Secrets to Growing a Successful YouTube Channel in 2023

1. Introduction: Hey, I'm Jordy and making YouTube videos is my full-time job. I know, crazy. The my channel Cinecom has over 2.5 million subscribers. So I decided to make a second channel that I was able to organically grow to over 300,000 subs in just two years. I am so grateful for being able to build a business from YouTube that allowed me to buy a huge studio and grow an amazing team to help me create YouTube videos. But my success didn't happen by coincidence. I followed a secret strategy that all the big creators use. Mr. Beast follows the exact same techniques. Ryan Trahan, exactly the same, Tom Scott, Casey Neistat, Vox, and that list continues. You're in luck today because instead of having to figure all that out yourself, I'm going to share the juicy details with you. By the end of this course, you'll have a complete understanding of how to make great thumbnails that get a high click-through rate and engaging videos that hold the retention of your viewer and to grow your channel so that you can become a successful YouTuber as well. However, the YouTube game has changed a lot over the years. Having lots of keywords in your description and doing all sorts of SEO hacks just doesn't work anymore. But that's a good thing. The YouTube algorithm favors videos that are good. But how do we make a good video and how do we know when a video is good or bad? Well, we're going to work on storytelling. I'm going to give you clear steps that you can follow as well as many examples to cover any niche from vlogging, to beauty channels, Lego building, and tutorial channels. We're also going to tackle some basic filming and editing techniques. But don't worry, you can follow along with the gear that you currently have, even if your camera is a phone and for lessons about video editing, it's the same. Just use whatever video editing software that you feel the most comfortable with. The techniques I'll explain can be done with any gear or any software. Well, I am super excited, so I really hope to see you back in my course. You are going to learn a ton of new things and you're going to be super energized to start working on your own YouTube channel. Thank you so much for watching. 2. Video Ideas: Hey, I'm super excited to see that you've signed up for the course. But I'm also frustrated because last week I published a video on YouTube that just didn't perform. Although it was a great video, I put so much time in shooting and editing, but nobody wanted to see it. On top of that, I've seen other creators with a similar video topic that got millions of views. Why isn't that working for me? I think we've all been there and the first thing we do is blame it on the YouTube algorithm. You got to promise me one thing, as of now we're going to stop blaming it on YouTube because the fact is that we have the success of our YouTube channel completely in our own hands. If a video didn't perform the way we hoped for the only person to blame is yourself. The only thing you need is little guidance and how the YouTube game works so that you understand what went wrong and how you can improve. That starts with the video idea. How can we know if a topic that we choose is actually cute? Is it something that your audience actually wants to see? To figure that out we first need to understand who our audience is. Because what might work for one channel might not for ours. So don't go around looking for videos that have got tons of views and think that by making something similar, that you would gain the same success. Who is my audience? We're going to describe an actual person that resembles our audience. This is a technique that is used for decades by top brands to define their target audience. Just think about its Coca-Cola, Apple, Tesla, etc. They're all doing it. We're going to pick a name for that person, what their age is, and what they do in life. What are their hobbies and what are they passionate about? Finally, we'll define their struggle and motivation. Also let you search on Google for a photo of some random person to go with that. It helps you to better visualize who that person is. Now to define all of that information we can either choose to try and figure that out for the current audience that we have. We can use our YouTube Analytics for that, which I'll show you in a moment. But we can also create a persona that is completely new. But it's someone that we want our audience to be. Because maybe your current audience is not the viewer that you want. Perhaps you've been making gaming videos all this time and you would like to switch to daily vlogs. That means that you're going to target your videos to a new audience. You can get started without using the analytics. Try to come up with a persona that you believe had the desire to watch your new videos. I have a template which you can download from this course to help you fill everything in. You might already be on the rights paths, you are making the same content for some time and you want to continue with that. Let's hop into the YouTube studio to see who our audience is. When you click on Analytics, you'll find a tap on top which gives more information about your audience. We can already get a ton of information from here. Scrolling down gives us the age of your audience as well as the gender and country they're from. The country can tell us a lot about culture, which is oftentimes tied to the struggle and motivation a person might have. Other important factors to look at are these two boxes, channels and content your audience watch. Have a look at the other channels that your audience is interested in and which recent videos they've been watching. Finally, you want to go to the Content tab and look at your top performing videos on the bottom. These are topics that your audience wants to see. There are also tools that add a whole lot more to the YouTube studio functionality. One of those is vidIQ, which is the industry standard for any YouTube creator. Once your channel will start growing, you want to start using this. I can't go over all the options as it's too much, but there are a bunch of AI tools including a chat bot. These AI learns about your channel. If you ask it something like, what is my target audience interested in, you'll get a pretty solid answer. VidIQ can give you more information about your subscribers and the videos they watch. There is a free option, but since I've been working together with them and this is not sponsored by the way, you can get your first month for just $1 and that's the best way to give it a try. You can go to vidiq.com/cinecom to get that $1 deal. With all of that information, create a persona. Now in terms of motivation and struggle, it doesn't really always have to relate to your contents. For educational content, it's usually easier. Having a channel about cooking, we noted our audience motivation is to cook better foods that stands out and be creative. Then their struggle is not knowing how to do that and what a fear of giving up because they keep failing. For a gaming channel, you don't particularly have such motivations and struggles. However, there's always a reason someone watches a gaming video. Maybe they had a long day at school or work and they are looking to put her mind at rest and watch some entertainment. Their motivation is to learn about a game or maybe learn a couple of new tricks from watching