YouTube Masterclass: How to Win on YouTube

1. Course Overview: This course, you're going to learn how to grow your own YouTube channel, whether it's a personal channel or one that you're running for a business or brand that you started or that you work for. I'm so excited to have you here. So welcome. We're going to start with what this course is and what it's not. While you may want to be the next Mr. Beast or Mark Rober or fill in the blank with your favorite YouTuber. This is a course geared towards smaller creators, ones that are starting out from scratch on YouTube, or if you have a small channel, be growing a little slower and you're looking for ways to help grow faster. We are going to learn from the top YouTubers out there, and we're going to extract and take their best strategies. We're going to take those practical strategies and be able to use them ourself. I'm also going to show you how I've created a successful YouTube channel myself. On the side. YouTube is not my full time business, it's not my full focus, but it's a major part of what I do, and it has helped me to grow my business to earning over seven figures in revenue for the past five plus years, to growing a community of tens and hundreds of thousands of subscribers and followers, not just on YouTube, but also in my own Facebook groups and own personal communities as well. What are you going to learn in this class? We start this course with a strategy tailored to you. We look a lot at understanding what works on YouTube and how you can replicate it before we go into all of the technical stuff. Yes, we're going to cover gear and things like that that you want and need to know as a creator. We're going to go into YouTube and show you YouTube studio, how to upload videos, all of those things that if you haven't touched YouTube before, we'll show you that, but that's later in the course. It's more important to understand your ultimate strategy first. A quick note, make sure you download the course workbook. That's going to be in the next lesson of the class. It includes top tips from lessons, includes the slides from most of the course. It also includes action items and links to videos that I share in this course, so that you can see examples of the way I'm talking about. Before I let you go, I want to share the best tips from some of the biggest and top YouTubers out there right now. 2. Top Tips from the Best YouTubers in the World: Of course, I could try to teach you this course on my own, but I think it's best to include some advice from people who are way more successful than I am. Starting out with Mr. Best, his best advice for people starting out from scratch is to know that your first videos aren't going to get a lot of views. This is true for you, for me, unless you have an outside audience in terms of a social media presence, an e mail list, a community, where you can drive traffic to your first video. You're not going to get a lot of views, and it's important to understand that and not feel down when you're putting out your first videos and not getting a lot of traction. Ali Abdala has a couple of good tips. One is, don't worry about what people think. If you're starting a channel, you might feel a little hesitant about like, what is your family going to think? What are your friends going to think? What about your co workers? The truth is most of those people are never going to see your videos. His second tip is people are paying for your video with their time. So make it worth it. People aren't paying you directly, monetarily to watch your video, which is what we do when we go to the movie theaters or what we do when we go to a sporting event. We're paying money to consume content. With YouTube, it's strictly a time based transaction, so you have to make it worth it to them. If it's not worth their time, then they're just not going to worth, watch it. Our next tip comes from Casey Neistat, the Godfather of YouTube. Truly understand your why, why YouTube. Why not another platform. It's why this topic. Pared to another one. Why this specific video? It's going to be a guiding light throughout everything you do. And his second tip is to have patience, which similar to Mr. Best. You're not going to blow up overnight, most likely. This does happen, and now is a great time to be on YouTube for new creators. I'll talk about that more in the next video lesson, but just remember to have patience while you start your channel. A newer creator who's blown up over the past few years is Jenny Hoyos, and she has three tips. One is experiment, experiment with different types of videos, different formats with YouTube shorts, Long form, different topics, everything like that. And along with that, quantity makes quality. So YouTube is no longer a place where just putting out a ton of videos is going to lead to success. High quality video is the answer. And I don't mean high quality in terms of expensive camera gear and cinematic shots or a crazy ton of editing. It just means that you're putting out something that sounds good, looks good, but more importantly is interesting. And a lot of that comes from experimenting and putting out a larger quantity of work so that you can figure out what works. So the tip is just put out as much as possible for the sake of putting out content, but put out a lot of content, play around with it so you can see what works. Through quantity, you'll find your quality stuff. And then a very practical tip is every second counts, especially for short form videos. She demonstrated this by showing a video that she posted a short, where the audience retention, it dropped off for the last few seconds of the video. And it wasn't getting a lot of views compared to some of her other videos that went viral and got millions of views. She cut off the last seconds of that video so that the audience retention lasted the entire video and didn't drop off on those boring last seconds. The engagement increased. So it was now, like, 100% watch rate, basically. And YouTube saw that and then started to push that video, and it went viral after that. Every second can count in your video and can make or break whether a video goes viral or not. John Canal from Think Media has a couple of good tips. One is Start Massy, try, don't overthink. Don't worry about the quality of it necessarily and just play around with it. You're going to learn as you put it out there. Hi second tip is to look to see if a specific video topic is getting more views than subscriber count. Do a search on YouTube for that topic. Look at the top videos or the latest videos, and see, Okay, are these videos getting more views than the subscriber count of the creator? Because if it's less than the subscriber count, it tells you that the only people watching this are most likely the subscribers of the creator, and YouTube is not pushing this out to other viewers. However, if there's a video with you know, 10,000 views, but only 500 subscribers to the channel? That tells you that YouTube is pushing that topic? That video topic or that channel topic. And that's a good way to determine if your channel topic, your Niche is a good one. And then the last tip comes from YouTube H Q itself. It's Don't think algorithm, think audience. Of course, we're wondering what goes into the algorithm of YouTube. How can we get our videos in front of more P does one video go viral versus another one? It's so much more important to think about creating a video for your audience, for a person watching it and not just trying to finagle it to fit some algorithm thing. There are channels that start video slow. They don't have a really interesting hook at the beginning. They're long format. It doesn't have super fast editing or B role or things like that. There are videos that succeed in that way, and that's because they're created for the audience that likes that type of video. In the next video lesson, I'm going to break down a blueprint for success for YouTubers right now. So we're going to go over everything that's most important to starting and growing a YouTube channel right now. So head over to that video and we'll see you there. 3. A Blueprint for YouTube Success: This is the most important lesson of the course. If there's only one video that you watch, make it this one. This is the YouTube blueprint, how to succeed on YouTube right now. We're going to start with a few myths that I want to dispel before we even get started. Myth number one is, I need expensive camera gear to make great YouTube videos. This just not true. Not only is camera equipment cheaper and more accessible than ever with iPhones and cheap cameras that you can make high quality videos, but there are new tools like AI tools that help us make that not super amazing quality camera or video, look and sound even better than ever. Adobe podcast and the new Adobe sound enhancer is just one of them that can take bad audio and make it sound like it's recorded in a professional podcasting environment. And these tools are only going to get better. But it comes back to so much more than just the equipment. Mth number two is, I need a huge audience to succeed. Goes back to what do you determine successes? Is success having a certain number of subscribers? Will you feel successful if you have 100,000 subscribers or 1 million subscribers or 10 million subscribers? And what does that even mean if you have those subscribers? I think success on YouTube could be different. It could be can I make enough income from my YouTube channel to be able to create YouTube content? Can I make it my job? You can do that with many, many, fewer subscribers than 1 million or 100,000. For me, my success on YouTube is not about a number of subscribers or revenue that I make directly on YouTube, but it helping me grow my other business and driving some traffic and some revenue to my outside business. The next myth is, I need to make three or more videos per week. Not true at all. In some cases, putting out more content when you're starting out is important. YouTube is going to like if you're putting out weekly or maybe even one or two videos per week. We're going to see channels in this course that obviously don't follow this now and maybe never have. I don't want you to feel like you need to be putting out three or more videos a week or even one video a week. To be successful on YouTube. You can do it with less because I want YouTube to be something that's not stressful to you and not a burden. I want you to feel like creating YouTube videos is fun and sustainable. The next and last myth is that it's too late to start on YouTube. There's channels for every topic out there, and no one's going to watch my videos because it's too crowded. People have been saying this for years, and the fact is right now is actually a better time than ever to start a YouTube channel. And it's specifically because YouTube has changed the algorithm so that smaller YouTube channels are pushed to an outside audience more than before. You've probably seen this on your own YouTube feed, where you'll see videos that you're interested in. It's a topic that you've watched other creators on. But it's this brand new channel that is getting thousands and thousands of views, but they have very few subscribers, and that's because of this algorithm change. And YouTube wants to put new channels in front of new people so that it can continue to grow and attract new followers and get people more engaged in the platform. So no, it's not too late to start on YouTube. Now that we've dispelled those myths, I want to cover a shortcut to success. There are two main things, understanding your y and understanding YouTube's business model that will propel you to having a more successful YouTube channel faster than ever. First is what is your y. This goes back to what is your unique value proposition? This is what sets you apart and is the reason that someone decides to watch your video versus another creators. How do you set yourself apart? Well, you can set yourself apart in a number of ways. You can set yourself apart with the style of your video, your personality, you yourself, the quality of your video, yes, more super high cinematic videos can be sort of elevated versus ones where it's just someone talking, not including any B role or anything like that. It could be the specific topic or the niche that you've chosen where you have an expertise or a passion about that topic that sets yourself apart, or it could be that schedule, the schedule of content. And for some cis, it is Yes, I'm posting a new video every day, and that's what sets yourself apart from channels that post not as often. For some subscribers, some viewers, that's what they're looking for, and that's what they appreciate. We're going to dive into what your y is and all of this stuff more practically with more examples in a future lesson. Along with your y is sticking with a niche. And this is a specific topic area for your courses. Niching down is really where you find your true fans. It simplifies things so that you know, Okay, should I be making a video about topic A or B or C or Z? We're not going to make a a video about topic z because it's not related to our specific niche. And it doesn't hurt us to have a small niche. And you're going to see examples of channels that I follow that have huge audiences But the topics that they make their videos on are so small, and I'm sure you watch YouTube channels yourself like this. Instead of creating videos on a broad range of topics, Nihing down allows viewers to know what to expect. And when they know what to expect, they're going to be more likely to watch your next video to subscribe to become that true fan, to follow you, support you monetarily, or whatever. And so choosing your niche, focusing down is better. Your Y also helps you determine what video you should make. And there are two questions I want you to ask yourself before making any video. One is, what is my competitive advantage in making this video? There something about my personality, my story that lets me tell this story or make this video better? Is there something about the quality of the content that I'm going to put out that I have an advantage on? I have access to certain people or certain places that can help me tell this story, how and why are you the person to tell this story compared to someone else? And if you can't really think about what makes yourself unique or why someone would want to watch you make a video about this topic versus another person, and it's probably a video topic to skip. And then the second question is, what video do people desperately need? So think about your Niche, think about the topic, what your UVP is. And think about yourself, because ultimately you're making videos for someone like you. What are videos that you would desperately want to watch? And that's within your heart. I can't tell you what to make in that sense. You probably know the videos that you want to watch and what you need to see. Those are the ones that you should be making. So that's the why. That's the why behind a YouTube channel that leads to so much success. The next is to understand YouTube's business model, and you need to do this to have success. YouTube's model is to keep people on the platform for advertisers. And it's as simple as that. They make money by having eyeballs on videos, and advertisers put ads on videos and in the middle, and at the end of videos, and they make money that way. And so YouTube wants people to stay on the platform. And if you play that game, YouTube will help you out. I've made the mistake, and I see others making the mistake early on, where they put out videos and they're driving traffic to their website to their off YouTube community or products or services or whatever. And if YouTube sees that, which they do, they see if someone's watching a video and then they click off to another website, they're not going to push that video. However, if they see a video where maybe it's a longer video and a person's very engaged watching it the whole time, and then they subscribe, or they leave a comment, or they click onto the next video from that channel. Oh, boy, that is a video that YouTube is going to push because that is a video that will make YouTube more money because they can sell more ads. What are the steps to succeed in this? One is to get clicks to your videos. If people aren't clicking on your videos, then YouTube is going to say, Well, no one wants to watch this guy's content, this gal's content, and so we're not going to push that content. How do we do this? Well, it basically comes down to our titles and our thumbnails. With our titles and thumbnails, we have a full lesson on these things and how to do it. Examples, everything coming up. But in general, the top tips are less is more. This is for both title and thumbnail. With your thumbnail having high contrast and color that stands out from that search page or stands out from the feed. Faces eyes and emotions. This creates a reaction and is more clickable, and that's why when you look at the feed, there's people that are looking like until it stops working, YouTube is going to continue to reward those types of videos because they get more clicks. In terms of the text on the thumbnail, it should support the title, but it shouldn't be the same. Why just repeat it when you could have some text on the thumbnail that builds a little bit of intrigue. You'll notice though that a lot of YouTubers now are not putting text on their thumbnail. Whereas five years ago, everyone was putting text on their thumbnail, but nowaday, it doesn't work as well. So not including text is not a bad thing either. Once you get someone clicking onto your video, how you keep them engaged. A few things. One is you need to master the hook. This is the first five, 10 seconds of a video that hooks them in, it grabs their attention. It builds curiosity, so someone continues watching a video. If a video starts too slow, if it's confusing, if they're not getting what they expected after they clicked on your title or thumbnail, people are going to click away, and YouTube, again, is going to see that. But if they click, they watch that first 5 seconds and they're automatically Engaged, that's a good thing. We have a full lesson on specifically creating good hooks in your videos and ways to do that in this course. No long intros, no long pauses, get into the content that people expect. And throughout your video, you want to build intrigue and suspense. It's not just at the beginning that you have to do this, you have to try to build some intrigue so that people want to watch to the end. So that's maybe mentioning things that are coming up later in the video. It's creating a structure of a video so that when you put out new videos that follow that structure, people understand what it is, and they want to get to the end. Edit your videos, edit it down. Mr. Beast is the master of this editing his videos over and over again so that the entire video is super engaging, super interesting. There's intrigue and suspense throughout the video. That doesn't mean though, if you want to put out slower paste. Content. That can't work as well. Well. There's lots of creators that do that, and I'm going to show you some in this course. Let's look at this with examples so that you can see exactly what this looks like in the real world. Defining your y. Plane with sticks is a channel I follow. You probably have never heard of them, but they are successful. They have 250,000 subscribers, and their why is to help people learn what the best small RV camper is for them. They put out videos that are reviews of all types of small RV campers, like tear drops and things like that. And That's what his y is, and he sticks with it, and all of his videos go back to helping people understand what the best gear is for them. And that's very specific. Similarly, choosing your niche. Playing with six, it's a very small niche. It's not even just general RV channel. It's a small camp, small RV channel. And not just bikes is another great example of this where they focus on urban design, city planning, creating infrastructure that is people focused. It's a niche that allows him to create videos on different ideas from bike paths to train and bus transportation, mass transit, and it gives them a little bit of breathing room. But at the same time, it all goes back to an audience interested in better city planning. We haven't talked about this before, but being yourself is so important in your videos. The YouTubers you probably follow are weird. They are funny. They are silly. But at the end of the day, they are just themselves. Bernardo is one of the YouTubers that I follow that I find to be so authentic in the way he makes videos, showing himself. He's just another travel vlogger, and I hate to say, Oh, just another travel logger because he really sets himself apart in making videos that are cinematically beautiful. But really, it's not just the cinematic quality of the videos that keep me engaged and subscribed and wanting more. It's him as the person in those videos that does it. Again, all the links to these videos are in the workbook, and you can just easily click on these links to watch examples so that you can see what I'm actually describing. And back really quick, he's an example of not putting out quantity, just putting out quality. 300,000 subscribers, but only 86 videos. So that's a pretty good rate at in terms of growing, and his videos get tens, hundreds of thousands of views, some millions Million view videos. It doesn't take putting out videos every week. He puts out a video every month or so, sometimes even longer. Plan to stick with it for some time. This is another great tip. Teppo Hap, he's the brother of Maddy Hpo who's a very successful YouTuber. He used to work and live or work with Peter McKinnon. But Teppo, his brother has stuck with it. In the beginning, he was growing a little bit slower or not so much, but he has stuck with it He's always gone back to trying to figure out what works with him. He's experimented, and he's getting the views he deserves now and the subscribers he deserves. And so if you look at his subscriber to video ratio, 100,000 subscribers to 500 videos not as good as Bernardo in the previous example, and that's just because it's taken him a little bit more time to get there, but he's stuck with it. And you'll need to do that, too. Put in the effort. Sometimes putting in the extra effort to have high quality titles, thumbnails, video with good editing, B roll, motion graphics, that can help you succeed. City Beautiful is a great example of this. Another urban planning, urban design type channel. You can get a sense of what I'm interested in by watching this class. But his videos, Are so high quality. They could be something on television or a documentary that you see, and that's what you find with YouTube nowadays is. The quality of content on YouTube is better than what you find in a lot of mainstream media nowadays. Lastly, if you find what works, repeat it. Repeat, repeat, repeat, living big in a tiny house, talking about a niche channel or topic, tiny homes. Yeah, they're popular, but 4.5 million subscribers. What he does is he just goes and tours people's tiny homes. Puts out a new video every week, same thing in the thumbnail, same style, and he repeats it because it works. Once you find out what works, you don't necessarily need to stray. Repeat it. Once you do all of these things, and only then can you start to think about making money from YouTube? And how can you benefit from YouTube? It's probably going to happen automatically. You're going to start making added revenue. You might start getting click to your website or products or services that you have to offer. But in terms of pushing that stuff, that can happen later. We want to feed into the YouTube game, put effort into it, and what you put into it, you're going to get out of it. Later on, we can focus on making more money from it. What did you not see in this video? You didn't see silly gimmicks or dances or fakeness. This course is not here to say that, step number one, Look at the trending dance videos on YouTube shorts and Instagram Reels and do that. Now, I don't want you to do that. I want you to be authentic. I want you to feel comfortable, and you do not need those things to be successful. Yes, they are trendy. Yes, people can find success doing those things, but you don't need to, and that's not what this course is all about. In this course, we are here to be authentic, be your true self, to connect with people, to connect with your viewers, and to simplify the whole process of being a YouTube. If that sounds good to you, I'm glad you're here, and we're going to dive so much deeper. Throughout this course, I have a lot of practical activities and action items that I want you to do, and I'm going to work through many of them myself. The way I'm going to do that is by brainstorming and using a new photography educational channel. I've already written the y, which is to take active steps to improve photography through practical challenges and lessons which are incentivized by community inspiration, recognition, feedback. And prizes. I think this sets us apart from other photography channels out there or potentially could, and that's why I chose it as my Y. For now, start to think about the channel you're going to be working on throughout this course, whether it's one that you've already started or a new one you're starting from scratch. Now we have the blueprint. We're going to dive into all of these topics much more in the next few lessons. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you there. 4. AI and YouTube: This wouldn't be a complete YouTube course if we didn't talk about using AI in your YouTube journey. Using AI is a great tool for research, brainstorming, and creating content. It's getting better and better, and I'm not here to say that you shouldn't be using AI to help you grow your YouTube channel. I use AI all the time now to help me with tasks that either I had to outsource, I never did before, or I spent too much time doing myself. So I can now focus on the more creative work. So how can we utilize AI for each of these things? First, with research, we can do a ton of in depth analysis of YouTube itself, other channels, other content out there to see what type of content is there, where are there content gaps? Use it as a tool to research and brainstorm, video topic ideas, outlining a video. You could even use it to create a script, although the scripts aren't going to be that good, although they're getting better and better each day. However, it's your unique personal self, your own UVP, your unique value proposition as you, yourself, the creator, and your story that I think sets yourself apart from other creators, and AI currently can't repeat that. I'm not going to say AI is not going to ever be able to replace you because In terms of creating content, AI can already do things like cloning your voice to almost an imperceptible level, also creating AI avatars of yourself. There are AI tools out there that can help you create content. And I'm not just talking about creating an AI version of yourself, but things like helping you speed up your editing, help edit your audio faster, help remove the pauses and mistakes in a video. These are all ways that AI is now already helping create is create content. Some of the tools to check out and use our Chat PT Google Bar. This is more for your text based research and writing and outlining SRA and others that are going to be out there soon in terms of creating video from scratch. Ultimately, at some point, the difference in terms of an AI generated image and video is going to be very hard to tell from a stock video or something that you've shot yourself. And I hate to say it because ultimately it is going to be putting people out of jobs and people shoot stock footage and stock photos. They're not going to make as much money. However, having an AI tool where you can just imagine something and create a video from scratch based off your imagination. It does level the playing field in some sense for creators to be able to create whatever they want without having to hire a huge crew to film that or to go on location and film it themselves. Like most people, I'm interested, I'm intrigued, but I'm also a little worried, and I will take everything with a little bit of hesitation. However, I'm not here to say that you shouldn't be using AI in your YouTube journey. There are some things you don't want to be using AI for. And that's creating a channel completely from scratch. You might see other courses and topics out there where people are actually creating YouTube channels from scratch, creating content with AI, everything's done with AI, and that's just a whole different type of YouTube creator. That is not what I want to do, and that's playing this game of just putting out content for who knows what purpose? But I think that you and most creators are here wanting to grow YouTube channel because you're authentic, and you want to share your story, share yourself with the world and grow a YouTube channel that is authentic to you. And AI can't replicate that. Ultimately, the audience wants to connect with you, the person, wants to hear your story. So you have to be a part of that. So use AI to help you on this journey, but not to replace you. Alright, we'll see you in the next lesson. 