Growing an MMA news channel on YouTube

[Timmy C]

Wondering if you need to have the word "Articles" in each menu item?

View attachment 50653

Probably not, I already thought of changing it, to be honest.
Been thinking about it today.

 

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

[Cameraman]

Probably not, I already thought of changing it, to be honest.
Been thinking about it today.

Websites are like life. You need to keep refining them.
You will always spot things that need to be changed and improved - at least that's what my wife says about me.

 

[Timmy C]

My page speed is now up to 60 in page speed insights on mobiles, gtmetrics it's at 100, or A+...

Whatever that means.

Good enough. It's nothing that I need to do now.

It won't move the needle. But writing more articles and making more videos will.

About time I get back to that I think.

Been action faking hard today lol.

All of my MMA articles need a complete makeover. But that's OK, I had to start somewhere.

 

[MTF]

My page speed is now up to 60 in page speed insights on mobiles, gtmetrics it's at 100, or A+...

Whatever that means.

Good enough. It's nothing that I need to do now.

In the future you may want to buy WP Rocket as it's the simplest way to get the best loading speed. But if your site loads reasonably fast, small improvements are unlikely to make any difference.

 

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

[Sam De Marco]

Like the idea and your presentation/vocal skills are pretty good. However, you need to change your background. Spruce it up some how...maybe on overlay or something. It needs to be a little more pro looking...and this is just my opinion so please don't take offence.

 

[GatsbyMag]

Respect to your efforts

But I don't understand why no one is commenting about how this defies CENTS

This business model doesn't make CENTS

Even if you reach the peak in MMA Youtube, you'll get what....200k subscribers at most? And that's if you reach that level. At the moment, the most popular Youtuber in your space barely has that figure (I think 115k subs)

And the monetization strategy seems awful....what, generate $10 from adsense and $100/mo from merch?

I appreciate it's easy to criticize and you've invested time and energy into this, but the payoff is not worth your effort. Drop this and find something else. Unless you're simply doing this as a hobby/get your creative juices flowing.

 

[Cameraman]

Respect to your efforts

But I don't understand why no one is commenting about how this defies CENTS

This business model doesn't make CENTS

Even if you reach the peak in MMA Youtube, you'll get what....200k subscribers at most? And that's if you reach that level. At the moment, the most popular Youtuber in your space barely has that figure (I think 115k subs)

And the monetization strategy seems awful....what, generate $10 from adsense and $100/mo from merch?

I appreciate it's easy to criticize and you've invested time and energy into this, but the payoff is not worth your effort. Drop this and find something else. Unless you're simply doing this as a hobby/get your creative juices flowing.

If @Timmy C was just working to get YouTube subscribers, I would agree with you but I don't think that he is.

He appears to be building a business around a website that he has control over. YouTube just becomes a marketing channel that he pays for with time rather than money. He also isn't appealing to only the MMA crowd when you visit his website.

There are a lot of ways that he can monetise this. Where it may become more difficult is creating an exit strategy that gives you a big payoff.

 

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

[Timmy C]

Respect to your efforts

But I don't understand why no one is commenting about how this defies CENTS

This business model doesn't make CENTS

Even if you reach the peak in MMA Youtube, you'll get what....200k subscribers at most? And that's if you reach that level. At the moment, the most popular Youtuber in your space barely has that figure (I think 115k subs)

And the monetization strategy seems awful....what, generate $10 from adsense and $100/mo from merch?

I appreciate it's easy to criticize and you've invested time and energy into this, but the payoff is not worth your effort. Drop this and find something else. Unless you're simply doing this as a hobby/get your creative juices flowing.

Thanks for the comment man!

Whilst I agree with some of what you say and appreciate your opinion, I don't think that applies to me, and I will explain why.

I realized early on that just focusing on views and monetizing the channel that way was a poor strategy. That's why I promote my ebook to my subscribers to get them on a list which is something I do control.

I also have a website and am trying to bring in visitors that actively train in martial arts, or are getting started, as shown on my website, and the articles I have started to post.

I did this because this targets people that actively train and are interested in their health better than my youtube channel does. There is some overlap with my MMA news channel for people who train etc, but the articles I am writing are more targeted to them.

To me the possibilities and ways to monetize/ earn a good income from this are endless. YouTube is part of that.

I am not thinking of this with a narrow lens of youtube/views.

As a bonus, i do enjoy the content and it is a creative outlet yeah, so that's another win.

If @Timmy C was just working to get YouTube subscribers, I would agree with you but I don't think that he is.