someone else play. Their struggle could be that they don't have the game or the budget to buy a good computer to play the game. Or maybe they just can't play the game because they are watching on the bus. That means you have a solution. You can make videos about the game that they can watch. Think about all of those things and take a moment to create a persona. Perhaps you want to pause this lesson for a moment and once you have that persona, we can start finding a good video topic. Getting ideas can come from various places. You can browse through YouTube and see what others have made, check on social media, watch a film, read a book, take a hike, anything. But this time when you come up with an idea for a video, you look at your persona. Does your persona, when they see the video you're about to make, does it have an answer to their struggle? Does it appeal to their motivation? Your persona is going to act as a checklist for every idea that you come up with. Let's have a look at a couple of examples. This is Jeff, my persona. I want to make a video about a cool device to instantly make a campfire. Let me check. Jeff likes fishing, hiking, barbecue, and other outdoor activities. He's more like a down to earth person, the basics in life. His motivation is to be more efficient at campaign. A video about a device to make a campfire really quick is a great fits. Now let's see his struggle. He doesn't have or want to spend much money on gear. Maybe that idea of that campfire device doesn't fit that well because it might be pretty expensive. Maybe there's a cheaper alternative that I could look for. Because if budget is a struggle that may be looking out for great deals is something that Jeff would be interested in. Or maybe I can figure out a way to make a campfire fast. Can I give tips on the sticks or grass to use? Or is there a DIY solution for campfire fuel? You see taking an idea through my persona cards can help to come up with something that your audience actually wants to see as you start to ask the right questions. Let's have a look at another example. This is Emily, 27 years old. She's very social, loves performance arts and cares a lot about humor in her life. She does stand up comedy in a small cafe and it's her dream to break through with that. But at the same time, it's her struggle because she feels insecure and she doesn't know anyone who performs on bigger stages. She feels alone. I'm going to make a video about dealing with those hot lights when standing on a big stage, which might affect your performance. Let's check the idea. She's already a performance artist, so that is good. But she's at the beginner face performing in local cafes with maybe 20 people watching. I'm not even sure if small cafes have big stage lights. Her struggle shows that she's dealing with other stuff right now. Maybe my initial idea isn't that good. Maybe in the future it will when my channel grows and my audience grows as well. When Emily reaches her goal and she's performing on those bigger stages. But for now, let's see if we can come up with a video topic that you would actually look out for. What about five tips for when your audience isn't laughing? She wants to become a better performer. That means she needs to feel very confident first. She's perfectly insecure because she's afraid to make mistakes or that her audience doesn't laugh at their jokes. This could be a good video for her. Your channel persona could change over time. I tend to go back to mine every six months or so because your audience might change, but you as a creator change as well. Videos that you create today is something you might not like anymore in a couple of years and you're creating very different contents. It's also possible that you have multiple different audiences and you can definitely make more personas if you wish, but try to keep it at a maximum of three, because as you choose a video topic, it might not always resonate with all of your audiences. Definitely for smaller channels, try to keep it at just one target audience. Now go and try that yourself. Come up with an idea and try to check it off using your persona cards. 3. Thumbnail & Title: You have your own bakery. There are different kinds of breads and your specialty are strawberry pies. It's a recipe from your grandmother and not only you, but everybody who tastes the pie says it's the best day ever had. That means you've got a great product to sell. Now, unfortunately, nobody wants your strawberry pies and to top it off, the bakery next to you has tasteless factory made pies but they sell like crazy, everyone wants one of those. The problem marketing and your thumbnail and title is just that marketing. Your video is the strawberry pie, but it's the way that you presented it that's not good. People won't click your video, so then what can we do about it? Well, let's have a look at what the other bakery does. They've got a bad product, but everybody wants their pie, so they must be doing something right. Well, they have a big poster under window that says, we have the most delicious pie in town. It shows a picture of a beautiful pie and vibrant colors around it. Now let's take a look at our bakery shop. There's no poster. You need to look through the window and to strawberry pies don't look so vibrant. Now without you knowing which pie actually tastes the best, which one would you buy? I think we would all make the wrong decision and go for it a tasteless pie. So to get more customers or the clicks, we need to make a better poster, a thumbnail. A title that is better than the rest. After all, you are competing with every other video on the YouTube homepage. A little bragging or exaggerating isn't so bad. Just look at what the other bakeries said about their pies. If someone else is going to do that, why shouldn't you? Now I'm talking about Clickbait. It's a very negative words, but are two kinds of click baits. One that goes for the click and doesn't deliver on what's promised and to the other also goes through to click, but it does deliver on its promise. When you've got a title that says, I build a house and one day, but your content is just a video of you laying down some bricks. It doesn't tell the story of the title that you set up. So instead, you can make a video about where you pre-build a small house in some warehouse. But then it only took you one day to transport that is pre-built house to the location. Even though you're exaggerating your title, you still deliver on what you promised. In one day, we've got a house on location, so clickbait is not so bad after all. In fact, we need little clickbait in order to get the click, and I know that for many of us it's a struggle to get over that idea. I had the same issues. I was afraid that my audience would hate me for making clickbait titles and thumbnails, but they weren't. In fact, I saw an increase in views, an increase in engagement, and an increase in retention. You might be wondering, Jordy how can a title and thumbnail contributes to engagement and retention? Well, that thumbnail and title has already part of your story. It's the setup and it creates expectations. It's the intro to your video and when done right, it already hooks the viewer into watching longer. We'll talk more about that one of the next lessons, but now let's go and see how we can make an amazing thumbnail and title. When someone opens up YouTube and looks at their