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

CountMonteCristo

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

Yeah, I think they look much better, I really like the second one! Not sure if you can reduce the word count on that one, but maybe you could try switching "shopify" with "google analytics."

"Shopify" is easier to read subconsciously and so even without actually reading "google analytics," I can't help but read "shopify full set up 2020" in an instant... and that already is pretty interesting. I hope that makes sense.

How's this for video editing!

Man, your 7yo is making stop motion videos? That is crazy! If he gets hooked on creating content this early, he's definitely going places!
 
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Phikey

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Yeah, I think they look much better, I really like the second one! Not sure if you can reduce the word count on that one, but maybe you could try switching "shopify" with "google analytics."

"Shopify" is easier to read subconsciously and so even without actually reading "google analytics," I can't help but read "shopify full set up 2020" in an instant... and that already is pretty interesting. I hope that makes sense.
Thanks @CountMonteCristo . Something that I think people do really well is use their thumbnail and title like a dance. They don't say the same thing but the thumbnail basically stokes the viewers curiosity. E.g. checking out this channel's thumbnails here:
33592
The title is much more about the content of the video (dropshipping, required info, 2020)
The thumbnail is about the emotional side. The worried face and the copy "Why 99% fail" makes you start wondering "Am I part of the 99%?? How do I become part of the 1%? This video must save me a lot of pain". I imagine this would be really effective for the CTR and boosting these videos.
I'm not pushing dropshipping on my channel, that's not what I'm about - but this is the approach I want to have towards thumbnails. We've had a few more designs from our designer but it's not quite there yet.
What are your thoughts here?
We also now have a TubeBuddy subscription and we're going to use that software to A/B test thumbnails and titles. It basically swaps out your thumbnail/title/description with another variable one that you set on a rolling 24hr period. After a few days, with enough impressions, you'll get a clear idea of the winner and you can keep testing. They allow you to run 10 tests at once.

At 107 subs now! I've slowed down my filming schedule. Still posting 1 video per day and will do for 120 days but I'm now focusing on quality. I spent a lot of time the past few weeks trying to get well ahead of schedule in case I was sick or couldn't film. Now I'm changing to 7 videos per week but I'm going to go for the massive value add. In my niche, the highest traffic videos are those that are 1-2+ hours long and have a full walkthrough of a complicated task or setup. E.g. Full google shopping feed and campaign setup, full shopify store build from scratch, full facebook ads campaign setup, full conversion tracking setup.

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):

Wow, funny you quoted that. He also has another channel where he teaches people how to make great content. It's not my favourite channel for marketing/content learning at all (he still seems to hold back a bit on the value and he pushes his affiliates so much that it makes me distrust his content) but he definitely knows what he's doing.
Here's his other channel: Graham Cochrane

How's this for video editing!
@Andy Black Looks like you have a potential new content manager!!
 

Andy Black

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Wow, funny you quoted that. He also has another channel where he teaches people how to make great content. It's not my favourite channel for marketing/content learning at all (he still seems to hold back a bit on the value and he pushes his affiliates so much that it makes me distrust his content) but he definitely knows what he's doing.
Here's his other channel: Graham Cochrane
Yes, I've been binge listening to his stuff. At least he walks the walk. He comes across a bit too smooth for me, but that could be the result of all his years experience talking to camera in his other channel. I think he does overdo it slightly with pushing his CTA signup and his clever segues. However, a lot of his stuff makes sense (apart from when he rants against paid ads... lol - but that's ok, he's just being polarising).
 

CountMonteCristo

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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

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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.
For anyone else lurking this thread - this is awesome advice. Take not of this. Gold.

Here's my latest video: video 20
It's very keyword targeted (a video my subscribers probably won't care about, but it brings fresh keyword-intent traffic to the channel).
@CountMonteCristo what are your thoughts on this thumbnail?
Title of video:
Google Merchant Center Shopify Verification - Easy Tutorial in 5 Minutes

Here's the original thumbnail design we had:
33629
  • Very wordy,
  • Hard to read because thumbnails are usually small in the search results
  • Just has the title repeated in the thumbnail
And here's the new updated thumbnail design:
33630
  • Has the dance between thumbnail and title where the thumbnail complements the title and encourages people to click (shows that it's under 5 mins so people can get it done quickly - it solves their problem when they are searching on youtube for a quick and easy solution)
  • Has logos of Merchant Center and Shopify - people will see these, it will stand out and they will know it's for their specific problem which is with Shopify (not another platform)