He appears to be building a business around a website that he has control over. YouTube just becomes a marketing channel that he pays for with time rather than money. He also isn't appealing to only the MMA crowd when you visit his website.

There are a lot of ways that he can monetise this. Where it may become more difficult is creating an exit strategy that gives you a big payoff.

I was going to say this yeh.

 

[Timmy C]

Like the idea and your presentation/vocal skills are pretty good. However, you need to change your background. Spruce it up some how...maybe on overlay or something. It needs to be a little more pro looking...and this is just my opinion so please don't take offence.

Thanks for that man. Yeh I guess that could be improved at some point but it isn't a priority right now.

The amount of large creators with trash set ups is countless.

I just feel this aspect is in the "good enough" category at the moment, but it is definitely something that could be enhanced later on!

 

[GatsbyMag]

If @Timmy C was just working to get YouTube subscribers, I would agree with you but I don't think that he is.

He appears to be building a business around a website that he has control over. YouTube just becomes a marketing channel that he pays for with time rather than money. He also isn't appealing to only the MMA crowd when you visit his website.

There are a lot of ways that he can monetise this. Where it may become more difficult is creating an exit strategy that gives you a big payoff.

Got it, the website route makes sense @Timmy C .....I also want to make it clear that I'm not intentionally trying to be a pain, I am genuinely trying to help.

NOW.....everything on Timmy's website is free...no ads, no link redirects....I'm curious as to why he hasn't started monetizing immediately to qualify whether this is genuinely peofitable? And what % of his subscribers converted into newsletter?

Because I don't think MMA audience is the type to sit down and read their emails.

Why not start a patreon instead and upload your best videos there?

 

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

[Timmy C]

Got it, the website route makes sense @Timmy C .....I also want to make it clear that I'm not intentionally trying to be a pain, I am genuinely trying to help.

NOW.....everything on Timmy's website is free...no ads, no link redirects....I'm curious as to why he hasn't started monetizing immediately to qualify whether this is genuinely peofitable? And what % of his subscribers converted into newsletter?

Because I don't think MMA audience is the type to sit down and read their emails.

Why not start a patreon instead and upload your best videos there?

It's like you haven't even read the thread. Or looked at the website. You have shown to not have a clue what i am doing.

You aren't helping to be honest, i see you tell other people to quit in other threads and make assumptions like you have about me and what i am doing.

 

[MartinG]

Great forum thread and progress How are you planning to monetise, and ebook/training programmes?

What kind of mic do you use?

 

[GatsbyMag]

It's like you haven't even read the thread. Or looked at the website. You have shown to not have a clue what i am doing.

You aren't helping to be honest, i see you tell other people to quit in other threads and make assumptions like you have about me and what i am doing.

Of course I have no clue what you are doing, no one does. I don't know what you ate for breakfast either, hence the purpose of this thread- to explain to us so we can contribute our thoughts/opinions, whether you like them or not.

The fact that you took time to look through my profile and cite a previous post of mine, shows that my statement offended you enough. This indicates that perhaps you are too emotionally tied to this idea and maybe you should run it through MJ's Idea/CENTS rigour again.

I really do not see what was wrong with my post about starting a Patreon & questioning why everything on your website is free? Can you comment on this Patreon suggestion instead of getting emotional. Thanks

 

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

[Timmy C]

Great forum thread and progress How are you planning to monetise, and ebook/training programmes?

What kind of mic do you use?

For monetization there is a few pillars:

Youtube:
Sponsors
Ad revenue
Affiliate income

Live stream donations: I pay attention to smaller MMA news youtubers who stream UFC PPV events and make a couple hundred bucks. That's insane to me, as a lot of the time I could be at home watching the event I intent on watching anyway and earn money at the same time.

This also acts as a marketing channel, where I can sell and promote other products such as books, online BJJ video courses etc.

Although online video courses are not something I plan on selling for while, I have my coach who is a BJJ black belt and we could work together on something in the future to sell to what I hope, is a nice stream of website visitors and viewers on Youtube.

Website:

Affiliate income
My own products/books(most likely), whether that's digital, physical, or both.

The ebook is a lead magnet to get people onto an email list where I can provide further value and sell products of mine that I make. Or affiliate products I think are relevant that will provide the people value on my list.

At the moment I am writing articles with as little competition on the topic as possible in the martial arts niche to build up my authority with Google so I can rank for more competitive terms related to martial arts in the future. At the moment I am interlinking articles I think are relevant as much as possible.

