in comparison to how much your work has impacted me MJ.

I am also grateful to the many people who came to the channel and felt like what I had to say was worth their time. The last few months have been some of the best months of my life.

Not necessarily travelling around the world, living in a mansion, at a party...

...but sitting at my desk, in my room, during quarantine, editing these videos, and knowing that I have provided value into other people's lives, and that by first providing that value, I am now able to earn an amazing income from it.

I have so much more planned, but I think that I will always cherish these memories and remember them to be the start of something incredible.

***

CONCLUSION
​

Ah, and before I sign off this update, here are some of my personal goals that I've been writing down in my journal for the last few months and figured it was worth sharing:

- Become a Millionaire by 25.
- Become semi-retired by 30.
-Retire my parents.
- Travel around the world.
- Buy my first house by 22
- Own a Tesla by 25 (LMAO, yeah - I'm a Tesla fanboy, have to admit)
- Have my YT business generate £100k/mnth in the next 3-4 years (more on how I plan on doing this to come)
- Teach/promote entrepreneurial values to children/teens in the form of some sort of charitable work.

Much love to you all! ​

And with that, I'm off to bed (this post took me damn near 3 hours!!)

Thanks for keeping us "in the know" and helping me spread my message -- I think there is one person on this planet as happy as you, and it's me. You are showing me that my content and my underlying message is resonating with the masses. While I knew that already cuz I've sold truckloads of books, to see it confirmed via video is awesome.

As you become more famous and more valuable, I hope you continue to share with us your unfolding story, and dang, it is unfolding!

 

[Valier]

@Valier very nice job man, I checked out your channel.
I really liked The toxic world of self help.

One thing that stands out to me, above ALL else, is your voice.
I read through the thread and I get what you are trying to do with monetization through ad revenue, courses and other stuff like that.
Consider getting more exposure to your buttery voice.
I can see you becoming a voice actor with no problems. And once you start networking with other actors, the sky is the limit.
I think its worth posting your videos in places where people are looking for voice talent.

P.S. My point is, dont "make" the courses, "voice" the courses.

Yes!

It's definitely something I've been thinking about! But it's part of the larger picture of things. I'll elaborate on this more in another post, but the first 1-2 years of this I want to dedicate to building up the channel and creating that video editing course.

IF all goes well, the capital raised from doing that is going to allow me to expand things into much more than just a channel - again, more on this in the future.

But I'm definitely building contacts at the moment!! Or should I say, my channel is building contacts for me.

I've spoken to a guy who has a film production company that has had a movie on Netflix (nothing big, but still impressive - and it means he has a connection with them).

I also have a call on Saturday with someone who has done a lot of work for the BBC and is now writing a satire film about "fake gurus" which he'd love to talk to me about.

Again - it blows my mind how powerful just having my channel is. These people are coming to me, I'm not making any cold calls, or emails, or anything. It's insane...

 

[Valier]

Thanks soo much for your update & transparency!!
Once again, suuper happy & proud of you!!

I was thinking of doing a health channel occasionally scattered with a beauty video, since I'm both a GP & cosmetic dr. Do you think that's a bad idea?
Will my channel be 'labelled' as a health channel instead of a beauty one, and have a lower CPM?
Or does the CPM depend on the individual video & not the channel as a whole?

When I read £21,233 I screamed. That's more than what I make in a month, and I went through an extremely tough program, and working a (pretty) tough job for almost 10 years to not-even-get-there!!

Seriously rooting for you!!
I think you should also consider a 'Fans Only' account. Since you already have a fan base, you can further monetize your audience by letting them ask you more personalized questions about their financial situation etc. etc. for a subscription fee.
That's what I plan to do once I've built an audience. And people will pay for FaceTime / custom videos yadda yadda etc.
The numbers can add up pretty quickly I reckon.

Honestly, thank YOU for supporting me - I sound like a broken record saying this but you can't imagine how much it means to me!!

Yeah, you should have seen my parent's reaction when I told them how much I earnt... they were blown away and overjoyed to hear it. Such an amazing feeling to see them that happy... and we've only gotten started.

And go for it with that channel!