This week I'm changing my filming routine up, big time. I'm still publishing every day because I have a nice queue of videos ready for publishing, but I'm now focusing on extremely high-level and valuable content. In my niche, the videos that kill it and bring in $100k+ views (even up to 3 million views for some) are those that are full 1-2 hour walkthrough of complex set ups.
E.g.
  • Full Google Shopping Setup
  • Full Shopify Setup and Website build
  • Full Ecom Email Marketing Setup
  • Full Facebook Funnel Setup for Ecom
Big videos to make but these guys generate so much traffic, subs, and they help so many people in one go.
We're already doing this stuff for our clients on a weekly basis so I just need to compile them into the script and then film it and teach it in a way that people can follow and understand.
When I've been looking at other channels in the tutorial space - they post a lot of videos that target smaller keywords but then they try making a big video and it explodes their channel.
The reason I didn't do this from the start is because those smaller videos still drive traffic - just not at the same level. When you make the big videos and try to go viral - you are gambling, in a way. It can either pay off big time, or generate a few views (like the smaller keyword researched videos videos) but you spent weeks making that video. This is because those big videos target the high-traffic-volume keywords. In my space those searches are much more competitive. They've optimised the videos well, and their channels already have a lot of subs/views and so they can rank more easily.
I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

We're at day 20 and at day 30 I'll do a report on the analytics and make a video showing how it's gone so far.
 

CountMonteCristo

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@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):
33642

You can see how it looks with the other thumbnails that come up:
33643

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

Phikey

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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):
View attachment 33642

You can see how it looks with the other thumbnails that come up:
View attachment 33643

Btw you came up 3rd for "verify shopify" keywords, so that's not too bad.
Awesome!! thanks for showing me that. I see now, we need to make it more contrasted. Especially because the thumbnails are shown at a small size in the search results so legibility is really important.

New video up! vid 21 with 111 subs:
 
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Phikey

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Day 23 video 23.

Subs: 118. It's pretty slow progress but after comparing my stats to others that have done a similar challenge I'm 2-3x ahead of where they were at this stage which is very exciting. Right now it's a real time thing - just gotta keep posting and letting Youtube work its magic with the algorithm.
My 2nd video is now killing it with 437 views! Really happy about that. I had posted videos last year and they never got more than 200 views in 12 months. This has done 437 views in 3 weeks, all from Youtube Search because it's keyword video towards a really good keyword. It's averaging 1.5 views per hour which means 1000 views per month of new people that have a clear problem that have never heard of me before.

I've been very active, helping people in the comments and getting some new video ideas. Just keeping at it every day!
 

Aylino

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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.
 
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StarVoyager

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Oh goody! Another youtube thread I need to read because I'm STILL trying to figure out what I want to be online. LOL
 

Phikey

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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.
33717
33718
33719
33720

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

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We officially have our first mega fan!
33741

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.
 

Andy Black

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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?

33764
 

Phikey

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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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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!
Good work. Only about 138 subs when I looked last night, which just goes to show that growing subs and getting masses of views isn’t necessarily the goal when your goal is something else. That seems obvious but I made that mistake when I had a YT coach who gave me the goal to “Grow a YouTube channel”. A few weeks later I came up for air and realised that should have never been my end goal.

This just goes to show (in case we didn’t realise already) the power of YouTube. People search on Google and YouTube for very specific things, because they have specific problems they’re trying to solve. If I had to create content for one channel only then I’d choose YouTube. Meh to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

I see folks are already asking you for a course as well as to hire you. Why not? You’re doing them a disservice if they’ve money in hand asking to hand it to you.

Don’t be apologetic about asking for emails or money when you’re providing value.

Marked notable. Let us know when you get your first client or course customer from this and I’ll upgrade to Gold.

How are you finding Loom? I was super excited when I started using it, but occasionally it fails to upload the video to their platform and I lose everything I’ve done. It also messes about with my mic gain.

EDIT: I watched the first minute of that latest video. Are you creating one ad group per item in the shopping feed? I did that for about 20k products via a bit of Excel messing about. It seems to work pretty good although I must go back and check it.
 