5. Understanding the YouTube Algorithm: There are two videos on the exact same topic. One gets millions of views while the other only gets a couple hundred. Why is that? It all comes down to the algorithm. If you can understand the algorithm, you can succeed with any video that you publish, let's break it down right now. While the algorithm is somewhat a mystery, there are three things that we know help improve your chances of succeeding. Watch time and engagement, click through rate and content freshness. Let's break down each of them. First with watch time and engagement. One is are people staying on your videos? If people are spending more time on your videos, it's going to increase your chances of success. YouTube sees that. Second is what percentage of a video is watched. So it's not just how many total minutes, but it's the percentage. If you have one video that's 5 minutes long and one video that's 30 minutes long, and Each video, people are watching 5 minutes of it. The video that's 5 minutes long is going to rank higher and get more views because YouTube sees that the retention rate is higher on that video. In terms of engagement, what are the user experience signals that your video creates? Are people leaving comments? Are they hitting the L button, the dislike button, or subscribing? These are all things that tell YouTube that your video creates engagement with the platform, and that's a good thing. Also very importantly, Are people leaving YouTube after watching or clicking to one of your videos, or are they staying on YouTube, and are they clicking to another video of yours? Those are good things. You're going to hear a lot about CTR or click through Rate. Do your thumbnails and titles entice viewers to click on your videos? If you're not getting a lot of clicks, then obviously that's not going to help with the algorithm. Here's a couple examples of thumbnails that work for a specific video? Alex, formerly French guy Cooking has an amazing channel? He is another person where it's like, truly authentically himself. No one can replace Alex who he is. Here's an example of a thumbnail and a title that worked really well. In one day, it got over 200,000 views, and it's called How I's made inside a French potato chip factory. The thumbnail is striking. It's got high contrast. It builds intrigue with him and his face looking curiously at this conveyor belt of all these potato chips. Just a very interesting photo that most people have not seen before, and that's why it's so engaging. Other example is Johnny Harris, 5 million subscribers. He is a journalist who makes videos formerly a Vox employee and creator. This video, cyber warfare explained the thumbnail, the future of war. He uses his face on a lot of his thumbnails, but also that mask, the anonymous mask. Very intriguing. He uses text right in the middle to add to the title, the Future of War. It's kind of saying what the title is, cyber warfare explain. And that title is very simple. It's not long. It's not filled with a bunch of keywords. It's just to the point, but intriguing and 1.9 million views in one month. Definitely succeeded at getting good click through. Next, we have Drew Binski, a travel YouTuber, 5 million subscribers as well. I spent a day in Haiti's most dangerous slum. Haiti has been in the news lately, unfortunately, and Drew Binski's thumbnails, you'll see a lot of them like this. I'm not personally a huge fan of the O WOW face, but it works, and this is an example of that. He doesn't have text, but it has a striking image of him and this crazy looking image of people running. There's fire in the background. Someone's holding a big knife machete thing. So super intriguing what's going on in this scene. And the title itself, I spent a day in Haiti's most dangerous slum. A little click baby. It works. And it just builds that intrigue, and it got a lot of clicks. Three good examples of videos that have high CTR. Click Through Rate. The next aspect of the algorithm that helps is content freshness. Are you regularly uploading new videos? A couple of examples of this. Remat Safety. He's been pushing YouTube hard. He is a financial sort of advice guy. He had a podcast, he had a book, but only recently has he pushed his YouTube? And he does have that existing audience that helped grow his channel faster than what many people would be able to do. He has 500,000 subscribers now. He's had a channel for a long time, but it was only recently where he started putting his podcast into video form on YouTube, and then he's adding these other financial type videos as well. And you can see that he's posting at least one or two videos per week. Every week, he has a podcast interview that launches on Tuesdays. And so having that consistency, I'm a fan and follower myself, and every Tuesday, I know there's going to be a new. I will teach you to be rich podcast episode. Having that consistency and that freshness helps with the algorithm. Another one is Tron coffee is a YouTuber that makes the blogs, but they're slower. They are slow paced, just kind of captures his day to day life, but people are interested in it. And you can see here with 346,000 subscribers. For these videos, he's getting tens of thousands of views, a couple of hundred thousand. So this is an example where the topic of the video, it's not very strong, and so he has worked really hard at growing his channel to get to this point. There are videos of his that have gone more viral, where it's like all New England colors, every year he goes out and captures beautiful scenery in the northeast of the United States. This is an example of where most of his views are probably coming from subscribers and YouTube is not necessarily pushing this set of example of videos here on the screen to a new audience. Now we understand the three core aspects of the YouTube algorithm. A reminder, we have watch time and engagement, click through rate and content freshness. What are the things though in 2024 that are making the biggest difference? Is YouTube is focused on getting videos in front of people, even without a large channel base. We've talked about this before. Here's a few examples of smaller channels that are getting a ton of views. James Coli, he is another financial advice type channel. He only has 100,000 subscribers, and you might look at this and say, well, his videos are only getting 20, 40,000 views. 60,000 views for some of them. But getting 50,000 views for 100,000 subscribers is really good. There are many channels out there with hundreds of thousands of subscribers that maybe get 1,000 views. That's because he's picked a Niche and a topic and YouTube has run with it and is pushing his content to new people, and that's how I found him because I follow people like mate safety, and then I get these videos in my feed. Finally, I got enough that I started watching that I subscribe to them. Malama Life, this is a great channel for minimalism, simplicity, 750,000 subscribers at the time of recording this video. And she puts out these videos that are very nie, focused on this topic of minimalism and simplicity, but YouTube has really pushed her channel to new audiences. Here's a great example Canoe the North of a channel that YouTube is blowing up, 26,000 subscribers, but look at their latest videos. 91,000 views, 158,000 views. Four videos ago, it was 500,000 views. This is a high quality log style, travel style, YouTube channel, and YouTube is totally pushing their content because it's so high quality, only 40 videos, total, but they're putting up videos with 500,000 views. Great example of this. The second thing in 2024 is that the community tab needs to be used. This tab that on your channel you have, and it used to be sort of buried in the channel. But now YouTube is showing what's on the community tab in the normal YouTube feed as well. So posting updates, doing polls, those kinds of things are what you can use the community tab for. Epic gardening is a great gardening channel, and they use that community tab a lot to post updates. And this is content that they might put on Instagram or other platforms, but they also put it on YouTube now as well. S theory is another great example of this posting questions, trying to create engagement in that community tab, and they're masters of building community with their audience. So check them out if you're interested in how to do that. If you're posting something on another platform, make sure you post it on the YouTube community tab as well, you can use it to promote older videos, other content. But remember, the goal is to keep people on the platform. If YouTube sees people are clicking away from the platform from your community post, then they're not going to show that in the general YouTube feed. But if it's a poll or a some sort announcement or thing that it's getting engagement and keeping people on the platform, that's when the algorithm helps you out. A third tip that I have is to not over post. If a video of yours that you're posting is getting traction, let it live a little bit. Let it breathe before you post another video. Check the ranking by views of your latest video performance, and we'll see this in the analytics section or lessons of this class to see how well your latest videos are doing before posting another one. So a few creators that do this well its into the sunset, another travel blogger. Then we have here, Life Ariza, great g style channel as well. You'll see that they post a video and it's not too frequent. It's spaced out enough so that it gives YouTube the chance to see how that video is doing, maybe push it along, help it out before YouTube has to CO, there's another video from the channel. Should I push that one to the audience or the previous one. Then the last algorithm tip is shorts, shorts, shorts. You should be putting out shorts. It's going to help your channel. At the same time within shorts, the thumbnails that you use for your shorts matter a lot, just like thumbnails for general videos, the thumbnails for your shorts matter, they are clickable. P home Cooks is a good example of using shorts, putting out shorts along with big videos. We have a full section on YouTube shorts in this class that will be diving into this in depth, Caleb Hammer, a personal finance interview style creator, also using shorts like crazy. The Money guys show is another finance channel where they take snippets of their long form content and put them out as short. And that seems to be working well for a lot of creators. It's working so well that format of, appearing on an interview show that some creators are faking it, where they have a setup that it looks like they are doing an interview with someone and they create these segments. They just create them from scratch, but these segments of an interview, and they post it as a short. To me, that's not being authentic, and it's not something that I would recommend. But understanding that tells us that using shorts and maybe creating podcast interview style content is something that you might want to be looking into for your channel. So how can you use all of this information to help with your YouTube channel? To do better with the YouTube algorithm, start with understanding your audience. What is their purpose for watching your video? The Fuji guys channel is a great example of this. They understand their followers are people that want to watch Fuji film camera content, and that's what they put out. You need to optimize for search and discovery. So this means your titles, descriptions, tags, and thumbnails, I have to align and help with this. California through my lens is an example of this. This video, Goat Canyon trestle Tough Desert Hike to the world's largest wooden trestle. Builds some intrigue. Then the thumbnail itself has a picture of that. It has the text that adds to it, world's largest wooden bridge, builds that curiosity. Putting into practice all those things. We mentioned briefly about clickable titles and thumbnails, and we'll learn more about that in the future. Create high quality videos, doesn't mean it has to be expensive. It just means putting in the effort to create high quality videos that keep people engaged. Jake Frew is a great filmmaker, YouTuber that does this and is really blowing up over the past couple of years because he spends the time to make creative, unique, high quality content. Looking for inspiration from a YouTube that is actually doing things that are not what you see every day. Check out Jake Ru. You need to engage with viewers, and this goes beyond the video, but also through comments, through things like livestream, which Pat Flynn, who started deep pocket Monster, has done. He does a ton of great live streams where he's engaging with his viewers, building that community, and that's going to help you with the algorithm as well. Collaborate and network with other YouTubers. This also will help you with the algorithm. Colin and Samir, they have a channel that's basically about content creators, about YouTube. They've done interviews with Mr. Best and other top creators, and that is obviously going to help them out when you have that sort of collaboration, but it doesn't have to be with Mr. Bees. You can collaborate with people in your niche, even if they have a smaller audience. That synergy can help your videos do better for the algorithm because YouTube is going to see this video is getting a little bit more traction and views than the previous ones. We're going to help it out. And that's because perhaps that small audience of the other creator boosted the videos views a little bit more than your typical ones, and YouTube is going to see that and further help you out. Lastly, analyze performance to learn what works and what doesn't work. We get all of the data from our videos in the analytics, which is amazing. YouTube has built out a huge analytics platform so that we can learn from our mistakes, learn what's working, what's not working. And again, we're going to learn all of this in the lessons later on. Where we dive into analytics. At this point, I hope you understand the YouTube algorithm a little bit better. All right, click over to that next lesson to keep learning amazing tips at starting your channel. 6. Choose Your YouTube Channel Niche: Choosing the wrong niche can spell disaster for your channel. So in this lesson, I'm going to walk through how you can choose the right niche for your specific channel. Welcome to this new section of the course, where we're going to start your channel from scratch. Even if you have an existing channel, it's a good idea to go through all of these lessons and steps so that you know you're on the right path to success. If you watch all of the videos in the introsection of the class, that was a great overview with some great tips, but now we're going to dive deep into all of those elements, starting with choosing a niche. ID a's choosing a small niche lead to big success, whether it's travel logging or sports analysis, C channel about Pokemon cards or gardening. It doesn't matter what the niche is. As long as it's focused, it will help you grow faster. We've talked about this before, but you want out all of the entire process of creating YouTube videos, you want the viewers expectations to be matched or exceeded, but you don't want the viewers expectations to not be met at all. And that is everything from writing your titles and creating thumbnails, and when they click on it, finding a video that matches their expectations to going to a channel after they've watched a video that they've liked and finding more videos within that niche or within that topic, that's going to lead to more success. Your Niche selection determines everything from content strategy to monetization opportunities to building a community of followers. And so that's why this is so important. For the long term, I truly believe that your selection should line up with what you're passionate about your expertise is on, and ultimately market demand as well. It doesn't mean that there has to be a ton of market demand, but there has to be someone out there that wants to watch your videos. And you're going to be making videos for a long time if you want to be successful at this. And so it shouldn't be the flavor of the weak sort of thing you're interested in right now. It should be something that you can foresee being interested in making content about for years and years to come. So how do we do that? In each of these lessons, I have a step by step strategy portion where I break down everything you need to do practically to do what I'm sharing. Step number one is channel topic assessment. Think about what are your interests and passions, what are your skills and your expertise? This is something for you to just sit there with yourself with and think about what are you most passionate about? And generally, that's going to be what the topic or the niche of your channel should be about. Once you have that in mind, then you have to do two market research. You can use tools like Google Trends, YouTube search, or T Buddy to look at keywords and trend analysis to see what is hot right now. It doesn't have to be something that's necessarily trending right now. It just has to be something that has an audience right now. AI based content channels probably weren't that popular back in 2022, but in 2023, 2024, and beyond, these types of channels have blown up channels that talk about AI technology, that teach AI technology. That is a trending topic. And there are also channels on topics gardening and homesteading that have gotten really popular since the global pandemic in 2020, because more people were getting interested in those kinds of topics. So you can look at that kind of trend as well to see what might help a channel or a niche succeed. So a couple of things to do is to go on YouTube. Use YouTube search, search for just that generic topic that you're interested in. See what videos show up. Go to those videos, where are they recently posted videos, or are they older videos? It's better if they're more recently posted videos because it's showing you that YouTube is pushing fresh content. On those videos, are there a lot of comments or not? If there's not a lot of comments, it means that that community or that audience might not be that engaged with that topic. If there's a lot of people commenting, interacting on those videos, even if it's an older video, that's a good thing. Look at your competitor channels. I say competitors, even though I don't necessarily believe we are competing with each other on YouTube. I truly believe there can be space for everyone on YouTube, but it is a good idea to look at the other channels in your niche, see what they're doing, see what is working for them. See if there are channels that are succeeding in your niche. And that leads me to the third step, which is competitor analysis so that you can see what Works for channels and what's not working for channels. Look at other channels and see if their views are increasing or decreasing and try to understand what is it about their videos that works or not? Which videos have gotten a ton of views? Which haven't? So if you haven't put out videos, and you don't know from your own channel what is working and what's not, you can look at other channels and see what works, what doesn't. What has gone viral? What hasn't? Not to copy, but to get inspiration from? Evaluate their production quality. What does the video look like? Do they have B role? Do they have a structure? How long or short are their videos? Do they use background music? What's their editing style? What's their personality style? These are all things that you can see, what separates them, what's their UVP, unique value proposition, and also why they are successful compared to other channels in the same niche. And while you're doing this, take a look at their community tab. Are they using it and how are they using it? What posts are getting the most engagement, the most comments, the most interactions? Use that for inspiration for your own channel. So you've sort of got a rough idea for the topic. You've done a bit of market research to see if there are people out there watching that kind of content. You've seen other YouTubers within this niche and done a little bit of analysis of what they're doing to be successful. Now it's time to do the fourth step, which is deciding your UVP, your unique valued proposition. As a reminder, this is a clear statement that describes the benefit of your channel to your viewers. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a statement that's put out there, but it's a statement that you need to know yourself, and I do think that you should write it down. It can be somewhat displayed or aspects of it can be displayed in your channel art, in your description, and within the content of your videos. But it generally should just come across in the content, even without explicitly saying it. The driving force behind what you do, and you can always go back to it. So think about the benefits of your channel, the videos that you're putting out, what differentiates you from other people. Remember we looked at. I think it is the first or second lesson of the class, it's your style, your personality, the quality of the video, the quantity or schedule of your content. All of that can determine your UVP. Think about your target audience, what are they wanting, and how can you deliver for them what they are wanting and also the consistency and clarity. You want to be consistent throughout your videos, but also it has to be clear. It has to be clear in everything you do. So some sample UVPs for just random channels might be empowering you to live sustainably with practical, easy to implement tips for eco friendly living in the suburbs. That niches it down, right? So this is something I just thought my wife and I could do because it's something we're somewhat passionate about doing. And so it's not just this generic sustainable living channel. But it's for people who live in suburb style neighborhoods and how we can live sustainably and eco friendly. Another example would be teaching RV enthusiasts about the best new small trailers on the market, and we saw that. That was playing with sticks. That is their UVP. Now, it's a UVP that I wrote out for them, just coming up with what I believe their UVP is, but it is that unique proposition that sets them apart. And there's not many other channels doing exactly that. So you could do all four of these steps, but there's another important one. And that's validation, step five. There's three ways to validate. One is to just do a search and see, Okay, does this niche work? And you've done a little bit of this before with your market and competitive research, but just validating that your idea has potential, analyzing your competitors and your niche. And then also asking your audience, if you have any sort of audience whatsoever, even if it's not specific to that UVP or that niche, ask them. For example, I have an audience of learners in all kinds of topics from video creation to AI and digital marketing and photography and beyond. So when I'm starting the YouTube channel that we've used as a case study for this class, photography, and friends. I want to ask my audience, would they be interested in this specific channel? And if there's a good number of them that would be, then that validates it. But if I'm choosing one topic that maybe my students aren't interested in, Well, it either means that I'm kind of having to start from scratch because my existing audience isn't really interested in it, or I need to pick a different niche. The sixth step and tip is to have commitment and flexibility. So it's a good idea to commit to a niche, stick with it. It's not going to necessarily have success overnight, but you also have to be a little bit flexible to maybe pivot. If you make a video that blew up, Want to repeat that style of video or that topic. If you post a flop, learn from your lesson and don't do that again. Plan With sticks is a great example of this because they were putting out all kinds of videos about camping tools and reviews for small family and things like that, but they really pivoted to what works best for them, which is just the RV based review style videos. So here are three examples of channels that have picked a very specific niche, and they're succeeding at it. Caleb Hammer is not just doing a financial channel. His show and his channel is called Financial Audit and he interviews people. But it's not just a typical financial interview with someone who's already interested in finance and is doing well. He is interviewing a segment, a type of person that other people aren't. It's your millennial. It's your Genz. It's your influencer. It's your people that are also content creators or maybe not content creators, but younger people and helping them get started. I find that a lot of other shows that I listen to, and I find are interviewing people who might be a little bit older, maybe they're married, or they're a couple, and they're more interested in their finances at that point in their life. Been done before. He has chosen a different niche, a different target audience, which is a younger demographic. And he's following the trends in terms of everything you see here on the screen with his silly thumbnails. He's a little bit abrasive, a little bit outrageous. He does use shorts, and he's using all of those things to grow very quickly. We saw this channel before, living big in a tiny house, very specific niche. And then lastly, another one, Justin Odisha, He has built a channel with 1 million subscribers just on Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects Tutorials. He is a person that I see, and I follow. I love his videos, and I'm like, Man, I could have been like just an Ad show, because my content for my personal channel, some of that after effects content and premiere pro content is my best performing content. And if I just stuck with that one topic, I would be much more successful than where that channel is today. But at the same time, you have to be passionate about that. That's where for me, that Niche specifically wasn't what I wanted to choose, but you can create this amazing huge audience huge channel based off of software applications that work together or one software application, if you want. So that's a great example of a niche. So let's break this down for the new photography and friends YouTube channel that we are starting. Our Niche is photography education, which isn't a unique niche at all. There's lots of photography education channels out there. Target audience that somewhat separates us is non technical photographers focused on improving the art and storytelling in their photographs. It's your everyday mom or dad, teen, or young adult, retiree or grandparent, getting into photography for the first time. It's not the content creator. It's not the photographer who has experience, who's necessarily trying to up their game. It's people who are getting into this as a hobby, not even necessarily someone trying to make money with it, but just as a hobby. So our UVP that we've decided on is empowering everyday stories through the lens. And so whenever we look back at our content that we're creating, I have to think about, is this video helping people tell their everyday story or capture their everyday story with their camera? And if it does, then it means it's a piece of content that I want to create. So your action item for today is to find five inspiring you tubes in your niche. So whatever your topic is, even if you follow people already in your niche, write them down, look at them, see what they're doing, and follow them? Start to pay closer attention to what they're doing that leads to their success. Pay attention to their thumbnails, their titles, their description, pay attention to what's going on in their comment section. Are their comments? Are they not? Are they replying to comments? Pay attention to their community tab, and are they posting in that community tab? We're going to look more into this in the future. But what are they doing off of YouTube? Do they have a presence on other social media platforms or not? Think about what are they doing to make money with their channel? Is that a goal of theirs? Are they pushing products? Are they doing brand deals? Just start to think about all these things. But for now, just make sure you have those five channels in your desired Niche to start looking at. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you in the next lesson. Bye. Click on it right now. Just keep watching. Keep learning. Have fun. Alright. See you there. 7. What is Your Why?: Know what the driving force behind every successful YouTube channel is? That's the y. And in this lesson, you're going to learn how to come up with your own profound y that keeps you going and helps propel you to success. And remember, coming up in this lesson, we have steps to success that you can follow, as well as real world case studies and action item, and we'll be putting into practice this with our own case study as well. Why is the motivation. It's the foundation of your channel. It serves as a guiding light. It gives you direction to what type of content you're going to create, and ultimately, it's why someone will watch your channel and engage with you. Being a YouTuber is not easy and having a clear y gives you some resilience when there are challenges, or when you're a bit confused about what direction to go in, you can always fall back on your y, and it will point you in the right direction. If you're doing something that doesn't feel 100% authentic or easy or right, you can think back to your y, and if it doesn't align, it's probably something you shouldn't be Let's go through our step by step strategies to success. Our first one is reflection. Reflect about your passions, your goals, and why YouTube is the right place to achieve these things. An exercise to help you with this is to visualize your audience, think about what types of videos do they want to see? When they are watching one of your videos, how does it make them feel? What is it about your channel that keeps them engaged, keeps them coming back, keeps them subscribed week after week, month after month or year after year. Remember we said at the start of the course that there needs to be a reason why YouTube is the place to be creating content. There's lots of other formats of content and platforms where you could be sharing your thoughts, your ideas, your passions. And so YouTube being the platform it is with video content, with the ability to connect with viewers through that video, through the comments, other ways like the community tab and through live streams, make sure that that's the right way you want to connect with your audience. Twitter or X is a completely different format of putting out content. But it's a more fast paced reactionary way that you can actually communicate with others faster and quicker. So if you have ideas that you want to get out there, very quickly, that might be the platform you want to be on. Let's compare YouTube to another platform like Twitter or X. That's a platform where it's very easy to put out ideas into the world, get feedback, have conversations, discussions, arguments, what have you. And if that's the type of content and connection you want to have with the world, YouTube might not be the best places for you. So right now, we're reflecting about why YouTube is the right place to align with your passions and your goals. Second, look for inspiration from others. Analyze how their y influences their content and viewer engagement. Look at the YouTubers that you follow and try to come up with what their guiding light is. It should come across throughout all of their videos. Sometimes it might even say on their channel. It might even be a mission statement, which is step number three defining your mission statement. Find it a very good idea before you even start, and this can be adjusted as time goes on with any business or brand, which a YouTube channel is is to define your mission statement, write it down, craft a statement that clearly defines what your goals are, and why you are doing what you do. If you're creating a YouTube channel for an existing business or brand, you might have that sort of mission statement already, and it can easily transfer to why now you are using YouTube as a platform as well. Couple example, mission statements would be something like we are committed to creating a community that celebrates eco conscious living, sharing knowledge and resources that make sustainability accessible and achievable for everyone. Our mission is to contribute to a healthier planet by making sustainable living the norm, not the exception. This would be a great statement for a YouTube channel that teaches sustainability techniques. It's not as specific as their UVP, the unique value proposition, or the niche that we've talked about before, which talks more about their specific audience or maybe they're catering towards people in the suburbs or maybe it's people living on farms or maybe living in a specific country, but these mission statements are more of an overarching reason for what they do. Once you've brainstormed this, once you've written this down, written out your e mission statement, it's time to align your content with your y. So when you're coming up with your channel content, there's three ways to reflect your y in your channel. One is to have strong pillars, strong pillars of content. This could be content categories, this could be content formats. We briefly saw the Fuji Guys YouTube channel about Fuji film Cameras and photography, and they have three core pillars to their content. One is gear reviews. So just checking out any of the latest gear, talking about how it works, why it's good, what the different options are. They have tutorials that teach people how to use the gear, and then updates for anything related to the Fuji film world. So when they're coming up with new content, if they fit in those three buckets that they've found that their audience likes, then it's a good piece of content to create. Before you even come up and solidify the pillars of your content, it might be a good idea to do number two, which is ask your audience, no matter how big or small, ask your audience what types of videos they want to watch. And it most likely will align with the types of videos that you want to create, however, you might be surprised at the things that you find enjoy creating might not align with what people actually want to watch from you or consume from you. And then at the end of the day, the third step is, whenever you come up with a video idea, ask yourself, does this align with M Y? Self reflect that. So some real world examples of channels with a good Y, One is Mark Rober. He has a great channel that does science experiments, but does it in a fun, interesting way for all ages. Our next example is modern builds. Their Y is doable DIY projects that anyone can complete. He is stuck with this Y, and like many tutorial channels, they start with some very basic ones that are geared more towards beginners. Perhaps they are more of a beginner themselves. As time goes on, they get better and better at their craft, and their tutorials get more advanced. However, even though he's gotten better at his craft, his tutorials are still aimed at beginners, to intermediate users, but definitely not like the pro level, highly technical skills, that would be a very small, small audience. Something I always remind myself and has been very good for my business is to think about the pool of people interested in learning a new skill. There's many people who are beginners and not many people who are highly advanced in that skill wanting to learn ultra advanced skills. Now, that doesn't mean that an ultra highly advanced YouTube channel on a topic doesn't work because remember, There's riches in the niches. Small niches are actually good for growing a YouTube channel. However, there's also a balance the opposite of that where when you're teaching skills, there's many, many more fish in the sea trying to learn beginner skills for any topic. And then our last example is the outsider MTB mountain biker. He's sharing local mountain bike rides. And this is a hyper local channel. This is Southern California. He does some trips and rides up and down the coast of California, sometimes into some other Western states like Nevada, and Utah, Arizona. However, most of his content is based in the cities around Orange County, Los Angeles County. So his audience is bigger than if he was making this channel in a smaller city or a smaller town. However, it's still a very niche topic and audience. But he sticks to that y, and he still has a fairly successful channel with your action item for today is to brainstorm your Y, write down all the ideas you have for why you do what you do, and then formulate that into a mission statement if you want to do a little extra credit. For example, with the photography and friends YouTube channel, R Y would be something like to empower new photographers to capture and share their stories through powerful photography. So I included a couple things there. Not only are we teaching people and photographers how to take photos, but also how to share them with the world, because part of the reason we want to teach people photography and why we like photography ourselves is it allows us to share our own story with the world around us. And so that's what we want to help people do and not just photography, but powerful photography that actually affects other people and maybe can make the world a better place. And this is the why that we can look back on when we are coming up with our content plan, when we are posting things on social media, when we are planning collaborations with other YouTubers or brand deals where we're partnering or affiliate sales. Does it go back to our Y? If yes, great, if not, then it's probably not a good fit. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. We'll see you in the next one. 8. Researching Your YouTube Competition: Secrets to success for any YouTube channel or topic are out there, publicly available for anyone to see, and that's in your competition, or as I like to say, your inspiration. So in this lesson, we're going to learn how to do just that so that the goal isn't necessarily to copy or it really isn't to copy, but just to find ways that they are running their channel that you can get inspiration from and how you can differentiate yourself from those channels. Through this research, you can see what works, what doesn't work, and how you can fit in. Our step by step strategies to succeed. Step number one is to identify your competitors. You might already know this, or you can use YouTube search to look up a topic. You can also use tools like Social Blade and Tube Buddy, which give insights, and I'm going to show you some research that I'm doing. I'm actually going to go into the computer later on after our case study examples and show you exactly how I would do this. There is also a case for using AI tools like Chat CPT to assist you in doing this research as well, and I'll show you how to do that coming. Step number two is to analyze their content strategy, see what types of content are successful, which types of formats, on what topics, what presentation styles? Are they doing interviews? Is it a long form log style video? Is it a hyper fast cut short? Is it a animation? There's all types of formats for getting a point across? And so see what that competition or that inspiration is doing. Step number three is to observe how they are interacting with their audience in comments, live streams, in their community tab. Take note of anything that seems to be working for them. The fourth step is to look at their visual and branding techniques. Do they have consistency across thumbnails, their video intros, their channel art? What stands out and makes them unique and recognizable compared to others. Fifth is to look at the SEO and discoverability of those channels? What keywords, tags, and descriptions are being used by the most successful channels in your Niche. Look at the titles of their best performing videos, as well as their most recent videos, look at those descriptions, to see what they're doing. While you're at it, the sixth and final thing is to look at their monetization and partnership strategies. Beyond AdSense revenue, are they making money with selling products, services, merchandise? Are they doing brand deals, sponsored videos, affiliate sales? Do they have any sort of membership? Again, we're just looking to see what the successful channels are doing so that we can replicate that ourself. And remember, the goal is not to copy. We're just seeing what works best for other channels so that you can replicate it with your own success and bring your own unique self out into whatever you do. So let's look at some real world examples for this case study, I'm going to look at gardening channels. It's something that my wife and I are interested in. It's not a topic that I would necessarily create a YouTube channel for I'm putting myself in the mind of someone who's super passionate about gardening and wants to do some research to see what channels are successful and what they're doing. We're going to look at epic gardening, one of the most prolific content creators out there in the gardening space, and someone who is relatively new to the space. This is not someone who has been doing it for decades, but really has just been doing it for years successfully as they've been doing it now. We're looking at a completely different style of creator and business, Floret Flower Farm. That's a mouthful. And then also Justin Rhodes, which is not just a specific to gardening, but more so homesteading and a lot of other related topics as well. Before we jump into the computer to look and analyze these channels, the action item for this lesson is to write down five things that your inspirational channels are doing that you want to do yourself with your channel. Welcome to this case study where I'm going to dive into researching competition for a gardening channel. This is a very long in depth video, where you're just behind me as if you were here in the room seeing exactly what I would do. So I would say this is an optional video. You don't have to watch the whole thing, but it might give you some insight if you are kind of confused at, well, what should I be looking at at a channel? I'm going to be looking at YouTube. I'm going to be looking at tools like social buddy and two buddy, social blade and two buddy, as well as how to use tools like AI to do a little bit of help with research as well for other channels. So now I'm going to go into the computer and show you how I would be researching in competition for a gardening channel. So first, we're going to head right into YouTube. You might have an idea for what the top channels are. Perhaps you follow some, but don't be blinded by your own bias because there might be other channels out there that you're not aware of. So it's a good idea to just put in a search for that main keyword for your topic of gardening, for example. Notice here that I have this little pop up. This is the Tube Buddy Search Explorer. Tu buddy is a tool that I have mentioned, if you go to two buddy.com. It's an extension. For YouTube. There's all kinds of things that you can do with it, but it does cost money. And so I'm not going to spend too much time using this tool in this class because I don't want to have to make you do any pay extra money for it. However, there are some really cool things, like the analysis that we're doing now, but also things like bulk publishing. For example, I've used it in the past on one of the higher tier levels where you can add new descriptions or edit descriptions for all of your videos at one time rather than going to each video, one at a time and editing it. So there's lots of cool things there, and we'll see more of two buddy in the future. But what it shows me now is the search volume, so we can see this particular keyword. So there's 13 million searches per month, and the competition is pretty tough. So it has a low competition score. So trying to target this keyword is going to be tough. It gives us some related search ideas here that we might want to look for. So, for example, maybe we would look for if you lived in Australia, gardening Australia, and that might be a little less competitive. Let's see what that keyword score is. High search volume, but still a lot of competition. So we'll talk about keyword strategy in the future when we're actually making our videos. But here, just not using two Buddy, with a basic search for gardening, we can see the latest videos that YouTube is pushing, because no longer, are they just filling the search results with the most popular videos from years and years ago. But they have videos that were posted 5 hours ago here. You have a sponsored video at the top, so that's a paid advertisement for that spot there. But Garden Aser the channel, posted this video 5 hours ago. And they must have a huge audience because it has 50,000 views already. Down below, you see epic gardening pop up. So you see channels actually pop up in the search results and shorts as well. And if you want to just look for channels, you can go to filter and filter by channel, and this will give you some of the top channels with gardening as their keyword. So epic gardening, the middle sized gardener, Jaque in the garden, homegrown garden. What's interesting about this is it's not just ranked in the order of subscribers. There's other things that go into the algorithm of surfacing these channels, and it most likely has to do with some of the things we saw earlier about the algorithm, like the recency or the freshness of the content, the engagement they have. All right, so that's the first thing I would do to find channels. Another thing I'm just going to hop over to show you, you can use a tool like Chat EPT or Google Bard. Both have free plans that you can get started with and just simply ask, what are the top gardening YouTube channels? It's going to pull from other sources, from other sites, and that have done the work for us already. And it will list some of the top channels, Epic Gardening, the Rusted Gardener, MI gardener, my Gardener, Garden answer. We saw that one pop up, the gardening channel with James one. So this is just to get you ideas for what channels are out there. Alright, so the next thing is to go into these channels and see what are they doing, right? So we're seeing, like we saw before, we're analyzing their content strategy, their engagement with their community, their visual branding. So Epic gardening has this sort of, like turnip logo. I think that's a relatively new logo that they've been using. I would look at their latest videos and see, Okay, what types of videos are they making now? Kevin Espiritu, the founder. He is in these thumbnails often. Sometimes it's just the plant or the thing that he's teaching about. You see some before and after videos, you see some collaborations with other people, all things that we're going to learn about and are good for growing a channel. Let's just look at the names. Watch this before you plant carrots. 12 crops, you'd be crazy not to start in April. So he's making content. That's trending. That's of the time. So it's perfect for April. And that's probably why that video has done better than some of these other ones. Time. Watch this before you plant potatoes. He's using emojis and some of his YouTube titles. He's tagging people when he's collaborating with them as well. Lots of things we can learn from. We can see his shorts. So watch some of his shorts. Let's just pop one. I wish I new when I started gardening, Part one. So seeds grow faster. If you cut them, this is the inside of a melon seed, and these two things are seed. All right, so you kind of get a sense for what his videos are like. Let's go back to videos, and I want to show you one because it's gonna contrast a lot with some of the other creators like Lorette we have here. Wow. L et's give it that pull. Okay, not bad. It took me a few seasons to figure out how to grow carrots well, but I finally did it. So in this video, I'm going to show you everything you need to know to do the same. So he's building curiosity about, what is it that he's pulling out of the ground, and then he quickly dives into the content of teaching you the same. We can look at the community tab and see what he's doing with the community tab. His latest post is about the seeds, which is a part of his business model. They have purchased this company botanical interest that actually produces seeds, and they actually sell them now. And so his latest post, not surprisingly is a little bit of a promo for those seeds. Alright, so let's jump over to Florett Flower Farms, which is a completely different style of creator and video channel. So Florett Flower Farm does the same. They sell seeds as well. They're not pushing their YouTube channel as much as epic gardening. They have a big audience on their website, on their email list, as well. But I'm just going to pull up one of these videos. Okay, so let's just open this one and notice the difference. I want to show you the most beautiful thing. So here's our little old farm track. Failed with all breeding varieties. So everything that's in this truck is from the floret breeding program, and all of the flowers behind me are also floret originals. This is all breeding. This is what I've been working on. Even though it has been the worst growing season that I've had in all of our years of farming, we're still managing to come up with some beautiful So, still a similar content wise, she's kind of following along, say, Hey, look at this, but there's no editing, there's no titles. It's just one shot of her showing that. They have higher quality documentaries as well that they put out. So let's just watch this one from the start. So this would be typically a what not to do with a YouTube video, where that was a ten second shot of sprinklers with no audio, no voiceover, nothing except for that moment. But this is their style. Typically, it's slower paced. Let's just show you the beauty of our flower farm type of video. And that definitely contrasts with what epic gardening does. Definitely a channel that utilizes YouTube as just an extension of getting their story out there, but it's not a core part of their business, whereas the YouTube channel for Epic gardening is one of the main ways that they make money because it's the entry point for most of their customers. Justin Rhodes is a homesteader. So I just wanted to show you, a different style of creator. So he doesn't have a huge business outside of the content that he creates. He has a book as well. But you can see, just from even the thumbnail, that it's that typical YouTube blogger style, the expressive face, creating intrigue urine therapy. We don't know what that is, but it looks a little bit interesting. He has a video about Carrots as well, but compared to Kevin's thumbnail, it's a little bit different. So let's just click on this and see the intra Milk. With two cows now in milk. Have skim milk, which is a result of us harvesting our What's happening with this video? The start of the video, 5 seconds and we haven't seen anything about carrots, which is what this video was about, right? Well, that's his style. His videos are just behind the scenes day in the life of Justin Rhodes and his family on his homestead. And that's what his followers want to get. With epic gardening, it's more like followers who want to learn tips about a specific thing, a specific technique. With Justin Rhodes, it's showing his life on the farm, on the homestead, and people are interested, even if he's talking about the milk he's getting from his cows in a video. Carrots. And then the last thing I want to do is, I'm going to go back to epic gardening, and I'm going to go to their videos and look at most popular. So here we have most popular videos ranging from 10 million views for how to grow ginger in containers. That's incredible. How to print tomatoes, 6 million views. So a lot of how two tips here. Let me just click on one of these. I just want to see what the description The garden. So he has a pretty thorough description, not too long of an intro about this video. He has an article that he links to and some sort of affiliate sale. They also sell products themselves, the pruners that he's using ways to support more links to all of his other things, podcast, discord, Instagram, et cetera disclaimer. There's a Spanish dub, which is pretty cool. So these are all things that I would just look at. Let's pop over to Social Blade, which is a free tool that you can use. It's a website. Just go to social blade.com. You can type in the user name or copy and paste the URL for a channel into the search bar, and it will find that channel. On the home sort of summary page, it has the load subscribers, the view counts, which is pretty cool to see it gives a total or sort of like a grade for this channel, and that's based off a successful it is based off of, like, recent videos and growth and things like that. What's cool is it has the overall subscriber rank per the world, and for the country, as well, which is pretty cool. It estimates how much money it makes per month and per year. This is the ad sense rating, which have to take with the Green of salt, depending on the topic. Some topics make more or less money, but it's somewhere in this giant range. And sometimes it can be more. Sometimes it can be less. And you can also see the video views for the last 30 days, which is really cool to compare channels because let's see what was that other channel? It was the top channel, the usted garden. Let's search for the rusted garden. So this had 10 million views in the past 30 days. Let's do the rusted garden. Not as big of a subscriber base, 1 million views for the last 30 days. So not as many. Let's go to Florett Flower Farms, so they have 160,000 views for the last 30 days, Justin Rodes. These aren't direct competitors, but 1.6 million for the last 30 days. Obviously, the ones with more subscribers, and that put out more videos are getting more views as well. Another thing you can do is, let's go back to Epic gardening. We can see under user videos, an easy way to just look at their latest videos and the view counts, easy to see here. And then also the 50 most viewed videos. So you can see, this is interesting. This did not pop up on the YouTube page when I looked at most popular videos. Is the world's most expensive because It's actually including shorts as well. So that's really interesting. But this tells us, look at what do we see in common here in these videos, which I believe are probably mostly shorts. I grew the world's most expensive spice. I made a Franttein dragon fruit plant. I created a Frankenstein tomato. I bet you don't know how Brussels sprouts grow. I became best friends with a trained to Crow to garden for me. There's definitely a pattern in the way he is titling his videos, and it's working. So this is what we can take from other YouTubers. We can see what they're doing. And maybe I could do a video in my backyard. I grew a Frankenstein passion fruit vine or something like that, or I grew a crazy, big passion fruit vine. I don't want to copy necessarily, but using that structure seems to be working for shorts. Another thing we can do is we can see the estimated earnings for an individual video, which is kind of interesting. That's his latest. We can go to Most view And this is just to get you ideas. So, again, I'm not saying we should just copy him, but we can see what are his most popular videos? Epic gardening, what are their most popular videos? And highest rated is going to be Most likes versus dislikes, I believe. But highest watch videos, we can see, Okay, maybe if we can create a video about this topic in our own unique way. That might be the right video for us. All right, so that is researching our competition, in depth case study. I hope this gives you more ideas of how to specifically do this. If you have questions, let me know, but get out there, find those five things that your inspiration does and keep it in mind for when you are creating your content. Thanks a lot, and we'll see in the next lesson. 9. Building Your Community & Why Someone Subscribes to Your Channel: Imagine turning every view into a loyal follower, someone who champions your channel and helps it grow for you. That's what creating a community of subscribers with your channel is all about, and you're going to learn exactly how to do it in this lesson. A strong community leads to higher engagement with your channel and more consistent views. Broken down, it looks like this. Community equals engagement. It's people actually participating in your channel. That engagement is higher views, comments, likes, with your videos, longer watch time. And all of this equals higher visibility and ranking to more people outside of your community, and that leads to higher views, and that flywheel kind of just continues to spin and you can grow, grow, grow. In a world where community seems to be lacking, there are deep emotional and psychological reasons why a person simply subscribes to a YouTube channel, and you can be a part of that solution for someone by building a connection, by creating a space for someone where they can be themself, where they can feel like they are part of a community. And that's what we're doing with our YouTube channel. So, the step by step strategies to succeed with growing a community. The first step is having a strong content value proposition, having a strong UVP unique value proposition leads to content value proposition. Viewers who look at your channel should know exactly what they're getting and what to expect with your next piece of content. Step number two is engagement and interaction. What does active engagement look like? It looks like, responding to comments, creating content based off a viewer's suggestions. Calling out subscribers by name in your video. These are powerful ways to build that connection with your followers. Of course, it also helps to have calls to action that encourage people to like comment subscribe. However, the repeated, like comment subscribe, in every video, in the same place in the video, you need to get a little bit more creative than that. And we've got ways to do this coming up in the course. The third step is consistency and reliability. This comes across with a consistent posting schedule. This builds trust with your audience so that they can look forward and know that another video is coming out soon. I mentioned Ramit Sac and I will teach you to be rich, channel, and podcast. They put out a video every Tuesday, and it's something that I as a subscriber look forward to. No one likes to have that flaky relationship with a friend or a family member who just doesn't show up, and it's the same with building trust with your viewers and subscribers. They want to trust that they will get content from you. And of course, there's going to be times when you can't provide that, and you shouldn't feel stuck and trapped to a schedule. And that's where the next part of this building trust comes into play. And that's sharing the behind the scenes, letting people into that behind the scenes. It could either be on the YouTube channel itself through videos, maybe shorts, or the community page, or it could be on another platform that lends itself better to more behind the scenes content, such as Instagram or TikTok. Long with being consistent and reliable, the fourth step is to create a shared identity. This can be done through shared language or symbols or jokes that you have within your videos, or you can make community specific merchandise something that literally symbolizes the community that they're part of. That thought. And that's why we've created this photography and Friends hat. This is a hat that we have given out as prizes to the winners of some of our photography competition. And I love it when I see people on social media posting photos of themselves out on a photo adventure, and they are wearing this hat. It's a symbol of being a part of our community. There's lots of platforms that allow you to sell merch. We'll look at some in the future, but this one was created with Print full. That's Print F UL. Dot com. I just talked a little bit about this, but the fifth step is to leverage social media and cross platform engagement. We know that YouTube doesn't want to sending traffic off the platform, but there is a way to use multiple platforms to grow on both. We can use platforms like Facebook or X to engage with our vans and create a community space, or we can use a more community centric platform like discord or Slack or even something like circle or Mighty networks to create a community space for our subscribers. On those other types of platforms, it's easier for people to send us messages, to have threads, and conversations, and things like that. And then most importantly, if you have an audience on those other platforms, when you are putting content out on YouTube, Drive that traffic from Instagram, from X, from Facebook, from wherever to your YouTube video to give it that initial boost of views. And the sixth tip or step is to highlight and celebrate your community, feature viewer comments, creations, or contributions in your videos, post community challenges or giveaways, and reward the engagement that your subscribers provide. So let's look at a few real world examples of channels that are doing this in really unique and great ways. The first is deep pocket Monster. This, as I mentioned before, is Pat Flynn's second YouTube channel. He jumped from entrepreneurship to Pokemon and has created a channel that has grown to over 800,000 subscribers in the first couple of years. And by now, he might be over 1 million. But he does a ton of engagement with his followers. Here's an example of that with a live stream. You could see the comments that roll in from all these people that are watching his live stream. He puts in the effort into creating these epic intros and things like that. Here, I'm just going to jump ahead to him some Pokemon card pack opening. He gives a lot of these cards away to people who are watching his live streams. He is someone who has mastered the art of building a community. He collaborates with other Pokemon content creators, and they've actually put together a live in person conference for Pokemon collectors. And so, yeah, he's the master at it. Follow him if you want to get a lot of inspiration. Second example is the outsider MTB. I mentioned, he just makes videos about mountain biking, local mountain bike rides, but he has built a community. He does a lot of that just creating using specific language with his audience that it's sort of like an inside joke. And then he does group rides. He invites people to get together from his YouTube following and to go on rides with. The last example is us photography and friends. We started out as a community. We have a Facebook group with over 110,000 members. We have also started a private community using circle dot SO as our platform, and we have our YouTube channel now that we are starting out. On that YouTube channel, we are doing things like live Streams, as well as competitions like this. You see this photo contest, and that goes back to our Y and our mission of helping people improve their photography, getting feedback, and creating powerful images. We're trying to do all of those things with our channel. But for us, it started with community and now is leading into a YouTube channel. The action item for this lesson is to write down five ways you will build your community with your viewers, so take into account everything that we've seen so far. Look at the inspirational channels you've picked and see what they're doing. Write down five ways. You can do that. And then also commit to responding to all comments on new videos for the first 24 hours. This really helps with engagement. YouTube likes to see it. Obviously, viewers like to see this. So whenever you post a new video, make sure that you're paying attention and trying to respond in a timely manner. In conclusion, remember that your YouTube channel is more than just a content platform where you are just blasting stuff out into the world, but it's also a place where you're creating meaningful connections and building a supportive community for people. By remembering this and actively trying to create a sense of community with your channel, you are going to be more successful. 