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

[Phikey]

Ok I've been planning this challenge for the last 3 weeks and I'm finally doing it. @Fox pointed me in the right direction with a course on Youtube SEO and now I'm taking the dive.

Here's a summary of it before I get into the details:

• Post a piece of content every single day for 120 days (in my case a Youtube video)
• Help as many people as much as possible and don't hold back on the value
• Answer every single comment/question
• Systemize this as much as possible so my team take care of everything and I just need to finish the scripts and hit record on my camera

What is this?

It's a content creation challenge for myself where I am making 120 videos in 120 days that provide insane value to my audience. I'm not pitching some $3997 course with an automated webinar funnel, this is real value and people can take it and go execute everything with all the learnings I provide.

Why am I doing this?

To challenge my self-limiting beliefs and to build a personal brand with longevity.

I have never been a content creator. I've always had this self-limiting belief that I'm the guy behind the scenes that helps other people become successful and I just collect the income while I do this. I don't write blogs. I don't make videos. I always thought it would take too much time and I'm better off chasing short-term deals than investing in something that might pay off in 6-12+ months.
I also never wanted to be associated with the shady people in my niche. There's a lot of fake gurus showing off lambos, fat stacks and convincing poor sheep to spend $2k on terrible courses filled with hot air. Many doctor their screenshots and convince young-hopefuls to part with large sums of cash in the hopes of achieving the same results in unreasonable spaces of time.
People are now waking up to the Fake Gurus and are looking for some answers. They're looking for real advice that actually helps. I'm going to give the people what they want and I'm not going to charge a cent for it.

What are the videos about?

Ecommerce marketing with everything you need to build your store. Just value, value, value. Content that people pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for but I'm giving it away all for free. Want to know how to set up all your email marketing flows in Klaviyo? I'll have my youtube playlist with the strategy, templates and a walkthrough of exactly how to set them up. Want to know how to set up profitable and scalable Google Shopping campaigns? It's all right there, in the Google Shopping playlist on my channel.

Why would I do this for free and not sell a course?

The more people I help, the more potential people that need my main business.
I'm helping beginners grow into competent Ecom store owners. If I'm the guy that's provided an insane level of value while they were learning the ropes then who's going to stand out when they need to free up their time and hand off their media buying in 1-3 years?
So, it's not 100% selfless here. Nothing is. But I have a different angle to many of the fake gurus because I'm not trying to make cash from courses on the front-end. It's a long-term game for me to build a brand that helps people so much that they'll come back (or tell people about my stuff) when they actually need my help. We love @Andy Black here in the FTF. He provides insane value and when those people have a friend that needs help on their Adwords, who do they recommend? Andy has put in the hard work, provided value and people trust him for that. I'm sure he enjoys it too, which is something I'm starting to do with this channel!

What authority do I have to teach this stuff?

I've grown several 7 figure stores. I helped my first client get their store online back in 2013. I used to manage some local markets in Sydney, Australia and I got tight with the store-holders. I learned their fears, frustrations, needs and wants. I helped my first store-holder get their clothing store online (onto Woocommerce) and designed and built everything myself (even borrowed my friends camera and took all the product photos!). Since then, I've been helping more business owners with their digital marketing and it's only in the last 3 years that I've honed in on Ecommerce and building a team that's really good at helping them scale. We've helped several stores scale to mid to high 7 figures with our marketing work and recently purchased and started growing our own store. I'm documenting the whole process on my channel as well. I was going to just document it here in the INSIDERS section but after thinking about this challenge I want to add it in here and provide the strategy to people watching my channel.

Why 120 days?

Doing it daily because I'll learn fast and fail faster. My first videos are going to suck. I'm still working out the camera, lighting, audio setup. As well as getting the script and editing process perfected. I think the first 30-100 videos are going to suck bad and I'd rather learn quickly at the start and get comfortable in front of the camera.
I've also been studying other channels and it looks like that right around the 100 video mark, channels really start to get some traction with Youtube's algorithm. That is, with my educational niche and targeting longer-tail keywords. Some channels can do well with a few videos but often they're focused on entertainment with higher production value. Miles Beckler (another Youtuber) started the same challenge a few years ago and he reported his results every month.

As part of my research, I graphed out his performance compared to the number of videos he made. Check out these graphs:

While he was posting daily and regularly for the first 120 days, his subscribers (and views were similar) shot off after 4-5 months. They increased exponentially regardless of his video output. He actually slowed down his video making output after the first 4 months and has seen an exponential increase in subscribers since. Now sitting at 134k subscribers. This guy is living proof. He's talked about this challenge a lot and inspired others to do the same.

Won't this take a lot of time?

Yep, but time is something I have in plentiful supply right now. My agency business is largely systemised and my team do everything. I just check in once per day. My ecom store is managed by my team so I'm just checking in on it daily. I'm also in lock down so otherwise I'm just twiddling my thumbs. Why not make the most of these months and build a foundation that could last for years?

My first video?

Here it is

I'll be updating my progress here regularly as I execute. If you have any questions or advice, please have at it!

 

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[Phikey]

Hey guys, it's been a while since I updated so here it is. There's a lot to catch up on so I'll keep it quick.

Summary:
Using my channel I generated $1.36 million in sales with a net margin of 20-30%, and fully automated my business so I could focus on my dream passion: making music.

Since starting the channel, it's generated the business $1.36 million in sales with a healthy margin. That was 2.7 years ago. For perspective, in the 12 months before the channel launched we were making $150k-$160k per year in sales. Overall I'd say it's been a success!

Freedom Gained
As I grew the Youtube channel, our client base grew, the team grew, and I slowly handed over all my responsibilities until I was out of the business. Currently it's 100% automated. I have an experienced and intelligent CEO at the helm running the show.

It's not making yacht money but for me my dream has always been to build my business to the point where it no longer needs me and allows me to spend my entire day doing what I love: working with music.

I get a very respectable income from my business, but more importantly, I get all my time. I'm not required in the business at all. My CEO sends me a weekly report with revenue, profits, new clients closed, and a few other important metrics so I know things are going smoothly. Apart from that, he has responsibility for growth and profits.

Transitioning from a personal brand
You might ask, "You built your channel around your personal brand, how is that sustainable?"
While our channel gets a lot of our leads, we've been consistently putting out quality blog posts that are getting us almost the same amount of traffic as our channel. Our team are also training to be on the Youtube channel themselves. We'll rename the channel to KeyCommerce (agency name) rather than Mr Sam Baldwin. We also source leads from other mediums too.

What work do I still do for the channel and business?
Nothing. Seriously. I've been out of my business since April. I still own it, but my team are running the shop.

Who's running the show?
I promoted from within. My CEO has decades of experience in agencies and digital marketing and has been running the company since I left in April 2022 (10 months). He's doing a fantastic job leading it.

What are you doing now?
I'm building a new business and Youtube channel called Phikey. With this channel, I'm travelling the world, creating DJ mixes in beautiful locations. I play melodic and progressive house music, creating 60 minute sets with sunsets/sunrises, drone shots, and good vibes. I'm also producing my own tracks (still learning and getting better). My vision is to build up my fanbase, add my own tracks to my sets (for distribution) and monetise the channel through ad revenue, affiliate links, merchandise, patreon, and later performance tickets. It might not make me a millionaire but it's what I love doing.