I am working on information articles atm. I will be adding, articles that are aimed at people that are more along the buyer journey later, or when I see it is appropriate to do so.

So far I have linked to a BJJ GI that people can buy as it fits in well with an article I wrote. So that's another avenue that can earn me income.

The number of internal links and product recommendations will build up over time as I create more content, and I will also add product recommendations to any current articles I have. I have already thought of a few but haven't added them in yet. It's not a big deal, but as more visitors to the pages start coming in from google search, that's when it's important.

I don't see much point in creating a paid product of my own at this point, to be honest. I am only interested in providing value and increasing my domain authority by writing articles. A book offer, or anything atm won't do me much good if I don't have visitors or a way that they come to me to buy said books etc.

I have created paid products such as books in the past, and it's pointless unless you know people will buy it and it has a need. It's a waste of time.

So now, the more important thing for me is to get people in the niche of martial arts to start flowing through me.

Get into conversations, with them so I can better understand their needs, etc

This is just a few things at the top of my head.

The mic is a blue yeti btw.

 

[MartinG]

For monetization there is a few pillars:

Youtube:
Sponsors
Ad revenue
Affiliate income

Live stream donations: I pay attention to smaller MMA news youtubers who stream UFC PPV events and make a couple hundred bucks. That's insane to me, as a lot of the time I could be at home watching the event I intent on watching anyway and earn money at the same time.

This also acts as a marketing channel, where I can sell and promote other products such as books, online BJJ video courses etc.

Although online video courses are not something I plan on selling for while, I have my coach who is a BJJ black belt and we could work together on something in the future to sell to what I hope, is a nice stream of website visitors and viewers on Youtube.

Website:

Affiliate income
My own products/books(most likely), whether that's digital, physical, or both.

The ebook is a lead magnet to get people onto an email list where I can provide further value and sell products of mine that I make. Or affiliate products I think are relevant that will provide the people value on my list.

At the moment I am writing articles with as little competition on the topic as possible in the martial arts niche to build up my authority with Google so I can rank for more competitive terms related to martial arts in the future. At the moment I am interlinking articles I think are relevant as much as possible.

I am working on information articles atm. I will be adding, articles that are aimed at people that are more along the buyer journey later, or when I see it is appropriate to do so.

So far I have linked to a BJJ GI that people can buy as it fits in well with an article I wrote. So that's another avenue that can earn me income.

The number of internal links and product recommendations will build up over time as I create more content, and I will also add product recommendations to any current articles I have. I have already thought of a few but haven't added them in yet. It's not a big deal, but as more visitors to the pages start coming in from google search, that's when it's important.

I don't see much point in creating a paid product of my own at this point, to be honest. I am only interested in providing value and increasing my domain authority by writing articles. A book offer, or anything atm won't do me much good if I don't have visitors or a way that they come to me to buy said books etc.

I have created paid products such as books in the past, and it's pointless unless you know people will buy it and it has a need. It's a waste of time.

So now, the more important thing for me is to get people in the niche of martial arts to start flowing through me.

Get into conversations, with them so I can better understand their needs, etc

This is just a few things at the top of my head.

The mic is a blue yeti btw.

You've now got vechicle to do research on what your audience and needs and focus on marketing prospective products, and creating if there is sufficient demand, so that you know you have X amount sold before you have even spent the time creating the product.

Very interesting journey, as it is a completely different niche to what I am used to reading about when trying to build a business online through Youtube.

Best of luck, I'll be following along.

 

[Timmy C]

I have written a fair few articles now and fixed up some of the old ones a little bit, aswell as added featured images to the posts.

Some things just seem super competitive in this niche and hard to rank for, the low-competition keywords are still competitive with not much CTR. that's how it appears anyway, but i am not getting hung up on it as often the tools will be wrong, once i get more data from search console, that will tell me alot.

Some other keywords don't have much information on them with Surfer SEO, lowfruits etc, but if i see at the very top of the search results, things such as: Reddit posts, quora etc, I just whip up an article quickly with a FAQ's as it might go ok.

I got 2 more email subscribers as well, one from youtube. I haven't produced a video in a couple of weeks as I have just been doing articles yet it still brings in visitors to the website which is good.

Clarity heatmaps is a valuable thing that I have added to the site. Alot of the time people go to the ''about'' section.
I think what @MTF suggested about improving this even further is a good idea.

Adding images of me, ideally training, and further substance to the about page wouldn't hurt either.

 

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

[Timmy C]

It was 20 days since my last youtube video as I was working on the website, and writing articles so it was overdue.