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Marked notable. Let us know when you get your first client or course customer from this and I’ll upgrade to Gold.

Wow! Thanks @Andy Black . Yep that's right, I think views and subs for numbers sake can be the goal if you're making money purely off of the Youtube Ads being run on your videos but that hasn't been my approach. I don't think I'll ever enable youtube ads, also because there are so many dodgy characters in my niche that would love to get their ads in front of my audience (ecommerce learners).

This blog post explains what I'm doing, really well: 1,000 True Fans

This idea of 1,000 true fans means that you just need 1,000 people to buy your product with $100 in profit per product and you have a 6 figure income source. I'm ok with not having 1 million subs if it means I have a targeted niche of Ecommerce learners that will buy everything I sell (courses, services, affiliate products). I've already started using my content in my sales calls to show that I'm an authority in the space and am teaching what we're doing. They can go check out my videos and really see that it's not all just talk but there are people getting value from it.

I see folks are already asking you for a course as well as to hire you. Why not? You’re doing them a disservice if they’ve money in hand asking to hand it to you.

Don’t be apologetic about asking for emails or money when you’re providing value.

Yep, you're right. I'm going to make a course eventually - I'm going to first get the systems in place to keep building the audience (lead magnet, funnel for lead magnet, automatic email sequence) so that I can then turn to the course. I'm also getting a bunch of die-hard fans messaging me on Facebook with specific questions and video topic requests. This is perfect for market research for the course because they're asking a lot of questions on things that aren't covered in other courses or elsewhere. If I focus on building this audience of die-hard fans (Youtube subscribers and an email list), then I can make sure the course is insanely valuable for them, build up suspense, and then launch the course to all of them in one go.

This just goes to show (in case we didn’t realise already) the power of YouTube. People search on Google and YouTube for very specific things, because they have specific problems they’re trying to solve. If I had to create content for one channel only then I’d choose YouTube. Meh to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

I agree with you 100% on Youtube vs Facebook, Twitter, etc. Youtube is fantastic for what I'm doing because once I create a great piece of content, it's there forever. When you make a facebook post, it's not really searchable, it gets shown to your audience but it has a life of like 3 days. My 2nd video is now getting 1-2 new views per hour (which equals 13,000 views per year!). It took me about 1hour to make that video with my system and it's going to just keep bringing in the traffic and promoting my brand for years to come. Like Youtube, other platforms are just other tools and everyone needs to decide which works towards what they're trying to achieve.

How are you finding Loom? I was super excited when I started using it, but occasionally it fails to upload the video to their platform and I lose everything I’ve done. It also messes about with my mic gain.
It's painful and we always need to fix the audio that goes out of sync.
I have been exploring camtasia but it's so expensive. I'm on a Mac so I think I'm going to try using Quicktime and see how I go.

EDIT: I watched the first minute of that latest video. Are you creating one ad group per item in the shopping feed? I did that for about 20k products via a bit of Excel messing about. It seems to work pretty good although I must go back and check it.
The way I showed in the video is a bit different from one ad group per item - you have one ad group but then you split up, within that ad group, by Item ID. Splitting up by ad group can be tedious (unless you're an excel wiz) and is great if you want to segment your negative keywords between products while keeping them in the one campaign. If you have 20k SKUs that would be a pain in the butt. That's a huge account to manage (I hope you're charging well for it!!).

I think you did well. Another way would be to segment the products by campaign based on product category so you can limit budgets based on category performance as well as add category-specific negatives on the campaign level. I didn't want to go too advanced there in that video because there are a lot of newbies watching the channel. The thing is, a lot of what we do is just testing testing testing and finding what works best in their situation.

I've had a guy on facebook messaging me with a tonne of questions and a lot of beginners really want a set of rules they can follow. As you know, there are some guidelines with what we do in digital marketing but so much of it is just testing, testing, testing and using our experience. I think I need to make a video on this to explain how this works for people. It's a real mindset shift. This guy was disillusioned because I was recommending a strategy that was different from what another teacher was recommending. Another guy on Youtube was saying 'Maximize Clicks' was the best bidding strategy (which is bonkers to me.. I'd only use that for branding campaigns).. but I'm sure it could also work in other situations. The student said he was going to completely 'disown' the other teacher and just copy everything I did because of this difference in opinion. I felt like I saw this student's conversion from an audience member to a TRUE FAN while we were speaking. But maybe he's just a TRUE FAN for now while I'm the flavour of the month?