homepage, they go through three stages before clicking on a video. The first stage is attention. What thumbnail grabs the attention of a potential viewer, usually bright and vibrant colors, but also faces. Emotion draws attention. That's why you see so many traders would a goofy phase under thumbnail, it's stupid, but it works. Contrast is another important factor and makes sure that elements and texts can be recognized easily so that they draw attention. Then the next stage is understanding the thumbnail. We've got about a second or two to make it clear in our thumbnail what the video is about. So we don't want to cramp too much information in there, but as little as possible in your thumbnail and makes sure that the elements tell a story. A story that immediately makes sense. This is also where the title comes in place. The title should be an extension to the thumbnail. If your video is about how to fly an air balloon and you put the title in your thumbnail then what's the point of even having a title. Leave the texts out of the thumbnail and now they do compliment each other. Then the final stage is relevance, so the audience knows what the video is about, but is it irrelevant to them? Do they care to click on the video and watch it. If I see a vibrant thumbnail of a chicken, and I understand that it's about how to tame a chicken to make it do stunts or whatever. I'm not going to be interested in that topic, so I'm not going to click. That's where your persona cards comes in. Make sure that the elements within your thumbnail and title are both familiar to your target audience and that they are relevant. Because a chicken might be familiar to us all, but not always irrelevant. There is a difference in there. Okay, so grab attention, understanding, and relevance. The three stages that a potential viewer goes through. I want to take a look at a few existing videos first that did really well and I want to analyze them with you. This is a video from FortNine. It's a motorcycle channel and he made this video which has a great thumbnail and title. Let's go through the three stages. Attention, it has vibrant red and green colors, which makes it stand out. It has our attention. Next. Do we understand the thumbnail? It shows a wrong and a good way of doing something and the title says that we are doing it wrong. So it already tells a story and we know what to expect. We're going to get a video on how to properly hold the throttle and supports that we watch because chances are that I'm currently doing it wrong. So there is a big emotive for me to click on the video unless I'm not interested. This channel is about motorcycles and more particular how-to videos. The viewer always learn something when they watch one of his videos, so it fits his target. It's relevant to them. He could have gone the other way and make it thumbnail of someone crashing and making the cost a little bit vague. Now I might be interested in learning new tricks for riding my bike, but I don't want to see other people crash. That's why it's important to always keep your persona card in mind, to bring your potential viewer to that last stage of relevance and get them to click. Let's have a look at another example, the biggest and most influential trader on YouTube, Mr. Beast, does it draw attention? Yes, vibrant colors. There is a great contrast between his red jackets and two blue backgrounds and there's a strong face emotion. It ticks all the boxes. Now, do we understand what's going on? Yes. Immediately, we see Jimmy struggling in a cold environment and the text indicates that he stays there for some time. The title isn't even necessary anymore. That's when you know you've got a strong thumbnail. The title says, I survived 50 hours in Antarctica. It gives more information about where exactly he is and for how long, so it compliments the story within the thumbnail. Is it relevant? Of course, it targets his audience perfectly as it's the type of content that he makes. If you were to do a tutorial on how to play chess, his views would be a whole lot less. So with everything that we've just learned. Let's create a thumbnail and title from scratch for a new video that we went to make. The video is about how to make a strawberry pie. Who guessed it? So how do we tackle the thumbnail and title? It's the first thing that you should do before making a video. That's why we're doing this lesson so soon into the course. Because as I said before, your thumbnail and title are the introduction to your video. It's this setup of your story, so it's going to influence your video tremendously. If you already shot and edited your video, it is much harder to find a fitting thumbnail and title, and that's where most creators fail. So a video on how to make a strawberry pie. Think about how you can wrap a story around it. Perhaps let strangers stays and then rate your pie. You can make a thumbnail of going door by door with your pie and someone gives a reaction of how great it is, or you let one person taste your pie a chef. If chef approves your pie, then it must definitely be good. Maybe you have a secret ingredient, something nobody tells you. If you want to stand out and gets people to click, you need to exaggerate. Don't say goods, but use the word best. Make a strawberry pie in five-minutes, or everybody can do it, even a child, something along those lines. In essence, you're still doing a tutorial on how to make a strawberry pie, but as you can see, the thumbnail and title is going to influence and how you package those instructions. Now use your persona cards to pick a story that fits your target audience the best. Let's say that secret ingredients might fit best. We want to grab attention with a thumbnail, so a vibrant photo of a strawberry pie play around with the background colors and see what makes your main subject pop, which is the pie that needs to stand out the most. Now make people understand your thumbnail. Let's create a story in, it's perhaps an arrow going into the pie, which tells that there's something in there. Recruit add a phase to show that there's something special inside the pie, you know, when a dose, or we can show that secret ingredient itself but make it secret. So we'll blur it out. Now all we need is a complimentary title. Make people curious and intrigue them to find out what the video is about. Maybe sharing my secret ingredient to the perfect strawberry pie, or add this secret ingredients to make your strawberry pie 10 times better, or struggled to bake a strawberry pie add this secret ingredients. Now you can find thousands of more examples by simply looking at very successful channels from within or even outside of your niche. VidIQ, which I talked about before, also has an AI tool that generates titles, which could be a great source of inspiration. It basically does that work for you, of looking at search keywords and competitor channels. Then finally, it's relevance. We've already taken care of that when we decided to what the video should be about. If a secret ingredient is in line with your persona cards, then your title and thumbnail are relevant and you've got a click. But having people to click on your videos will never grow your channel if you don't tell an interesting story that keeps your audience hooked. So in the next lesson, we're going to learn how to write a compelling story for maximum retention. 