If you like electronic music, you might like my sets. They're perfect for house parties, studying or working when you want something to listen to. Artists such as Lane 8, Rufus Du Sol, Ben Bohmer, Tinlicker, Marsh, Luttrell, Cristoph, etc.

You can see my latest set here:

Also happy to verify my sales to an admin if required, just let me know.

If you guys have any questions about the business or my journey, let me know and I'll help you out.

 

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[Phikey]

Amazing and well done - that is a lot of hard work so great to see it paid off.

If you were to start this challenge again (or for someone else looking at doing it) what would you now recommend to do differently? Or maybe what would you recommend to do even more of?

Would love to see the lessons learned.

Good question, I finally have some time to sit down and write out some thoughts:

Some things I learned through the process:

• Building an audience is a fantastic way to get to know your audience on a deeper level and find their problems and pain points. I have shifted my business significantly since starting, focusing in on helping my audience as much as possible, and also learning how to speak to them in a language they understand: “their problems”.
• Building an audience builds HUGE trust. On many sales calls now, the prospect will often want to take a screenshot of the call to show their friends because they can’t believe they're speaking to me after watching my videos for months. They say things like “it’s so weird to actually see you respond to me in person rather than just watching” “It‘s so weird to hear your voice as it’s been in my head for so long”. It’s made it a lot easier to close deals with great clients that I really want to work with and can confidently get results with. I don’t have to beg for clients, or work with clients that I know will be tough to deal with. I can pick and choose, which has resulted in a huge amount of testimonials and case studies (we have about 20 on our website now).
• Sometimes you just need to jump in, commit, and do it. It’s so hard to start something like this challenge, that’s why I came here for the accountability. Though, it’s been worth It. I’ve now built an asset that’s generating consistent views, leads and business and we’re growing rapidly because of it.
• It’s also made hiring a lot easier. People want to work with a business that’s ’winning’. We’re not huge, really, but I’ve been able to blast my email list when needing to hire and picked up some great candidates, one of which I have hired which has been awesome. It also attracts higher level talent that want to be a part of something big and cool, to work for a company that’s doing something in the space.
• Change their state. This is the best advice I can give. When you change someone’s actual state of being you gain huge trust and they’ll listen to everything you say. They need to set up Google Analytics? Make a video that means by the end of 5 minutes they can verify that it’s set up and then you get all the credit. It proves to them that you know what you’re talking about. If you can help them with just one thing like that, you can help them with many more. So many blog posts and gurus have waffle content and hide things behind lead magnets and courses. Give people real value up front and you’ll have them for life. Simple and well-known advice but it’s true to a T.

What would I do differently?

• I would start with better production value and editing from the start. This is a double edged sword. It would take longer to start and get into the rhythm but my early videos are now immortalised because many of them have ranked well and have received tens of thousands of views. To be honest, they are great value, but I know that if I spent more time on the production side they could have done even better.
• Learn how the Youtube algorithm works, inside and out, and play to your advantage. This means editing your videos well to remove any fluff, improve the scripts so you don’t waffle or go off track. I’d go through each video monastically before publishing to optimise them as much as possible. Though, this being said, there‘s so much value to ‘just starting’. I think that if I tried to do 120 videos in 120 days with a high-production level approach I would have burnt out.
• Don’t make waffle videos just to fill space. I went after some keywords that were low volume and low competition but they ended up falling flat, not generating traffic, and actually hurting my channel. I would also make some videos that I thought were valuable but the audience weren’t interested in them at all. Sometimes you might think you know what your audience NEEDS but that doesn’t really matter if they don’t know they need it. It’s a lot harder to convince someone they need something (even if they really do) than to just give them what they need first, build trust, and then they’ll go through the valuable content.
• Don’t get caught up in video topics or niches that suck you dry. GMC Suspensions were a big topic last year and I made some great videos on it which generated a lot of views. I also went ahead and made a course on the topic which was one of the first quality resources available. It made some good sales for a few months but died away as an army of people from Fiverr took my course, learned everything and then started offering a service for $5. I spent a lot of time creating that course and it was profitable overall, but I should have focused on my core service and hiring. You can make the most popular videos in the world. They’ll generate ad revenue, but if you’re looking to build a business around the channel then you should keep in mind how you’ll monetise it.
• I wouldn’t have made it all about me and my name. I wish I used a pen name for the channel. This is just because now my videos are up and immortalised, if I ever want to go under the radar or wipe myself from the internet, it’s going to be much harder. I would have built it around the brand, which would make it a lot easier in the future if I want to hand off the ‘acting’ to someone else. I can still do it, but I’ll need to transition.
• Get the business model or service dialled in before starting. I had too much business and have had a waiting list for months and months because we grew and I didn’t have the team to handle it. I’d rather maintain a high quality service than hire rookies just to get the sales. It would have been great to have a good foundation first so I could make the most of the sales.
• Charge what your worth and the value you provide. It took a long time before I caught on that I should be charging more. The clients were getting a super sweet deal and I was at full capacity so I was turning away clients. I now charge something more reasonable and it’s increased profits too.
• Don’t get an ego. This started happening as my channel took off where I though I was hot stuff. I had to check myself and bring it back in because it brought emotions in that were not conducive to running a business. I started thinking more about what I thought people needed to hear rather than helping people with their problems. I’ve found that when I’ve stopped doing this I lose their attention quickly. Something to keep in mind. Focus on helping people, getting them from A to B and you’ll build their trust. Monetisation comes naturally after that.

What would I do more of?

• Queueing up videos in advance. I did do this many times but there were one or two times in the challenge where the publishing caught up to the bank of videos I had saved up. I’d focus on another project for a week or two and I’d be back at the stressful point of filming, editing and publishing with almost no videos spare.
• Hire multiple editors at once. At the start we had 4 and we paid them on a per-video basis. This made it easy to calculate my expenses and we could save money in periods of less editing. It also meant that if one editor got an ego about their editing (which did happen), and they try to raise their rates because they think that the channel’s success is all due to them, you have a backup. This actually happened and I told him that I have 3 other editors taking jobs and he changed his tune entirely and actually offered a discount to us if we provided him more videos. You don’t want your channel being held hostage like this and having to find a new quality editor mid-way through without disrupting production.
• Spend time building the branding assets and not iterating with videos. My first videos had bad audio, low quality titles and transitions, and overall lower quality editing. I wish I did more video tests before posting videos that have now become vital to the viewers of my channel.

Overall it’s been awesome. There are many channels out there with more subscribers and views but my viewership are super niche and targeted. I love this because Youtube has figured out who watches my content and are better able to recommend me to other people too.
I’m excited moving forward. I’m still posting one video a week but soon we’ll focus on SEO and blog post content and build that up as a traffic source.

 

[Phikey]

It's DONE. I did it, 120 videos in 120 days.

Here are the final stats:
Subs: 1,183
Views: 42,931



Look at that beautiful growth!!

And the final video (an overview of the 120 days):

Man that was an exhausting challenge. I really wanted to give up at about day 100. I was burnt out from making so many videos and I was also trying to run the business at the same time. We had a big uptick in new business so I was also doing more hiring, training, systems building and it was just crazy.
If I were to do it all over again I would do it in a heartbeat.

