Figuring Out YouTube

[Andy Black]

I'd like to get better at shorts but when I read from a script it looks boring. I posted the talking head version of this video to LinkedIn.

Our 11 year old suggested putting video clips in so I redid it quickly with Descript and am interested to see how it does on YouTube and TikTok.

My first go at B-Roll. I can't say I'm that excited about the results, but at least I can do it somewhat.

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/pCS9JQGdmlU

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

I'm just off a call with someone who reached out because of that little 5 minute Google Ads video I posted on LinkedIn 3 weeks ago. I won't count my chickens before they're hatched but they could turn into a client this week.

Notes to self:

1. Continue posting content on all platforms. You'd be doing people (and yourself) a disservice if you don't.
2. Imagine if I got loads more views on my videos?

 

[Cameraman]

I'd like to get better at shorts but when I read from a script it looks boring. I posted the talking head version of this video to LinkedIn.

Our 11 year old suggested putting video clips in so I redid it quickly with Descript and am interested to see how it does on YouTube and TikTok.

My first go at B-Roll. I can't say I'm that excited about the results, but at least I can do it somewhat.

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/pCS9JQGdmlU

I like the visuals in the video but the script at the start lost me a little.

Have you tried starting with a direct question to the viewer to see if you get more traction?

When I thought about adding the question "Do you know what your target customer spends their money on?" the rest of the video felt more engaging.

I'll be honest, I haven't worked out shorts for myself so I don't know if posing a question at the start hooks more people in or even how important the script is. I'm still struggling with YouTube's long format.
Note to self - find some time to go make some more Shorts.

 

[Andy Black]

I like the visuals in the video but the script at the start lost me a little.

Have you tried starting with a direct question to the viewer to see if you get more traction?

When I thought about adding the question "Do you know what your target customer spends their money on?" the rest of the video felt more engaging.

I'll be honest, I haven't worked out shorts for myself so I don't know if posing a question at the start hooks more people in or even how important the script is. I'm still struggling with YouTube's long format.
Note to self - find some time to go make some more Shorts.

Yeah, I need to work on my intro/hooks more. I don't particularly like the b-roll stuff. It's not how my brain works.

I like the idea of doing a short a day since they're quite quick to do and I get the reps in faster, and maybe doing a longer workshop/chat per week as I do them anyway.

I'm being careful not to get sucked into the video rabbit-hole again. It's not directly related to what brings in my revenue so I don't want it to be a timesuck.

While it occasionally brings clients I don't want to do it to get clients or sell my Google Ads course at this stage. It's more of a hobby or itch I can't scratch. I'd just like to get better at doing videos, and build a library of my thoughts and ideas... more for my kids than anything else. Hence me not really liking my scripted shorts as it's not *me* in the video.

It's like my best videos are me presenting live (maybe with a bit of a structure to follow?) or screenshares I've scripted and edited down to be super concise.

Still figuring it out.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

Lol. Our 12 yo started doing Minecraft animations. He uploaded the shortest wee video yesterday and watched it get 2k views this morning. I need to up my game...

View: https://youtube.com/shorts/QH3mZAjkHco?feature=share

 

[Andy Black]

I lightly edited a 90 minute presentation using Descript and uploaded it.

For this style, I could do with getting better at Google Slides and create sections that can be standalone videos.

View: https://youtu.be/9kn79FWQAXk

 

[Andy Black]

Our son Conor (who's 12!) uploaded a YouTube short yesterday and it got 2.8k views this morning.

It's a Minecraft animation again.

We had a theory that the viewers like the fox and a bit of a story from the video two days ago. He was missing sound and captions so created the video in Blender, exported it, then imported into CapCut to add sound and captions.

He was disappointed the video the previous day had so few views... because he spent so much time on getting "Steve" to headbutt a cactus. Cue a lesson on it not being related to what HE likes.

Well done son!

The video: https://youtube.com/shorts/1vq8oZbsioA?feature=share

EDIT: Uh-oh... I just found out our 11 year old installed Blender yesterday.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

Saving this to come back to:

View: https://youtu.be/Af5r4454atw



Also... chatting with @Timmy C about trying to be more consistent and post at least once a week. (I keep doing a flurry of videos then disappearing for 6 months while I work on my business.)