4. Video Scenario: Hey guys, it's your boy, Jordy here, and I'm back for another video, and I know it's been a while since I made a video but I promise you [OVERLAPPING] I'm sorry. I didn't find a way to close that video, so it just fell asleep. I've seen that video start like that 1,000 times, have you as well? If for some reason we know it's a bad intro when we see it's what we keep making the same mistakes, at least I did, and this is what a retention curve of such a video looks like, this drop are the people who not fell asleep, but instead found the close button. But after I started implementing a very simple technique, my retention curves start to look like this. What is that secret sauce? It's storytelling. One day, a young boy was playing basketball outside when all of a sudden he threw the ball on the roof. So he grabbed a ladder. But as he always got onto the roof, this ladder felt. There he was hanging, and screaming for help but nobody was home, and nobody in a neighborhood heard him. His fingers started to slip. One hand got loose with all those muscles, he tries to keep hold but he couldn't. With fear in his eyes, he started falling but as he thought to drop on the ground, two strong arms catched them, he looked up and said, thanks dad, which after the basketball dropped on his father's hands. True story. That's story could have been told differently. A young boy accidentally threw his basketball on the roof, so it took a ladder, and brought the ball back. Dns, which one do you prefer to watch, even though it's the exact same story, I think we would all like the first one more, even though that first story is a little bit exaggerated, and not entirely true, but that's how media, television shows, and even the news works. You take an existing story, and you make it more exciting, that's exactly what the biggest YouTubers do. Just think about its Casey Neistat, Mark Rober, Ryan Trahan, Mr.Beast, they all implement the same storytelling techniques. Things that happen in their video is never a coincidence. It's plans. Now if you're doing some craft behind your desk, it's easier to create a story. If you're doing vlogs, it's a little bit trickier as you want to make sure that your video stay natural. But here are a few tips, and tricks that can help you with that. First, let's start with a breakdown of what a story is. There are four sections. The setup, the incidence, the struggle, and the resolution. So let's say that you are preparing yourself for a Viking run. You're at the start of the course. Everybody prepares in short, you tell your goal what you want to achieve by the end of the video, perhaps you're trying to finish in a Top 10, and you can add some drama to it by saying that you have sore muscles or that, you're a little bit afraid or something. That's all part of this setup. You set up the story you create a feeling that the viewer starts with, and looks forward to it. Now comes the incident. The viewer knows that you want to finish in the Top 10, make sure that something happens which could prevent that. There's where your planning starts, pretends like you have a bad start, immediately fall or something, or show an edit of all the struggles. Talk to the camera, and tell your viewer that it's not going as you hoped for, even though maybe you're running first-place, the viewer doesn't know that. The third part is the struggle. We already see you struggling, but we're going to add another layer on top of that. At this point, remind your audience the goal that you want to achieve, finishing in the Top 10, and maybe show a sign of success, you overcome some struggle, and was able to catch up or something, but this leads to a bigger problem. All of a sudden something happens, you trip, and hurt your ankle, you're exhausted, and need a break. Someone else's hurt, and you decide to help them. Anything that makes it seem like they're not going to achieve your goal. Again, this is something that you can plan ahead even if you're running first, pretend like you're exhausted or something, it's going to make your story so much better. Finally, the resolution, although it seems like you're not going to win, something happens, maybe a friend picks you up, and helps you to the finish line a supporter yells at you, you can do it too, which energizes you to step up, try to plan this ahead. Or maybe you can do the Viking run first, and then afterwards shoot some extra video to tell your story. Anyway, this surprising act makes you finish the run. If you want a happy ending, you finished in the Top 10, maybe even first place. So never start shooting a video without a story, even if it's a vlog, an educational video, or anything else, every video can be created with a compelling story. I'll do one more example of a tutorial video, as that's usually a tricky one. Let's take the most boring topic ever. I want to make a tutorial video about how to install an antivirus software onto a computer. Now we can do this the boring way, which could help people who are specifically searching for such a video. But we want to reach an audience on the homepage. Remember that that's the first thing you see when you go to youtube.com. If you see a video here that says how to install an antivirus program, that most likely you wouldn't click on it unless you accidentally happen to look for that, and for some miracle reasons, such a video pops on your home screen. Well, that's never the case. If you're making videos for search, that's fine, but don't expect to get engagement from your audience, gain subscribers, or get any views in that first month, you want to reach people on the homepage, and here's how we're going to do that. Your story doesn't start with this setup, but with a title, and thumbnail. That's why we need to make sure to do that before we start working on the video. We've already covered thumbnails, and titles, so let's quickly come up with something. The title could be got a new computer, do this first and a thumbnail that shows a blurred program on which you will right-click to install. So you've already set up a part of your story when people see this and click on it, they know it's about a new computer, and that they're going to install something new on it. That's what you're curious about. What is that program? You've got them hooked, so now don't let them go with a boring intro. You start the video with sharing a personal story of how you bought a new computer, and only a few days later it crashed, and you lost all your files. So you're going to try and fix that now. You've got a virus on a USB stick, but before you're going to let it off, and destroy your computer, it will first install an antivirus programs. So you've set up a goal that you want to achieve, which is letting off a virus. A setup of the story is done. Now we can move into the incident. With so many antivirus programs to choose from, which is the best talk about your struggle of how one program could slow down your computer while the other does, simply doesn't work. But slowly you're coming to a solution, and install an antivirus software that you recommend. Next, you let go of the virus to test the program. Here is where that struggle starts. Your computer go slow, and unexpected pop-up appears. It seemed as though the anti-virus program didn't work, but then comes the resolution. The program picked it up, and it saved your computer. Now you can also go for a funnier ending or you accidentally that the virus go off on the wrong computer, which doesn't happen. Anti-virus installed yet. That is up to you, but you can see how we turn to boring tutorial into an exciting story, and as important, how your thumbnail, and title are part of your story. Now, unfortunately, your viewer did close the video, what went wrong? I've got a good story. Why is everybody leaving? Well, bad video or audio quality is a deal breaker. I'll show you in the next lesson how to get amazing quality with the gear that you're currently using. 