Although I don't know for sure, I'm certain that the health niche has a very high CPM. Any niche that really falls under the categories of health, relationships, or wealth, I'm going to immediately assume they have a high CPM. And what have you got to lose? Honestly, from your credentials it already sounds like you're going to know much more than 90% of health-based channels on the platform.

The health niche is another one of those niches filled with all sorts of "fake guru's" and just overall bad advice - plenty of gap in that market for someone genuine to come along!

I think you should also consider a 'Fans Only' account. Since you already have a fan base, you can further monetize your audience by letting them ask you more personalized questions about their financial situation etc. etc. for a subscription fee.

Yup! This is pretty much what I want to do with my Patreon, and I'm going to be talking about this more in an future update. But I severely underestimated the power of Patreon, and it's far better to have a stable monthly income, than just relying on the algorithm alone.

Although it's of paramount importance to me that I provide great amounts of value to my Patrons, and that it doesn't feel like a simple cash-grab.

 

[Fox]

Had the chance Monday to interview James (@Valier )

Was a really cool talk - he had a ton of great advice on his approach, mindset, and Fastlane principles.

Thanks again James for this!

@MJ DeMarco I think you will really enjoy this - the forums and the books got mentioned quite a few times.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Congrats to James @Valier, who just went over 1M subscribers.

 

[Valier]

Update 3. A Slow Grind, and Case Studies.

Drum roll... the fourth video is out!
Definitely one of my best. Been learning a few new editing tricks that I'm putting into practice. I also scripted this video, unlike my others... so the game is definitely stepping up!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRHBrJziE-Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRHBrJziE-Y

Also some important observations, arguments, and case studies to note:

It's a Slow Grind...
Youtube is definitely a process... I already knew this, but after four videos in it really does sink in that you just have to keep going with it, learning from the data that you get, and keep making improvements from there. And if it’s clear it’s not working out, you may have to call it quits.

But with that being said, I’ve done a little research on some newer channels and there's one thing I keep noticing:


Poor Quality, (and an overall lack of care).
If you ever have the time, browse through this subreddit where you'll see different new youtubers post their content: r/advertiseyoutube

It's insane how many I come across (especially in the gaming niche) where their videos are just lengthy piles of nothing. The editing is bad, the audio quality is either terrible or it's non-existent, video quality is poor, etc etc. There's nothing that makes these people stand out in what is already an insanely over crowded market.

Personal finance is no different. Ever since Graham Stephan got big, I've seen a surge of people who are essentially doing exactly what Graham is doing. The same editing, same thumbnail, and overall talking about the same stuff.

It’s not like what they’re actually talking about is bad with most of these guys, it’s just that there’s nothing special about it.

Does that mean that niches like personal finance/gaming are impossible to break through? Absolutely no.

Check out a guy on YouTube called Andrei Jikh. Another personal finance youtuber. He’s had his channel up for 1 year, and has had it grow to almost half a million subscribers.

If you just click on one of his videos, you’ll see exactly why that is.

Andrei has amazing editing, a unique personality that he lets shine through, and he adds his own little twist of ‘magic’ to all of his videos – quite literally. It’s different, it stands out. And I predict that Andrei will dominate the personal finance niche in the next year or two.


How this relates to my own channel.
Four videos in, and I’m starting to get a better sense of where I see the content of this cannel going.

I really like creating ‘documentary-style’ videos, just like my recent one. Where the video has a sense of narrative, it’s split into parts, the music has that ‘documentary’ feel, and the scripts also adapt that narrative/story-telling style.

But that also means that I won’t be able to post more than 1 video a week (at least not until I get some help with editing).

Initially that made me fearful because, after all, people are constantly going on about how you should be ‘posting consistently’. And then I noted a few examples of channels that defy this rule:

Case Studies:
One: Internet Historian.
Two: Bill Wurtz.
Three: Kurzgesagt.

(there are definitely more, but these are the ones that I am most familiar with).

All of these channels take a much longer time to post videos, and yet they still get ridiculous views.

Why?