Some thoughts:

1. Short videos are easy(ish) to do and also help me get my reps in.
2. I do 60-90 min chats all the time but don't often record and upload them. If I'm smart I'll prepare better and have title screens showing up when I switch between topics, and then I can chop it up into smaller videos too. Maybe the 90 minute thing is a YouTube Live even? And I cut it up later?
3. I don't think having a strict publishing schedule is a good idea. I even almost deliberately break it so I don't develop a "streak".
4. My goals are just to get better at creating videos, and to create things I can point people to so I don't keep repeating myself.
5. And I'm more interested in impact/legacy over revenue.

 

[Timmy C]

Saving this to come back to:

View: https://youtu.be/Af5r4454atw



Also... chatting with @Timmy C about trying to be more consistent and post at least once a week. (I keep doing a flurry of videos then disappearing for 6 months while I work on my business.)

Some thoughts:

1. Short videos are easy(ish) to do and also help me get my reps in.
2. I do 60-90 min chats all the time but don't often record and upload them. If I'm smart I'll prepare better and have title screens showing up when I switch between topics, and then I can chop it up into smaller videos too. Maybe the 90 minute thing is a YouTube Live even? And I cut it up later?
3. I don't think having a strict publishing schedule is a good idea. I even almost deliberately break it so I'm not trying to keep up a streak.
4. My goals are just to get better at creating videos, and to create things I can point people to so I don't keep repeating myself.
5. And I'm more interested in impact/legacy over revenue.

I never thought of shorts like that, but you are right. It's good to get back in a rhythm, and for speed.

Great idea with the chats, make the most of it!

Yeh I don't have a strict schedule either. Consistently all over the place lol.

Can't wait to watch your progress mate. I wouldn't be surprised if youtube gets you a heap of clients anyway.

 

[Andy Black]

Saturday morning and he's straight back at it...

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[OMDA]

I saw this and thought it was somewhat relevant to this thread

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

 

[Andy Black]

I started mucking about on brand new YouTube channel this week.

1. My goal is to get better at creating videos without affecting my personal branded channel.
2. I wanted to start with short videos as they're quicker to do so I can get more reps in quicker.
3. I didn't want them to be talking head, personal branded, have anything to do with Google Ads.
4. I'm almost a collector quotes and one-liners so thought I'd post ones I like and a bit about them.
5. ChatGPT helped find famous quotes and helped create the script. It's amazing, although tends to be overly flowery, and most of the time sounds like it's making sense when it doesn't really. It seems to be all about figuring out the prompts, eyeballing what it's come up with, keeping some of what it spews out, and asking for variations of what you don't like.
6. I'm using an AI voice in Descript to do the narration. It's amazing to play the video, not like something, change the text, and a few seconds later hear it read differently.
7. There's a bit of background music and some boring drone footage as the video (both straight from Descript).
8. I started with a couple of videos a day but missed today.
9. I originally posted to TikTok as well but decided to delete that from my phone - again. The content I was watching on TikTok when doing "research" made me lose the will to live. I'll just focus on getting better at creating videos for YouTube.

As you can see from the screenshots below, there's not much happening (yet?), but I've learned how to use Descript a lot more which will feed into videos on my main channel when I get round to doing them.

I'll not share the channel because:

• I'm curious to see if the YouTube algorithm picks the videos up at all.
• The videos are embarrasing at this stage!

I'm not so interested in growing a channel. I think the content that grows a channel is much more valuable, and the knowledge and skills to create the content that grows a channel are more valuable still.

 

[Andy Black]

I tried an actual clip this time, and the final short was only 6 seconds.

I didn't expect any views, but clearly this is a better route for now.

Deleting the other lame videos ...

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MaxT]

Nice results Andy, keep going on. I need to improve my videos too, views are decreasing

 

[GatsbyMag]

Also... chatting with @Timmy C about trying to be more consistent and post at least once a week. (I keep doing a flurry of videos then disappearing for 6 months while I work on my business.)

In your experience, do you find the conversion rate of traffic from your YT channel ---> your business to be worth the effort of uploading? Basically does the ROI add up for you?

 

[Andy Black]

In your experience, do you find the conversion rate of traffic from your YT channel ---> your business to be worth the effort of uploading? Basically does the ROI add up for you?

I'm not thinking in terms of ROI like that. I'm not thinking in terms of "traffic" either.

I'm fascinated by YouTube itself as a platform. I watch so many useful YouTube videos on the TV in our living room when everyone's gone to bed. It's mindblowing how our only barrier to getting in front of millions of people is our skill at creating good videos people want to watch.

My goal is to get better at creating videos. I've a few different types of video on my main channel and I've not figured out what type to focus on, if any. I'm just trying to get 1% better each time I upload something.