5. Video Making 101: Imagine you'd have to watch this entire video like this. I could do the most dangerous stunts like trying to jump off a building or perhaps take you through an emotional roller coaster. Chances are you'd be long gone because you're irritated by the bad audio and video and it's not because you're using your phone as a camera, that it's impossible to get good results. Let's go over some techniques that you can implement right away, starting with video. Video always goes together with lighting. If you're sitting indoor, it's easier as you have more control over the lights, where it comes from. At home, you can use Windows or decorative lights as a light source or maybe you already have a softbox that is great and it definitely makes things easier. Now one important rule is that your main source of light comes from this side. If your camera is sitting here, makes sure that the main lights comes from either side. That way you get some shadow on your face. It's much more pleasant to watch now when outside the main light source is the sun. Here you wouldn't have the light's coming from this side as well, not in your face and not behind you, which causes lens flares. Now your background is as important, that's what people need to look at the entire time. Make sure that objects in the background make sense, do they relate to your channel. If you don't specifically have objects that's good to relate to your channel then just keep it clean. Have a poster, perhaps a plant or something in there, but not too much. A bright, vivid background is also more pleasant to look at. I know mine is pretty dark, but I've got a reason for that. My channel is about filmmaking and when we think about the theater, the behind-the-scenes, it's usually darker, plus it makes me pop more. I've got a light on me so I'm bright, the background is dark, so I stand out and that's something important. You don't want to blend in with your background. If you have a bright background make sure that it has different colors than the clothes that you're wearing. Another great trick is to take distance from the background. Never sit against the wall. It makes things flat, which doesn't help to make you pop, take distance and you'll even notice that on some cameras you'll get a blurry backgrounds and that is perfect. It helps to make you pop even more. Outside, we can do the same thing. If you're standing in the sunlight, maybe look for a darker background. Is there something going on behind you? Does it make sense? Okay, then if not look for a different spot, otherwise it's just distracting. Make sure that the lighting comes from this site and that you pop against the background. Having those two things is a great start. If you combine that with good camera framing, your video quality is perfect, regardless of what camera you're using. Camera framing can be a bit overwhelming. I mean, I have two entire courses just about that. Instead of explaining the entire concept behind camera framing, I'm just going to give you a few tricks which are already going to make big differences. Starting off with breathing space as you frame yourself or someone else, make sure that there is some space around the person. Don't stick to a side or their heads against the top like this, give it some breathing space, but not too much keep in mind, a large space like this needs to make sense. Filming your subject with lots of space above her head is distracting. It feels unbalanced and awkward to watch. It's like every Zoom call, you see people sitting in all different corners, fill the camera frame and leave a small space around the edge. Now if you'd like to learn more about this, definitely look into the rule of thirds, which is a camera framing technique or you can check out the other courses that I have. They are for beginners, so don't worry about getting overwhelmed. Our lighting is good, the background is good, and the framing is good. That means we've got a good video. Awesome. Now, unfortunately, we're not done yet. When the audio is bad, none of your other stuff matters. If you have trouble to hear what someone is talking about, you get exhausted and it's very uncomfortable so you leave the video. Luckily, audio is a lot easier than video. There's just one trick. That's it. Bring your microphone as close as possible to your mouth. No, that's not even good enough. Bringing your microphone right next to your mouth. That's what you want to aim for. You can see that I'm wearing a little microphone right here as well. It sits right next to my mouth. Now there are two solutions. The cheapest ways to use your phone or any other audio recording device that you can get your hands on and try to attach that somewhere to your chest. You record the audio and video separately so when editing you need to synchronize that. It works, but it's very DIY and you're making it yourself complicated. The second solution costs a little bit of money, but it's already starts at around 20 bucks, It's a laugh Mike. A small little microphone like I'm wearing right now, which you can clip onto your jacket or t-shirt and just plug that into your camera or phone. There are mikes with long cables like this one from Deity, it's called the V lav, but you also have wireless solutions. Hollyland has a great one called The Lark C1, one ends is the transmitter, which acts as the microphone as well and the other end is the receiver which goes into your camera. It costs a little bit more, but it's the best purchase that you can do. I would buy a good audio solution first and then look for a better camera. If you have the budget, don't cheap out on the mic, and that's it for audio. You came off easy with that one. That's why I've got a task for you that way you don't come off easy after this lesson, [LAUGHTER] I want you to look up five YouTubers that you enjoy watching because of their video and audio quality. Like MKBHD, he does tech reviews and I love how good his videos always look, although it's pretty simple and clean, take a screenshot of five creators and throw them into a document. I use the Milanote, which is an online board creator very useful, and I can create a list in here. Now examine how they achieved their video quality. Where does the lighting come from, what's in the background? What are the colors and their clothes and the elements in the back? Then try to recreate that. Take a picture and place yours next to them. That way you can compare and see if you did a good job. Exercises like this helps you to better understand how camera ends lighting works. Making better videos is only something that you can learn by doing. Go and do that right now and when you're done, you can come back for the next lesson. 