Let’s take Internet Historian (one of my favourites) as an example. Here’s a post he made on a subreddit that is based around helping new youtubers: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/aefl08 View: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/comments/aefl08/advice_from_a_larger_channel/


It’s a great read if you’re interested, but I wanted to boil it down to some key points:


Creating a ‘Catalogue’ of Videos:
One thing he seems to stress the most in this post is creating a ‘catalogue’ of videos.

And I think both his channel and the others I’ve mentioned are great examples of doing this. When I first watched the Internet Historian, I couldn’t stop binging his other videos. They were incredibly entertaining, it was clear he put a lot of thought and effort into them, and they all had a sense of narrative, and story, that made them very fun to watch.

Quality Over Quantity
Although I think there’s a balance that needs to be made, he makes a great point about the quality of his videos being a priority.

The whole reason I (and others) binged his videos, is because they know they are getting good quality content from each one. Good jokes, the same-style of editing, an interesting narrative, etc etc.


Applying this Mentality
With my future videos I also want to prioritise content, a sense of narrative/story, and build up a ‘catalogue’ of videos, that have a good sense of re-watchability, and could potentially spark a binge watch of my channel.

There’s a lot more to be said on this subject, but I’ll leave this update here for now!

 

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[Valier]

Update 4. A Word of Caution.


Anotha’ one
Fifth video finished up and released – decided to take a dive into the data broker industry. Pretty interesting stuff…

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ2l-kk5ihk


Now a couple thoughts and some important things to note if you personally decide to go down this route:



THIS IS NOT FASTLANE (yet).
This is the ‘fastlane forum’ and since we’re all here to create businesses that fulfils the CENTS framework as best as possible, it’s important to note:

Youtube is not Fastlane. (At least, not the type of channel that I am creating).

Because this channel is centred around building a ‘personal brand’ it mostly requires my face to be in it, and if we’re going to be uploading videos regularly, then that means a lot my time will have to be traded in for creating these videos.

With that being said, here are a couple of my plans to make this channel more Fastlane – meaning less trading of my time for money, whilst keeping up the quality and still growing the channel:


Time Spent Editing
Without a doubt, the longest stage in the process of making my videos is the editing.

One video can take anywhere from 20-30 hours to make (roughly speaking). Granted, I am still new to editing, and so I’m learning things along the way which makes me a pretty slow editor at the moment.

I’m sure I’ll get faster at editing as I continue practicing, but even then, the amount of time I spend editing isn’t going to work if we’re trying to Fastlane this thing.

For now, I don’t have much of a choice, but it is absolutely my goal to hire an editor that knows how to edit in a similar style to what I’m currently doing – and do an even better job of it!


Other Income Streams
This was always a plan from the start, but I should have mentioned it already:

I don’t plan on monetising my videos using just Youtube ads.

Thankfully there are a few other ways that I can expand the channel’s capability to generate money:

First, I’m able to generate traffic to my other business (www.quidemy.com) and convert that traffic into buying customers.

Second, I think I’ll be setting up a ‘patreon’ account – at least whilst we’re still starting out. For those that don’t know, Patreon is a donation platform that lets people donate money on a monthly basis to content creators, usually with a little incentive from the creator. It’s not the greatest way of generating revenue from the channel, but it can certainly be helpful at the start if there are fans willing to donate money in return for the content.

Third, courses. Online courses are incredibly profitable. But of course, I’m not trying to sell some garbage snake oil stuff, so the courses that I do create for the channel must be actually informative and provide an extreme amount of value. Usually to do that, it will require leveraging my own experience… which is pretty small atm. I’m still thinking of ideas, but if this channel goes far, I definitely can see myself creating a course on exactly how I did it, and how you can potentially replicate those results. Time will tell for this one. Oh, and I’m not going to be shoving these courses down people’s throats – they may get an occasional mention in a video here and there, but it will never detract from creating good free content for the channel.

Fourth, merchandise. A little on the fence with this one, but if there’s something of genuine good quality that I can see myself creating (merchandise-wise) then why not? Again, this is something for the future, but definitely worth thinking about.

Fifth, affiliate marketing. Low on the list because it isn’t incredibly profitable – but affiliate links in the description have been proven to add a little bit of revenue to Youtuber’s careers, so again, why not? Of course, all the links that I have in the description are for products that I use myself, and that I genuinely think will help my audience.