Here we have a window into a really bizarre relationship between gurus and students in the info-products space. How some people treat teachers as gurus and latch onto them, rather than focusing on their knowledge that's actually useful. It's very strange. As soon as their favourite teacher says one thing that doesn't seem right, they discount everything else they've said and learned and jump to the next one.
 

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Day 28, video 28, the last few days my channel has had a nice surge in subscribers and views.


I'm really digging in and putting out some great content now.
 
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Wow! Thanks @Andy Black . Yep that's right, I think views and subs for numbers sake can be the goal if you're making money purely off of the Youtube Ads being run on your videos but that hasn't been my approach. I don't think I'll ever enable youtube ads, also because there are so many dodgy characters in my niche that would love to get their ads in front of my audience (ecommerce learners).

This blog post explains what I'm doing, really well: 1,000 True Fans

This idea of 1,000 true fans means that you just need 1,000 people to buy your product with $100 in profit per product and you have a 6 figure income source. I'm ok with not having 1 million subs if it means I have a targeted niche of Ecommerce learners that will buy everything I sell (courses, services, affiliate products). I've already started using my content in my sales calls to show that I'm an authority in the space and am teaching what we're doing. They can go check out my videos and really see that it's not all just talk but there are people getting value from it.



Yep, you're right. I'm going to make a course eventually - I'm going to first get the systems in place to keep building the audience (lead magnet, funnel for lead magnet, automatic email sequence) so that I can then turn to the course. I'm also getting a bunch of die-hard fans messaging me on Facebook with specific questions and video topic requests. This is perfect for market research for the course because they're asking a lot of questions on things that aren't covered in other courses or elsewhere. If I focus on building this audience of die-hard fans (Youtube subscribers and an email list), then I can make sure the course is insanely valuable for them, build up suspense, and then launch the course to all of them in one go.



I agree with you 100% on Youtube vs Facebook, Twitter, etc. Youtube is fantastic for what I'm doing because once I create a great piece of content, it's there forever. When you make a facebook post, it's not really searchable, it gets shown to your audience but it has a life of like 3 days. My 2nd video is now getting 1-2 new views per hour (which equals 13,000 views per year!). It took me about 1hour to make that video with my system and it's going to just keep bringing in the traffic and promoting my brand for years to come. Like Youtube, other platforms are just other tools and everyone needs to decide which works towards what they're trying to achieve.


It's painful and we always need to fix the audio that goes out of sync.
I have been exploring camtasia but it's so expensive. I'm on a Mac so I think I'm going to try using Quicktime and see how I go.


The way I showed in the video is a bit different from one ad group per item - you have one ad group but then you split up, within that ad group, by Item ID. Splitting up by ad group can be tedious (unless you're an excel wiz) and is great if you want to segment your negative keywords between products while keeping them in the one campaign. If you have 20k SKUs that would be a pain in the butt. That's a huge account to manage (I hope you're charging well for it!!).

I think you did well. Another way would be to segment the products by campaign based on product category so you can limit budgets based on category performance as well as add category-specific negatives on the campaign level. I didn't want to go too advanced there in that video because there are a lot of newbies watching the channel. The thing is, a lot of what we do is just testing testing testing and finding what works best in their situation.

I've had a guy on facebook messaging me with a tonne of questions and a lot of beginners really want a set of rules they can follow. As you know, there are some guidelines with what we do in digital marketing but so much of it is just testing, testing, testing and using our experience. I think I need to make a video on this to explain how this works for people. It's a real mindset shift. This guy was disillusioned because I was recommending a strategy that was different from what another teacher was recommending. Another guy on Youtube was saying 'Maximize Clicks' was the best bidding strategy (which is bonkers to me.. I'd only use that for branding campaigns).. but I'm sure it could also work in other situations. The student said he was going to completely 'disown' the other teacher and just copy everything I did because of this difference in opinion. I felt like I saw this student's conversion from an audience member to a TRUE FAN while we were speaking. But maybe he's just a TRUE FAN for now while I'm the flavour of the month?