6. Video Editing: The video edits. This is the part where do you spend most of the time and if not starting now, you will. A great director once told me that video editing is like cooking. You've got all of the ingredients which are your shots, but you can tell different stories with those shots, different moods, and feelings. Like cooking, you've got 1,000 recipes with the same ingredients, and just as with videography becoming great at video editing needs time and practice. I'm going to give you a few tips that you can immediately implement, which are focused on better retention, keeping the audience watching, which leads to more engagement, more impressions, more views. It's all connected. The first thing we need to understand is that our viewer has the attention span of a spoon, which is not much. Therefore, we need to constantly draw attention and trigger the audience to focus on the video. One way of doing that are cutting out the breaks between your sentences. Every time you say something wrong or say, "um" for too long, you cut that part out. With too much silences in-between takes you lose pacing and that's a factor that could make your viewer lose attention and close the video. You want tight cuts throughout your entire edits. The same thing goes with scenes. If you're sitting in a room talking for 10 minutes straight to your audience, they will get bored. Try to change locations now and then. Jump cuts appear when you remove a part in a sentence, you jump little bits and the audience notices that cut, it's distracting. Add a little zoom which hides the cuts and makes it more pleasant to watch. Work with B-roll and texts. B-roll are just shots about the thing that you're talking about. You can shoot that yourself or download a stock video, but it helps to visualize what you're talking about and it gives something new which draws attention. Now one of the best stock sites that I can recommend is Story Blocks. They are the most affordable and have a huge library and if you go to storyblocks.com/jordy to sign up, you will support my work as well, so thank you for doing that. I love to work with text animations, something simple as a big text on the middle of the screen while I talk, again, it draws attention. That's what you want to try and do for your entire edit. Some of the effects help with that as well. Little bells, whistles, and switches. Finally, you can connect certain shots or scenes together for a better flow. This is done using the J and L cuts techniques. Basically, you already cut to the next scene while you're still talking except for the audio, your speech. This is an L cut, which comes from the shape in your timeline. The other way around is a J cut. Near the end of the scene, you start to introduce the audio from the next scene, and then you cut to the the video as well. Here we see a J in the timeline. Making your scenes or cuts flow like this together makes your video move forward, keeping attention. We've got the audience attention with these editing tricks. Great. Now I want to spice it up with some jokes, but are they actually funny? Well, we can make them funny with editing. A simple trick is if you have music in the background and you tell a funny joke like elephants are blue. You see the music just stopped and it's silent for a second but then as you move on to music starts again. Now having such a cut and music makes your jokes funnier, even though an elephant that is blue isn't so funny. You laughed at it. I know you did, but you can also create new jokes with editing, maybe you're doing a review about some new video game and it has very slow loading screens. Now, to make a joke out of that, you could zoom in on your face and add the sound of some crickets to show the irritation. Although you might just be staring without emotion, that moment just became something funny. Video editing is a playground and the best way to learn it is by starting to look at other creators. Look for very specific editing techniques and try to recreate them for your videos and you don't always have to look at your own niche. Inspiration can come from any creator, TV show, or film. Now before you ask Jordy, what is the best video editing program, what should I be using? Well, I just shared seven editing tricks with you which if you realized [inaudible] created in one specific program, the program you're using is just a tool to edit. It doesn't define your edit itself. Really it doesn't matter what you're using, work with something that you feel comfortable with. But if you'd like to know, I work in Adobe Premiere Pro and I've got an entire beginner scores for it if you're interested. Anyways, your video edits will be through the roof now. It's just a pity that after people seeing your video they're gone, but I've got a solution for that which turns the viewer into a binge-watcher and I'll share that secret in the next video lesson. 7. Call to Action: YouTube favors channels that can keep their viewers hooked. The longer someone spends time on YouTube, the more ads that they can show, thus the more money YouTube makes. It's a business with the goal to make money so it's obvious that they would push videos and channels that can keep their audience for longer times on the website. We're already doing an amazing job so far, we've got a great thumbnail on titles, so people click. Then they see a video with a great story and editing which makes them stick around till the end. But now what? You scored a point with YouTube. But what if we could score another point? What if we could make sure that the person who just saw your video opens up another video on your channel and starts watching that one? And by the end of that video, they open up another one and before they know it, they're binge-watching and you've scored 10 points with YouTube. Ultimately, that's our goal, but how can we do that? It's done with a strong call to action. You ask your viewer to take an action which is to watch another video or maybe to subscribe on your channel. Unfortunately, just asking it gently doesn't really work. If you're planning to do that, don't even bother to ask, because that's the moment that your viewer wants to close your video. It has the opposite effect of what you're trying to achieve and that's because it's a bad deal for them. Only you gain something out of it, a new subscriber. But what do they get in return? Nothing. It's like doing a garage sale, but you don't ask for money, then why should you go through all the trouble of hosting a garage sale? You can much more easily just throw everything away. That trade deal needs to go both ways. You want a new subscriber, what does the other person get? That could be not to miss another great video because I publish every single week. You are defining what the subscriber gets in return. That is very important because what seems obvious to you might not for them, but your trade deal is still a bit unfair. You get a subscriber and they get a weekly new video. So what? Who cares? What if I'm not interested in your videos? Then the trade deal sucks. That's true. We have to make sure that your viewer knows that you're only uploading great videos, that they will definitely enjoy. How can we convince them? Well, they're currently watching one of my videos, so that is proof that the video is good. Let's start the video immediately by saying, hey, this is a great video. Just trust me, just wait until you've watched it entirely. Go and subscribe now because you want to see this great thing every single week. Don't do that, that's the moment your viewer could leave the video because you haven't given any