I have some other ideas in mind as well, but that’s for another time. Out of these methods the most ‘fastlane’ ones are taking viewers to my other business, creating online courses, and merchandise. Assuming that I’ve set up processes behind each of these that allow them to run with little-no effort, then they have the greatest chance of allowing me to generate more money from the channel, whilst still keeping my efforts needed to do so fairly low.

As always, all of these things require a lot of upfront effort first before they become more passive, but as long as I can put in that work and sacrifice at the start, I believe it can really work out.


***


That’s about all for this update. By the next one, I’ll begin to recap how the channel has been going so far along with plans for the future.

Till then!

 

[Valier]

OK, I’m writing this on my phone so it may not be structured too nicely, but the money stats have come through:

My CPM is about £14.34 (images attached below)

I received a total of 22.2k monetised playbacks (people whohave actually seen ad on my videos) - now bare in mind I only started monetising the videos less than 48 hours ago, so it doesn’t account for all the views we‘ve had before that.

My total estimated revenue is £180 since I started monetising. I’m not too sure if YT takes a cut from this or if this is the direct amount that goes into my ad sense account, I’ll need to research this a little more but just wanted to fill you guys in!

I’ll likely do an update post where I go through exactly how this monetisation stuff works once I’ve figured it out.

But yeah, £14.34 CPM is incredible...

 

[Valier]

That is amazing!

Ahahaha, well - as I said, I'm glad I've put people on your books.

Just like Andy said, it's a perfect example of a productocracy.

I was paid a grand total of NOTHING from MJ to not only reccomend his books on three of my videos, but also dedicate an entire video to it - all because I believed in the messages and principles of those books and thought it was worth sharing and creating a video about.

Productocracuy for sure.

Me too.

Consider these as your “shut up and take my money” moments @Valier. I get them too and could have acted on them sooner.

Set some course up and let people give you their money. Do it this following week.

I'm trying my best to get some sort of course going, but I have to admit: things are getting quite overwhelming.

My biggest priority right now is getting this next video out... but my God is it a giant project that I can only reasonably expect to be out in the next 4-5 weeks, and I'm working pretty ungodly hours at the moment to do that, as well as keep up with important emails/messages that are being sent through.

I don't want to rush through the course either, whilst I aim to first make an MVP version of it, and gradually improve the course over time, I still want to make sure I'm teaching it properly and haven't just scrambled to put something together for the sake of a cash grab.

Right now, YT ad revenue is paying me ridiculous amounts of money, if I do say so myself - so I'm being a little patient with the course.

But I'll start recording lessons for it as soon as this next video is done.

Again, it's me completely on my own doing this at the moment, so it's definitely become a bit daunting over the last few weeks with what's been going on, but I'm going to get more to grips with the processes behind running this channel, and hopefully begin to outsource/hire others to help me and ease off the stress as time goes on.

 

[Valier]

It's none of our business...but youtube ad income is hard to estimate. Can you see a general metric....like x cents per view or x $ per subscriber. Or is it related to your kick a$$ viewer retention...which is probably Amazing!

More than happy to share! - after all, I wanted to be as transparent as possible with this thread.

I'm going to be making a full post explaining how Ad Revenue works on YouTube soon, but for now I'll just break down my own stats.

Remember that these differ from channel to channel, depending on the niche of the videos you choose to create.

So, my average CPM (the amount of money I get per 1,000 views) is currently £13.66 (this can fluctuate here and there, but it's overall been around this figure).

Now, you only get paid per "monetised view", meaning when someone actually sees the ad (so if someone has ad block on, you don't get paid).

I've had about 1.2M "monetised playbacks" (in other words, 1.2 million people have seen ads on my videos), and this has given me an estimated revenue of £8,359.74.

And trust me... I'm very aware of how F*cking insane that figure is considering we've only been monetised for 11 days.

From what I've seen the "estimated revenue" figure that YouTube gives me is fairly accurate and usually what you end up getting at the end of the month, but when I know for sure, I'll make a post about it.

So yeah, it's all about views. Subscribers are nothing but a vanity metric.

Hope that helps!

 

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