Some things I learned:

• Just start. Don't try to get everything perfect (like the camera, lighting, audio). Just start filming and creating. The most valuable thing you have is momentum and consistency. It's easy to be a perfectionist and use this as a form of procrastination and you end up never publishing anything and move onto the next shiny thing (and waste all that time prepping and planning).
• Give the market what it wants. Do the keyword research, look at the problems people are facing, and find a way to solve them with your content. In my niche there are a tonne of people selling expensive courses and few people giving out genuinely helpful tutorials for free. I tried to make my videos clearly take someone from A to B (like setting up conversion tracking or verifying their Shopify store in Merchant Center). Things that people could measurably say that my content helped them. This creates a great feeling for the viewer and immediately builds trust because I've given them a transformative experience.
• Ignore the naysayers. Around the 30 day mark I had some friends tell me I was wasting my time and I should focus on marketing activities that gave quick wins (like cold emailing, posting in facebook groups and dm-ing people). Their advice did have merit and it does work (good for when you're starting a services business). But.I knew that I needed to build an ASSET. A way to generate consistent leads that already knew me because I had built the authority. I stuck at this Youtube challenge I'm now getting about 3-5 new leads each day (last week we closed 5 clients). I knew that I was building an asset that had scalable and exponential growth even with the same amount of workload. They were trying to help but they had never seen someone run a content strategy before. I'd done my research and knew that if I put my mind to it then I could get results.
• You can learn everything. I learned so much about editing, filming, scripting, delegating, designing.. so much in this whole challenge. It was awesome. Don't feel overwhelmed by it all. Just start chipping away at what you need to do and soon you'll have eaten the whole elephant.
• Get feedback ASAP. I didn't realise it when I created this thread but you guys here gave me so much amazing advice on my content in the first few pages that allowed me to quickly revise what I was making and bring up the standard of output. The audio was messed up, the editing sucked, and I couldn't see it because it was my first time doing this sort of thing. Some great posters here gave some quick feedback that would have taken me months to see otherwise. Why? Because at the start you're getting only a couple of views and there's a low chance that anyone watching the videos on Youtube will give you constructive feedback that can really help.
• Once you commit, don't give up and find a way to be held accountable. This thread helped a lot. I didn't want to let you guys down. I also have a good friend of mine that's building a SaaS and we zoom call once a week with weekly accountability goals. We set clear goals for the coming week and we make sure the other guy gets their work done. This friend was a godsend and he saw the whole journey from 0 views to over 40,000 views. More than once he was the reason I didn't miss my upload schedule each week because I knew he was counting on me.
• Find ways to prepare for when you're at your worst. Everyone has their ups and downs and everyone feels like they don't want to do the work that they know they need to do. I created a batching system so that some weeks I could go hard with 10-20 new videos created but still publish them once per day. This meant that I could operate in sprints. Film hard one week and take a week off the next. When I was on day 30 I had about 85 videos already filmed and they were all in the editing phase. This made it really easy for me to step back, look at what my audience needed and I had the time to make a free course that helped people optimise their stores for better conversion rates. We've now had over 400 people take the course and one guy emailed me this week saying that he tripled his conversion rate after implementing what I taught in the course. The content isn't particularly special, but I go through the basics that few store owners have. So if you DON'T have it, then just implementing reviews and a better description on your product page is going to have great results. If I was actually Scripting, Filming, Editing & Publishing one video every single day (the whole video production in that one day) this would have been incredibly hard.
• Don't be afraid to pivot - keep listening to the market. I originally started the channel with the branding focused on building an Ecom store remotely. I thought people would care about that - working from home or while travelling. No one really cared about this, they just wanted to learn how to make money first. So, after realising this, I just focused on the tutorials that helped with this and left out the remote/travel sort of stuff.

That's it guys. Thanks for watching this thread and I hope this motivated a few others to get on top of a content strategy.

What's next?
I'm now going to have a big long sleep for the next few days and then decide if I'll keep making more videos. I think I'll still post but 2-4 per week. I've got some good momentum that I'd rather not lose.. but I also need a break and don't want to burn out. As many people told me at the start:
It's a marathon... not a sprint!

Sam

 

[Phikey]

It looks like you moved to weekly videos now but the channel is over 11k subs.

Can you give us an update as to what is going on?

Yeah, the daily videos were great for the first 4 months to kickstart the channel and algorithm but it's really not sustainable when you're growing a services business.

I've just been releasing 1 video a week so it doesn't take too much time but maintains the traffic.

Honestly, the Youtube channel has exploded my business. Best thing I ever did. Of course, it was a huge investment for a long period, but it is still paying for itself every single month with new clients coming in.

 

[Phikey]

BIG MILESTONE - just got my first client from Youtube!! $1500 per month PPC client. He gave the verbal agreement and we're starting in 3 weeks.

He found me from Youtube Search and had consumed ALL my videos. The sales call didn't feel anything like a normal sales call for me. He was sold before the call, we just talked through the strategy. This is the power of content marketing. Trust and authority was built way before I even spoke to him.

He gave me some great feedback on the channel:

• He said that I was very different from all the other youtubers in my niche.
• He said that he could clearly tell that I knew my stuff and that I had REAL experience because I was showing real accounts and had a depth of knowledge that you can't get from just repeating what you read on a blog (he said some competitors do this).
• He said that my marketing audits were the most helpful videos on my channel. The videos where I go deep into marketing accounts and talk through my recommendations.
• His feedback was to do more videos about how to THINK like an expert ecom marketer. How to get the mindset so he could solve all the problems specific to his store, himself.

Current stats:
Subscribers: 212
Videos: 43 (been posting every day but just not in this thread)

I'm only at 212 subscribers and I'm getting a new contact form submission on my site every 2-3 days. Often it's requesting help on little problems and they're new stores (so not a qualified lead). I'll help them via email (not spending too much time doing this) but I'm waiting for the more qualified guys like the guy that's now a new client.
I can imagine that when I'm at 1k subs, or 10k+ it's going to be an incredible source of leads and traffic for my brand. I haven't thought about this too much as I've just been focused on getting good content out there.

 

[Phikey]

Hey guys, I haven’t updated for a week or two and a lot has happened since then:

Subs: 634
Videos: 87
Days: 87

Here's a screenshot of the 87 days to date. A really clear upward trend over time.
It's definitely a marathon.. not a sprint!



A bunch of you guys have asked about my systems and prices and how I give videos to editors.
I’ve made this full video just for you guys here where I walk you through my whole content management system here:

I really appreciate all the support you guys have given me so far. I’m ⅔ of the way through this challenge and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done for my business. Traffic on my website is up, and I feel like I’m actually building a ‘brand’. The cool thing about the platforms I’m working with is that every block that I build is a block that never needs to be built again. I’m putting in the same work each week now but the results are more and more exponential each week.

Even though I’ve had some doubts along the 87 days so far and sometimes just wanted to stop, the results that are coming (as well as all the youtube comments every single day) have encouraged me to see this challenge through.

After the 120 days I’m going to switch to a few videos per week and focus on creating much more focused quality content. I’m going to create videos that are edited very professionally and tell a story at a higher level. I’d love to explore entertaining videos for my niche and make sure that every video I publish is extremely high quality.