value yet. It's like trying to sell a car before you explain all of its features. Focus on making a great video first and those who are still watching near the end they are probably interested in seeing more from you. You've shown them what great content you make. You've given them value. If you were to ask to subscribe to your channel near the end of your video, it would make much more sense and they are much more likely to subscribe. A call to action always needs to have value, a two-way trade deal, and asking for people to subscribe doesn't have to be on the end of your video, it can also be somewhere in the middle. Maybe you're sharing five tips on how to build better Lego pieces. After sharing two or three tips, you've already given value so you could perfectly ask for a sub there, and that leaves you with some more space near the end of the video for a second call to action because what you want to avoid is asking for too much. There can only be one call to action. If you were to ask to subscribe and like and place a comment and watch another video and check the link to my merchant and description and sign up to my newsletter and follow me on Twitter [NOISE], people are long gone and they would not take any action. One call to action is much stronger than two call to actions. If you really want to ask for two things, know that it wouldn't convert as much as asking for one thing so then it's best to spread them out through the video. We've already asked the viewer to subscribe in the middle of the video. That means near the end it's cleared out. Any new call to action counts again as one. We want the viewer to binge-watch. We ask them to click the video on my left or on my right. You can create such clickable cards in YouTube Studio, and have them go to another video or playlist. Just like when asking for a sub, think about the two-way deal. You get a binge-watcher, what do they get? Create a value for them. For example, your video is a vlog about you training your dog, that's what people have just seen, so it's fresh in your memory. Now, use that information to make a follow-up. For instance, I wasn't able to show how my dog can roll over in this video but in the video here on my left, you can see the entire process of how I made my dog roll over. I hope to see you there and thanks for watching. You set up a problem, something from the video that you just watched is missing and I know that you liked the video because you're sticking around until the end. If I tell you that I have another video that shows the part that was missing from this video, you probably want to see that. We have created a value, a two-way trade. You get another view on the next video and they get the missing puzzle piece. We've had videos with a click-through rate on those cards of up to 20%. Imagine if 1,000 people are still watching your video near the end and 200 of those click to watch the next video, that's insane. It's not only blows life back into your older videos, but it helps with the general success of your channel. Imagine you would get 100 views per video, but suddenly you go viral, a 1 million views out of nowhere. Let's say that 400,000 of those are still watching near the end and 20% clicks on that card. Suddenly you're older video which normally gets around 100 views, now has 80,000 views and you never know when that viral hit comes. So be prepared and have a strong call to action on the ends. That's the moral of the story. Now let's go over a few more examples. A video that shows you how to train at the gym and you've showed that you weren't able to pull up a weight of 100 kilos so near the end of the video, you can say, well last month I was able to pull up 100 kilograms and it was an incredible journey. You can check out that video here on my left, and those who are still watching near the end of the video will find that an incredible value and click to watch your next video. You're exploring a cave, an exciting video in which hopefully everything goes well. Your call to action says, today everything went good but there have been moments where I got stuck in a cave. Well, you can check out the video here on my right where I got stuck in a cave and it's a pretty exciting story. Let's do one more for the financial video creators. A video about the Top 5 stocks that you need to invest in right now. Your call to action, even though these five stocks are great, you need to sell them at the right point, otherwise, you'll lose a lot of money. In the video here on my left, I'll explain at which point you need to sell your stocks for maximum return. You've got people who could subscribes, and turn them into binge-watchers. The last piece of the puzzle is to make your audience engage, which triggers all the signals at YouTube to push your channel hours, and before you know it, you've earned yourself a silver play button. In the next lesson, I'll share all the secrets to get a highly engaged audience that loves your channel. You see what I did there? 8. Engagement: You're watching a movie on television and it's amazing. You're loving it. The story takes you through an emotional roller coaster. You're bonding with the characters, sharing emotions. The end credits appear and you have this weird feeling like you just lost great friends. Here's an empty hole in your heart, so you look up online if there's a sequel, but you're not watching Fast and Furious, so there isn't. You continue to search online for rumors about a potential sequel and you hope to find something. You know that feeling? I'm sure we've all been through that. If one of your viewers goes through such a feeling, you've got yourself a core fan and unlike television, they are not left with an empty feeling because on YouTube, there is something called the comment section and that place makes sure that your story continues. As they wait another week for your next video to upload, that's the place where your core fans can talk about the video and relive those memories. Core fans will watch every video you publish because they're on the train of the story you're telling, a train that continues for years, for as long as you make videos. Got a call to action, they will probably take that action because they are in it for the whole right and that's the only great for your channel to get recommended more but also for if you wish to start making some money off from YouTube. Now perhaps a t-shirt sale, a Patreon, or some digital goods your core fans are more likely to buy. That's why it is so important to have your audience engage and turn them into fans rather than just a viewer. How do we do that? Well, the biggest effort needs to come from your video itself. Just like with a movie, if you have a compelling story like we talked about before, you'll have more people feel an emotion. That's why videos, where you talk about your own emotions, get more engagement. You're opening yourself up, making yourself vulnerable, and people appreciate that as it shows that you are just a human being like them. Not that you have to tell a drama story about your deepest fears every week, but it couldn't hurt to upload such a video now and then, or when it's organically possible to add that into a video. We've learned about how to write better stories, which includes struggle. If that struggle is something personal like having trouble to climb a mountain or something, then use that moment to open yourself up to your