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

[Phikey]

Is it possible to share how much it costs to hire all your VAs?

Yes! I pay video editors $30-$40 per video, and my content manager is $12 per hour.
Honestly, I'm investing quite a lot into this project but it's because I can use the profits from my agency to do so. I'm looking at this as a long-term-game. If I help people start and grow an ecom store and they become successful in 1-2 years then I'll have built a lot of trust with them and when they need someone to manage their marketing they'll be more likely to choose me. I'm not going to build a course anytime soon unless it's 100x better than all the other courses out there - and this space is incredibly competitive for courses. Everyone has started a dropshipping store and then are trying to sell a course on it.
I'm just going to help as many people as possible, build an audience and an email list, and learn what their biggest problems are and try to help them. Some of the more advanced viewers that have established stores might come to me as a lead for my agency, but I'm not expecting a lot.

 

[lowtek]

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

 

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[CountMonteCristo]

@CountMonteCristo what are your thoughts on this thumbnail?

Yeah, I think that's pretty good. It's a very niche topic, so it's not like you have too many options.

I personally would try a few solid colors (or subtle textures if you want to get fancy) for the background, even just plain black to make the logos pop. The logos are very light in color, so if you want them to pop out, you'll have to make the background dark.

Something we learn in visual arts is people's eyes go to the highest contrast areas in any image. If we apply that to the entire search page you should be able to stand out with a high contrast thumbnail.

Here, I did a quick mock-up for you (you're free to use it lol):


You can see how it looks with the other thumbnails that come up:


Btw you came up 3rd for "verify shopify" keywords, so that's not too bad.

 

[Phikey]

We officially have our first mega fan!


Someone saying they will buy anything I make! That's so encouraging and shows the power of building trust through content.

Maybe I'll make a course someday but it would have to be incredibly valuable and better than anything else out there.

For now, I'm just focusing on building the trust and relationship with my audience. I've been working on a mini-course that's a free lead magnet.

This is going to be huge, as the goal here is to help the audience member have a clear and measurable positive impact on their store within my course. It's on optimizing their product pages and I know that if they go through it and see their conversion rates jump up by x % then they'll clearly see that I know my stuff and can help them.

Day 26, video 26.

 

[Phikey]

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?

View attachment 33764

Yes!!! There it is!! The power of keyword research and Youtube SEO.

The last few days have been wild. I've been closing new clients like crazy and been getting more messages from subscribers asking for help. This weekend I'm filming a marketing audit video for one of my subscribers!!

I also just dropped my most valuable video I've ever made so far.
I teach my audience how we run manual bids for shopping campaigns with our own template. We've scaled up dozens of campaigns with this method and I've never ever heard of anyone using it or teaching it. Why? Because I created it myself over a year ago and it's incredibly effective.

I've even let people get direct access to the template we use, for themselves. I do put it behind an email opt-in but it's just so valuable that I think I need to start asking my audience for something in return. With the responses I've been getting from my little audience, I think they'll be ok with this!

 

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[Andy Black]

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.

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.

 

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[Andy Black]

Hey Sam! Well done. 565 subs!!

 

[Phikey]

Do you find panel lights are better than ring lights? Like the colour distribution is better.

Hey @fastlanedoll I've only used panel lights. Im not a big fan of how the ring lights cause these big ring reflection in the pupils of people's eyes. Makes them look like an alien.


I took about 1.5 months off Youtube and the channel kept on growing at the same pace!!

Now at 2,260 subscribers.


I'm now switching to an easier schedule of 2 videos per week. First new video back up again this week:

 

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[Andy Black]

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”.

I love that your focus building an audience is to get to know them and their problems/pain points on a deeper level, rather than to sell to them. And this is how best to sell to them anyway!

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).

Yeah, I get that too. It still takes me aback.

Myself and @Fox had our first video call last week. We both thought we'd already chatted via video because he's seen each other's videos so often.

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.

Yeah, making it a challenge is great. I can imagine doing a video a day is hard though.

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.

That's so cool. Was that an unexpected benefit?

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.

100%. Give people aha moments and/or something practical they can do there and then. Videos, podcasts, articles (and even courses!) that don't do the above are so frustrating.


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.

Yeah, it's a tricky one. The way to improve quality is to keep publishing and learning. I have an accidental podcast which are just recordings of me chatting to people. By doing lots of those it's given me the ability to create super-short and tight podcast episodes for a new podcast. I've insisted that each episode for the new podcast is edited so it's tight. My co-host wanted the first episode published almost immediately, but I pushed back till I was happy with the editing. It only took a few days longer, but it's now something I'm happy to direct people for years to come.