I’m getting 2-3 new contact form submissions per day from my website but I’m finding that these leads are much less qualified. Every now and then we’ll get a good one but most of them are beginners looking for help. I half-expected this when I started.

Usually once I tell them how much our services cost they say they’ll revisit in a few months. I understand, and it is also an issue with our offer. Our prices are high and designed for established stores. We don’t offer a guarantee and it’s always an investment up front. If they’re just starting out and they don’t have existing revenue for their store, this is a huge risk for them. I agree too, they should validate their store, products and more importantly, their customers. Then we can take them from good to great with our work.

There are still ways that I can help these people :

• Creating more videos to answer all their questions and current problems so they can keep growing their stores themselves
• Create a mini marketing service that costs less and is great for starter stores to start their paid media strategies on a smaller scale.
• Create other services like audits that people can purchase as a one-off to get a big boost in their performance and strategy without committing to a long-term partnership
• Creating courses that show them how to do what we do but they’ll have to execute it themselves.

Anyway, I’ll keep going, I see now why a lot of people told me that it’s a marathon and not a sprint. It’s tiring to push out so much content but so far it’s been worth it. No regrets.

Thanks everyone for your support!

Sam

 

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[Phikey]

3.5 months in and I finally hit this huge milestone!


Thanks for all the support guys!

 

[Phikey]

Hey guys,

Currently on day 110 so just 10 days left in the challenge.
Subs: 983
Total views: 35,032

Just been continuing the grind, making more videos and trying to help my audience as much as possible.

This challenge has been the best thing I’ve ever done.

• I’ve learned so much about content creation
• I’ve learned a lot about my audience and how to add value
• I’ve become much more engaging and entertaining and this has brought benefits into my life outside of work
• I’ve created a consistent lead gen source (e.g. we’ve closed 5 clients from youtube this week).
• It forced me out of my comfort zone and to put myself out there. No longer being behind the scenes.
• I’ve learned way more about my audience which has allowed me to better craft a service which is at their price point and helps them in the best way possible.

My team are also very very happy because we now have constant leads and business. Covid was stressful for everyone, we had to let some team members go and reduce hours. Now we’re looking very positive and we’re growing again.

It’s definitely been a lot of hard work, and there have been many times over the last month where I wanted to give up but I’ve stuck in there. I’m going to finish this challenge (10 more videos), even if it kills me.

Overall, it’s just the beginning. I’ve built an asset that’s growing and growing and as long as I feed it, it will be an awesome source of growth for years to come.

I’ll likely hit 1k subs today or tomorrow which will be a big milestone. Though, over the last month I’ve really realised that the subs are irrelevant. There are channels with tens of thousands of subs that have barely any engagement anymore. The content sucks and youtube doesnt even show the videos to the subs. I’m now looking at daily views and the leads I’m getting to my business. I’m looking at the likes and the comments where people thank me because I’ve helped them solve some sort of problem for their ecom store.

I really stand by what I thought from the beginning which is to focus on how you can add extreme value and worry about the monetization later. Almost all the CTAs in my videos are to go watch other videos and get more and more values. I dont ask much from the audience and so the people that want to work with me have to actively go search for my website, find the contact form, and message me there. I’m ok with this and later I’ll do more monetization but already the sales I’ve generated from this project have made back the cost.

 

[Andy Black]

Friday night and I'm adding a product to the Google Merchant Center for a new client and the interface is different than I remembered.

So I go to Google (incognito), set the date range to be within the past month, and searched "how to add products to google merchant center".

Guess who's video showed up?

 

[Phikey]

Hey everyone, things got wild since my last update. I was doing 5 views per day when I posted with a few hundred subscribers and now I'm doing 20,000 views per day and over 3,200 subscribers. One of my videos is now at 120,000 views (in just 2 weeks) and the others are in the tens of thousands. It's absolutely wild. I had been working on this channel for 8 months and then BOOM, it suddenly took off.

This screenshot shows the data since the day I updated the forum here (10th of Feb) until today.


I think Youtube just suddenly figured out my audience and it's going bananas showing it to every viewer that likes the music I play and the feedback has been insanely positive. I'm getting DMs from other producers, and DJs (many that I look up to) asking to do collaborations. I'm also now thinking more about how I can monetize this.

I've been looking into licensing the tracks with the labels so that I can make youtube ad revenue from the views (but I'm also careful about non-skippable ads on my videos which can hurt the quality), maybe starting a patreon account, selling merchandise (a bunch of people have asked where I get the unique shirts I wear in my videos) as well as where to find the gear I use (could use affiliate links). At the moment I'm just trying to send my fans to my instagram so I have a place to communicate with them more easily. I'm also considering starting an email list where they get access behind the scenes vlogs and secret sets in order to build up that contact list in the case I lose Youtube/IG or any other social media platform. I do already have a website set up just to have a presence but I could take things further in this way.

Anyway, the next adventure continues and I'll keep you guys updated if it's something you're interested in. I'm posting a new video every 2 weeks. Here's the one uploaded today, the editing and quality is getting better every single video:

 

[Phikey]

Day 2, video 2!
Videos: 2
Subscribers: 43

I've been getting some great feedback from friends also in this space and the sort of content they want to learn. It seems that a lot of people in Ecom are tied up with Amazon and feel like they don't have control over their brand. They want to get their store over to a standalone platform and grow it separately from Amazon or eBay so they have more control over their list and the buying experience.

 

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[Phikey]

NEW WIN!

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


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

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


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

This screenshot here of my tags shows it's doing exactly what I planned!

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[CountMonteCristo]

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

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

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

So here are a few things that I think are hurting you big time:

• The music is very loud. It’s distracting. You guys need to dial it waaay down. It’s an informational video, not a dance party. Especially when you switch to sharing your screen and your voice goes even quieter, the music overpowers everything and it’s very hard to concentrate on the info. Background music should only be as loud as to break the awkwardness of silence and/or overpower background noise. (You could also switch up the genre of music and have something more neutral or fitting to the topic.)
• Same for the sound fx. Too loud. It should be more subtle.
• Speaking of sound fx, too much. Adding a whip whoosh sound to every single cut not only accentuates the cuts, but it gets annoying real fast. Especially when that same whip whoosh is added to every graphic element too. Too freaking much. It’s annoying, distracting, and quite honestly screams “cheap overseas editors.”
• I generally think you guys should keep everything more simple. Sound fx for the graphics is fine but totally not necessary. Even the zoom in-zoom out transitions (which intend to hide the cuts by looking like camera switches) are unnecessary and can get annoying if done too much. There’s nothing wrong with jump cuts, this is youtube, not some corporate documentary.
• Now, I didn’t watch all your vids, but in the last one “How to get a Custom Domain for Ecommerce store” at 0:50 there are 2 takes left in (and both of them are illustrated with graphics lol) which is something to take up with your editor. I’m pretty sure it’s a language thing, they probably didn’t realize that it was the same thing twice, but in any case they should pay more attention to stuff like that.
• Also, some of the effects are just unnecessary and distracting. Like that matrix number stuff at the IP address line at 1:00. I see the intent, it could be a fun gag, but without the sound and it should end at the end of the sentence, no need to let it run for another.