10. What Types of Videos Should You Create?: You ever wonder why a certain video goes more viral than others? In this lesson, we're going to tackle different types of video formats so that you know exactly what you should be creating for your channel. Welcome to this new section of this YouTube course, all about strategy and actually creating your channel and your content. So far, you know the why, the mission, all of that. And now it's time to start actually putting things into practice. There are so many different types of videos on YouTube that cater to different audiences needs. And in this lesson, we'll go over the main categories and types of videos. Ultimately, your choice should align with your goals, the niche that you are in and the interests of your target audiences. The first type of video is educational videos. Cooks is a great example of this where they use visual storytelling to break down complex subjects into digestible lessons. This is what I do as a photography education channel as well, and what many, many popular YouTube channels do, teaching others. Example is the Vlog example. And I'm going to use Vlog as sort of a bigger umbrella of not just like the Vlog where we're carrying around a camera, talking to the camera as we go about and do something, but just the general follow my story style of video. Whether you're traveling, whether you are a gardener or a photographer, or you're a scientist or whatever it is. It's just the follow me do what I do in my life type of video. Casey Neistat is, as I said, the godfather of YouTube in this sense, who shares his life and experiences through blogging. And through that he creates a deep connection with his audience through that authenticity and creative storytelling that he does in his blogs. Product reviews. This is another type of video that's very popular. Marques Brownlee, MKBHD is a great example of a channel that does this, tech reviews, shows an analysis of different products, the pros, cons, what's good, what's bad, test them out, and just gives that evaluation for a viewer who is interested in purchasing it, or just interested in that product. And it doesn't have to be like a tech review. It's just product review. It could be makeup reviews. It could be reviews for artist supplies, whatever it is. This is a great type of video for pretty much any niche. Our next example is interviews. T ones by First We feast is a great example of this, creating a unique experience for his interview guests, where they are eating hot wings with hot sauce that starts at a lower hot sauce scale and goes hotter and hotter and hotter. And their conversations just get deeper and deeper and deeper and funnier and funnier and funnier as the hot sauce gets hotter. You don't have to create such a wild and unique outlandish type of style there. But just in general, interview style videos is a great format. It allows you to collaborate with other creators, which will help you grow an audience as well. That synergy of both audiences can help both channels grow. Listales are another example. Watch Mojo, specializes in this sort of like top ten list. They created for a number of categories. But you probably saw with epic gardening when we were doing our research, they have list videos as well, the top ten plants to put in the ground in April or whatever that video was. So coming up with a list, it's a catchy title and subject and format. For a video because it keeps people engaged. People are always wondering, Okay, what's next? What's the next thing? What's the next thing? And so it keeps people watching those videos. So these are six of the most popular types of videos. There's others out there. You got documentary, narrative fiction type videos, and even more. Now is the time to start to figure out what type of video you are going to be making. And you don't have to pick just one. But you have to go back to your audience and think from their experience, what type of video and what format are they going to most enjoy? Combine that with what type of video are you going to enjoy creating yourself? Yeah, making listic videos might do good with an audience, but are you going to enjoy making list type videos? Interviews are great, but are you shy and you don't want to talk to other people, or is it just going to be too much work to set up interviews with other people? You got to find a balance between what your audience wants and what you want to create. And you don't have to just pick one. You can pick multiple formats of videos. Even the same topic could be done in multiple formats. For example, if we were trying to teach someone how to grow tomatoes, you can do that by interviewing someone. You can do that with a log where you show behind the scenes of growing a tomato plant from a seed to a full blown plant with tomatoes on the vine. You can do that in a simple educational video. So we're not talking about necessarily the topic of the video, but the format. Analyze what you do. So as you put out videos, see what formats work, play around with it, especially if you're starting a channel or if you're just trying to grow, there's no harm in just putting content out there, trying out different formats, and seeing what sticks. The action I am for you is to write down the three types of videos that you plan to make. Get that pen and paper out for our case study, photography and friends, what we're going to be creating our photographer highlight and feedback videos. This is something that I don't see a lot of on YouTube, where we are actually looking at the members of our communities, their photos, analyzing them, giving them feedback. And this is going to really build that connection and trust with our audience. We're going to do monthly live streams with Q&As, where audience can connect with us. And then we're going to do impactful photo story videos. These are going to be more of like a documentary style video where we look photos that have made an impact in some way. Maybe it's a very popular image that people are aware of, and we'll talk about the photographer and sort of behind the scenes of what it was like to capture that photo and how it has impacted the world. But it also might be where we talk to members of our audience, and we look at their best or their favorite photos and talk about why that is their favorite photo and what kind of impact it has made in their life. These three types of videos are meant to build community with our viewers. So that's types of videos. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. And the next one, we're going to learn how to master the art of the hook, more important than ever. See there. 11. The Art of the YouTube Hook: Next few minutes, you're going to learn this single thing that you can do to sky rocket your YouTube success. And that's the art of the hook. Ready to dive in. In this lesson, we have tons of examples to showcase exactly how you can master creating engagement in those first few seconds of your video. The hook is the first ten to 20 seconds of a video used to grab the viewer's attention and persuade them to watch the rest of the content. I would even argue that the first two to 7 seconds are just as important, especially for short. Having a large drop off rate where people are clicking onto your videos, but then our clicking away after the first five, ten, 20 seconds is really bad for the algorithm. You are not going to rank well with the video doing that. And that's why we need to make that hook so engaging and captivating. So how do we do this? Here are my step by step strategies to succeed? These strategies, we're going to be looking at some examples. We're going to start with the example for a video if you were looking to travel to Lisbon Portugal. This is something that I'm doing currently myself. I wanted to find examples of videos about that topic with good and not so good hooks. The first strategy for a hook is to start with a question or a provocative statement. This immediately creates curiosity and encourages the viewer to continue watching so that they can get the answer. So let's look at a couple good examples. Our first example is 48 tips I wish I knew before visiting Lisbon Portugal. Ben is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't end up loving Lisbon, and I think there's a lot of reasons for that. I just spent a whole month here, and I think I've identified a lot of those reasons, and I'm here to share with you. Right. So in this example, he starts the statement with something a little bit provocative of people don't end up liking Lisbon, so I'm going to share those with you. And there's going to be a list. We know that from the title, and that just keeps people engaged. Our next example is from Dave in Portugal, the titles called ten Things not to do. These are ten things you don't want to do when visiting Lisbon. So that hook right there is very captivating because as someone interested in traveling to Lisbon Portugal, I want to know if there's something I shouldn't be doing. Here's a completely different topic, but let's see how they use a question or provocative statement as their hook. If you had to guess what the 20 most valuable sports teams on Earth are, where would you start? Say Football is the most popular sport on Earth. So you'd guess some famous football teams would be on this list. Real Madrid. Yep, here at number 11. Manchester United, Cech, Barcelona, Liverpool, Check and Check. How about that team that won a historic three trophies last year and is owned by an ultra rich monarchy? No, not on the list. Alright, so I let that one play a little bit longer. The first 30 seconds we're pretty engaging, but it starts with that question. What would you guess are the most valuable sports team? And so it starts to get you thinking, Okay, well, maybe I could get this right, and it has this great visual of this list. He starts popping in results from that list, and it just builds that curiosity, and you want to fill it out and you want to know if you were right So let's look at some bad examples, and I don't want to harp on YouTubers out there. So I don't want to say these are necessarily bad videos because they actually rank really well for the topic of travel guide to Lisbon, Portugal. However, the hook is not as strong as it could be. First, we're going to look at the Expedia Channels Travel Guide to Lisbon. The Bugs Capital, Lisbon lies on the Western Iberia Peninsula, where the Tacs River meets the Atlantic Ocean. Settled almost 3,000 years ago, the CT predates Rome, Paris, and London by centuries. Okay, so a much different vibe and style for this hook. It's some sort of just facts about where Lisbon is located, which for some people might be interested, and maybe that's what they are looking for. However, for someone who's searching for tips, like a travel guide, which is exactly what this is for Lisbon, they likely already know where that place is. And so that is just not a good way to hook someone's attention who really quickly wants to know, like the top thing to do in Lisbon or the best places to visit, et cetera. It's not that this is a bad video. It has 2.6 million views. So it's got a lot of views, but that hook could improve. Our next example is Lisbon, the ultimate visitor guide, everything you need to know, pro tips, and more. This is an example of a video that again, it has a lot of views, so it's not a bad video necessarily, but let's look at the hook, and I'll explain. Hey, there, folks, Scottsdale Travel chick sidekick here to present our ultimate visitor guide to Lisbon, Portugal. Okay, so we're already almost 10 seconds into the video. And all they've done is explain who they are the channel and what the video is about, which we already know as a viewer because we read the title of the video, right? So, you don't need to explain what the topic of the video is if your title says exactly what it is. In this video, will cover all the cool things you'll want to see and do on a visit to Elizabeth, along with how to get there, how to get around, the best times to visit, the best places to stay the. Even though this is a little bit slow, I would have just taken out the first 10 seconds and jumped right into this list of in this video, we're going to show you the top things to do, and then maybe include this list, although I think it still is a little bit slow and not as good of a hook. All right, so that was the first strategy in creating a great hook, which is asking a question or making a provocative statement. Our second strategy is to preview the value or outcome that the viewer will gain by watching a video. For example, this could be the sneak peak of the end of a DIY project or a cooking video, you see the final bake or meal that you've made, and then it backs up. It shows exactly what the viewer will achieve by watching the video. So let's look at some examples. Our first good example is this one. 12 essential travel tips when visiting Lisbon Portugal. If a trip to the beautiful city of Lisbon might be on your radar, then we'll most certainly have you covered here. We'll be looking at navigating around the city, saving some time by skipping all those cues, how to get the most from the local cuisine. Where's the best location for your hotel and a bunch of suggestions for visiting the popular day trip to Sintra. Alright, so the first thing that they say, let's watch it one more time because it really piques someone's interest. Trip to the beautiful city of Lisbon might be on your radar, then we'll most certainly have you covered here. So they are answering the question that everyone who is watching a video is asking themselves, even if it's subconsciously, is this the video that I should be watching right now? And then they jump into a preview of the outcomes, which is a list of things like where the best hotel is and some of those other tips that they mentioned, and giving that preview rather than saying, Here are ten tips for visiting Lisbon. Tip number one is. Tip number two is they are actually previewing it right here in the first 20 seconds. Another good example is this one from New Yorker Ju Hui. Sorry, if I'm mispronouncing that. Trip to Lisbon Portugal for five days, 20 things to do in Lisbon for the first time in 2023. You traveling to Lisbon and don't know what to do there? Well, here's the perfect five day itinerary for your stay. So this one asks a question. It says, Are you traveling to Lisbon, and then it follows up with the value that you will get, which is the perfect five day itinerary. Completely different than the previous video, which was using B rule of the city with some titles and graphics. This one shows the creator, the YouTuber themself, on the screen, which is often very engaging to have a hook, the person on screen. Third way to create a good hook is to use strong visuals or shocking facts that grab attention and set the tone for the video. Our first example is going to be Lisbon Portugal Travel Guide best things to do and eat in Lisbon. Let's watch that. We made it to Lisbon. So what sets this video apart. The hook for this video is the strong visuals. Hi cinematic quality. Yes, we got that sort of intro log style. We made it to Lisbon intro line, but then it cuts straight to strong visuals, music. And if you are the target audience for that type of video, that's going to really captivate you compared to some of the other listical type videos of, here are ten things that you can do in Lisbon, starting with? Blah blah, blah. So very interesting way to start a video there. And what I love about all of these videos is It's all on the same topic, right? And all these creators are successful. All these videos ranked well. All of them got a lot of views, but they target a completely different type of viewer. Our next good example is Lisbon everything you must know before visiting. Right, so again, strong visuals, very creative vibe kind of has, like, a Wes Anderson style vibe to me, and that's what sets that video apart. Our fourth strategy for a great hook is sharing a personal story or anecdote, something that connects the topic to a personal experience, and perhaps something that a viewer's own experience can connect to. So let's look at an example here. Dave, again, I was mugged in Porto Portugal. And before I go into the video, I just want to say that the use of the title and then just the video the thumbnail itself with him with the black eye is very captivating. Unfortunately. Two of his buddies sucker punch me right into the face. My glasses fall onto the ground, My nose is bleeding everywhere. And pretty much it's a three on one. These guys are ganging up on me. Alright, so first 10 seconds of the video. We already know exactly what happened, but that is what we came for, right? He doesn't start the story by showing visuals of Portugal or where he was when this happened. He doesn't start from the beginning of the story. He starts right at the climax. And that's what makes this personal anecdote and this video so captivating. I still want to watch more. I still want to know what happens, but I don't have to wait to get to that action point. This is a completely different topic, but here's another example of how you do this. Why I choose France over the United States beneath the surface YouTube? Paris in the 80s. Wow. That was 40 years ago when I was here with my family visiting as a teen. We traveled around France for a few days. And from that experience, I walked away with some ideas about how the country was, how the people were, how the food was. Those ideas solidified over time, including many misconceptions, which I'll talk about in this video. How wrong I was. After just over a year of being here in France, it's been incredibly wonderful, far exceeding my expectations. So here's an example of this creator who appears to have moved or visited traveled back to France. But he starts with the story of being there as a teen. He includes B roll footage of what France looked like at that time. Music that sort of sounds like it might have come out at that time, and it is a great storytelling technique to get into the point of his video of where he's at now. Let's look at one more example. This is from Search Party, the woman behind the North Korean throne. It's February 9, 2018. And a plane is approaching Seoul, South Korea, with a mysterious passenger on board. Because of a 70-year-old war, the Korean Peninsula is divided between a flourishing democracy in the South and a brutal secretive dictatorship in the North. All right. The structure of storytelling in this video is what sets it apart. So we're 17 seconds, and we already know a few key facts about what this story is about. But it starts with that story. Let me just play it one more time. It's February 9, 2018. And a plane is approaching Seoul, South Korea, with a mysterious passenger on board. All right, that builds curiosity, right? While I'm doing this, let me just show you what's interesting on YouTube is you can see the most replayed parts of the video. You can see where there's more retention, and that's something to look at. If there's a high drop off rate and then no peaks or replays over here, you know that a lot of people dropped off from this video. But what an amazing way to start this video, where you could start it in so many other ways. But again, it starts right in the middle of the action where the woman is traveling on a plane between North and South Korea. Fifth strategy for creating a great hook is to challenge common beliefs. Begin with a statement that challenges an idea and entices viewer to watch to hear you debunk that misconception. So a couple of examples of this. 27 tips I wish I knew before visiting Porto Portugal, back to our Portugal videos. I just spent a full month living in Portugal, and these are the things that I wish I knew before spending time up in Porto. So the first thing was a huge mistake on my side, and I listened to everybody. I listened and thought that Lisbon was the place that you wanted to spend all your time and not Porto So he's challenging that belief that he had himself, that Lisbon was the time the place to be and not Porto. And that intrigues me. I'm like, Okay, why is that? And it's a reason to continue watching this video. And he has 26 other tips, basically. Our second example is from Johnny Harris, who actually started that channel search party with another YouTube. He's a master of storytelling. This video, Your supplements are a lie. Already intriguing Imagine you're getting ready to go to the gym. You grab your keys and your bag, and then you take a supplement. And you feel like it's working. It might be working a little too well. What you don't know is that this supplement, one that you bought at the health aisle at your grocery store, is laced with an antabolic steroid, an illegal drug invisibly mixed into this powder. So this hook, combined with the imagery of the thumbnail and the title is already challenging a common belief. He's basically saying these supplements are a scam. They're a lie. They're not actually helping you the way that you think they are, and that itself is the hook. He combines this with great story telling sort of building a personal anecdote, as well as strong visuals to create this very compelling hook in the video. Sixth way of creating a great hook is incorporating humor into your video, using a lighthearted joke aun some sort of humorous observation that's relatable to your videos topic can make it a very engaging experience. So let's look at a couple of examples. Here's one. 48 hours in Lisbon from Top Jaw. We f the strip Oh, wow. Alright, so just those visuals of him being silly, dancing around, eating, the sort of combination of the talking in the background, all create this really captivating, joyous, humorous vibe. Our next example is this one from Becky and Chris. Different topic, building a camera charge station in my F 150, blah, blah, blah. It fees like a painfall field in here. It is so hot out today. I can't believe it. It's ni emergent 20 degrees outside. Totally different than many of the other videos we saw. She is not explaining what the video is about. She is just incorporating a little bit of humor to get us interested and engaged in telling this story. So those are six things to do in creating a hook. What are things not to do? We don't want to have lengthy introductions, over promise in our intro, slow pacing technical issues with your video. Obviously, that would be bad, or any sort of clickbait. Remember, one of the core tenets of this class, and YouTube success is matching a viewer's expectation with what they get out of it. Even if you have a good hook, if you over promise or if the hook itself is sort of clickbaity, and then the rest of the video doesn't follow up with enough quality content, that viewer is not going to subscribe. They're not going to watch another video of yours. And YouTube sees that, see that they're clicking away from you, and that's not going to help with your algorithm, your ranking. So here's a bad example. Shouldn't say click bait. This is a slow long intro. This is the travel guide world. Let's check this out. Hey, there, fellow travelers. Welcome back to Travel Guide World. Your G two spot for all things travel. Okay, so, first, it sounds sort of like an AI voice over, but then that first 10 seconds was like one shot that ended up with a title. Again, we already know as a viewer exactly what this video is about. We saw it in the title, so we don't need to repeat that. Our next example here is this one with a very clickbaity type thumbnail. Let's check out this video. Top ten things to do in Lisbon right now. Welcome to Lisbon, the city where pastries are worth waiting in line for, and the trams are more packed than a cam of sardines. Again, I'm not sure really what is happening with this video. The thumbnail does not match the style of the video itself. It also sounds somewhat like an AI voiceover. I'm not sure, but you can also tell from these videos. We have a low amount of views. And I just have to point this out. This is, like, funny because And this top comment is, I would marry the woman on the cover in a heartbeat. Great id. Thank you. So that is what that viewer was expecting, and I don't know if they got it from this video or not, but these slow intros to these videos are examples of what not to do. Here are seven more examples of good hooks. I think more examples can help explain this for you better. So our first example providing a question, VSauce. Here's a great example here. Let's check it out. Hey, Visas, Michael, here, the Earth is spinning, and we are spinning along with it. But what if the Earth suddenly stopped spinning? So the visuals are interesting, but that provocative question right there is also very intriguing. And we want to know as an audience. Yeah, what would happen? Here's a great example of a hook from Casey Neistat for building intrigue. It's on the topic of the Apple Vision Pro, a product that has semi recently come out, and you could start this video in a number of ways. You could have started it with showing the preview of the value you get from this video, but take a look how Casey does it. Okay. So it's a ten second clip. Video quality is not amazing. Shaky camera. The focus isn't sharp the whole time, but it's of Casey riding down the middle of the New York Street on a skateboard with his Apple vision pro on it. Build intrigue, right? It's like, What is this guy doing? What is happening right now? And I want to keep watching. Here's another example of intrigue. Plan With Stick has this format. I've talked about their channel before. He reviews small RV campers. But at the start of all of the reviews, he previews and tells people to stick around towards the end of the video where he's going to share his top three things he likes and dislikes about this camper, which makes people want to continue watching it. So let's see how he does that. Some manufacturers out there, you might have six different choices of cabinetry lamination, but we've got a dozen combinations of carrying mountain bikes, and dirt bikes and all that. So that's really our focus. Get it. You're sick of all these overpriced overland trailers. So MI. But this one's different. And that's why it's featured on this channel. I challenge you to build out an off road trailer from a budget camper manufacturer like Hiker or runaway, companies I respect, known for industry low prices. Then compare their built out budget overland trailers to the Boreas AT. Trust me. There's no comparison. Same price, but the Boreas AT is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of quality components and materials. Stick around though, as usual, I'll share what I like about this trailer in areas for future improvement or potential issues this trailer may present in the field. So that's something that you can kind of build into the format or structure of your videos to keep people engaged till the very end. Our next example is a value preview example. And this is from the I will teach you to be rich. Channel, how to become a millionaire on a low salary. Sometimes we see these depressing stats about how millionaires all inherited their money from their parents. And reality is that is not true. The majority of millionaires are first generation wealthy. And what that means is that you don't have to depend on having wealthy parents in order for you to become a millionaire. I want to show you how you can become a millionaire, even if you were born into wealth, and even if you didn't go to an elite college or make $500,000 a year. Okay. So he does a couple of things here. One is he starts with a misconception that he is trying to dispel. And then at the end, he kind of creates that preview of the value you're going to get from the video with the steps that he's going to teach us. Alright, Our next example of a strong visuals is from Alex, French guy cooking. How hard can it be to make a potato chip? What's the guys? So very cinematic, very visually pleasing. Music is also really great, and it works to keep me engaged. Another example of a personal story from Sam Newton. Let's check it out. I don't know about you, but I find this beauty in taking ordinary footage that I shot with my friends and turning it into something that feels like it belongs in a movie. Okay, so that's just sort of like a personal feeling, a personal vibe story, anecdote, I guess, that creates that intrigue in connection with a viewer because I can relate to that. In our last example to showcase how to create great hooks comes from epic gardening, watch this before you plant potatoes. I'm obsessed with potatoes. You probably love potatoes. And if you don't love potatoes, L et's subscribe. Go solve the ***** puzzle, 'cause that's what we're talking about in today's video. Okay, so he adds just a little bit of visual comedy popping up from underneath the camera with this big potato, talking about how he's obsessed with potatoes, saying, to unsubscribe, if you're not obsessed with potatoes. Very funny way to start this video. In conclusion, three tips to help you make better hooks. One is to spend as much time creating that first five to 10 seconds of your video as you think and care about the rest of your video. If someone doesn't want to continue past the ten second mark, then it doesn't matter what the rest of your video Number two is to experiment with the different types of hooks. We've showcase a lot of them here in this video. Try out different options and see what resonates with your audience. Number three is, this is a process you're going to refine as you go, and as YouTube changes, as trends changes as your audience might change, make sure you're changing the way that you start your videos as well. We showcase this for long form videos, but this is so crucial for shorts as well. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in another lesson. 