Saying that, I created a 5 minute Google Ads tutorial video recently and posted to YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Someone DM'd me on LinkedIn about it, and they turned into a €1,500/mth client yesterday.

I get a few people sign up to my $25/mth paid membership each month, and that's likely from reading and watching my free content.

This week I created a new channel so I could try different styles of video without impacting my personal brand and main channel. As mentioned in recent posts above, my goal isn't to grow YouTube channels, it's to figure out how to create the content that grows YouTube channels. And some of those videos would likely do well on other platforms, and some may well directly bring clients or students.

It helps that I have revenue from other sources. It means I'm not chasing money. I can just think about getting better and being able to deliver value better. I trust that if I figure out how to give value better then good things will happen.

You seem to think very transactionally. I like what Alex Hormozi said in a recent podcast ... It's not Give, Give, Give. Ask. It's Give, Give, Give. Get.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

Blimey.

I showed our 11 yo the new YouTube channel I'd created with a couple of 7 second videos of Elon Musk talking. One had background music and the other didn't. I asked if he thought I should have background music.

An hour later he asked me to read what ChatGPT answered:

 

[MaxT]

Blimey.

I showed our 11 yo the new YouTube channel I'd created with a couple of 7 second videos of Elon Musk talking. One had background music and the other didn't. I asked if he thought I should have background music.

An hour later he asked me to read what ChatGPT answered:

View attachment 50715

Have you good results with that type of video ?

 

[Andy Black]

Have you good results with that type of video ?

I've only done two. I just wanted to see if I could download videos from YouTube and pull out snippets with Descript. I picked Elon Musk as he's so popular, but I wasn't expecting to get any views.

I want to start adding better a-roll and b-roll to videos. I'll stick to the business and marketing niche as I know enough about those topics already.

It's interesting that the second video didn't get any views...

Is it because of the time of day I posted, the quote, no music, the day of the week (Saturday), the fact that I deleted all the lame videos, the fact that it's too similar to the previous, etc?

This is why I want to do shorts. I get to publish more often and can start seeing patterns. I can't see a pattern with just two videos.

As mentioned already, the goal is to figure this out, not to "get results".

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MaxT]

I've only done two. I just wanted to see if I could download videos from YouTube and pull out snippets with Descript. I picked Elon Musk as he's so popular, but I wasn't expecting to get any views.

I want to start adding better a-roll and b-roll to videos. I'll stick to the business and marketing niche as I know enough about those topics already.

It's interesting that the second video didn't get any views...

Is it because of the time of day I posted, the quote, no music, the day of the week (Saturday), the fact that I deleted all the lame videos, the fact that it's too similar to the previous, etc?

This is why I want to do shorts. I get to publish more often and can start seeing patterns. I can't see a pattern with just two videos.

As mentioned already, the goal is to figure this out, not to "get results".

View attachment 50725

Thanks for your feedback Andy, the shorts publication are a real science it's impressive. A lot of variables can bring a different results, but I've seen too, subs and music and a fast video editing bring good result. Also it's a good format for start a channel. it can be a good idea to note what days and hours are the best, I've found an chrome extension, powered with AI who give a lot of help about hours and days, titles, description, tags and many more. I'll find it for you when I'll come back to my home tomorrow if you're interested

 

[Andy Black]

Thanks for your feedback Andy, the shorts publication are a real science it's impressive. A lot of variables can bring a different results, but I've seen too, subs and music and a fast video editing bring good result. Also it's a good format for start a channel. it can be a good idea to note what days and hours are the best, I've found an chrome extension, powered with AI who give a lot of help about hours and days, titles, description, tags and many more. I'll find it for you when I'll come back to my home tomorrow if you're interested

I've since seen that the location with the most views was the US, which I didn't expect.



The graph of views is very different from what I've seen of my own shorts, and those of our 12 yo. Normally it flat-lines, spikes up, then flat-lines again. This time there's steady growth after the second flat-line. Mind you, I did tinker with the title and hashtags. I wonder if that affected it?



It's doing better than my normal videos because of this:




More stats:

 

[Caminsky]

I've had loads more engagement on TikTok than Youtube Shorts. I need to work on long-form video content, get it on Youtube, and re-evaluate. As it is, Youtube's algo isn't a fan of my content yet.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

Blimey. Clone your own voice: Unparalleled AI Voice Cloning Online

Descript can do it too: Easy-to-use text to speech generator | Descript | Descript.

I must have a play to see what it's like. Imagine I get my own AI voice to read my forum posts and I create videos out of them?