So, bottom line is: you get what you pay for when hiring cheap editors lol. It’s fine though, these should be easy fixes and actually requires less work from them. To recap here's what I'd have them do:

• No sound fx, unless absolutely necessary for some gag (like the explosion) or an actual scene transition (like talking head to screen sharing) and never louder than your voice.
• Jump cuts instead of zoom cuts.
• Bring down the music by like 20db at least and maybe find something less dancy and more chill. You can really set the atmosphere with music (I mean have you seen @Valier's vids?!) so why EDM and not jazz or hiphop or classical?

And finally (this is where my technical expertise ends and I just give my opinion) I honestly think your thumbnails could be cleaner too.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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[CountMonteCristo]

Something that I think people do really well is use their thumbnail and title like a dance.

Yeah, 100%. You only have so much space to "sell" your video that putting your title in the thumbnail is a waste of opportunity. The only purpose of your thumbnail is to stand out from the thumbnails next to it. No more, no less. Then, once you have a split second of people's attention, you can elaborate in your title, however, that too can be very open ended and vague, as long as it sparks curiosity and promises a good use of the viewer's time.

What I think is really interesting about people who go viral is they tend to think backwards about making videos. They start with the thumbnail and title, not the content. They don't go "what kind of video can I make" but first they think "what is the most outrageous, shocking, weird, impossible, provocative image or image-text combo I can make that would spark irresistible curiosity?" And only then they ask how that could fit into their niche or how that could be a video.

 

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[Phikey]

Start with the benefit. Solve a problem, satisfy a need or a want. Only then think of a product that helps you get there (and adds further considerations to price, such as your COGS, marketing strategy etc.). This way you bring value that a buyer is willing to pay for and can approach pricing at the core of this simple value equation:

Value = Perceived Benefits Received / Perceived Price Paid​

I agree with this 100%. With this, every individual customer could accept a different pricing for the same product. All because everyone has their own individual perception of the value they receive from the purchase.
When pricing your products you're trying to find one price that suits everyone.. You set this price and all your customers purchase for that price (until you change it, or unless you display your pricing differently on different landing pages or stores). really, everyone has their own price that they're willing to pay for the product because everyone has their own perception of value. One person might be willing to pay $1000 for the same product that someone is only willing to pay $500 for. The trick is to test to find the right pricing that nets you the greatest profit after total volume of orders and the average profit per conversion come into play.

There's a relationship between these two variables:
1. Price of the product (and therefore, the profit per product sold)
2. The volume of products sold.

You might sell 5 products and make $100 in profit per product which nets you $500 in profit. That's potentially a lot better than selling 100 products with $4 in profit per product... Plus with less customers there are less overheads to do with customer service and logistics. If you increase your price too much you'll see a big amount of profit per order but the total volume of orders would decrease as less people are willing (or able) to pay the higher price. The goal is to balance the pricing so you maximize profits on both the volume of orders and the profit per order.

You could start out with a cost-plus pricing model (if you have no idea what your customers would pay) but I recommend doing more customer research first and then testing out different price points and watching the conversion rate change. Many of my clients will slowly raise their prices week over week by 5% or so and watch for when conversion rates start to tip. Probably better to test this out with a proper A/B test but it is still useful.

Status update:
Subs: 438
Day: 71
Videos: 71

Latest videos:

Still going strong, scripted 10 new videos over the weekend and filming them this week.

I filmed 3 really long Google Shopping videos showing the 3 best methods for setting up the product feed and google shopping campaigns. Each video was about 50 minutes long. The type of videos that I. hope will rank well and bring in tens of thousands of views for the channel. (similar to my 2nd video that I released that now has 2200 views). I didn't check my audio before I sent the footage to the editor and I got back the final videos and the audio is all distorted arghhh. I didn't check the levels!! So I have to go re film those 3 videos again. A bit frustrating but lesson learned. All part of the game.

 

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[Andy Black]

Agree with Andy, do what Valier is doing.

Actually, I wasn't saying to not produce daily.

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

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




I also wrote this in Valier's thread:


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

There's often an argument of quality vs quantity.

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

However, there's threads in here (including mine) where I give myself a challenge to do something once a day for X number of days. I still stand by those challenges for a few reasons:

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

Rapid production can improve quality.

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

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

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

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


My personal strategy is to do both.

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

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

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


Personal example: Creating little Google Ads videos on YouTube.

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

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

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

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



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

Super inspiring thread Valier.

 

[Phikey]

Day 46
Subs: 234

Now getting 10-15 signups to my free course every day. This is wild. I'm only spending $5-10 AUD per day on Facebook ads and I'm getting A LOT of interest. I think it's because my ad copy really talks to my target audience.

Right now I'm just building my email list as people sign up for this free course.

Here's the plan with this:

• My free course (7 sections), teaches people how to create well-optimized product pages for their Ecom store
• Throughout the course, I have a lot of my youtube videos embedded, so people are digesting my content in a useful way. It's part of how they learn with the course but they'll also get to know my brand, my content, and that I'm also on Youtube.
• I also have a call to action at the start and end of the course for them to go check out my youtube channel and subscribe. Here I'll get a couple of people to come in from cold ads, get value out of the course, and in doing so they are introduced to my brand. They then go and consume all my other content and become a fan of what I'm teaching.
• Once they sign up they'll also get emails from me. Because they signed up for my course, I'm going to put them on an email sequence that is very similar to the course. It adds a tonne of value over 2-3 weeks with lessons from within the free course.
• After 2-3 weeks they will receive my standard email flow which has emails 3 times a week and it's all VALUE. I'm taking different videos I've made and making them into bite-sized email form. The goal here is to add more value to my audience and get them over to my youtube channel to watch the full video. This way I'm constantly feeding my youtube channel with highly-engaged fans that bump up my Youtube engagement rates (good for the algorithm).

I still haven't even thought about what I will sell these people. But I'm creating this beautiful, high-value ecosystem that feeds into itself so my audience are consuming my content, learning and improving their stores.

Anyway, that's the update for today. We're 1.5 months in and finally I feel like I'm starting to see a bit of an uptick in traction and engagement. This might pale in comparison for what's to come (I hope).

 

[Phikey]

Wow! Thanks @Andy Black.

Day 49 today
Subs: 246
Email subs: 83

Still posting each day:

My facebook funnel is still going and getting about signups per day at a CPL of $0.50 AUD which I think is really good. Time will tell if my targeting is on point and if these students are engaged with what I'm doing.

I met up with a friend yesterday that's creating content for artists to help them get signed and build their own following. He runs a record label here in Sydney. I showed him my content system and how I'm easily pumping out a video a day and it blew his mind. We're going to sit down and build a similar system for him over the coming weeks. I really think that content is the way - the way I've seen people engage with my brand has opened my eyes up to its power. The ability to automate the trust and authority building process with potential customers is insane.

For anyone lurking this thread, I recommend checking out this blog post here:
Why I build an engaged Audience First before starting my Company

I found this last week, it was posted here on the FLF in another thread. It's a lot of what I'm already doing and it makes so much sense. Find an audience that has a problem and then help solve that problem. Instead of trying to figure out the product first and then trying to figure out who to sell it to, find that audience, build trust, and then solve their problems.