12. How Many Videos Should You Publish? Your YouTube Content Calendar: Goodbye to last minute scrambling and hello to a more stress free YouTube schedule. In this lesson, we're going to tackle creating a content calendar that's going to make your life much easier. As I've mentioned before, it's more important to have a consistent schedule that your viewers can expect rather than putting out more content than you feel capable of doing. When you are starting a channel, yes, you're going to have to put in some extra effort. And there's going to be days and weeks where it feels like you just don't want to put out another video, but it might benefit the growth of your channel. That being said, for your personal stress, personal mental health, not saying you have to do it. It's just that successful channels generally do put out more content in the beginning, and then they can slow down at a later date. I think it's consumers, too, many of us have gotten to the point where we don't need two, three, four videos a week from a creator that we're following. Oftentimes, that's a little bit too much except for those hardcore fans. But for a general audience, fewer videos, once a week, once every other week, or even once a month, is perfectly fine. So how do we set up ourselves for success to make sure we stick to that schedule? Here is my step by step strategies to succeed for building a content calendar. Tip number one is to assess your resources. First, you have to understand your capacity for production, post production. If you're doing this all by yourself, if you have helpers, many of us are going to be doing this all completely by yourself. Do you have a full time job, and are you doing this on the side, or you have a more flexible schedule where you can be making videos throughout the day, throughout the week. Are you jumping full time into YouTube and you can spend unlimited time. Time is a very valuable resource that many people don't have when creating a YouTube channel. So if you have it, it's going to benefit you. Money is another asset that's going to help you. It allows you to outsource, editing, outsource, help with production. Or purchase tools, AI enhanced video editing software, things like descript or even Adobe Premiere Pro, which have new AI features that can speed up your post production and production workflow, things like automatically editing audio, editing videos by transcript, which allows you to just basically delete paragraphs from an automated transcript, and it will edit it for you. Descript has a new tool where if you're recording videos and you're not looking right at the video camera, and you're reading off of a prompter or screen. It will actually with AI, make it look like you are looking at the camera. It's not perfect now, but in the next year or two, it's going to get even better and better. It's not free, but it's not too expensive. But this is where if you have some monetary resources, you can invest that into the production of your channel. Even if it goes back to equipment, having a simple setup, if you're shooting videos in your home, if you have a dedicated space where you can leave up your lights, your camera, your gear, that's going to make the production process more efficient. However, I understand that not everyone has that option for them. Think this is where we have to get real with ourselves and say, Okay, well, if I'm having to set up gear, or maybe I'm making videos out while I'm traveling, going out and capturing stories, that's going to be a lot more work than someone who is sitting at a desk with a camera that's always there ready to record, and that person can easily create more content every week. Maybe they have an editor, they're outsourcing their edits to. Obviously, that's going to be a lot easier than someone who's doing it all themself outside of their home. Studio. Just be real with yourself in terms of how much you think you can do. Our next tip is to make sure you have those content pillars identified. Remember we talked about defining three to five main themes or content pillars that your channel will focus on. This helps with planning and preproduction of your videos. You don't have to wonder about, k, does this video fit in with my channel? If you're sticking to those three to five pillars, for example, with a photography camera gear tutorial type channel, might have gear reviews, tutorials, and then maybe photo adventures, and you can fall back on those three pillars of content. If you really want to stick to a content release schedule, you can use those pillars as part of your calendar. For example, you can have interviews that are released once a month or once a week. Then the opposite weeks, you can release tutorials. Peter McKinnon did this with his two minute Tuesday tips. He used to do these shorter. They were never really 2 minutes. I ended up being a lot longer, but every Tuesday, he would release a new photography tip or Tutorial. P got used to that and started to expect that every week, and it gets people coming back to your channel, subscribing to your channel because you're sticking to that schedule based off of your pillar content. Same time we want to stick different pillars. We also need to diversify our content formats. For most channels, you're going to grow with a variety of formats. I'm not talking about the topic or theme of the video necessarily. I'm talking about long form videos versus shorts or shorter form videos. You might be able to put out shorts every week or a couple times a week and then put out longer form content. Once a week or every other week or once a month. Our next tip is look at seasonal and trending topics. So beyond your week to week day to day calendar, it's a good idea to step back and look at the overall calendar and think about if there's any seasonal trends or days of the year that are important within your niche. And even if they're not important to your niche or the topic that you make videos on, you can still capitalize on something that's trending by connecting that trending moment with your own videos and your own storytelling. And we're going to look at examples of this coming. It's all great to say, Oh, yeah, you should have a content calendar, but how do we actually do that? That's when it comes down to scheduling and flexibility within that schedule. You can use a tool like Google calendar to block out days, making sure you actually put videos on your calendar. You can use a tool like Trello that is sort of like a big sticky note white board where you can add notes to a board, move it around. I use Trello for my production schedule for my YouTube videos, my course videos, and all the other content that I'm producing. And it's really nice because you can have different boards for different content pillars or content formats. You could also sync it up to Google calendar so that when you have a task or a little sticky note on your trello board, it automatically has a calendar due date for that specific note, and it will appear on your calendar. Something that I've had some success doing that has increased my production is block scheduling. That means that for different days of the week or different blocks of weekly schedule, I focus on one area of my job or one area of YouTube production. For example, on Mondays and Tuesdays, it might be pre production. All you are doing is researching, writing scripts, preparing for the shoot. Wednesdays might be Shoot day. You're out filming on Wednesdays. Thursday might be post production day. And then Friday is going to be the day that we're actually publishing, scheduling out these videos online, creating ancillary social media content, connecting with other creators and all of that other stuff that goes into being a YouTube. Out block schedule, I find that every day looks a little bit like the same. I hop on my computer, I check e mails, I check social media. I watch a YouTube video here or there. I get a little bit of production in, a little bit of editing in, a little bit of scheduling in, but it's definitely not as efficient as a block schedule. So if you haven't done so, try it out. The same time that we want to have a schedule, give yourself some grace in terms of stepping away from work, stepping away from YouTube. And also, if there is something spontaneous that comes up, maybe there's a new partnership or a seasonal trend or a new topic, AI starts trending and you want to make some content related to AI or whatever the next big thing is. It's okay to step away from your content calendar and focus on something fun like that. And the last step is to batch produce and have a publishing cadence. If you're struggling to put out new videos consistently. Think about what your production schedule looks like. Are you trying to make a video every single week that goes out that week or the next week? If so, that can get very tiring. And you might want to figure out how to batch produce videos, where you are recording five, ten videos at one time in one week. You are editing all those videos in one or two weeks. And then you have every other week content or monthly content for several months. I have had a lot of success with this with my premiere pro tutorials, my after effects, motion graphics tutorials, and photograph tutorials, where when I'm creating a course, I might turn some of those lessons into YouTube videos. And I know that when I've done that, I've had months of content that's coming out on a weekly schedule. And those are the times where I see my channel grow faster than ever. It's up to you to decide what your publishing cadence is. I think it's going to take a little bit of time to figure out how much you can produce at a high quality. But remember, we are living in a world of YouTube where less is more, and a higher quality product is going to be more worthwhile. In putting your effort in, then a bunch of not so high quality videos. You can also get extreme with all of this. I know some YouTubers that have a year planned out with every single video, the dates that they're coming out. And that's great for them. I can't look that far in the future myself. I like to have maybe a month or two worth of content ready and then have those specific days or trends, seasonal things that are coming out. Like, for example, for me, I know that in the fall in October, usually Adobe releases all of their big updates for the year for all of their apps. So I know in October, I'm going to be ready to be creating tutorials on all of those new features. So things like that just keep in mind. All right, let's look at some real world examples of this in action. So first, let's look at a couple examples of different types of content calendars. There is the super consistent calendar. We saw this before living big in a tiny house. They put out a new video once a week. And it's just once a week, same day of the week, they release one video. It's one content pillar, it's one format, and that's what they do. It's super consistent, just like a television show. A consistent calendar looks like this. City Beautiful. They put out one video every two weeks or so, but it's consistent. There's no months where you look back and you see, Wow, they didn't put out a video at all. It's not necessarily the same day of the week, every week, but you can expect a new video every couple of weeks or so. Here, we have a not frequent, but semi consistent calendar from Bernardo Bacal. As I've mentioned before, does these nice travel blogs, It really is based off of his travel schedule. And you can tell that some of what he releases was filmed months ago during the summer. He'll release something that he was doing in the spring or in the fall. He'll release something he was doing in the summer. And he's a creator where I wish he could put out more content because I love all of his videos, but it's definitely not frequent, and it's not consistent to a T. However, he still has success. So this is a good example where it's not always necessary to have that strict schedule. Let's look at an example of seasonal content. Trout and coffee, I mentioned, is another YouTuber that kind of goes against the grain of like the fast pace editing in your face style of creation. His seasonal content comes in the form of literally following the seasons. He lives in a cabin in the northeast of the United States, and a lot of his videos are about capturing the fall foliage or the first snow of the winter, things like that. And so he's literally following the seasons with his channel. An example of trending content flexibility and being able to follow something that's trending and make something for your channel. Is Casey Nat put out this New York City is underwater video. And this is when they had a huge rain storm, and there was a lot of news coverage of it. So Casey getting out there being sort of the man on the street, just filming what was going on. It was a great video for him to put out because it was a trending moment that day and the next day, and it got 4.7 million views from most of those from that week. So this is an example of a newsworthy story. Something happens in your local area that is worldwide or national news. It doesn't make sense to make a video about that. It really depends on what your channel is. Casey's channel is just about his life. His story, a lot of it is just like living day to day in the places he lives. So this makes sense. If you have a channel where you are focused on cooking, I'm not sure if making this video makes sense. However, you could come up with ideas that connect the two. Perhaps you are a gardening channel, and then there's a huge rainstorm. You can make a video about harvesting rainwater or the benefits of rainwater for your garden. Try to come up with ways that your audience would be interested in that trending topic. In conclusion, it's important to have a good balance between planned and spontaneous content that caters to your audience expectations while also allowing you to capitalize on anything that is trending in that moment. I know this can be a little overwhelming, but you should start simple. Start with, I want to put out one video a week or every other week and start from there and then ramp up and add maybe another weekly short or twice a week short, but start with what you can do. And this is a good thing to look back on every year or in the middle of the year. And this is also something you can look back on and adjust over time. Don't stick with something just because you started doing that. Think, I this working for you? Is it working for your audience? Thank you so much for watching this lesson and then I hope it helps you with your own YouTube content calendar. 13. Creating Evergreen vs. Trending Videos on YouTube: What is Better?: Rather have explosive views with your latest video or views, weeks, months and years after you post. Or maybe you can do both. That's what this lesson on Evergreen versus trending content is all about. Evergreen videos are the ones that people are going to be interested in viewing weeks, months, years afterwards. They're still beneficial to viewers, and they're not tied to something that's trending or seasonal or something that's going to get outdated. Trending videos, it's just that it's something that is trending, something that's going viral right now. And in a week or in a month or in a year, it might not be as interesting to watch. You could think of sporting events, a typical game from a few years ago in the middle of the season. That's not really evergreen content. Perhaps the highlights of that game, if something really epic happened during that game would be, but the game itself is not something most people are going to be watching years into the future. Both have value. Evergreen content, it provides that sustained traffic and engagement over time, where many of your new subscribers might come from and find value in your channel. They might see that you have this library of content that is very interesting to them that they go through and they watch it all. But trending content is really great, too, because you can get quick spurts of traffic, and it helps YouTube see that you are someone that's putting an effort to grow your channel, and you're going to get new eyeballs on your channel, but you need that evergreen content to keep them engaged as well. So let's look at the steps to succeed with both Evergreen and trending content. The first step is to identify the Evergreen topics in your niche. Are there any foundational topics for your topic? Are there how to guides, tutorials or frequently asked questions that you can make a video on that anybody interested in your topic, especially those that are new to that topic, would want to watch. Are great videos to make. You can do research on this using tools like Google Trends or AH RFS, or even AI tools like Chat GPT or Google Bard, where you can literally ask for a list of good Evergreen topics, that's what I would do. And also, looking at Google Trends, you can see search volume for different topics. And if there's topics that are growing, that's really good, but you want to see consistent growth or consistency to know that it's an evergreen topic. It's also a great tool to use to find trending topics in your area because it gives examples of keywords and things that people are searching for right now that are exactly that are trending. In terms of creating this evergreen content, it's important to make sure that the production itself looks and feels timeless. So this comes in what you are saying. So you might not want to start your video saying, Hey, it's me here, Phil. It's December 1999, coming at you with this new tutorial. That's going to make it look really outdated. So whatever you can do within your production itself to make it feel timeless, and not time stamp it to a specific date is good. At the same time, be willing to update things. While you can't change the content itself, you can update the title, the tags, the description, you can add a new thumbnail to make it more relevant or keep up with whatever the trends are with thumbnails and titles and things like that. For example, many YouTubers don't do this, but now we have things like tags. You can hash tags in your titles, you can tag other creators. You can put emojis in your titles, all of these things that make titles more visible we couldn't do before. So it might be a good thing if you have an existing channel to look back on your videos and look back at them and see if you could update them with anything that makes it more clickable. For trending topics, one thing you can do to make it easier is to develop that quick production workflow. It's going to get easier to make videos over time, and if you're doing this yourself, then you're the one that's going to have to do it. You could always outsource a video edit for a trending topic if it makes sense. But for your own sake, you can come up with things like templates for your video edits, templates for your graphics, within the video, having a library of music, stock, video, B roll, all of those things ready to go if you need to make a video in the next day or whatever. All of that will allow you to make a video quicker if there's a trending topic. And in terms of finding those topics, it's just about paying attention to what's out there, what's happening in the news and being ready to jump on it. AI is the trending topic Ala mode. It's in fashion right now. It has been and will be for the next several years. I was not afraid to be an earlier adopter of Chat GPT, and I jumped on creating educational tutorials and courses on that topic as well. And it not only benefited my audience because I can teach these tools, but it benefited me as well because I was one of the early teachers of this content on platforms like to me. An example of this is AI. It's Ala mode. It's what's in fashion, and It can feel a little bit scary to be an early adopter of so many new things that are always coming out, but you have the flexibility as a newer YouTuber to jump on these new trends. Whereas older more established YouTubers might, and I don't mean older, but I just mean more established. They might have a content calendar and schedule that's already set up. They might be in the middle of productions that take months or weeks, and they can't jump on a trending topic, but you are more nimble. You should be more nimble and flexible to jump on something that's more trending. And know that even on these big new topics, you can try to tie it to whatever your topic or your niche is. And I don't want you to feel worried to make a video because it's a great opportunity as a smaller YouTube to do so. YouTube wants that content, even if it's coming from a smaller channel. Our last tip is to find that balance within your content. It's good to have a foundational layer of evergreen content. Like I said, when someone comes to your channel, either through that Evergreen content or through a trending video. It's good to have that Evergreen content that they see, Okay, there's a batch of videos that I'm interested in, and it might take two, three, four, five videos for them to subscribe or more, but you need to have that. And if all you have is trending videos that might not be interesting for a new viewer or new subscriber to watch right now, that's not going to be good for your channel. Let's look at a couple examples of videos that do this. First, we have a smartphone camera techniques video from MKBHD. He does all kinds of trending videos on all the latest tech gear. However, this is a good example of an evergreen video where it's likely going to be beneficial for many years. Yeah, there's going to be new phones with new capabilities, and this is a video that you might need to update every few years. But for several years, it's going to be a really great evergreen topic. An example of a trending video is the Olympic trick shots video from Dude Perfect. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch more so than some videos years down the road. However, the traffic that's going to come to it is mostly going to come during that initial Olympics where they launched this and potentially when the next Olympics happens as well. A more balanced approach example is Yoga with Adrian, who's one of the biggest yoga instructors out there on YouTube. She put out a video that was Yoga for uncertain times. This was during the pandemic, and it's a great video. For that moment. But it's also a video that contains content that is still relevant today, even though the marketing or the angle of the video is something that's a little bit more trending. People are always going to be going through uncertain times, even though this video was likely put out there because of the pandemic, because so many people were uncertain about that moment, and it was perfect to come out then. But still, someone that watches it today will find some value from it. So let's look at what types of videos I could put out for the photography and Friends channel that are both Evergreen and trending. There are so many opportunities for evergreen topics, any sort of basic, how to introductory, lesson educational content. We've got editing tutorials that could cover the basics of editing portraits or landscape photography and try to make it where it's not program specific. You could do a specific light room portrait editing video, and that's going to be pretty good, pretty Evergreen for many years, unless it's something where like some of my old content is a little bit outdated because the interface has changed. There's new tools within Lightroom. There's a whole new process for editing portraits. So I've updated those videos, and still that's a good video to have for years to come. But it might be a better idea to create a program software agnostic style editing tutorial where you're really looking at the art behind what you are editing and how to edit, and it's not tied to specific software. Other example is photo blogs. I'm creating this channel for someone like me, and I love watching photographers out there capturing amazing photos, and that's just content that even if it was years ago, it's still very interesting. In terms of trending content, looking at AI for photographers or any of those new features or new photography tools or apps, new gear reviews, that is all good trending content to be putting out there when it is trending. The end of the day, it's good to incorporate both, as we've talked about, having that Evergreen content, will sustain the channel for the long term, it will encourage people to subscribe. It's that library of content, that a new visitor to your channel, whether they came from an Evergreen video or a trending video, they'll see that and they'll find value in it, and they'll be more likely to subscribe versus if you're just doing trending content, it's a little bit harder to have that sustained growth. Also, if we're looking down the road at ad sense and revenue, Having views in your older videos is going to be really good compared to if your videos just get a bunch of views that first week or month that you launch it, and then they fizzle out and don't get any views because it's on a topic that is so yesterday, right? So having those evergreen videos will help with revenue, too. Thank you so much for watching this video, and we'll see you in the next one. 14. How to Design Clickable YouTube Thumbnails: The very first impression you'll make with a viewer. It's the thumbnail. In the next few minutes, you're going to learn the core elements of creating a great clickable thumbnail that stands out in the crowded YouTube feed. Welcome to this new section on optimizing our videos for YouTube. This is a super important section. So let's get going. Thumbnails are super important period. You should be spending almost as much time thinking about how to create a good eye catching thumbnail as you do thinking about your video topic itself. It is so important and many YouTubers overlook this. The thumbnail and the title form the primary decision making factor for someone choosing to watch your video or not. So ultimately, You don't have a good thumbnail. It doesn't matter how good your video is because fewer people are going to see it. In this lesson, we're going to see a lot of examples, and so let's get straight into the step by step strategies to succeed. The first step is to understand your audience and your niche. Analyze what the common visuals, themes, and styles are in your genre, in your niche, take into account the demographics, the common interests and themes within your audience. At the same time, we have to take that with the grain of salt because we don't want to necessarily just create thumbnails that blend in with the rest of what is out there in niche. We want to figure out how to stand out, too. The second step is to use high quality images. Many people will either just take a screenshot from the video itself or use some generic stock photo that they found. You can get away with using either of those or both of those if you have a really high quality image that stands out. However, most likely, it's going to be better if you take separate high quality images. And that starts with a photo from a higher quality DSLR or mirrorless camera, perhaps an iPhone. But not just screenshots. There are so many design tools out there, and you can use whichever ones that you are comfortable with. Most of them can do similar things. Canva and photoshop are the ones that I use and recommend. Canva is probably the one I recommend more now because it's online, it's web based. Before, it used to be that, like, removing the background from a photo. So if I wanted to have a thumbnail with my face in it, it was hard to do with Canva, or it just didn't look good. But now the automatic background remover honestly better with Canva than photoshop. It's insane. I don't understand how photoshop hasn't figured this out yet. They have a good tool. And for thumbnails, it works. However, Canvas is even better. Canva has built in stock photos, but you could use other stock image sites like Unsplash and Pixabay for free, or sign up for any sort of stock service like in vado elements, which I use, which has images, roll, footage, music, graphic templates, and everything else, all in one package. Journey and Dolly are great tools as well that are getting better and better at creating AI generated images. Once you have a good photo, it's time to put that together in a design. And how do we make it stand out? We want to use vibrant colors. Vibrant colors stand out in that feed of video thumbnails. Contrast the image, high contrast is also something that stands out. Something that I like to do is when I'm putting out a video on a topic, I will see what are the video thumbnails for that topic? And how can I contrast that? Can I use a different background color? Can I use text in a different way or use my face, if all the other videos, don't use a face, something that differentiates your thumbnail so that it pops out of that background. I would use text sparingly The trend is that text on thumbnails is not necessary anymore. It used to be where everyone was using texts in their images. But nowadays, it just doesn't seem like it's what is getting the clicks. If you do have text in your image, make sure it compliments the title and it is not just a repetition of the title. Think about how can you use texts to build intrigue, to make someone want to click your video. And we'll see some examples of this coming up. But that's what you're trying to do, ultimately with your title and your thumbnail is Build interest and intrigue. O bviously, this goes without saying, you got to make the text big enough so that it's visible when someone's scrolling through their feed on a mobile device or on a computer, and that text shows up really, really small. So less is more. If you're not doing it already, use faces and emotions in your videos. It's just what works. So if you're not doing it, you should start. And this also goes back to higher quality images. Again, finding a screenshot from the video is not likely going to work as well as if you can take separate reactionary, emotional Photos of you or whoever's in the video that draw and capture attention. Our sixth tip is to maintain consistency in the branding and style of your thumbnails, Cb hammer, and we'll see examples is a great example of this where you know it's a cab hammer thumbnail because of the way that it's laid out. And the style of editing. Same with living big in a tiny house, all of their thumbnails have the same template so that when their videos are released in the feed, people know exactly what video that is and who it's from. If possible, my last tip is to use AB testing. This is where you have a video that shows one thumbnail to some people and one thumbnail to other people. Not everyone has access to this feature. It is available for built into YouTube for some channels that have their controlled experiments. However, you can also use a tool like Tube Buddy that helps run AB test for things like your title and your thumbnail. And all it will do is it'll release your video. See which thumbnail is getting more traffic, and then it will help you pick the one that obviously has a higher click through rate. If you're not using one of these tools, it's a little harder to do on your own. However, you can do this over time where you can choose one thumbnail style for a video. Then if you have another video that is on a similar topic is a similar format, and you do a different thumbnail, you can see which one gets more engagement initially. Also, you can go to your older videos and update the thumbnails and see if that changes anything as well. I would definitely recommend doing that. To modernize your existing library of footage. Alright, so let's look at some real world examples. First, starting with someone who puts out super high quality images. Peter McKinnon is a photographer, so it's not surprising that the image quality of his thumbnails is very high. He puts himself in the thumbnail, as you can see here, one has text in it, but the other two are literally just him. You might not know Peter McKinnon if you haven't seen them before. If you've seen him, he's very recognizable with his skinny jeans, his hats that he wears, his long hair, and beard, his tattoos. And so even if you can't see his full face, you know that's Peter McKinnon in that image. And that alone, because he's built a reputation on YouTube for so long and has so many subscribers and followers, having him in the thumbnail is going to make it more clickable, versus if he was just putting out the same exact video, but some random stock footage photo of someone with a camera or someone walking by a body of water, that's not going to work. Drew Binsky uses vibrant colors in his thumbnails. You can see that in these examples, super high contrast, the saturation is really pumped up. Not only that he uses faces and reactions, that capture emotions, that one title with the text in it, 61 years, no sleep. It adds to the title, which is he hasn't slept since 1962. Doctors don't know why. Both of those together kind of add to make it more intriguing. You see the thumbnail first, and you say, 61 years, no sleep. That's incredible. And then you read the title, and you're like, Wow, 1962, that seems like a long time ago. And so both of those actually work well together. I know not everyone's going to want to do such reactionary, emotional, overdramatic faces in their thumbnails. However, all I can say is that it's what works. Ramat Safety is another person that does this, and he does it in a little bit less outrageous way. You can see here he puts his face on top of a descriptionary image of what the video is about. So, for example, the one on the left, it says, you've been lied to. And that's intriguing. You're like, what have I been lied to? And then you see the house burning in the background. And then the title adds to that. Why don't own a house as a multi millionaire? All of that together combines into something that's intriguing. The middle one is just a standard episode of his podcast. And many of his podcast episodes, the thumbnails follow or have a same template where it's a quote from the podcast, and then it's him reacting. Then on the right, you see the last one. The text Genzy is giving up And this was one where actually the text in the thumbnail matches, I think, too much to a t to the title. I think he could probably tweak that a little bit. Even if it says, why is Genz giving up or why has Jen Z left the boat or something a little bit more punny or creative in terms of that text on the thumbnail, might be interesting. However, the reaction that he has makes the viewer wonder, okay, what's going on. And again, he's someone with a recognizable face, and as you grow, your channel and become more recognizable yourself, putting your face is just going to make those videos stand out. That's also why reaction videos or videos collaborations where someone with a smaller YouTube channel puts the face of their interviewee on the thumbnail, or if they're doing a reaction about a certain YouTuber, they'll put that bigger YouTubers face on the thumbnail because it's going to get more clicks. Then here, we've seen this before, but that consistent branding can help. I have two action items for you. One is to look at the trending page and see what all the thumbnails have in common. Is there anything that now is trending? Because over time, these four elements and styles might change. Also, for your particular niche, search for a topic. I'm going to do this coming up in the case study video for this lesson. But I want you to do this for your topics because what's in your niche might be different than what's typical for your standard video that's trending. So in conclusion, my three final tips for thumbnails. One is, make sure you spend time focused on creating great thumbnails. If you can't do it yourself, outsource this. This is probably one of the cheapest ways you can increase your success on YouTube. Spend ten bucks on fier or upwork.com and have someone else make a more eye catching thumbnail for you. Two is experiment, experiment with different styles, different formats, with text, without, with your face, without to see what works. If you can and you have the money to invest in two buddy, use the AB test option to AB test, different thumbnails. Three, your thumbnails are going to be a balance. It's going to be a balance between visual appeal, clarity, and brand consistency. But at the end of the day, as I always say, make sure you match the viewer's expectation with what's in the thumbnail. Years ago, it used to be easy to trick the algorithm by putting any sort of beautiful person on a thumbnail. People would click that, and then it would be a video on something completely random. That doesn't work anymore. That hurts your channel, it hurts your videos. So make sure what's in your thumbnail represents what's actually in your videos. Thank you so much for watching this lesson. In the next video, I'm going to be doing a case study behind the computer, and I'm going to be showing you what I would be looking at to improve my thumbnails. 