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.

Remove fluff, don't waffle or go off track. As a consumer, I wish more content creators did this. As a producer I'm happy they don't. It's easier to stand out.

What would have been a happy compromise starting out? Do a video every 3 days?

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.

I hate waffle videos and podcasts. I'm more forgiving for written content because I know the first part is for SEO, and I can quickly skim down. I was listening to a podcast yesterday and it took 11 minutes to get to the meat. 11 minutes!!! I was busy skipping forward 15 seconds to find where she started. I didn't bother listening, and I removed that show from my list. How you do anything is how you do everything. If you don't respect my time in that one episode I started listening to then you'll not respect my time in any of your episodes.

100% agree with fulfilling demands that's already there, rather than try to generate demand. That's the whole ethos behind paid search after all. You can educate people on what they need once they know, like and trust you. I'm reminded of "Give them what they want, then sell them what they need."

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.

Lots of gold advice in here. I'm reminded of the Mother Theresa quote in my signature. Don't worry about numbers, just focus on helping people.

Oh, and for some niche channels the ad revenue pales into comparison to the other ways to monetise.

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.

This is interesting. Do you mean a "pen name" like an author has a pen name, or do you mean a brand name like for your agency/courses?

I kept changing the name of my YouTube channel from my personal name to a brand name. I've decided to just stick with my personal name, link to my personal brand website, and build other channels/sites if the volume justifies it.

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.

That's the main reason I don't push any of my social media accounts. I've too much business coming in as it is. I think just sending folks to a lead magnet could be good to start. Then figure out how to serve folks on that list over time.

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.

Ha. I'm still not doing this. I've been raising prices slightly, but not too much as I'd then be serving a different segment of the market I don't want to focus on.

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.

Thinking you're hot stuff and that whatever you produce will go down well is a trap lying in wait. We get started by helping people. We scale by continuing to help people.


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.

What if you'd not put yourself under the stress of having to do the challenge, but produced videos regularly? I know people who've stopped producing because they were doing a challenge and missed a few days. For the new co-hosted podcast I'm trying to keep to a weekly schedule (my co-host wants to do twice a week). I'd rather we recorded two episodes a week and built up a bank for when the inevitable happens and we're not able to chat for a week or two. Even recently we had a 2-3 week break but I personally don't think it matters in the big scheme of things.

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.

Ha. This is smart. I'd have never thought of this. Thanks!

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.

Can you redo those videos to the standard you want, and even run ads to them? You've proved the content is good, so can you improve them?

I've done this a few times with a particular video on my channel (not least because Google keeps changing the Google Ads interface). I've no qualms creating a newer version of a video and leaving both on my channel.

Here's that video. It's only about a minute long.

View: https://youtu.be/mLYH9OBd3J0

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.

It's great that you’re excited moving forward. This seems like just the start for you. Well done for getting started and sticking with it. This is a lesson for people, and you deserve all the results you're getting.

 

[Sean Marshall]

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.

AMEN!

I love this post.

Best of luck with the challenge amigo!

 

[Andy Black]

Nice audit @Phikey. Nice first video on your channel too. More professional than most of mine, with the intro, outro, and end cards. I must admit I can't be bothered doing those. I'd have to outsource it to get it done.

We had a Turmeric client a while back, and had the same problem in that they were spending too much budget on the "turmeric" search term.

Lots of good stuff in the video.

You talk a bit fast maybe? Like you're trying to fit it all into as short amount of time as possible. Or is that your natural speed?

Also, maybe lose the swish sounds in all the jumpcuts at the start? Jumpcuts are fine without.

Nice end-screen template. That's smart having areas to put the subscribe and next videos. I'm guessing you don't have next videos setup yet and that's why the blank parts below?




I like that you're planning to post daily. If your channel is more focused then mine then you'll tell the YouTube algorithm that it's all about XYZ and it will help ranking.

Looking forward to when you do some Google Shopping campaigns. I'm not a big fan of creating and managing them.

 

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[Phikey]

Day 4, video 4.
Subscribers: 52

 

[Bobby_italy]

Hi man your videos are very well done, I'd maybe consider having your own style, like something that people can remember after watching one of your videos.

There is a famous italian youtuber(not only) who's called montemagno, you see bookshelve and a bald head and you already know you've seen the guy.
Maybe instead of books keep some accessories, just give the background your own twist.

That was my 0,02 good luck!