I still haven't even decided what course I would sell to my small audience but I'm getting different subscribers asking for a Google Shopping course and an Ecom email marketing course. I think what I'll do next is to try to interview some of them to find out what specifically they want out of these courses. I'll also add a survey to my email autoresponder sequence so I can gather some more data about the big problems my audience are facing. The worst thing I could do is to spend weeks/months on a course that I think is really useful but totally misses the mark and doesn't help the people I'm trying to help.

Anyway, enough rambling. Thanks for the support so far guys! The feedback I've already received in this thread has been incredible and saved me so much time with getting my videos to a better point.

 

[Phikey]

Huge update, first client from Youtube just paid!



$1500 USD retainer per month with a 3 month initial contract. This client is a huge ecom brand that has been around for 25 years. $60 million a year in revenue (across retail/wholesaling & Amazon) but they had never got their store on Google Shopping/Google Ads. They were using their searches on Youtube to find an expert that knew their stuff (and so they found me). The sales call wasn’t even a sales call. It felt like they had already decided to work with me and we were just talking through the details of what it would look like.

Very exciting that this thing has finally born fruit! Maybe a lot of people would be impatient by now. It’s day 61 and I was grinding for 3-4 weeks before my first video so it’s taken almost 3 months to get a client from this. 3 months is a long time to the first sale if you’re starting this from scratch, and you don’t have an existing business to fund it. The thing is, all the videos and assets I’ve created so far are done and now out there. They’re continuing to generate views and my average views per day across my channel is increasing every week (now at 300 views per day).

Other cool things that have happened:

• Our pipedrive funnel has 12 leads in it, usually we have 3-4 at any one time.
• We’re getting a new lead ever 2nd day now. Not all are qualified, a lot are beginners that need to be at a bigger point before they can work with us.
• Had a call with another subscriber that wants to start with us but needs to make some adjustments to his site first. He said that no one else is teaching what I’m teaching on Youtube and it really grabbed his attention.
• Had a call with another subscriber that is trying the alibaba express general store dropshipping route (I DO NOT recommend this at all) and I think I helped convince him to build a business that adds more value rather than just retail arbitrage (by building a brand with a great buying experience). On the call it was like he had never heard someone talk about Ecom like this before.. I feel like a lot of what I’m teaching is disruptive in this space (because it’s different from all the gurus) but I’m just teaching entrepreneurial principles that have worked for thousands of years. Find a group of people with a problem and then find a way to solve their problem. Super simple.
• I’ve included all my content in my sales funnel. So when someone books a call on calendly (even if they come through a referral or upwork) then they receive reminders for the call as well as links to my youtube channel and free course. This has been HUGE - I’ve already had a call from upwork where that email had converted him into a MEGA FAN. Usually upwork calls are tough because I’m just another media buyer to them and so I need to REALLY prove myself. In this case, he’d gone through my free course and already gotten measurable results for his store. It was one of the first calls I’d ever had from Upwork where the prospect was sold on me and just wanted to work out the details. He still needs to make a few more changes to his store (converting it to shopify from clickfunnels) and we’ll start working with him in 2 weeks. One of his comments on the call “You should really charge for this course Sam”. So it achieved my goal of trying to provide insane value to the point where they wonder how great my paid services are.
• What value did he get out of the free course? As part of my course I teach students to go and find their target audience around the web (forums, facebook groups, etc) and find out about their needs, pain points and language they use. He did just this and learned way more about who he was trying to sell to. He found out that he was using the wrong language to describe the product and their problems. He also found that his customers were actually more likely to buy the product for their children rather than for themselves. You can imagine how much this would change all the ad copy, website copy, etc.
• My Facebook ads funnel is still going and getting 5-10 new signups to my course each day. I think this has helped my channel grow as well. I’m getting cold traffic to go through my free course. Within the free course I embed a lot of my youtube videos and also have a few CTAs (Call to action) to go checkout my youtube channel and subscribe. I see this is a safe way to generate paid traffic to my channel without tanking the engagement rates which can happen if you just drive traffic straight to youtube.

All good things and it feels like so much is happening all at once. After grinding my butt off (as you can see in this thread) it’s now getting more and more results each day (exponential growth).

Update on the stats for the channel:

Day: 61
Videos: 61
Subs: 339
Email list: 201

I made a 60 day update video here:

And some other videos I’ve launched since my last update:

Thanks so much for all the support here guys! I wouldn’t have been able to do it without all the great feedback in the initial pages. I’m half way through my 120 day challenge. I can’t imagine what results I’ll have by 120 days and beyond. If anyone else is considering starting a Youtube channel - I 100% recommend it, as long as you can be consistent and not give up within the first few months (very hard).

It’s a long-term game. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Honestly, I am doing a sprint to 120 videos but I’m making sure I’m consistent throughout this sprint and then I’ll switch to 2-3 videos per week after that. With my filming/editing system I’ve created, I can just spend 1 day per month scripting and filming and then I’ll have all the content done for the whole month. When I get to that point I’ll likely do 1-2 weeks of recording and get all the videos done for a 6 month period and then hand it over to my content manager to handle so I can focus on the other parts of the business.

 

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[Phikey]

His video editing kicks a$$.

All thanks to my fabulous editors!!! I've created a system so that my VA does the research, I refine the script, I press record and film it.. and then I just hand it off to the editor who puts it all together and makes it look great.

 

[Phikey]

Also I'd try to fit some entraitainment stuff here and there, like "24 H challenge: FROM ZERO TO SALES" etc.. like once a week something that potentially anyone would watch, to act as a catch, you know build some audience.

I love this! And that's the plan. Right now I'm targeting keywords to bring in tutorial/how to traffic and I'm going to have more entertaining binge-worthy content (that also helps people) on there so that when they do check out my channel they stay around and subscribe.

Awesome stuff. Definitely subbed!

A few observations:

• You may want to clean up that title screen. I had to rewatch it 2-3 times to see what it was saying.
• That key sound effect at the beginning feels like I'm getting stabbed in the brain

Q:

Are you familiar with WooComm + Variable products -> MC? I can't for the life of me get the variable products to show price properly to the crawler.

Thanks for the sub! Wow, really good advice. I'm really glad I posted this thread. Yep, I see it now - I'm going to fix up the title screen and get rid of the sound effects.

Let me look into that for a new video!!! Great feedback and I had no idea that was such a problem.

Good work. I watched this one but not the longer ones. Is 5 mins a good duration for them?

Personally, I prefer not having the swish noises as your logo comes in and comes out. It distracts from what you're saying.

You're doing a really good job speaking to camera and your pace is good. I was supposed to do videos like this so know how hard it is to write the script, read it and not fluff it, look at camera, be energetic, wave hands about but not too much. I bailed on it as it is damn hard work! And I don't want to have to be the guy on camera.

Thanks Andy! I think I'm getting better at speaking right at the camera which is good. I can see a clear difference in the videos from the first ones to the once I filmed this week (I've filmed 45 videos now and they're in the editing/schedule phase so that I'm well ahead with the challenge and I am just putting out videos one per day).
Yep, noted on the swish noises, I'll fix them up for future videos.

Man, so glad I posted this thread. I'm getting really quick feedback on my 'product' that would have taken months if I waited for people to comment within Youtube.

 

[Phikey]

Agree with Andy, do what Valier is doing.