 

[Caminsky]

Blimey. Clone your own voice: Unparalleled AI Voice Cloning Online

Descript can do it too: Easy-to-use text to speech generator | Descript | Descript.

I must have a play to see what it's like. Imagine I get my own AI voice to read my forum posts and I create videos out of them?

How do we know we're talking to the REAL Andy Black now!?

 

[BizyDad]

How do we know we're talking to the REAL Andy Black now!?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

How do we know we're talking to the REAL Andy Black now!?

Indeed. Maybe I'm on a beach sipping margaritas at the moment and these posts are by some ReplyBot (Trademark pending)?

Sometimes I feel like a bot could respond for me in the forum with stock answers in various scenarios.

Member: How do I setup a landing page to test my idea?
AndyBot: Have you even talked to anyone yet?

Member: How do I get clients for my new B2B service business?
AndyBot: Have you asked everyone you know if they know anyone who needs XYZ service?

etc.


I was already wondering if I could somehow input all my 15,000 forum posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc into some database and see if I could train something to respond like me.


Hmmm... this YouTube progress thread is taking a few turns I didn't expect.

 

[Caminsky]

Indeed. Maybe I'm on a beach sipping margaritas at the moment and these posts are by some ReplyBot (Trademark pending)?

Sometimes I feel like a bot could respond for me in the forum with stock answers in various scenarios.

Member: How do I setup a landing page to test my idea?
AndyBot: Have you even talked to anyone yet?

Member: How do I get clients for my new B2B service business?
AndyBot: Have you asked everyone you know if they know anyone who needs XYZ service?

etc.


I was already wondering if I could somehow input all my 15,000 forum posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc into some database and see if I could train something to respond like me.


Hmmm... this YouTube progress thread is taking a few turns I didn't expect.

What's funny is that there are sites which help you train a model on your voice. More pessimistically I would imagine that they can also be trained to mimic successful sites and personalities.

 

[Andy Black]

What's funny is that there are sites which help you train a model on your voice. More pessimistically I would imagine that they can also be trained to mimic successful sites and personalities.

Our 11 yo watched one of my recent YouTube shorts and said "You sound like an AI, which is weird."

So I guess people who read teleprompters or scripts (badly) sound like AI anyway. Meaning I could train AI to narrate in my voice, get it to read various written content I have strewn all over the place, and then add appropriate video clips. That seems like something I could delegate quite easily. Hmmm... I wonder if that's a service we could provide busy business owners who create a lot of written content but don't have time to do voiceovers?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MaxT]

Hi Andy, right now I'm experimenting with a lot of video on youtube short. I noticed that videos with another small video at the bottom of the screen helps to hold the user's attention. I think you see very well what I am referring to. Second thing, subtitles. They can be included very easily, especially with artificial intelligence tools, and they allow users to increase their attention to the video. Third thing I'm experimenting with right now is popular music like Kevin Macleod's. Indeed users know them, so they feel comfortable listening to it. And you, do you have any keys or similar tips? I'm trying a little bit of everything but I'm not getting a lot of views yet.. About the "after", I put some keywords on the tag section but what can we do more?

 

[Andy Black]

Hi Andy, right now I'm experimenting with a lot of video on youtube short. I noticed that videos with another small video at the bottom of the screen helps to hold the user's attention. I think you see very well what I am referring to. Second thing, subtitles. They can be included very easily, especially with artificial intelligence tools, and they allow users to increase their attention to the video. Third thing I'm experimenting with right now is popular music like Kevin Macleod's. Indeed users know them, so they feel comfortable listening to it. And you, do you have any keys or similar tips? I'm trying a little bit of everything but I'm not getting a lot of views yet.. About the "after", I put some keywords on the tag section but what can we do more?

Gosh. I'm no expert. Keep chipping away trying to make 1% improvements each time. Sometimes something will take off compared to your others. Sometimes something will flop compared to your others. Try to come up with a theory whenever something does different, and a way to test it.

My current observations is that the subject matters the most to get the initial views of the video in the shorts feed. It will cause people to swipe up or stay and watch. E.g. the Elon Musk videos caught people's attention because he's recognisable and has a lot of fans. About 50% of people didn't swipe away.

Then the hook, music, subtitles, etc improve average view duration %, which YouTube judges when pushing the video out further. Try to get this over 100%.

Given the Elon Musk videos got a few K views on a brand new channel, and my latest shorts on my channel with 1k subs got barely any views, it points towards each video standing on it's own two feet.

I find this encouraging. Keep getting better at creating videos and they could do well even with a new channel with no subscribers.