 

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[Andy Black]

Day 4, video 4.
Subscribers: 52

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.

 

[Phikey]

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

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

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

That's a good point. I saw a channel where the thumbnails were just large bold white text on a black background. I think they were testing out new ideas for thumbnails to see what works. You'll never know what works best until you give it a go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 new videos:

 

[Phikey]

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

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

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

 

[Phikey]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man, this is incredible feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

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

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

Here's what I'm going to work on:

• Only have jump cuts (no zoom cuts)
• Keep sound fx really subtle - not for every animation/transition or thing that happens. Only have it rarely when it actually adds to the video
• Reduce the music volume so it just fills in the silences and covers background noise
• Experiment with other music types - I agree too, I'd love to have some jazz in there. Awesome idea
• Thumbnails - I've been talking about this with my content manager too. You confirmed just what I was thinking and we'll work on these

If you have any other feedback then please let me know, thanks for following along and this sort of advice is worth its weight in gold.

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

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

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

 

[CountMonteCristo]

Happy to help, dude!

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

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

May the algorithm be with you!

 

[Andy Black]

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

recordingrevolution

Home studio owners - are you looking for tips on how to record vocals, mix drums, or simply what home studio setup you really need? You're in the right place...

www.youtube.com

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





How's this for video editing!

View: https://youtu.be/vC__I1ZjqdM

 

[Phikey]

Subs: 191
Views: 5748
Day 37 - video 37

Slowly getting there!!

I've posted everyday on the channel, here are some other ones I posted since friday.

^ this video here is HUGE. really valuable and I reference this a lot in the videos I've been making recently. It takes people through the full steps to calculating the profit for their Ecom stores and I also provide the template they can get access to as well.

I've been using this as a lead magnet and I already have 10 signups to my email list. Epic!! Youtube subscribers are great but having an email list is way better because I OWN that list. I can keep building the relationship with my audience and helping them in other ways. I've also been learning about advanced autoresponder techniques where I can build out email flows for different subject areas and only show each email subscriber an email flow relevant to them. E.g. if the indicate that they are interested in Ecom SEO then I'll send them more emails helping them with that. I find this out by tracking their engagement and interactions with different emails as well as sending them a survey when they sign up.

 

[Phikey]

Day 38!
Subs: 197

 

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[Simon Angel]

That's amazing @Phikey

 

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[Phikey]

Thanks guys!
Day 45
Subs: 229

I've been focusing on moving my most valuable scheduled videos to the front of the queue so that I'm pushing out a lot of incredibly valuable content for my subscribers every single day.

The last 2 videos for example:

Showing an epic strategy for getting new product videos recorded really easily.

A video that walks my audience through cold calling and cold emailing suppliers. I even include all the scripts and templates that I use - as a lead magnet to build my email list.

I've also started running some basic facebook ads to a free minicourse I created.
The course teaches people how to build high quality product pages and takes them through the process of talking to their customers, building a buyer persona, and then building a product page with this info.
So far it's had 4 signups on the first day with a CPL of $1. I'm going to keep tweaking the funnel and hopefully I can get that down to $0.20 per signup.
I'm still not selling anything at all - just 100% focused on building my audience, adding as much value as possible, and building the relationship.

 

[Phikey]

Maybe someone has asked this question before, but what is the name of the course?

Thanks for the replying!

It was Sean Cannell’s course. Here’s the reply from Rob: EXECUTION - Starting a YouTube Channel. Let's start getting creative again...

Great course that gives you the structure to get going. His stuff works really well when you’re targeting search keywords on Youtube. This was my strategy and it works great for education channels. If you’re creating an entertainment channel (like James Jani) then you want to play to the algorithm to get into the recommended videos. Mine do this, but only once someone has gone through a lot of videos already and they always find me by the search function. This allows you to scale like crazy.. it’s similar to facebook ads vs google ads (one is heavily intent based, the other is audience based).

I’d say (and this is just my own opinion) is that going after search queries is going to be lower risk and result in an ok pay-off. Going after the algorithm is higher risk but could pay off big time. High risk as in, you can put a lot of effort in and get nothing back (or even nothing back for a long time).

Now that I’ve got a solid base of content, subscribers and flow of an audience into my whole ecosystem (website, free course, email list), I’m going to experiment with videos that try to hit the algorithm. They’ll take longer to create but can be really fun, and might pay off!

Suscribed to the YT channel. Your videos are actually useful and well crafted

Thanks !!

I got this comment on my channel (maybe this was you?)



These sort of comments motivate me big time!

Thanks for all the support so far guys!