I gave my thoughts on UFC 292 which is an instant reaction video:

Website promo is at: 4:53

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojf8-QLgzQ0


I promoted my website in the video to drive website visitors, maybe get a sale, and get some email sign-ups.
I can already tell it needs work, but I will get better at promoting it, it's too small on the screen I think.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Someone else in real life recognized me yesterday from my youtube channel. We were doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, just sparring, and he said he found me on there when he was searching for MMA news.

He said I should create more videos as they are very high quality. I just explained that I love youtube, and I haven't been posting as much lately as I have been working on my website, etc.

It's super cool that people recognize me in my day-to-day life when I have never told anyone about my channel. Youtube has so much value.

It's all organic.

 

[Jrjohnny]

It was 20 days since my last youtube video as I was working on the website, and writing articles so it was overdue.

I gave my thoughts on UFC 292 which is an instant reaction video:

Website promo is at: 4:53

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojf8-QLgzQ0


I promoted my website in the video to drive website visitors, maybe get a sale, and get some email sign-ups.
I can already tell it needs work, but I will get better at promoting it, it's too small on the screen I think.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Someone else in real life recognized me yesterday from my youtube channel. We were doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, just sparring, and he said he found me on there when he was searching for MMA news.

He said I should create more videos as they are very high quality. I just explained that I love youtube, and I haven't been posting as much lately as I have been working on my website, etc.

It's super cool that people recognize me in my day-to-day life when I have never told anyone about my channel. Youtube has so much value.

It's all organic.

Dude I don’t watch MMA or know shit about it and I js watched your entire video.

You got me hooked real quick lmao good job.

 

[Timmy C]

Just a quick update.

I haven't posted as much on youtube lately, about once every week and a half as I have been writing articles like a mad man.

I paid for Surfer SEO and wanted to get as much value as I could from the tool as it was expensive.

I've posted so many articles on grappling I've lost count.

Time to back off a bit as I'm burning out with it.

One article a week soon will be the most I will do.

Multiple a week has me going crazy.

My writing has come a long way though.

Much better.

 

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

[Timmy C]

Not much to update.

I have been writing heaps of articles for the website and have a digital product for sale now that I seen was selling on the etsy marketplace.

I have about 5-6 products in mind to add at this time. But got alot of other things going on atm so I'll get to it at some point.

Been slow on the youtube front and haven't done many videos as my time has been spent on articles, and other health things.

This was the first 2 months of me writing articles:

3000 impressions and 60 website visits.

But in just the last 3 days 1000 of those impressions have been captured, aswell as 17 visitors.

So the articles are starting to work.

It's compounding.

 

[Timmy C]

My google search traffic has disappeared

I am at a loss as to how to fix this or if it even can be fixed since google offers no information as to why?

Since the 24th of September my impressions, aswell as my website have completely disappeared from Google search.

3 days before this I noticed I couldn't log into my google analytics so I assumed the issue was with this, and it not feeding information to the google search console.

I Since fixed this, and it has been fixed for about 5 days now, but yet my impressions, traffic and website are still in no man's land.

It's a new site, been up about 3 months, and I have no idea what's causing this.

Google search console says everything is indexed but it clearly isn't. It's showing no errors ro reason why this has happened.

For it to just drop to zero overnight like that is concerning and I honestly don't know if this is even worth continuing.

 

[Dockid]

My google search traffic has disappeared

I am at a loss as to how to fix this or if it even can be fixed since google offers no information as to why?

Since the 24th of September my impressions, aswell as my website have completely disappeared from Google search.

3 days before this I noticed I couldn't log into my google analytics so I assumed the issue was with this, and it not feeding information to the google search console.

I Since fixed this, and it has been fixed for about 5 days now, but yet my impressions, traffic and website are still in no man's land.

It's a new site, been up about 3 months, and I have no idea what's causing this.

Google search console says everything is indexed but it clearly isn't. It's showing no errors ro reason why this has happened.

For it to just drop to zero overnight like that is concerning and I honestly don't know if this is even worth continuing.

I ran your website through Semrush. Your pages are still indexed, your keywords are trending downwards.

It also seems your existing keywords are dropping in ranking. For example you have dropped from 10th to 85th for the search term 'best bjj gi for hot weather' - Best BJJ Gi For Hot Weather. You might want to try and improve some articles. This blog just lists a bunch of lightweight gis for sale instead of answering the question - What is the best gi for hot weather.