Here we have a window into a really bizarre relationship between gurus and students in the info-products space. How some people treat teachers as gurus and latch onto them, rather than focusing on their knowledge that's actually useful. It's very strange. As soon as their favourite teacher says one thing that doesn't seem right, they discount everything else they've said and learned and jump to the next one.
I segmented their 20k products into campaigns (with different priorities) for each product category, and each product is in its own ad group. It was “interesting“ figuring it out in Excel, but now we’re a few weeks on and they’ve uploaded more products and maybe removed others. I’m wondering how I’m to keep everything in sync now.

I love what you’re doing and am delighted for you. When I get back on the YouTube horse (with a new channel), then a video a day of intro, screenshare, and outro is exactly what I’ll be doing, and lots of “How to” style videos based on keyword search volumes.

I agree about NOT allowing Adsense Ads to run on your channel. No way I’d do that on this type of channel.

Have you considered running YouTube ads for your best performing videos? That might help bring in people and you’ve more than enough content to get people to binge watch.

I love Valier’s thread and this one equally. Different goals, strategies and tactics. Both with great execution.

I’m using Camtasia. I love it, but I likely have to get a faster PC for video editing/processing. It doesn’t have the nice round selfie-cam though, which is a shame, but you get to move, resize, or hide/unhide yourself because it’s on its own track. I’ll have a look at recording intro, meat, and outro on the webcam in one session. @Lex DeVille uses Camtasia too.

Oh, and isn’t it great when you have videos/content you can direct prospects to? It saves time, AND does that “show, don’t tell” that you’re an expert.
 

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Day 28, video 28, the last few days my channel has had a nice surge in subscribers and views.


I'm really digging in and putting out some great content now.
Very nice video. Reminds me a bit of Nick Nimms (link below). The editing is pretty good but zooms in and out a bit too much for me. I think simple jump cuts would suffice and not make the audience too sea sick?

BTW... smart to keep people on your channel and not have a CTA to go to your website (yet?). That’s aligning with YouTube’s goal of increased watch time so they’ll love showing your video. I was just going to do ads so would put a CTA to signup in my videos. I should mix it up actually, or figure out how to create a win-win for YouTube, their audience, and me.

Here’s Nick:
View: https://youtu.be/8KNz8yxrn18
 

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Have you considered running YouTube ads for your best performing videos? That might help bring in people and you’ve more than enough content to get people to binge watch.
Yes, definitely. I've thought about this a lot and it's hard because there isn't a lot of resources out there on how to do this well. The videos I watched all basically showed how it was a bad idea because of all the hate they got. I think I could find a way to do it well but it will require testing and being very careful. I'd hate to ruin the progress so far and drop a video out of the algorithm because I ran traffic to it. What I would prefer to do is to run a facebook ads funnel with the content there and then have the CTA to a lead magnet and my youtube channel embedded within the lead magnet so it's a soft changeover. That way I can protect my engagement rates and just have the more committed viewers transfer over. Still mulling this one over though.

I’m using Camtasia. I love it, but I likely have to get a faster PC for video editing/processing. It doesn’t have the nice round selfie-cam though, which is a shame, but you get to move, resize, or hide/unhide yourself because it’s on its own track. I’ll have a look at recording intro, meat, and outro on the webcam in one session. @Lex DeVille uses Camtasia too.
Ok I'm close to being sold on it. I'll do a bit more research on it. The last few videos I've used Quicktime and that's been ok but it's a bit fiddly sometimes. It does work though.

Oh, and isn’t it great when you have videos/content you can direct prospects to? It saves time, AND does that “show, don’t tell” that you’re an expert.
Exactly! I was speaking to a friend of mine and he suggested setting up an automated email flow for when prospects book a call with my on calendly. They'll get a basic flow of emails that have a few case studies and link to my channel for some videos that show I know my stuff. Still thinking about this one too.

Very nice video. Reminds me a bit of Nick Nimms (link below). The editing is pretty good but zooms in and out a bit too much for me. I think simple jump cuts would suffice and not make the audience too sea sick?
Yep, I’m with you on that feedback. I’ve been thinking the same thing. It’s funny how our edits started on video 1 and we have all this editing and we’ve gotten feedback from multiple viewers to just keep it simple. No zoom cuts, just regular cuts, no crazy animations. They just want value. It’s not about trying to entertain them, it’s about insanely valuable knowledge packaged in a way that’s efficient to consume.