 

[Phikey]

Thank you for the reply: I will make my point even more explicit.

Is it worth to follow such a program and give everything when you have not sold yet? You may imagine some of my "fears":

1 - What will I then be able to sell them if I shared real value with no limit.

2 - Will my audience be ready to PAY if I train/condition them in getting everything for FREE from me?

Now, regarding your recording process: Since you are talking about a script, do you read your script? Or is it an outline you improvise on?

How precise is the structure and writing? Do you use a prompter or how do you do to see and read your script while talking to the camera?
What would you suggest?

No problem!

1. I recommend you think about what you’re actually selling. Are you just selling KNOWLEDGE? Or are you selling a PROCESS? When someone buys a course they’re often looking to get from A to B. They could go through your entire youtube channel, spending weeks finding the right videos, knowledge, and figuring out what order they need to do things in... OR, you can create a clear roadmap to help them achieve their desired result and guide them along that path with the exact videos they need.. with your course. Here’s some proof of this: I get a lot of emails and comments every day now with people asking questions on topics that are clearly in my other videos.. because I have 120 videos and there’s hours and hours of content there, it takes a lot of time to comb through and figure out what they want. But if they had a course, they could go through it step by step, and each lesson is targeted towards their current stage of the journey.

I’ve heard this same excuse dozens of times and I think it’s really a self-limiting belief. You have all this knowledge anyway.. If you dont share it all on your youtube channel and keep it in your course then how are people going to trust you and buy your course? You’re going to have to create an exceptionally optimized funnel with paid ads and be competing with all the other infoproducts that are doing the same..

At the same time, you could have spent a few months grinding away, putting the content out there for free, and basically creating a blue ocean for yourself. Who else can come in and compete with you once you’ve made all those videos?

2. You’ll need to find out. My audience definitely does. They’re emailing me to find out when I’m releasing a course or how they can work with me. People will want more. Not everyone. But of your audience there will be a smaller percentage that wants the next product.. they want to dive deeper.


For my recording process I just found what worked for me. I write out the script, usually word for word, into a google doc. I then set up my camera and mount my ipad underneath the camera so I can refer to it as I film. I’ll read the script from the ipad, think about the line, and then say it to the camera. Sometimes I’ll improvise on the spot if I feel there’s a better way to say the content or if I get a new idea. This is just my method.. It means that my editor has to go through and cut out all the bits of footage where I’m reading and preparing.

For screenshare videos, I make some bullet points and then just hit record and go at it. After a few of these I got pretty good so there are no awkward bits and it’s pretty engaging (in my opinion). I recommend finding whatever method works for you so that you can create GREAT content. There are a lot of people on youtube but few are actually engaging. I studied a lot of channels before starting mine. I saw people that had been posting DAILY for 2-3 years and still were barely getting any traction. The problem is that their videos were boring and the engagement/retention rates were low. This tells youtube’s algorithm that the content isn’t great.. even if the actual information is amazing.. you need to make people keep watching your videos.

So yeah, like I said. Find what works for you. This is what works for me. I wanted to find a way that I could just pump out quality videos on the regular. It took some tweaking and it fits my own style. I know some people that just list out 5 bullet points and then just talk for 20 minutes and create amazing videos.. but that’s not me.. I get lost on tangents and the content is a bit ‘waffley’.


Also, I’ve tried teleprompters before and I hate them. Just because I feel like a robot. I want to put the emotion and FEEL into my videos with each line. I want people to feel that I mean what I say. If I use a teleprompter then my brain just switches off and I feel like it’s just my mouth moving. I become monotone and lose the passion for what I’m talking about. That’s just my experience! If it works for you, go for it!

 

[Fox]

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.

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.

 

[Andy Black]

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.

Great update! Well done.

 

[Tiago]

@Phikey Freaking amazing man. I remember the first video I saw only had a couple of views, and then suddenly boom you have over 3k subscribers.

But the process here is what led to the event. Posting consistently, and your videos are great quality and entertainment.

I hosted a party here at my house a couple of weeks ago, and just left your video of Dunas da Joaquina playing on the TV. People regularly stopped and watched the video because of the stunning visuals.

 

[Simon Angel]

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.

View attachment 47962
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:

Dude, I noticed your growth recently! I wondered if it was spontaneous or if you were doing something behind the scenes.

Congrats man!!

 

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[Andy Black]

Coolio - another YouTube progress thread! Subscribed. Good luck!

(Will come back and read this later. Only skimmed it as I was tagged. Thanks your kind words.)