Thanks for the feedback @daftypunk

I've been watching Valier's youtube thread and it is working really well for him. Youtube is loving his videos, they play so well to the algorithm and he's got a lot of traction, really fast. He's monetizing with ads and that's a fantastic strategy. My videos will never be monetized. I'm not trying to make money on the front end or get 1,000,000 subscribers or views on my videos. I'm focused on helping a smaller number of people with specific problems. I want to build up trust and create a very strong resource of how-tos and knowledge.

My goal is not the total number of eyeballs, that's not my success here. I'm very focused on helping a specific group. I'd much rather have 100 true fans that trust and want my expertise rather than 100,000 eyeballs that watch my videos for entertainment. Later I'll get into the entertainment videos and mix them in. It's going to be a balance.

Also, just watched one of your videos. Title is way too long- why not just "Grow your online store in 30 days"( or whatever the time period)

That's a general video and one I'll probably make later. The current titles are super targeted towards what people are looking for. It won't be thousands of people per video, but if I have 100 videos and they're each helping 500 people solve a particular problem then I've solved 50,000 problems and impacted A LOT of people in a very positive way.

It's 4 days in and I have 18 new subscribers. It doesn't sound like much but that's 18 people out there that saw a video and saw value out of subscribing and getting more content. That's mind blowing to me and I'm keen to see what happens over the next 116 days.

 

[lowtek]

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

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

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

 

[Phikey]

Well, not the "behind the scene guy" at all! Good stuff, keep it up!
Keen to learn more about setting up an e-commerce store, thanks for doing that.

Thanks! It definitely took some guts at the start but now it feels so natural to be in front of the camera. Comparing the videos I've filmed last week to my first ones is night and day. I feel like I've just levelled up my charisma like a video game. When on calls with prospects and the team, I find myself explaining concepts and ideas with much more clarity. I speak with more confidence and with more effect. To be honest, that side of it has made the whole project worth it already.

Day 24 Video 24

I've now got some true fans!! The feedback is looping back and I'm providing clear value.





A bunch of people asking for more help, getting me new video ideas, and thanking me for helping them on their journey.

One guy sought me out on all social media channels and is loving all the vids I'm putting out. It's a good sign!!

My latest video (video 24) is targeted towards the video that's generated me almost 500 views alone already. Same topic, similar problem. I launched it and it already has a few comments which is great for engagement. Give the people what they want!

 

[Phikey]

Ok it's day 31 and I've made a video reviewing the first 30 days of daily uploads.

I go into the number of subscribers, the views, watch time, all the analytics so you can see how much I've progressed so far.

I'll probably do something like this each month for the challenge.

 

[Flint]

Thanks for sharing @Phikey, learning from it. Great initiative, superb execution and solid work ethic.

Looks like you're targeting both >$10k/month profit businesses and aspiring/entry level ecommerce entrepreneurs. I'm in the latter category and I'm happy to share my insights and experience with your offering/experiment.

I really like the clear message and branding. Some keywords that spring to mind: personal, humble, positive, congruent, putting client's needs first, driven, knowledgeable, experienced, systematic, strategic, results focused. You build trust with your content and attitude.

I'm following your free course and I like how it places several of your videos in the systematic order of steps to follow. This helped with making your Youtube content more streamlined for me.

As someone who's new to ecommerce (and Fastlane in general), I found it difficult to follow your Youtube channel at first. Each video is a little snippet with details from a bigger picture which I wasn't familiar with. Where do I start? What do I need? Is this enough? Is this too far ahead of where I am now? Do I need to worry about it now? This may be overwhelming and create a feeling that something is missing.

I know you have playlists. But it was only the course that matched my end to end mind map of how to eat that elephant. I'm executing on it now and I'll report back in my progress thread. Good stuff.

You have plenty of other videos not embedded/streamlined in the free course, so I can picture them creating a similar flow perception issue. I assume you'll get there as you're executing a bigger plan, so that's fine. The detailed videos are great regardless as they answer many low level questions in digestible chunks. They build trust with your potential clients already running stores and experiencing issues you discuss.

The course itself is a great read and the story flows well, especially if you need to get your mindset right. I've spent enough time around various businesses to relate to the "need first" perspective, but it was a good reminder of how to approach the Why of your business. You don't stop there though and give actionable advice that can be implemented on the spot.

I've been using your course as a guiding material and referred to it several times to sanity check my progress to avoid action faking. When used like that, the story flow is a bit in the way of the actionable steps, so I created my own summary checklist. Perhaps it would be helpful to have such a checklist at the bottom of each lesson (or the whole course)?

As a side note, the checklist reminded me of @Andy Black's comment on teaching maths. Andy noticed some of his student's minds going blank after writing a formula/equation. They didn't know how to solve it/what the answer was, so they just starred at the page. Andy suggested writing the equals sign at the end... and this was often enough to prompt the brain to keep figuring it out further. I suppose this simple "keep going with what is to be done next even if you don't know the final answer" step removes the overwhelming feeling of burden of performance and getting stuck in your head. Works for me.

So I used this advice here too, and started working on little bits and pieces that I knew had to be done, even if trivial. Thanks to the checklist inspired by your course. The checklist keeps evolving but it's a very important tool keeping me on track.

I'm waiting for your video on pricing and reviewing various expenses related to running a business. As a newbie, I still need to figure out the viability of my idea. I'm probably unaware of various costs and margins that can make my idea sink or swim.

Keep going Sam. You have a new follower and you've built enough trust so that I know where to go when I reach the $10k per month profit mark.

P.S.
@Andy Black, many thanks for recommending this thread and bringing it to my attention.

 

[Phikey]

Thanks for sharing @Phikey, learning from it. Great initiative, superb execution and solid work ethic.

Looks like you're targeting both >$10k/month profit businesses and aspiring/entry level ecommerce entrepreneurs. I'm in the latter category and I'm happy to share my insights and experience with your offering/experiment.

I really like the clear message and branding. Some keywords that spring to mind: personal, humble, positive, congruent, putting client's needs first, driven, knowledgeable, experienced, systematic, strategic, results focused. You build trust with your content and attitude.

I'm following your free course and I like how it places several of your videos in the systematic order of steps to follow. This helped with making your Youtube content more streamlined for me.

As someone who's new to ecommerce (and Fastlane in general), I found it difficult to follow your Youtube channel at first. Each video is a little snippet with details from a bigger picture which I wasn't familiar with. Where do I start? What do I need? Is this enough? Is this too far ahead of where I am now? Do I need to worry about it now? This may be overwhelming and create a feeling that something is missing.

I know you have playlists. But it was only the course that matched my end to end mind map of how to eat that elephant. I'm executing on it now and I'll report back in my progress thread. Good stuff.

You have plenty of other videos not embedded/streamlined in the free course, so I can picture them creating a similar flow perception issue. I assume you'll get there as you're executing a bigger plan, so that's fine. The detailed videos are great regardless as they answer many low level questions in digestible chunks. They build trust with your potential clients already running stores and experiencing issues you discuss.

The course itself is a great read and the story flows well, especially if you need to get your mindset right. I've spent enough time around various businesses to relate to the "need first" perspective, but it was a good reminder of how to approach the Why of your business. You don't stop there though and give actionable advice that can be implemented on the spot.