 

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

[Timmy C]

I ran your website through Semrush. Your pages are still indexed, your keywords are trending downwards.
View attachment 51749
It also seems your existing keywords are dropping in ranking. For example you have dropped from 10th to 85th for the search term 'best bjj gi for hot weather' - Best BJJ Gi For Hot Weather. You might want to try and improve some articles. This blog just lists a bunch of lightweight gis for sale instead of answering the question - What is the best gi for hot weather.

Thanks for checking that.

But one article or affiliate post that didn't have much or any traffic to begin with doesnt explain to me the dip across the entire website, and most of the site is information posts.

 

[Timmy C]

I ran your website through Semrush. Your pages are still indexed, your keywords are trending downwards.
View attachment 51749
It also seems your existing keywords are dropping in ranking. For example you have dropped from 10th to 85th for the search term 'best bjj gi for hot weather' - Best BJJ Gi For Hot Weather. You might want to try and improve some articles. This blog just lists a bunch of lightweight gis for sale instead of answering the question - What is the best gi for hot weather.

I looked at what Google was ranking prior to making a post.

All of them are listicle style articles at the top of SERPS for best lightweight gi, or best gi for hot weather.

I just don't think this has anything to do with the drop to zero overnight.

This isnt simply losing rankings.



That's falling off a cliff that directly coincides with when analyctics stopped talking to the search console.

 

[Snowball]

I looked at what Google was ranking prior to making a post.

All of them are listicle style articles at the top of SERPS for best lightweight gi, or best gi for hot weather.

I just don't think this has anything to do with the drop to zero overnight.

This isnt simply losing rankings.

That's falling off a cliff that directly coincides with when analyctics stopped talking to the search console.

It may just be an algorithm update or seasonal traffic. Disconnecting analytics from GSC should not have affected rankings in any way.

I'd check everything from these support threads:
Why did my site traffic drop? - Search Console Help
Analyzing Google Search traffic drops | Google Search Central Blog | Google for Developers

Make sure no manual actions or security issues on GSC, and make sure GSC is connected properly.

Otherwise, it could just be that your site is new and doesn't have many backlinks.

Google will index all new sites and then start to compare your site to others out there. After some time, if they deem it not providing unique or valuable content, then it could drop in rankings suddenly. This has happened to me.

Your site is still really new at 3 months old, so it's hard to say.

I highly recommend Brian Dean's backlink strategy of creating content for "linkreators" (other website owners, since they're the only ones who can link back to you, not your regular readers). I'd also check out Pat Walls Lean SEO strategy.

 

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

[GatsbyMag]

My google search traffic has disappeared

I am at a loss as to how to fix this or if it even can be fixed since google offers no information as to why?

Since the 24th of September my impressions, aswell as my website have completely disappeared from Google search.

3 days before this I noticed I couldn't log into my google analytics so I assumed the issue was with this, and it not feeding information to the google search console.

I Since fixed this, and it has been fixed for about 5 days now, but yet my impressions, traffic and website are still in no man's land.

It's a new site, been up about 3 months, and I have no idea what's causing this.

Google search console says everything is indexed but it clearly isn't. It's showing no errors ro reason why this has happened.

For it to just drop to zero overnight like that is concerning and I honestly don't know if this is even worth continuing.

I think you should continue it.

It's surprising how traffic just disappeared, I wonder what happened.

Like the other poster mentioned, it's only been 3 months. Keep going !

 

[Johnny boy]

These are good keep making them.

 

[MattR82]

These are good keep making them.

Agreed!

I only just came across this thread and the improvement from the first videos is great, I'm glad you took Andy's advice about being closer to the camera.
You have a voice and style that is easy to listen to and not annoying at all, like some other small mma channels. Jesse on fire is ok but a bit of an adderall addicted nutter and I couldn't imagine listening to mma guru for more than 15 seconds before wanting to rip my ears off.

My favourite editing of any mma video though has got to be the comedy endings that MMAWorld do lol. But these are great. I'll give you a sub for sure.

 

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

[Timmy C]

So semrush did reveal some issues with my website that might have caused me to stop ranking for so many keywords, and I'll work on fixing what I can as I go.

But today, we push on.

Since I have been writing so many articles I haven't made many videos at all but got back on the horse again with this one:

View: https://youtu.be/tVW7ZVT85I0?si=KnnDtZ8-q3C1CDAC


I'm too pissed off atm to write articles as it's demotivating with what has happened, so I'll shift a bit more of my focus to youtube until I figure out what is going on.

 

[MTF]

@Timmy C, how is the newsletter going? Are you getting any subscribers?