audience, show the real struggle and pain. Even though the rest of your video are funny jokes and fooling around, having one short moment where you show your feelings as such strong and binding elements, and that will automatically generate more engagement. Engagement is not only placing a comment, it's every form of interaction with your video. Hitting the like or dislike button is an engagemen, sharing your YouTube link through social media, talking about it on Reddit or Discord. Someone who makes a reaction video about your video. Although those last things don't impact a channel directly, it will be in the long run. When someone shares something about your video on Instagram, dear friends speak up on that. They discover your YouTube channel. Don't limit yourself to only YouTube, use the whole Internet. Now YouTube has different engaging tools as well like Community posts. Try to post something meaningful at least once a week, ideally 3-4 times. You can create themes to make it yourself easier, something that we do is PollMonday where we ask a question to our audience. For instance, would you rather have the best editing computer or the best camera? Then there is SneakPeekWednesday where we share a funny photo from the video that we're working on, ThrowBackThursday an animated gift from an older video. Things like this continues your story and it shows that you're not just a weekly program, but an actual living human being. Now do keep in mind to always share meaningful value. Just like what your call to action, it's a two-way trait. Like why should I care that you posted a photo eating pizza? It has nothing to do with your channel. There's no reason I should interact with that. You didn't make me laugh, you didn't make me feel anything, so let's change that a little bit. You've got a channel about Lego and you're eating pizza. Well, let's give a small slice through a Lego guy and say that you're having pizza with Pete, a character from your Lego videos. Now that's fine and people are more likely to engage with that. They are left with a happy feeling. Next time you upload a video, they are reminded with that picture and reminded by that happy feeling which could make them click your video more likely click the Like button, or maybe post a comment about the pizza picture they saw. I know it's starting to become very psychologically but that's just the way it is. I wanted to make you understand why engagement is so important and that it is something organic. Asking your audience for a like or a comment is not going to work. It's not organic, but you could influence that organic engagement. Talking about your feelings is one way, but there is another example. Say you're doing a challenge, both you and your friends have to carve an art piece out of goods. Now instead of deciding it for yourself who made the best piece of art, let your audience decide. Ask them, who do you think made the best wooden sculpture? Let me know in the comments down below. That gives a reason to comment or if you have a beauty channel, ask your audience what to wear in the next video, a yellow dress or a blue sweater, that makes your audience feel like they have influence on your video. By typing in a comment, they can control how your next video is going to look. That is something extremely powerful to get engagement or take it a step further. If 1,000 people like this video, I will shave my head. Now for sure, you're going to get 10,000 likes and a whole bunch of comments as you're doing something very drastic and every single one of those comments or likes are going to be genuine. They are real. From the viewer's standpoint, they engage toward your video because they wanted to. It's not because you ask them to do even though you tricked them into engaging. Holdover through the entire course now, there's one final conclusion left in which I want to share something personal, but I really want you to know about it, so I'll see you back in the next and final lesson of this course. 9. Conclusion: I was 18 years old when I started making YouTube videos. For me, it was just a hobby. Whenever I had an idea for a new video, I would make one, but as my channel started to grow, I saw potential, not in a sense of becoming a full-time YouTuber, but just as a way to grow my audience more. That was my goal. I started uploading new videos every single week, until one day I got an email. It came from a company that wanted to send me a product which I could keep in return for a video, and I'll never forget that moment, because suddenly I realized the value of my videos. Now it wasn't much, but that companies are willing to spend money, even if that's in the form of a $200 product, made me understand that I have an impact, an influence like many call it, and I really hate that word by the way. At the same time, my subscriber count was already at around 10,000 people, and it was at that moment that I started to treat my YouTube channel as a business. Before that, it was just a fun hobby, and still it's fun, but it's not a hobby anymore. Now all I'm saying, is that, it took me more than six years to realize my YouTube channel had potential. If you start a new channel today with zero views, and zeros subscribers, or maybe you have 20 steps, and a couple of views per video, my advice is not to wait six years, but to treat your channel with a goal in mind immediately. Maybe your goal is to make $1,000 a month from YouTube. This could be through sponsorships, or by selling your own digital products. Another goal is to reach 1,000 subscribers, or maybe your goal is to collaborate with someone who has over 100,000 subs. A goal can be anything, and it's something personal, something that you want to achieve, but by having a clear goal in mind, you'll grow your channel a whole lot faster, and you won't make the same mistake that I did. Now, it did took me six years until I decided to upload every single week, and then it took me another two years until my channel to goal. Don't expect that after watching this course that your channel's going to get boosted like crazy suddenly. It takes time, and for some, that's going to be a couple of months, for others, maybe a year or two. Just don't give up. Enjoy the ride, enjoy every video that you make, and success will eventually come. But give it time, and work towards your goal. Luckily, I never quit because, ever since YouTube became my job, I stopped working. This is my work now, but it doesn't feel that way. One big conclusion from this entire course, is that, YouTube success doesn't come from secret tricks, or SEO hacks, or research, and data analysis, it comes from passion. Videos that tell stories from your hearts. Now it's time to make your first successful video, and the best way to do that is to start from the beginning of this course again. No, I'm not joking about this. Start with less-than-about video ideas as you create a concept, then as you design a thumbnail, you watch the following lesson. This course is a tool for you. Use it on every video that you make next until all the tips, and tricks become a routine. If you're still struggling with videography, or video editing, definitely check out my other courses. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope that you enjoy this course, and if you have the time, definitely leave a review, it means a lot to me. As I always say on the end of every YouTube video, stay creative.