I've been using your course as a guiding material and referred to it several times to sanity check my progress to avoid action faking. When used like that, the story flow is a bit in the way of the actionable steps, so I created my own summary checklist. Perhaps it would be helpful to have such a checklist at the bottom of each lesson (or the whole course)?

As a side note, the checklist reminded me of @Andy Black's comment on teaching maths. Andy noticed some of his student's minds going blank after writing a formula/equation. They didn't know how to solve it/what the answer was, so they just starred at the page. Andy suggested writing the equals sign at the end... and this was often enough to prompt the brain to keep figuring it out further. I suppose this simple "keep going with what is to be done next even if you don't know the final answer" step removes the overwhelming feeling of burden of performance and getting stuck in your head. Works for me.

So I used this advice here too, and started working on little bits and pieces that I knew had to be done, even if trivial. Thanks to the checklist inspired by your course. The checklist keeps evolving but it's a very important tool keeping me on track.

I'm waiting for your video on pricing and reviewing various expenses related to running a business. As a newbie, I still need to figure out the viability of my idea. I'm probably unaware of various costs and margins that can make my idea sink or swim.

Keep going Sam. You have a new follower and you've built enough trust so that I know where to go when I reach the $10k per month profit mark.

P.S.
@Andy Black, many thanks for recommending this thread and bringing it to my attention.

Wow, thanks for the detailed feedback @Flint . I'm really glad my videos and my course have been useful for your journey.

Yes, I've had similar feedback as well - that a lot of my videos are all smaller parts of a bigger picture. I'll later be creating videos that help draw everything together. I like this approach because in the overview videos I can reference all these detailed videos I've created. This means that people can watch the video, and get a list of all the videos they need to go watch specific to their own problems.

I think what would REALLY help my viewers is for me to create a beginners playlist that has a few videos explaining everything from zero. It gives an overview so people can orient themselves before diving deep into all the technical stuff.

Wow! Amazing! I just created my first Skillshare course, so I know how much effort goes into what you are doing! Such a great idea with the challenge.
Thanks for the updates and sharing...wishing you best of luck and may the force/algorithm be with you

Thanks @Gepi !! Glad it was helpful!

I think this is what I did for folks in the forum regarding Google Ads. I dropped so much content that people started getting lost or overwhelmed. They then asked for a course to help them go through things faster, and in order. I think it's the best way to create a course - pump out so much free content that people could use that to get results, and some people would pay to have a condensed or curated version.

Yes, 100% @Andy Black. The course helps provide a clear pathway from A to B so that people can go through and make sure they don't miss any steps along the way. Did you have a process for creating your course? How did you know what to include? How did you know how to present it?

@Andy Black , any chance you could use some of your mod magic to remove the section on my first post in this thread where I was updating the number of subs and videos? It's frozen at 30 days because I couldn't edit that post any more after 1 month. I'm wondering if it's going to confuse some people now that I'm well ahead of those stats.

Status update:
Subs: 387 (this jumped by 15-20 overnight!!)
Day: 66
Videos: 66

Oh wow, it's growing quicker now. I was on 300 subs just last week..

My new video for today:

 

[Phikey]

@Phikey

Hey Sam,

Hope you don't mind me bumping your YouTube progress thread to ask a few questions about Google Ads, specifically Google Shopping campaigns, as I've watched so many of your e-commerce/Google Ads videos that you've basically become my "go-to" person for any GSA questions...

I recently launched my first e-commerce store back in May and tested a few products by promoting them via Google Shopping campaigns, which was my first experience with the Shopping ads, but not Google Ads itself, as I run numerous search campaigns in the past.

Now putting aside the niche/product itself and a myriad of on-site factors that can influence the conversion rate, what I noticed with GSA campaigns is that Google triggers your ads for a very wide range of search terms.

I've done my best to write a very specific and detailed product title + description and also I go through the search term reports daily with my campaign, but adding irrelevant terms to the Negatives list seems like a never-ending process at the moment.

Unfortunately, with GSA campaigns we can't pick and choose the keywords that we'd like to bid on, so we rely on Google to "read" our product pages and trigger the ads for what it considers as relevant search terms.

This is especially an issue with products, which are designed to work with other things, like for example car parts, phone accessories, computer components, etc.

If I'm selling parts for a Ford Mustang, I don't want my ads to be triggered for other Ford models, let alone other car manufacturers. In reality, the negatives list gets even bigger, because I could be selling a very specific part, which is designed to fit only a 2005 special edition Ford Mustang, so you can imagine how much stuff would need to be neg'ed to prevent my ads from being triggered when people search for parts for older or newer Mustangs, or even other parts for a Ford Mustang.

My product is correctly categorised in Google's product listings and you would expect better targeting from them, but obviously the more clicks they can get from you, the better for them...

Almost 4 months later, I still find myself adding negative keywords for the same product I began selling in May 2021, because there's naturally a HUGE number of variations of irrelevant terms that Google thinks are relevant, but despite my efforts of carefully using exact and phrase match negatives to rule out as much rubbish as possible, Google manages to come up with more stuff every day.

What's interesting is that this is my experience with a very small store with just 2 products that I actively promoted, getting less than 50 clicks/day, so I can't imagine what it's like promoting large stores and getting hundreds/thousands of clicks daily...

Is this the norm with GSA campaigns or I'm over-complicating things?

Appreciate your help

This is, unfortunately, normal with Google Shopping - and you don't seem to be over-complicating things based on what you've shared. I commend you for reviewing your search terms daily. Most sellers don't do this, and they suffer for it by paying for a lot of irrelevant clicks.

There are several tactics we use to build up our negative lists more effectively.

First, we add phrase match terms to the negatives where it makes sense. For example, if you don't sell used parts, you can add "used", "pre-owned", "refurbished", and so on.

Second, you can get ahead of poor quality searches with some brainstorming. For example, if you only sell Ford Mustang parts but have noticed other models in the search terms, you can research a list of all the other Ford models. These lists tend to be easy to get (List of Ford vehicles - Wikipedia). From this list, we can start adding "focus", "fiesta", "escort", etc.

Third, we use something called an N-Gram analysis. Here's some information on it and how to use it. Search Query N-Gram Performance Script | Brainlabs This is an excellent way to get even more phrase match terms to add to your negatives, not to mention getting good ideas for your product titles.

Fourth, we use an ad script to auto-add negatives of search terms that don't have specific words in them. Here's the script we use: AdWords Script: Auto-Add Negative Keywords - Automating AdWords You must be careful with the setup, but once it's running, it can save you a lot of time and money.

 

[Phikey]

Is the research/scripting closely similar to writing an article? Or do you have different guidelines so it would sound and flow better on video?

It's pretty similar. The thing with videos is that it isn't like an article where you can slap someone's name on it and it's fine. If I'm filming the video then I need to be able to speak the content with authenticity. I need to really know the content well and be an expert. I want to build a relationship with my audience and if I just narrate a script that someone else wrote, it's never going to connect with the audience.
So my content manager basically researches the topic and compiles some info in a bullet point list. I can then go and write it out into a script using my own voice and my own knowledge. It cuts the script writing time in half but also produces quality content. I think it's the best of both worlds, in my situation.

Even for the research, I do need to point her in the right direction for where to go to find the info. It's definitely worth it though. We've been filming for 3 weeks and we have a mountain of videos in the queue, ready to be released.

 

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