BTW... smart to keep people on your channel and not have a CTA to go to your website (yet?). That’s aligning with YouTube’s goal of increased watch time so they’ll love showing your video. I was just going to do ads so would put a CTA to signup in my videos. I should mix it up actually, or figure out how to create a win-win for YouTube, their audience, and me.
Yeah, I’m very focused on trying to play by Youtube’s rules. That’s why I’m trying not to link out (too much) to my website or externally. If I can boost up all the metrics that tells Youtube that people love my videos and they stay on my channel (or at least stay on Youtube) then that’s going to play well in my favour.


I’ve posted a video every single day the last few videos but I haven’t made it to this thread to update!

Day 29:
Day 30:

Here a fan actually reached out to me to help him with his account and I made it into a video. Easy way to create insanely valuable content! He loved it and watched it all the way through.. twice!! I’m hoping that will give it a nice boost in the algorithm in the early stages.

Today I also filmed a video update on the 30 days of daily uploads. I’ll post this tomorrow and it will update my viewers as well as the FLF here on the progress. Going to dive into some analytics and talk a bit about my system.

I think it breaks the 3rd wall a bit and tells my audience more about what I’m doing, who I am, and my goals here for the channel. I have a really strong gut feeling that the more authentic I can be with my channel, the better it’s going to perform.
 
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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.
 

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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.
Wondering if that could/should be on a completely separate channel about growing a YouTube channel?
 

Phikey

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Wondering if that could/should be on a completely separate channel about growing a YouTube channel?

That was my original plan @Andy Black but I knew that it would potentially split up my focus between two topics (one being Ecommerce and the other being growing a youtube channel). There’s a lot you can do with the growing a youtube topic but I know that if I do that I’ll need to go all in. It’s very competitive because the people already making videos on it are doing it really really well. I could definitely do it but I would need to create a whole channel brand and strategy for that niche and I’d rather just keep it under Keycommerce.

I also really like the idea of keeping it on my one channel so I can break the 3rd wall with my audience and show them what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. It allows me to really connect with them and talk about how I’m answering their questions and making better and better content towards what they’re asking for.
 
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Great work Phikey! I don't watch your videos (except your last one as I'm considering starting a channel myself) since I don't do ecommerce, but I'm following your process closely.
 

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Great work Phikey! I don't watch your videos (except your last one as I'm considering starting a channel myself) since I don't do ecommerce, but I'm following your process closely.
Thanks! I was actually really surprised by the amount of likes that post got here. I didn't realise that a bunch of people were following along like that!

Day 32, video 32
Subs: 166
Views: 4,879
 

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That was my original plan @Andy Black but I knew that it would potentially split up my focus between two topics (one being Ecommerce and the other being growing a youtube channel). There’s a lot you can do with the growing a youtube topic but I know that if I do that I’ll need to go all in. It’s very competitive because the people already making videos on it are doing it really really well. I could definitely do it but I would need to create a whole channel brand and strategy for that niche and I’d rather just keep it under Keycommerce.

I also really like the idea of keeping it on my one channel so I can break the 3rd wall with my audience and show them what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. It allows me to really connect with them and talk about how I’m answering their questions and making better and better content towards what they’re asking for.
Makes sense.

Watched the video. Greate stuff, and I liked how you tailored it to your audience too so that it will help them with their eCom business.

What's the third wall that you mention?
 
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I like that you're adding these in. Will be great for you when you look back on this.

33855
 

Phikey

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What's the third wall that you mention?

It’s a method used in filming or theatre where the actor speaks directly to the audience and acknowledges that they’re there. I feel like I’m doing a similar thing here by opening up my Youtube analytics and talking through my overall strategy for the youtube channel. While my subscribers have been viewing my content and learning, I’m now talking about how the content they’ve been viewing is actually part of a bigger strategy too. It’s meta. It’s like if I made a video where I teach people the structure of my videos, and then I use that structure in that video to explain the structure.
I think that by talking through what I’m doing it creates a different connection with my audience through a different level of authenticity. It shows them that I’m here listening to what they have to say and I’m doing the best I can to be as valuable as possible for their journey.
 

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