15. Case Study: Analyze Your Competitor's Thumbnails So You Can Stand Out: Come to this case study video, another one where I'm going to get behind the YouTube screen and actually walk you through what I would do to analyze YouTube thumbnails and to help me determine for myself and for my channel, what I should do. So the first thing I said was to go to the trending page, and you get to that currently by clicking the little YouTube menu hamburger option over here on the left, going down to explore and choosing trending. So first, let's just go through and see if we see any sort of style or thing that stands out with these thumbnails. Some of them appear like, actually, they're kind of hard to see, but those are the ones with the music videos, and perhaps the music video videos, the music video videos. The music videos don't need captivating of an image because they already have a following that's going to be watching and listening to that video. However, a more visible thumbnail would not hurt this video at all. Here's an example of three faces. So text, not a pro, and then three faces with reactions, probably the player in the middle. And then two reactions on either side is pretty good. This one, I built an invisible katana from Mike Shake. Here's an example of a high quality image where obviously this is not from the screenshot from the video itself. It is the probably something that they shot separately. Someone edited that together, and just much, much more high quality. So just going down the list, again, we got some images that this is pretty contrasty. We have this smiling girl and then this creepy dog day animatronic right there. Would probably put her a little bit bigger so that she's more visible because I'm zoomed in here on the screen, but realistically, I'd be looking at a screen like this, and that just doesn't stand out. But it's important to look at your screen when it's zoomed out so that you can see, k, what does stand out? These videos are typically doing well because they're from creators who have an existing audience that can drive that traffic. However, if you were not Doug Demuro, I would be making the thumbnail with a separate image of myself, my face big on the screen with the same reaction that I assume he has here, but so you can see his face more visibly. One thing that I did not mention in the last lesson to help your thumbnails stand out, and more so on the dark theme. So if we view the dark theme here, and you can see in your analytics, I believe, if your subscribers are using dark or light theme. Because for a video like that one I showed down here, the Star Wars outliers, and then also we played a YouTube simulator thumbnail. It has this border here. And that border helps it stand out on this black background. If it's a color border with a little bit of a darker color, it will also help it stand out on the white background as well. So the 20254 runner must have just come out because we see some videos about that, several videos about that. And that's what we're talking about, we're talking about, creating trending content. Eclipse that we had in 2024 also just happened. So that's really good trending content to create videos about. All these creators are doing a lot of what we've seen already. I think it's going to be more important for you to look at the specific topics in your niche to see what people are doing. So, let's look at, when I search for Light room, the light room channel pops up and then videos from their channel. So they get a little bit of extra weight because their channel matches the keyword. And sometimes YouTube will surface a channel if it's about a particular keyword like this and their videos first. However, I'm just going to scroll down here to these videos, which are the first ones that appear in the regular algorithm for Light room. One thing I'll note first is for many of these videos, it has the light room logo. Peter McKinnon has this one here. If I were him, I would update that light room little logo in this thumbnail, even though he's probably using an older one. It outdate dates this video. So it makes it look like a little bit of an older one. And perhaps there are some people who would click on his video more if it had the more current logo. Look at these three videos. Very, very similar. The first two are from the same creator, and the third one is from a different one. What do these videos use in their thumbnail to help it stand out? We've got the logo, we've got the before and after, which is a common light room tutorial style. But here we have text here and the first one that says before, after. So it really helps us see it, and it also draws our eye into that a little bit more. And then here we have an X and a check mark, which sort of gives that sense of, like, here's the bad thing, and here's the good thing. But here look at their titles, too. I know we're going to talk about titles coming up very soon, but it's worth just looking at these titles. Ten secret light room tricks the pros won't share. Intriguing, intriguing. Typically, one who's not experienced in writing thumbnails or titles for YouTube videos might just say ten Light room tricks for you or for any photographer. But he builds intrigue by saying ten secret light room tricks, and also that prose won't share. Is my good friend, bring your own laptop Dan. He's got that video that is pretty trending, which is great to see for him. Here, we can also pay attention to the images for the shorts. So it's a good idea to build something in your short that will be a good screenshot for your thumbnail. So let's move on to just photography. So here we have the latest videos that are trending for photography. This top one, the text is a little bit hard to see. I would probably change that text, maybe put it on top of a bubble or like a square color shape that makes it stand out more similar to this next one, which has the expert in Amager with text that pops out. So that's something to be aware of. Lots of good high quality images of cameras themselves. This is where for photography, there's not a lot of that reactionary faces on thumbnails. Is that because photographers watching these channels don't want to click those, or is it just because photographers feel like they don't want that on their image, but perhaps it would actually help. And as a new creator in this space, you might be able to jump in and start ranking better with thumbnails that have more extreme reactionary emotions and faces in your thumbnails. Here's a great example of a thumbnail and a title that is intriguing. The thumbnail says, Do not buy one, and then the video title is DJI pocket three, the most honest review on the Internet. Do not buy one. It kind of says exactly what we are going to get from the video, but now I want to know why. All right. Let's look at AI photographer or AI photography might be another term that would be good to look at. Ftopper is here. This is another good example. The text in the thumbnail, how to fake real photography. And then the title, AI has changed my photography forever. Both of those combined tell a bigger story about what that video is about. Good reactionary face right here. This AI will edit your photos like a pro. Goodbye photoshop. And I like how they use the logos of Affinity Photo, Photoshop, these tools with the little X. And then they have the check mark for mid Journey. And the title says the End of photo editing. Very good thumbnail right there. Sometimes simplicity is all you need. AI is here, and then AI photography is the title of that video, and that worked. Now, scrolling up, I just wanted to show you, I mentioned looking at search results for a topic and seeing how you could stand out with colors. When we look at the first five images for this topic, which one stands out the most maybe, the first four. This one right here, the Sean Tucker one with the redish orange background. Now, it doesn't mean that these other ones aren't going to capture our eye as well. They're all ranked high for a reason partially because they have good thumbnails. However, this red one really stands out. So you can look and see, okay, with photography, there is a ton of sort of cool tones in these thumbnails. There's not a lot of that orange or red that really stands out. See all the blue that's being used I think if we made light room tutorials, but we put it on a red backdrop or had a red border, that would really stand out. So by doing this, you get a better sense of what you should be doing and also how you might be able to stand out. Hopefully, this case study helps you out, and we will see you in the next lesson, which is all about YouTube titles. 16. Get More Views with Better YouTube Titles: Ever clicked on a video because the title was just too irresistible. In this lesson, we're spilling the secrets and creating those titles that can't be unwatched. And to start off, I want to give you a quick tip that most top YouTubers do with their titles. And that is coming up for the title of your video before you do anything else? Before you write an outline before you script, before you film, before you edit, before you come up with a thumbnail. You should be coming up with the title of the video. After all, if you can't come up with a clickable intriguing title for your video, it's likely a video that won't be worth making or one that will get a lot of views. However, there is a balance here. It's not just words that should build intrigue. You also have to add the weight of having SEO friendly keywords in there as well. We're going to start this lesson at looking at some example titles have three different video topics, and we're going to look at what the top ranked videos are titled. The first example is Apple Vision Pro. Here are the titles. One, using Apple vision Pro, what it's actually like by Marques Brownlee, MKBHD. Ryan Tran put out one that was I survived 50 hours in Apple Vision Pro. And then created by a put out, I Apple Vision Pro a gimmick or the future? Right, so let's look at these and think about intrigue versus SEO. All of them have some intrigue into it, but I think it goes without saying that I survived 50 hours in Apple vision Pro is the most intriguing. It's the video that I would click on. However, if you're strictly looking for a review of Applesion Pro, first, if you're looking in YouTube and you add the key word review to this, then created by EA's video might come up sooner, or that might be the more likely video that you click on. And then MKBHDs using Apple vision Pro, what it's actually like That gives you a preview of the value you're going to get from this video because a lot of people are asking exactly that, what is it actually like to use Apple vision Pro? Let's look at another example back to our Lisbon travel guide. Here are four great examples. Lisbon, everything you must know before visiting Lisbon vacation Travel Guide Expedia. 48 tips, I wish I knew before visiting Lisbon Portugal. And then Lisbon, the ultimate visitor guide, everything you need to know pro tips, and more. All of these videos ranked pretty well in terms of intrigue, which one do you find the most intriguing? I would say that for me, the 48 tips I wish I knew before visiting Lisbon Portugal is probably the most intriguing one. It gives me a prompt of, ok, what do I wish I knew? And then hopefully it's going to provide those answers for me. The first one, two is pretty good. Lisbon, everything you must know before visiting. They capitalized must know, they capitalize Lisbon, which can help specific keywords stand out or words that they want to emphasize make them more visible. In terms of SEO, The last one sort of tried to stuff a lot of SEO in there. The ultimate visitor guide, everything you need to know, pro tips and more. I would just simplify that a little bit more. You don't need the and more. That is not doing pretty much anything for your SEO. You could probably just leave it at Lisbon, the ultimate visitor guide. Everything you need to know when you use the word and a title, it does have some weight in being more clickable because it shown that if you're talking directly to your audience, whether that's in a headline or an e mail subject line, a social media post or a YouTube title, that does make it more clickable. For the pedia Lisbon Vacation Travel Guide, they added PDA in there because they have some weight in determining if someone wants to watch that video. It gives them some credibility. And some people might be looking up the pedia Lisbon Vacation travel guide. However, if you're a new creator smaller, you probably don't want to include your channels SEO or name in your title? It's already going to be baked in to the SEO of that video because you are the channel putting it out there. And I don't think for the title, it's necessary. Alright, let's look at one more example before we get into our steps to success. Roth conversion, this is a financial technique and topic that is popular in the world of personal finance. So a few videos about Roth conversions and their titles. One, at what point should I consider making Roth conversion It's great because it prompts that question, and it's sort of like talking in my conscious, exactly what I'm wondering. To is, watch this before Roth Converting in 2024. Trust me. All right. Perfect example of making this a trending topic, even though it's an evergreen topic, but you've used a title that makes it more clickable here in 2024. Roth IRA Conversion explained. Simple as that. That's probably a very popular key phrase that people search not just on YouTube, but on Google. And we have to remember that YouTube is owned by Google and YouTube videos often surface in Google results. And so having that key phrase is going to help that video surface. And then also costly Roth conversion mistakes and how to avoid them, that should say to them. So that one also kind of is intriguing. It makes us wonder, like, I want to make sure I'm not making mistakes, and that's why that is intriguing. All right, so those are some examples, and it shows you the range of different titles for any topic. All of these titles work, and they have different elements to them that we're going to be going over now in our step by step strategies to succeed. The first step is to do your keyword research before you even think about making a video, shooting it, do some research to see if it's a topic that you should be making a video on? You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, if you have access to it? Tube Buddy VID IQ. These are all popular tools that give you insights to specific keywords. We saw before where you can search in YouTube. If you have two buddy, the extension, it gives you the search volume if it's trending, if there's competition for that keyword for whatever you type into YouTube. You can also just do a search yourself and see, are there a lot of videos? A there trending videos? Are there new videos on this topic? How many views are they getting How many comments are they getting? You can use a tool like Chat EPT or other AI tools to ask for keywords help. And using AI tools like this is a great way they're going to get better and better to figuring out what topics you should be actually making videos on. You want to set yourself up for success and make sure people are actually searching for your video topic before putting in the effort to make that video, right? The second step in terms of your title is to incorporate your keywords strategically. Saw in those example titles, there's really three approaches. One is just a simple build intrigue and not really worry about the SEO and key words of that title. The second is strictly a key word approach, where it's like the Portugal travel guide. And then the third is a more balanced approach. I think you should try to do a more balanced approach, where it's 24 things you need to know before your trip to Lisbon Portugal. One strategy that can work is including your main key words earlier on in your title. We saw in that example with Lisbon, a lot of them had Lisbon as the very first word. And that helps as a viewer who's searching for a Lisbon travel guide to see, Okay, this video is about Lisbon specifically. Perhaps you are making a video about all of Portugal or a trip to Europe. And you've been to Lisbon, but you don't want to include that specific Lisbon keyword in your title because it would be too specific to what your video is actually about. And that's a case where it wouldn't work to include Lisbon right there up front. However, if your video is a Lisbon travel guide, having that keyword at the beginning is very beneficial. The third step is to promise value or evoke curiosity. We don't want to be click Baty. We want to be honest about what our video is about, so we match their expectations, and we've seen this over and over. We want to build that intrigue and curiosity. F, something that you can do that helps is use numbers and lists, for example, three ways to do XYZ, the top ten tips for visiting Portugal. 24 things you wish you knew before visiting Portugal, Lisbon Portugal, 48 things I wish I knew or 48 mistakes you don't want to make. Those are titles that work better with that number. If I put two videos out and one said travel tips to Lisbon Portugal. And then one was nine travel tips to Lisbon Portugal. The nine title is going to win nine times out of ten. It sets a clear expectation for what the viewer is going to get from the video. And it also sets that expectation that a viewer is going to want to actually go through each of those tips and using that format of a title with a number actually results in longer watch times. Five question format. We see this a lot. Adding a question sparks curiosity that a viewer is going to want to find the answer to. It's just our nature that if there's a question, we're going to want to find the answer. This can be tied into using the word you as we talked about before. For example, a good title would be What are five things you need to do in Lisbon Portugal? Instead of top five things in Lisbon Portugal or top five things you need to do in Lisbon Portugal, having it as a question format can help. Next is optimize for length, meaning that you don't want to have a super long title. Something 50-70 characters is typically a good balance. Doesn't mean every title has to do that. But when titles get too long, It looks like you're stuffing keywords in there. It's just too long for people to read. Again, people are watching YouTube videos mostly on mobile devices, and you're scrolling through the feed. If there's a short, simple title that hits the keypoint, that's going to be much more readable for someone scrolling through the feed than a really long title. So longer is not necessarily better. L ast tip is to test and refine. You can always update the titles of your videos. You can do AB testing with tools like T Buddy, to see what titles work well. I do this with things like e mail marketing where I can send out an e mail to my audience using two different titles or subject lines to see what works. Things that I found that worked well for me with my e mails and my YouTube videos are adding Imogs, tagging, doing hash tags, keeping it short and simple. Obviously, adding a question or something to build intrigue as well, and not just focusing on the most bland keyword robotic title. That could be possible. So your action item today is to again, look at the trending page and look at what the titles have in common. And then once you have an idea for your next video, write down three titles. You don't have to pick one today, write down three titles that put into practice everything we've learned so far in this video. So, for example, for our photography in French channel, if we have a video topic of photography blog to Sequoia National Park, Here are four title ideas that I came up with. One is photographing the biggest tree in the world. National Park Challenge, three photographers capture the Sequoias. How would Ansel Adams photograph General Sherman today and five best photo spots in the Sequoia National Park? Now, this is before I've even made this video, and these topics are actually different types of videos. The title of the video might determine the content itself. And I can use my judgment, I can ask my friends, I can ask my followers which video they are most interested in watching. And that's before I even do any of the work, just coming up with this title. So you can see that I use things like numbering in that second and last one. I use different key words. So National Park Challenge. National Park, the keyword is much more valuable of a keyword than Sequoia National Park or just Sequoia Park. General Sherman is the biggest tree by volume in the world, and it's something people go see in this specific park. And so having that in the title also changes maybe who's watching this video. It might be people who are searching for that specific location and not just the general park. I'm curious to know which of these video titles is most intriguing to you. So in conclusion, you have to find a balance between humanistic curiosity, and then the robotic algorithm that YouTube search is. You can continually experiment and refine your titles using the analytics that we have in YouTube, and we'll look at those analytics in the analytics section, and how you can see, what title is getting a higher click through rate and all of those kinds of things. And at the end of the day, again, integrity is key, making sure you're matching the viewer's expectation with what the title says and promises. Thank you so much for watching this lesson. I hope it helps you in creating more compelling, more clickable titles. See in the next video. 17. How to Use AI to Help Write Better YouTube Titles: Here's a quick case study in how to use AI to help you with your titles. So I keep referring to Google Bard, but really it's Gemini. It's changed name since Google created their AI tool. With either of these tools, it's pretty simple. You just prompt it. You can write it in human natural language, and it can help you out. For example, I've prompted it. I'm making a YouTube video in Sequoia National Park aimed at my target audience photographers. Come up with five intriguing titles for videos that I can make Here we have Capturing Giants, a photographer's guide to Sequoia National Park, lens among the Redwoods, creative photography, techniques in Sequoia, et cetera. You can read through these. You can re prompt it with things like make these titles more SEO and keyword friendly for YouTube. Is going to rewrite those and try to make them more SEO friendly with more keywords or better keywords. Now, I'm going to have it rewrite them. But instead, focusing on keywords, make them simpler, but more intriguing to build curiosity. How to capture the grant, secrets from Sequoia through the lens Unseen Sequoia, Chasing Light in Sequoia beyond the postcard, id in Sequoia, photographing what most miss Photographers Day and Sequoia start to finish. So you would use these and combine them. You would take elements from them. I wouldn't just take one of these unless it looks really good, although I think all of these could use some work, maybe even just taking part of it, Sequoia National Park photo tour. That's not a bad one. Landscape photography tips for Sequoia National Park, also not a bad one, but maybe it would be nine tips, nine landscape photography tips or something like that. So that's how you can use C chat GPT and other tools. It's the same thing with Gemini. We can copy and paste this just to see what it would do. And interestingly, it comes up with some similar ideas. Although it does give us some more specific ones, Star gazing and Sequoia, Wildlife Photography and Sequoia, Mastering Macro, Sequoias miniature Worlds revealed, really cool ideas for us. And I would do this before we even head out on our adventure. Thank you so much for watching, and we will see you in the next lesson. 18. Optimize Your YouTube Descriptions & Tags: You shouldn't do with YouTube descriptions and tags is just ask Chat GPT to write it for you. However, you can use AI to assist you in writing descriptions, especially when you have a format. Supercharge your SEO with proper descriptions and tags. That's what this video is all about. Descriptions provide additional context for what your video is about. Provides you an opportunity to include more keywords that will help surface your video when people are searching for things that aren't specific to your title. And also, it gives you an opportunity to assist the viewer in doing things like adding chapters to your video so that they can jump around to parts or rewind to the parts that they most want to watch, as well as having calls to action to continue watching other videos, purchase your products or services, or anything else that you want to include. Tags are also just as important because it's literally telling you tube, this is the search term that I want this video to appear for. So let's learn how to do it. First step in our strategies to succeed is to craft compelling descriptions. Start with a brief summary of the video in the first one to two sentences. You don't need to do more than that. You can include more information later on, but there's more important things that you might want to include in that third or fourth line of your description box. Start with a keyword friendly but not keyword stuffed description written for a human that adds to your video. Most people aren't reading the description of a video. At the beginning, maybe it's something they click on later on to get some context or to find something that you're referencing to in the video. So it's not something where your description makes a video more clickable. However, what's in your description will make your video appear in the search result, and that's where your title and your thumbnail come into play. After those first two sentences or perhaps even sooner, if you have something that you're really trying to get your viewers to do is to have your call to action, and you could have that either at the very top or down below those first two descriptive sentences. There is the above the fold part of the description where viewers have to click on the dropdown button to view the whole thing, and having a call to action above that is going to make it more likely that someone sees it and clicks it. However, there's only a couple lines that are very valuable. And so there's a balance in saying, Hey, buy my product here at the very beginning of a description versus having a description of the actual video itself and then having that called action. If you can squeeze both into those first two, three lines, that's even better. Below that, typically, YouTubers will have chapters if they've included chapters in their video. And the way you do that is you literally just put the timestamp. So that's literally like the time one colon 00 for 1 minute, and then the name of that chapter. And then for every other chapter, you do the start time stamp and then the description. And it'll automatically be clickable using that format. Below that, I would include any links to your other social media channels, your website, or anything else that is good to have in every video so that if someone is interested in that, it's there for them. I find that sometimes I'm watching a YouTubers video, and I want to go to their website or see what they have to offer, and they have not included that in the description. To me, it's like, why not? It makes it easy for a viewer to find that information. We're going to look at an example of a description in just a second. But next we have using your tags effectively. Start by including all of the broad keywords that are related to your video, but then include some of those long tail key phrases. For example, I just got back from a trip to Waikiki Hawaii in Honolulu. So if I was making a travel log about my trip, I would include the main keyword of Waikiki, Hawaii, Travel Hawaii, Hawaii blog, Waikiki log. And then I would include some more longer tail key phrases of the places that I visited in the blog. For example, Waikiki Aquarium or the Honolulu zoo or even traveling to Waikiki with kids, if that's what my video is about. Using a tool like two buddy, when you are uploading a video, present you with options to include that you should consider for your keywords and phrases. We'll see that in the later technical section where I'm actually uploading a video, so that can be super helpful. Again, make sure that your tags represent what's actually in the video, and you're not just adding tags to your video because you want your video to come up for some random popular tag. Match that those viewers' expectations. Third step is to use hashtags. You can actually have hashtags in your title and your description. And just like any other social media platform, when you use a hashtag for a popular term, people can click on those hashtags and find other videos about that topic, as well as if they're coming from another video and they click on that topic, they will see your video as well. Currently, YouTube allows you to put three hash tags in your title. You can include more in your description. However, I would not put three in your title. I would probably pick one at the most for your title and then just use the rest in your description. Throughout your description, make sure you're optimizing for SEO. So wherever you can, you don't want it to feel robotic, but wherever you can, add a secondary key phrase or keyword, add that to your description wherever possible, wherever it's natural and valuable for a reader. So let's look at some real world examples of what the top YouTubers out there are doing with their descriptions. First up, we're going to look at a video from Cleo Abram on a video about Apple Vision Pro. Let's look at her description. So the description starts out. What is the Apple Vision Pro actually for? This. And that is supposed to describe what this video is about. And then she jumps right into her call to action, which for this video is the affiliate, which is a eight sleep pod cover. Which for me, she's allowed to do that because she is now a bigger Tuber. She has really jumped into YouTube and started and risen quickly. She's done that through a lot of partnerships and things as well. However, this product does not necessarily relate that directly with the typical viewer for this video. So that's where you have to be careful if you're a new YouTuber. Don't just do these random brand deals with products that aren't necessarily related to your audience, and definitely not related to your video. Then she has the rest of her description. She has her chapters down below as well. She's also added the caveat that Apple did not sponsor or pay for this video in any way, which helps make the viewer feel like this is a more authentic video. Let's look at another example from Yoga with Adrian. She often uses hashtags like yoga or 15 minute yoga practice in her titles or her descriptions. And what's kind of cool about that if you can create a unique hash tag is then it's easy for people to find other videos from you that are related. For example, if you're doing a series of exercises or cooking videos or anything like that, and you have a hashtag, people can just click that, and all of your other videos will pop up. The first line in here description is from foot to crown. We take 10 minutes on the mat to stretch connect and release tension. Great description. It's not super keyword friendly, it doesn't include yoga or anything like that. However, it explains exactly what viewers should expect from this video. She uses that key term 10 minutes several times, which must be something that she's seen works in terms of getting clicks. People want short actionable yoga sessions. She also includes several other videos. You can see here that along with this series that people might be interested in after watching this video. She has some emojis here that tie into her about M section, and then a little disclaimer at the bottom as well. Let's look at one more example about using hash tags, which Tasty often does in their titles and descriptions as well. Here you can see they've also tagged different collaborators that they have worked on in this video. They use emojis to make this text pop. Have their main called action, which is to subscribe to the channel. So they have a little URL shortener here, which probably allows them to track how many clicks they are getting, rather than just linking directly to the YouTube channel itself. This allows them to track those clicks, see what videos they're coming from, very smart there, description, more ways to connect with tasty, their music, licensing, everything like that down below, but pretty simple. It's not a ton of description about the video itself, just a lot of tagging other people in the video. And keeping it simple. So, let's look at a case study for the video that we were talking about in the last video. The one that I chose to write this on is the National Park Challenge three Photographers capture the Sequoias. So here we can see the description. So who took the best photo at Sequoia National Park, building that intrigue. I include the hash tags for Fuji film Lika and Hasselblad, the camera models or brands that we're using. I tag. This should be Sam Will and Phil. This is tagging the other YouTubers that we're collaborating with. I have the hashtag for Sequoia National Park as well. I break down what is in this video challenge so people know exactly what they're looking for. Not only will I have the video chapters down here, but I also have key points broken down here. We have our Instagrams, our community website down here as well. Simple and not too complicated. Here, I've included in this part right here some key phrases or key words that people might be interested in watching General Sherman Tree, M Rock, tunnelg. Those are all popular places here. In the Sequoias, but not something that I'm going to include in my title, for example. So I use my description to have that. In terms of the tags that I'm using, so here are some that I came up with that I would use for this video, visiting Sequoia National Park, photographing Sequoia National Park, best photos in Sequoia National Park. That should be removed. Photography Challenge, National Park Photography challenge, General Sherman Tree, photography, visiting General Sherman Tree. So in summary, make sure that your video descriptions are optimized with the right keywords, key phrases, using hash tags, using your chapter breakdown, having your call to action above the fold. Invest time in researching this yourself. Use tools like Chat GPT to help you in writing a description. If you want. And once you have a template that you use within YouTube, you can actually create a description template for your videos. We'll see that in the technical section of the class where you don't have to write everything out, so you're called action to your website, your other products, your disclaimers. All of that can be pre populated within YouTube. Awesome. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope this section on optimizing your YouTube content has helped, and we'll see you in another lesson coming up now. 19. Turn YouTube Followers into Fans: Secret to explosive growth for any YouTube channel is turning your casual viewer or even subscriber into a loyal fan. These are the people that are going to propel you to success. Every video that you put out they're going to watch, the retention on those videos is going to be high. The engagement, the likes, the comments is going to be high. YouTube's going to love that and push your channel out to more people. So how do we get those loyal fans? We've heard this before. We've talked a little bit about it, but in this lesson, I'm going to break down specific action items to turn those viewers and subscribers into fans. Let's get into it. Can see some of the reasons why fans are different than just subscribers or followers and why it's important for long term growth. However, before we dive in, every YouTube channel is a part of a niche, and that niche is a community in itself. And the community could be on just YouTube or elsewhere. But the first thing you need to do before you even start a YouTube channel, or if you've already started, but you're not actively doing this is be a part of that community. So you can really understand the nuances of what that community is all about, what types of creators are in that community. What are they creating? What's the language of that community? What's an area where you could kind of come in and bring your own flavor into that community? Because that's what's going to excite people who are a part of that community and want to watch your videos. If you just come in assuming that you know what's what, putting out videos, but you've never really listened to the community, you've never interacted with others in that community. Through, I'm talking about commenting and having conversations or even off platform. I talking to people on other social media platforms. That's the first step to truly being able to turn followers into fans understanding that community. So how do we do this with our YouTube channel? You can do this by hosting Q&A sessions, doing live streams, putting out community polls in the community tab, somehow involving the viewers into your videos. So it's not just a passive experience. Ask for their feedback, acknowledge their feedback, mention people, give shadows in your videos, tag people in your comments and in your descriptions, or especially if you actually have supporters, like if someone's supporting you through a membership, a patriot, highlighting those members in those videos. That's why a lot of people do that support. Not only do they want to see you putting content that you've been putting out, but they like seeing a little bit of s and acknowledgment in those video credits or whatever. All of these things are free for you to do. It just takes a little bit of time and effort to put out something that creates more engagement. The second strategy is offering exclusive content or perks. This could be behind the scenes content, early access to videos or exclusive merchandise that you give or make available for members who are part of a patrion or a YouTube membership or wherever you host your own community outside of or even a part of YouTube. I know that with my own community of photographers, I've mentioned before the photography and friends, hats and merchandise really gets people excited when we give those out as prizes, or we make the shirts and things available for people to purchase, and they can wp the brand, the community when they're out there taking photos. Third step is to show authenticity and vulnerability in your videos. This fosters trust and loyalty, really building a personal connection with your audience. You can use blogs or create personal story videos, using shorts, YouTube, or off platform to just share the behind the scenes, share the ups and downs, the process of making your videos, your thought process and making videos. And this is another place you can create that interaction, asking people for feedback, support. I see a lot of YouTubers who will ask, like, what title should I use, and they have a list of four titles. Not only does that create that interaction and build a fan out of someone, but it also helps your channel because you know what's going to be more clickable. The four step is to consistently deliver quality content. Quality content is going to keep viewers coming back for more and more. Over time, you can invest in improving the production value of your videos, and you yourself will become a better presenter. I know that when I started making videos and putting them out there into the world, I was embarrassed. It was a little bit hesitation, not knowing if people are going to like my personality or how I talk. And some people don't, and that's okay. Not everyone's going to like you, the way you present, the way you tell stories. However, you're going to get better. Your voice is going to get stronger. You're going to get better at storytelling, which is so key to making great YouTube videos and having success. That is another huge, huge tip. I haven't really hit on much in this course yet. But incorporating storytelling into your videos can really set you apart. If you can somehow build some funny stories or just somehow add storytelling elements, even if it's an educational video or an interview series or something, telling stories will help. And you're going to get better at that over time. Fifth strategy is to build your brand beyond YouTube, whether it's Instagram, X, Facebook, having your multi platform presence allows you to have different touchpoints for your followers. Not everyone's just logging on to YouTube the most. Many people might be on X or Instagram or Facebook more often. And so sharing content, sharing thoughts, feedback, connecting with your audience on these other platforms continues to build your community and basically remind them that you are there, you've put out new content, and you want them to come back to your YouTube channel. Now, I don't want to burn you out with this. There's tools out there that can make this simple to automate social media content, to batch process and schedule social media content. The tools that I've used in the past that I like are meat edgar.com. And hoot suite.com. So let's look at some examples of YouTubers doing this in the real world. One is yes theory. In terms of building community engagement, they are one of the masters at this. They host local events in countries around the world. They have a local language, they have merchandise for their brand, and they sell that. That's the main way they get support from their viewers. And they've really built this audience around the world that support them. I wasn't without effort. They are putting together events. They are traveling the world and having get togethers. And you might not be doing that or capable of doing that, or it might not make sense for your channel or your niche. But because they are storytellers traveling the world, and that's their niche, basically, it makes sense to have pop up events around the world where they do meeting greets. For exclusive content, Johnny Harris has a Patrion account. He calls it the news room. You can see the sample sort of prices here that he does. It would be good if you're wondering, Okay, what type of things should you be giving out? What the price point should be? Just look and see what other creators in your niche are doing themselves. Johnny offers things like early access to videos behind the scene blogs of the back end of how their production process works, producer credits, and even more. In terms of turning someone into a loyal fan, it can also be thought of as going from acquaintance to close friend or best friend. And the only way you can do that is by sharing your honest, authentic self with someone. Daniel Drew is an example of someone who I find very authentic in his videos. He shares his feelings. He shares unpopular feelings that culturally, many, I'm just going to say men aren't open to sharing. And for that specific reason, he has built a loyal following of fans on YouTube that really appreciate the types of stories and the truth that he shares about himself and his journey through life. So this is a running theme that should go throughout all your videos. You should always be authentic, but you might also want to choose topics that lend themselves to sharing more about yourself. For example, this video, he put out the biggest mistake of my 20s. This is a very real raw emotional video that someone could put out. And his channel is about life and the journey of life and storytelling and philosophy. And so this video might not be the one that you put out, but find a way where you can talk about the mistakes you've made. Admitting mistakes is one of the best ways that you can connect with someone. And that is a good opportunity for me to share that I've made so many mistakes with YouTube. I've made so many mistakes with my channel. And the only reason I'm where I'm at today is because I've put in time and effort over years and years and years and years. However, I haven't put into practice all of the best tips consistently like I should have. And I say like I should have, because If I wanted to grow my YouTube channel and have it be a main part of my business, that's what I should have done. However, my YouTube channel has always been something that's on the side that has helped me grow my main business of online courses and content, but not necessarily just the YouTube channel itself. That being said, I've made so many mistakes with my YouTube channel from making videos that weren't on point to partnering with brands that at the end of the day, I just shouldn't have promoted their products. And another example of quality content is the Jits into Sunset. They have a language that they use with their audience. They're always asking questions, asking people to comment and things like that. But the quality of their content is just really good, too. And they don't slack off. They don't put out videos if they're not high quality up to their caliber. Sana Pencino, is a great example of a huge YouTuber, 14.5 million subscribers, who has a multi platform presence, who has expanded. And, of course, people like her will have a full team behind them doing this. And when you're starting out, it does take extra effort to be posting on YouTube and on Instagram, and on X, and everywhere else that you need to be. However, one. You don't need to be on all the platforms. That's not what I'm saying. However, you should pick the one that is off of YouTube where your community lives, where the people in your Niche typically are. So if it's on dit, if it's on Facebook groups, if it's on X, that's where you should also try to have a multiplatform presence. I'm going to leave you with one key point, and that is the strength of your fan base is not just in the numbers, but in the quality of their engagement and support for the channel. It doesn't matter if you have 1 million people subscribe to your channel, if no one is commenting if no one's interacting with you, even if you get a few views, that's fine, but you need that community. You need those loyal fans who are going to be out there on the Internet, defending you, promoting you to the world so that you don't have to do it yourself. And I hope the tips that I shared in this video help you do just that. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next lesson. 20. Engaging Your YouTube Audience with Comments: Ever felt the thrill of receiving a comment from a YouTuber that you follow? This is a secret weapon that you can use to build trust and create a loyal fan. Let's learn exactly how to do it in this quick lesson. The first step is to specifically prompt viewer interaction. Incorporate viewer questions or comments from a previous video into your current content showing that that viewer's input has tangible impact. The strategy isn't just asking people to comment down below, asking a question, which is good. That's the first step. But it's highlighting those comments and reactions so that people know that you yourself are actually reading them and that they matter. Potato Jet, he's a YouTuber who makes filmmaking tutorial videos, gear reviews. He had a series of videos. I think in most of them, he would actually bring up the comments from his latest videos at the end. Just go through some of the top comments. And I thought that was a really cool strategy. The next strategy is having timely responses. Make sure that you schedule time and we put this as an action item earlier in the course. But after you post a video, make sure for the next at least day you are responding to any new comment as fast as possible. Those first few hours after a video is posted are crucial for getting into the algorithm of YouTube. And so if YouTube sees there's automatic engagement and you can create that engagement by commenting back and having conversations in your comments. That's going to be really good for your videos ranking. The next tip is to highlight and pin comments. So on YouTube, you're able to pin one of the comments. This is often used by YouTubers to pin a comment that they've made. However, you can pick a comment that you believe will create more engagement, get more follow up comments, and use that as your pin comment as well. One way you can use the comments is to get content ideas. A specific strategy would be to have a comment of the weak segment in your videos where you discuss and give credit to viewers who have contributed ideas or feedback. So we mentioned that before. But These are the ideas where if you're taking this course and you're like, Okay, this all sounds a little general. This is all general advice I could have found anywhere. Of course, you can find this advice anywhere. This is not unique advice. However, this is a specific strategy where if you're not doing this, try it out and see how it goes. See if it does, create a little buzz, create a little bit more interaction in your follow up videos. An important step to success is to handle negative comments constructively. Definitely don't want to be someone who's argumentative. There's trolls out there that will never lose an argument online. And so there's no point in to getting into an argument with people online. You want to show people that one you are listening, and two, you are receptive to criticism. It doesn't mean you have to back off your morals or say something that you don't want to say, but it's good to let people know that you are listening. This will depend on how thick your skin is and how level headed you can be. It's I think one of two strategies. You either ignore the trolls, you could delete or block those comments, although that can start to get add up and be time consuming if you're a popular YouTube creating content on sem controversial topics. I mean, anyone can make a topic controversial, but there's some topics that lend themselves to more hate comments, and roles. So you could either have the route of, I'm just going to ignore it all, delete it, or you can try to respond with grace, with humor to diffuse that tension. A couple of real world examples of YouTubers who do this Js into sunset. This is a great video. You should check out. Remember, the links are all in the workbook. In most of their videos, At some point in the video, they have some sort of specific comment that they want viewers to comment below. For this video, it was they tell viewers to comment. I can't believe Adam saved Tanya from the lion. And I read that comment as a viewer first. I saw that. I saw a couple comments, and I didn't realize what was going on. So I was watching the video, and I was like, Wait for Adam to save Dania from A Lon. And then it was at the very end of the video where they say, Hey, comment this down below. And I was like, Oh, gosh, they got me again because I forget that they do this. But it was a great way to get people to comment. You know, the worst thing to do is just say Light comment, subscribe. The second best thing to do or second worst thing to do is say, like, leave a comment below. Let us know what you think about this video. The third worst strategy or now we're getting into a better strategy is to ask something specifically, like say they were on a safari. Maybe ask, what was your favorite animal that we saw? Or have you ever been on a safari? If so, where? The best way to get interaction is something completely random and unique like this. Check out other YouTubers not just in your niche, but first we face they do pin comments pretty well. Let's go ahead and check out this video really quick, see what the pin comment is. Today I got pepino, mangos, melon, Pina, Sandia, orange, So this was a little documentary style video about the frutero. Those are the men and women on the street of LA that sell fruit at little fruit carts. And their first pin comment was thumbed up for all the fueros feeding the city streets. And so that is a comment that can get a lot of engagement because people watching this are automatically going to be into what it's about. And so having that at the very top of the comments is a good strategy. You can see that has a lot of likes and replies as well. Terms of handling negative criticism, Johnny Harris is really good at this. He has a lot of critiques online. He tackles really controversial topics. And because YouTube is a global platform, there are inevitably parties on either and all sides of these topics that he makes videos on. He has done a really good job at when he does make a mistake, he will respectfully respond and either explain why he did it, or he has gone so far as removing a video and editing it when the mistake he made was big enough that it needed some sort of change. And he also doesn't respond to everyone that critiques him because there's just too many. But when there is a little grain of truth in those comments, he does it in a good way. So check his channel out, look at any video that he has, and you'll see the critiques and how he may respond. So in conclusion, the comment section of your videos is an important part of any YouTube success. We're not just putting out content into a vacuum. There are literally people. I know it sounds crazy, right? There are people that are going to be spending their time, their valuable time watching your videos. And so try to engage with those people as humans through that comment section. Be a part of it, let people know that you're reading them, responding to those comments so that they know you too are a real human. It's going to help your channel grow. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next one. 21. YouTube Collaborations: Imagine doubling or tripling your next videos audience with less work. Sounds great, right? Sounds almost impossible. But it's not. You can do it with collaborations, and this video will break down how to do collaboration successfully. Collaborations are great, because, like I said, it's less work to create more content. You can have someone there who's filming with you. You can go on someone else's channel, they can go on your channel. You can make a single video and partner together and split up the work. And this exposes you to a brand new audience. It can also, if you're bringing someone onto your channel, just spices things up. It brings a unique story, a unique person that's different than yourself. I know you're great. People love watching you, but it's also nice to have something fresh to look forward to as well. And something that I've learned with my own collaborations is that I always learn from these people, these friends, these partners. I learn how to make better videos, I get insights. And that's just the truth. We don't know it all ourselves. So collaborating helps with that. And it also increases your credibility as a creator in your space if you're working with and collaborating with other YouTubers even if they're not huge, you're not going to reach out to Mr. Beast and ask him to be on your channel and get a yes. He is a little bit too busy until you have maybe 10 million subscribers or 30. I don't know. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't be going after YouTubers bigger or even smaller than you. So how does this work? The first step is identifying the potential collaborator. You might already know people. So first look within your own network and see, are there people around you that could be in a video of yours, even if they're not a YouTuber. Maybe they have a specific expertise or story that would make sense to share with your audience. If you don't have a relationship with the person you want to collaborate with, then it's like any other online relationship starts. You slide into their DMs. Ideally, you are looking for the best way to connect with them on a personal level. So sometimes creators will have a website with an e mail. E mail is still a very good way to connect with people. I know the younger generations, it's more social media and DMs is great. However, I know as a creator that I don't check many of those, and most of these platforms will block or hide the comments or the messages rather from people who you don't have a connection with already. So however you can, though, you need to reach out to them. Idally, you are doing this in a very natural and authentic way where you're just building a report. Maybe you're asking them questions. And maybe in the back of your mind you have an ulterior motive of someday collaborating with them, but initially, you just need to build a relationship with them. Maybe it's as simple as commenting on their videos that they put out, frequently commenting on their videos or their social media posts, and trying to get some reaction and engagement there before doing a private message or an e mail, just so that when they do see your name pop up, They might have a little bit of a recognition to you. You could also try to get a connection. Maybe there's someone you know, who knows that person, who knows that person, and can give you an introduction. The easiest way to do this, though, is if you've started to grow a channel is to reach out to people who have a similar sized audience or a smaller audience. You never know if that smaller audience channel is going to blow up. And if you've collaborated with them and you have a video with them on your channel or their channel later down the road, that video can drive a ton of traffic to your channel. So don't be hesitant about reaching out to channels that are smaller than yours. So once you connected with someone and agreed that you want to partner on a video, you need to plan that collaboration. What is it going to look like? Are you both creating videos for your own channels on the same topic? Are you swapping topics? A you just appearing on one person's channel? It could work in any way. I see a lot of travel loggers and photographers going out on these photo adventures, and at the end of the day, they each make their own log. And it's super interesting. It's a great way that I'm introduced to new channels and people that I might be interested in following. A more structured way of doing this as an example that I did when I was pretty new on YouTube, I reached out to a video creator Caleb Wagi. He is the video producer behind a lot of Pat Flynn's content. And I don't know exactly how the conversation started, but eventually, I said, Hey, like, we live relatively close to each other. What if we just get together and record a couple of videos. We decided that I was going to be making some after effects tutorials for his audience because I had that expertise, and his audience would be interested in that. And then he had a lot of really high quality sound equipment that I didn't have at the time. So he made a few audio recording microphone tutorials that worked really well for my audience. So it was very a good synergy for both of us because we each had our own expertise, even though we had a similar audience. So that brings us to creating the content. So we've talked about how maybe you're just getting together and each person is creating their own content, or maybe it's more structured, and one person is interviewing another person or one person is just appearing in another person's video. There's some things that you should do in those videos to make it clear to your audience what's happening. Literally like introducing the person to your audience is good because your audience might not know who it is, including titles and descriptions of the person in your video is good. And of course, in the follow up in the description, tagging that person, making it easy for someone from your audience to get to that person's channel is important, and the same should be on their side as well, making it easy for someone to find your channel from their video that they've put out. The most important thing to do is make sure that the purpose of the video and the collaboration feels natural and not promotional in any way. People are very smart, and they're going to know, Okay, they're just like these two random people getting together for just the sake of promotion. And I'm not getting any benefit from it. So make sure that as a viewer, put yourself and your viewers shoes and think, Is this collaboration, does it make sense? And then once you have that video created, you got to promote it. Make sure you're on the same page with your collaborator on how and when you're going to launch it on YouTube and off of YouTube, how you're going to promote it. This is a really good opportunity to build trust with your audience and excitement with your audience with some behind the scenes. Stuff. So whether that's on YouTube with a video or shorts or through the community tab or off of YouTube with like Instagram stories or TikTok or whatever, but showing the behind the scenes so that people know, Oh, hey, Phil's collaborating with whatever photographer, and they're making this cool series, and it's coming out soon, and just building that excitement so that once you actually put out the content, your viewers already know it's coming out and can get excited and you'll get more engagement when it does. Once the video is published or the series is published or whatever, it's a good idea to evaluate the success. This is something that we don't do enough of with anything we do as creators, but make sure you're looking back and did it work? Did it not? Are there ways to improve or was it just not the right collaboration? Hopefully, it was, and hopefully you can continue to make future projects that benefit all parties, you, your collaborator, and the audience. So let's look at some real world examples of this in action. A cross pollination example is where there's just creators who are sort of floating through the different channels. Epic gardening actually is doing this more and more with creators in the gardening space, where they're actually putting those creators channels under the umbrella of epic gardening. They must have an actual business structure where it's part of their brand. However, it didn't always start like that. Specifically with Jaque in the garden, who was just a friend who would sometimes appear in the videos of the main epic gardening channel, and you can see here, Jaque appearing. And this was just a natural way to collaborate. And it would drive traffic to Jaques channel. His channel has grown really, really well. Lot having to do with his partnership with epic gardening. But then it also gives a chance for someone who's interested in gardening to get more content without it being on the main epic gardening channel where it might not make sense. A split collaboration example is where creators come together for some sort of project, and then they each make a video on that topic. So an example of this is team trees where Mark Rober and Mr. Best and some other creators came together to plant 20 million trees. You can see in this example the different styles of storytelling and the angle that they created videos on. So Mark Rober into science. He put out this video about how they used drones to plant 20 million trees. Different than Mr. Beast, sort of all of these videos are about just the epicns of the topic. And so his was literally just about planting 20 million trees, his biggest project ever, and by collaborating it, drew more attention to this project, which helped support it, and ultimately made it bigger than if just one of them was working on it. Nice natural collaboration example is this example where Johnny Harris and Cleo Abram came together. This was when Cleo Abram was a very small YouTuber. She had a video journalism background, and she has that expertise, and Johnny had her come onto his channel to make this video about the dark side of electric cars. It was probably a topic that maybe he could have looked into himself and made the video himself, but it just made sense to partner with someone who likely either had more of an expertise or time as a journalist to look into this topic and figure it out so that Johnny could be working on his other stuff. So it actually increases the efficiency of creating content in that way. It benefited her a lot because she was a small creator. Johnny pushed a huge audience to her channel because in the video, he talks about, you know, if you want more content like this, Cleo does this, check out her channel. He did a great job sort of promoting her in this video. Then, like I said, Johnny gets this great video with in depth journalism from Cleo that he wasn't able to do or didn't have to do himself. Some examples of what I've thought we should do with the photography and French channel. One is go on more photo adventures with fellow members within the community or just other photographers. And then each person creating their own sort of blog or style video. Interviews are great interviews are probably the simplest style of collaboration. And I know that from my videos. In other topics like teaching online, when I had my online course masters podcast, I got a lot of traffic from those video interviews, especially I was able to interview someone when they were smaller, but then they blew up as a creator. And that video is still ranked really well for that person. It's pretty cool. Interviewing other photographers both in our community and out of our community, and then inviting popular photographers to participate in the photography challenges along with our members. I think that's a really cool idea where each week, we have these challenges for our members that we do within the community, but what if we had some bigger named photographers out there doing those challenges with us? I think that would be really cool. At the end of the day, collaborations are one of the best ways to grow an audience and get more views for a video. You just have to make sure that it's authentic And it benefits not just you the collaborators, but also the viewer. It's something that they want to see. But this is just another strategy where if you're sitting there and you're wondering, Man, I've done everything or I just don't know how to grow my channel at this point. Have you reached out to someone and collaborated on a video. If not, do it. If you did it once, do it again. It's a great way to also not feel like you're in this silo of being a content creator by yourself. I love collaborating, and I look forward to doing more with my courses and YouTube videos in the future. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you in the next video. 22. Leveraging an Audience Outside of YouTube: The last time that you put out a YouTube video. Did you forget something? The number one thing I see YouTubers forgetting to do is using whatever outside audience they have to help with that initial traction and views for a newly published video. In this lesson, we're going to go over the specifics of how to do just that. Diversifying your online presence to other platforms can help you get in front of an audience that you might not have if you just stuck with being on YouTube. So there's lots of benefits that can work in the long term for you by being on other platforms. How do we do this? First step is to identify the complimentary platforms that works well for your niche for your community. If your community's on dit, be on read it. If they're on X, be on X. If they're on Facebook, don't be on Pinterest, B on the platform where they are on. The next step is to create that platform specific content. You might think it's easy to just post the same content on all platforms. And yeah, that's the easiest, but that's not going to be what works best. For example, using Instagram to post behind the scenes photos and stories about the process, Twitter X for quick updates and thoughts about things going on in the world or content that you're creating. If you're using TikTok, you'll want to convert your longer form videos to reels, or specifically create a real, something specific in that format and good for that format rather than just trying to convert a long video to a short form real, because oftentimes it doesn't work as well as if you come into it from the mindset of I'm making a vertical short The third and most important tip is just to remember to utilize those other platforms to drive traffic engagement with your YouTube videos. Any platform is going to want to keep their members on that platform. And so if you're doing this on other platforms, it's going to hurt your ranking and perhaps hurt the algorithm on those other platforms. But if your main focus is being a YouTube, that's okay. We don't necessarily care about building up a huge audience on these other platforms. We just want to use whatever audience we have to drive traffic to our latest video on YouTube. Now, if you don't have a social media presence, you can also do this by engaging with online communities, answering questions, sharing insights, and participating in discussions on platforms like edit or Niche forums that are related to your topic, Facebook groups, other community platforms related to your topic, be a participant in those forums and those communities. Don't just go in there and spam your content, but if there's a way to subtly incorporate references to your YouTube videos, you can do that. But it has to be authentic because I know as someone who runs a community like this, when someone's self promoting, it's obvious, and that person's getting banned or at least that post is getting removed or that comments getting removed. However, if it's actually beneficial to the members of my community, I'll leave it in there. I want people to be commenting and sharing insights and advice. And if it's a little bit of a self promotion, but at the same time beneficial, that's totally fine. But at the end of the day, if you become an authoritative voice within a community, people are going to find their way to your channel, even if it's not being like, Hey, here's a video I just posted. Watch it. But if you're commenting, interacting, and sharing insights that people might not know, then they're going to end up on your page somehow. We saw this in the last lesson, so I'm not going to dive into it, but collaborating with other creators and influencers is a great way to get yourself in front of new audiences. But at the end of the day, I don't want you to fall into the B everywhere trap. You might look at other creators that are successful, and they have a YouTube channel, an Instagram, a tik tok, a interest, a website, their own community. That takes time and effort, and it might take having a team run it for you. And when you're starting out, it's impossible to do that and give each platform justice. And as a solo creator, someone who's just starting out, that's unlikely or maybe even impossible to do, especially giving each platform the justice it deserves to do it authentically. My ultimate advice is to pick the one platform outside of YouTube where your community is most likely to be and spend that, that extra time, whatever extra time you have there on that platform. Let's look at some real world examples of people doing this. So the first example is having a complimentary platform with your Niche. For example, Peter McKinnon is a photographer, a visual creative. So what just makes sense to be on Instagram. We're sharing visual stories, photos, videos is the perfect place to be. Terms of creating platform specific content, epic gardening does a really good job of this at in creating their shorts. They don't just convert a long form video into a short. They create unique shorts and reels. Head over to their channel and check it out. Again, all the links to them are in the workbook for this course. Pat Flynn is a great example of someone who not only builds a community for his own audience, but also engages with other communities as well, putting himself in front of people, whether that's in interviews, podcasts, doing conferences, being there in that community, being a part of that community. And he's done this successfully in a brand new Niche with his deep pocket monster Pokemon channel, where he has jumped into a new community, and he has done that by participating within the existing communities of that. So what can I do as a channel, and what will my strategy be moving forward? One is just making sure that I'm cross promoting when I'm publishing a new video. It's something that I just forget to do not only on social media, Instagram, within the Facebook group and community, but also my email list. I have an e mail list with tens of thousands of subscribers on there, interested in photography, and I often forget to let them know that I have a new video out. If I want to focus on growing this new photography YouTube channel, I need to have that as part of my promotion schedule. After I launch a video or schedule it, make sure that I have an e mail scheduled to let my followers know that it's out too. Then in terms of being on other platforms, I just can't do shorts myself. I don't have the time or energy or effort to do it. So I need to hire someone who can condense some of my longer videos into shorts to be successful at this. And because I have the money to do it now, this is one area where I can save time myself and spend the money to still be on these other platforms that are important as a photography influencer content creator. But then I can focus my time and attention on either the more important things for the business or on the things that are important for my personal life, like my family. So the key is to see where your audience is, utilize those other platforms, and then create specific content for those platforms. Again, it's not just about broadcasting our own ideas into the world, it's about collaborating, interacting, and building a relationship with those people on all those platforms. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but if you're serious about growing your YouTube channel, it's what can help you do that. Thank you so much for watching this video, and we'll see you in the next one. 23. Ways to Make Money with YouTube: Know you've thought about it. You've thought about making money on YouTube, and how great that would be, whether it's some extra side income or a full time job, a full time income that could replace your job. In this section, we're going to break down all of the different ways that you can earn money and give you tips on how to actually do so from starting out as a small channel to growing into a larger one. First, let's break down the different ways to make money on YouTube. You're going to learn how to make money from ad revenue, sponsored videos, and brand deals, memberships, such as Patrion, and even Crowd funding, or YouTube memberships, affiliate sales, Live Stream, Super chat, selling your own products and services, and even more Idas that I have for photography and friends and ones that we actually already make money from include sponsored videos that might be a sponsored trip or a photo adventure, products and services. So our courses, workshops, in person or online, and then one on one coaching for photography students, and then merchandise, like our community hat or maybe a shirt or sweatshirt. In the next lesson, we're going to jump right into explaining exactly what ad revenue is and how to make more money with ad revenue on YouTube. I'll see you there. 24. Ad Revenue: You just hate having to sit through the ad at the start of a YouTube video that you're really wanting to watch. Let alone two ads at the beginning, or when it stops you in the very middle, right at that pivotal moment or scene in the video, and then an ad pops up. I hate that, too, but we have to remember this is how YouTube pays creators, and YouTube pays its creators, even though we can complain about the low ad rates that YouTubers get, it's one of the best rates for any platform out there. This is probably the easiest way that you can start making some income, and we're going to learn all about it in this lesson. We learned very early on in this course that YouTube's business model relies on ads. The more people are on the platform, the more time people are on the platform, the more ads that are clicked on the platform, the more money YouTube make and the more money it shares with creators. There are lots of different factors that contribute to how much you can make with your channel. The same size channel might not make the same amount of ad revenue, depending on the topic. And I have firsthand experience with this by putting out videos on different topics. And even within a channel, different videos can make different amounts with the same amount of views. At the time of recording, you have to be a YouTube partner program member to earn ad revenue, and you have to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time across all of your videos in the past 12 months to be eligible. So if you're not there yet, keep building your channel, and once you get there, you can start making money. Let's break down how ad revenue works on YouTube even further. Are several types of ads on YouTube. You have your display ads. These are the ones that will appear next to a video that's playing. You have your overlay ads. These will actually appear at the bottom of a playing video. You have your skippable and non skippable video ads. These are the ones that happen at the beginning, middle or even the end of videos. You have your bumper ads, which are very similar, but these ones are not skippable. They are just I think six or 5 seconds or less, and they just appear at the beginning of a video. And after the ad plays, the video starts. And then you could also have sponsored cards. Each type contributes to the overall revenue and viewer experience. As a YouTube creator, we don't have to worry too much about this, although there are ways to turn on or off specific types of ads if you don't want them on a video. For example, there are sometimes when I put out a video, oftentimes when I might be promoting a product or service that I have myself, that I don't want a YouTube ad running on, because the experience for the viewer itself is already promotional, so I don't want YouTube to add more promotion on top of that. Here are the strategies to increase your ad revenue. The first is to create longer videos, longer videos that can include a mile ad. Typically, this means a video has to be 8 minutes or longer. The key is that you need to maintain the engagement and retention of people watching that video, otherwise, YouTube won't display ads or those ads won't get clicked or viewed. So ultimately, you won't make more money because of longer videos. Second tip is to focus on higher CPM niches. CPM is cost per meal. So this is basically how much money the advertisers pay per million views or impressions. This can be done by creating videos on trending topics within your Niche or trying to connect whatever's trending out in the world with whatever you talk about on your channel. Also try to push your content in general towards something that's of higher value for advertisers if it aligns with your audience and with what you want to create as a creator. I found in my personal experience that on my channel, I put out all kinds of videos from photography tutorials to ones that are more on personal finance. Again, making the mistake of putting different topics, different nessues on one channel. That's not what you should do. However, within that, I see that the videos about personal finance make a lot more money in ad revenue than the photography tutorials. And that makes a lot of sense because advertisers who are putting ads out there for financial products and services are likely going to spend a lot more money than photography equipment advertisers. Third strategy to increase your ad revenue is to improve the video quality and engagement in your videos. This goes back to all the tips and techniques we've talked about in this course, the better the quality of your videos, the more engagement you have, the more views you're going to get, the higher rank you're going to get for your videos, the more subscribers you're going to get, and ultimately, all that leads to getting more and more views, which are going to lead to more ad revenue. Fourth strategy is to make sure that you optimize your videos for YouTube SEO. This is something that you can do going back to your old videos as well. Make sure you're paying attention to the keywords or key phrases that your video is appearing for or not appearing for, and try to improve that both in your title, your description, and also in your tags. Going back and updating all of those to optimize them for SEO, improving your thumbnails, to get higher click through rates. Of course, all of that's going to lead to more views, and therefore more ad revenue. Fifth and final tip is to have a regular posting schedule. Again, it sounds obvious, but if you have a regular posting schedule, if you're posting more frequently, that's going to lead towards more views and more ad revenue. If you're only posting one video a month or every few weeks, it's going to be very difficult to make a decent amount of money with YouTube ad revenue. Let's look at some real world examples of creators doing this. For longer videos, Johnny Harris and Yes Theory both put out videos that are often 20 minutes or longer, and this allows for mid roll ads that boost their revenue. Their video quality is super high, and it keeps that engagement and that works. Higher CPM Niche examples are ones like Graham Stephan, who makes personal finance videos, also real estate investing. These attract premium ad rates and a higher value audience in terms of from the advertisers perspective. Channel that has high video quality. Peter McKinnon, his cinematography and photography tutorials stand out from the crowded space of photography tutorials and education. And because of that, and because of his storytelling, his videos stand out, he gets more views. He's grown his channel to where it is today, and he's making a lot more money than a similar creator in this space, but putting out less quality videos. Terms of consistent posting, Drew Binsky is one of the creators who's done this. He's actually branched out and created multiple channels, some using content that he's filmed over the years of traveling the world that hasn't appeared in his main page, but he's been able to repurpose that content to tell even more additional stories. Thus, more videos, more views, more ad revenue. You can see here in the recent videos that he's posted that he's posting about one video a week. In conclusion, I would suggest trying to put into practice the tips that we've shared in this video. Perhaps trying to make some videos that lend themselves to a higher CPM. Pay attention to those high profitability, high value niches on YouTube. Do a search. To Buddy puts out a list every so often. You could find these lists online. But some of the hottest, most profitable topic areas include making money online, typical digital marketing, personal finance, educational, tech, gadgets, all of that. So new products, lifestyle, fashion, beauty and makeup, cooking, travel, fitness and body building, gaming, and then comedy and humor. Those are the top 15 earning niches, according to to Buddy. So even if you're not within one of those niches, try to make videos that will rank well for keywords that are related to those topics. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you in the next video coming up soon. 25. Sponsored Videos: Imagine making a video that you were planning to make. It's a video that you love and your audience loved. But on top of that, you're getting paid to create it. That's what sponsored videos and brand deals are all about. But before you jump into any brand deal, no, there's a right and a wrong way to do it, and that wrong way can hurt the trust that you've built with your audience and ultimately hurt your channel. So let's learn how to do it the right way. What is a sponsored video? Simply, it's a video that you're getting paid to create, where you're not specifically promoting a specific product or service throughout that video. It's not like you're making an advertisement for the latest iPhone or whatever. Perhaps it's a video where it includes a sponsored ad as part of it. However, having a little promo or a sponsorship plug is not always required for a sponsored video. There are different ways to do it, some where you don't necessarily even need to include a little promotional bit. Maybe there's some product placement or you're utilizing a product throughout the video, and there's subtle hints at that. On the opposite side, sometimes it is where you are being paid to review a product, and you have to let people know that it's a sponsored video, but that video in itself is about the product or service that you're getting paid to promote? It's super important to be transparent and honest about this, not only so that you have trust with your audience, but also to align yourself with the rules within YouTube. There's a little checkbox when you're uploading a video that says, Is there sponsored content in this video, and you need to include that because people, the public, need to be aware if you're getting paid as part of creating that video. So what are some strategies for making sponsored content? First is to build a compelling media kit. This means when someone comes to your YouTube channel, they should see a nicely polished channel that has branding, meaning colors, imagery, fonts, text, that looks similar across video. Within videos, quality of your video should be high, and including the motion graphics, title cards, graphics that you use, the editing that you use, it should all feel high quality and professional. Beyond your YouTube channel, you can create a brand kit. This includes your mission statement and about me, samples of your top performing videos, testimonials from viewers or customers of yours. And this is something you can send to companies when you're reaching out for them to partner with Once you have that together, which could be on a web page. It could simply be a Google Doc or a folder that you can send to people or a PDF that you've created with canva.com, you can reach out to companies. Sometimes this will happen organically, and companies will approach you. And in that sense, they're already putting their first foot forward, and it'll be easier to create a partnership. However, if you have a solid brand kit, you might be able to bump up the sponsorship rate for your videos. And I wouldn't be afraid of bumping up your price. I've done this in the past, where I used to think that, you know, maybe I could get paid a couple hundred dollar for a video. But when I'm busy and I don't really want to do it, but I'll do it at a certain price. I will put a price on that video. I've gone up to $10,000 for a video and had companies actually accept that. You just never know what their budget is going to be. So research and target, appropriate brands for your business. There are so many typical sponsors. Let's see, right now, you'll see better help, you'll see Nord VPN, you'll see incogni you'll see some advertisers that will want to sponsor videos in all kinds of niches. However, think about your audience, what would be beneficial for them to see and try to partner with brands that make sense. For example, I've done sponsored videos for photography gear that I've used and I love, or if it's a product that I am not aware of or I haven't used myself. I will make sure one that I can be honest about it. And also, two, I want to test it out before I commit to actually making a video. And most companies will be happy if you do that. Within YouTube, if you are a partner and eligible, under the Earn page on your studio, there's also a tool called Brand Connect, where it helps you find brands that align with your video topics. Third step is to figure out your pitch that has some sort of value proposition. If you're going out to brands yourself and trying to persuade them to pay for one of your videos to be created, you'll need to showcase why you have some sort of unique value proposition, whether it's the amount of people in your audience. It's the type of people in your audience. It's the past performance of Ads or products or services that you've promoted to your audience. Whatever it is, you need to be able to explain that in a pitch. In the fourth strategy, which we've also talked about before is that brands may approach you. If it is, just make sure you do your due diligence to know that it's a legitimate brand. Sometimes I will get e mails for products or services asking for me to review them or do a sponsored video. And I will then go look for that product or service and see what other creators have done on YouTube, because typically these brands are reaching out to multiple people, not just you, and so you might be able to find a video about that topic on YouTube to see if it's legit or not. And you want to make sure you have a contract that spells out what you are providing and what they're paying in return, when they're paying, how they're paying, whether it's directly to a bank account, pay pal, what have you. Beating successful sponsored content comes down to a few tips. One is aligning your content with your audience's interests, maintaining the transparency and trust of your audience and never misleading them about the nature of your relationship with a sponsor, and then also delivering on your promises if you have a agreement with a sponsor, making sure you fulfill those agreements. You put out a high quality product, a high quality video, because ultimately, you'll want them to sponsor another video. So you want to make sure that you're doing what you can to benefit them from what they're doing, paying you. So some real world examples of this in action, and you can look at these videos. The links are in the download for the course. First, we have Mango Street, which does a really good job at finding brands to partner with specific to their audience, like cannon or square space tools that they use and recommend as photographers. Huckberry, this is a very interesting one. This is a channel. They are a clothing company, but they have a series of videos called dirt, where the host goes out and travels across the world to different places and is basically creating a travel food show. Troughout the entire video, there's no hard promotion of products or services. They're not saying, Oh, here, today, I'm wearing this pants and this shirt from Huckberry. However, you see the products while they are traveling, you see that they're wearing them, but it's a very natural form of product placement without hard advertisement. I really think you should check this video out and see how it's working. Now, this is a video on their channel, so it's not like another creator who's being paid to make content. Huckberry. However, this would be a great example of that very organic type of sponsored video. Trot and Coffee is a creator who does a really good job about weaving in sponsored products into his videos naturally. Here's an example of one where they went up to this cabin in Canada, and he talked about, like, traveling to new places and it being tough to sleep. And then the video was sponsored by Beam, which is a sort of drink that you drink with natural elements to help you sleep. There was another recent video where he was taking a dog for a hike, and then at the top of the mountain, the dog was getting a treat. And it ended up being sponsored by the creator of whatever treat that was that he was giving the dog. So try to be creative with the ways that you transition to any sort of promotional part of your video. So if you want to be successful with brand deals and sponsored videos, make sure that one, whatever it is, it aligns with your audience, to reach out and do the work. It's not just going to come to you, especially the good brand deals that you need to put in the effort to build out a solid media kit and to start reaching out to brands that you want to work with. And then lastly, remember, these partnerships don't just benefit you with money right now. It can benefit you in the long run with more connections and exposure to another audience potentially that the brand has. Thank you so much for watching. And in the next lesson, we'll learn more ways to make money on YouTube. 26. Memberships: Loyal fans want to give you money. It's true. They know that you're providing so much value to them for free with YouTube videos, and many of them would be happy to pay a small monthly membership to help support you. That's what we're covering in this lesson on memberships, Patrion, and crowd funding. I'm going to put these into two buckets. Tube memberships and Patrion, or any other sort of platform that you can create a membership where someone pays for something on an ongoing basis to support you is a little bit different than crowd funding, but both are ways that your fans can support you in your creations. Let's break down the strategies for success. The first is to decide if you want to use Tube memberships, which is available to eligible channels, and you can actually have people pay you directly on YouTube. This has many of the same factors as a Patrin account, where you can have different levels of membership, but it's a very seamless experience for your viewers, which is one reason to potentially choose YouTube. Whereas sending them to a Patrin page, Patrin is nice, it's all set up. People know what Patrin is. They know that it's a place that they can trust to support you. However, it is taking someone off of YouTube, as we know, that's not necessarily good for the YouTube algorithm. You set up your YouTube membership, it's not going to run itself. It's not going to promote itself. So you'll need to do the promotion yourself. You can do this within your videos by promoting that you have a membership. You can do this outside of YouTube through a website, e mail list, social media, wherever you can. If that's the way that you want to be making money or one of the ways that people can support you, you need to let people know that it's an option. And whenever you promote joining a membership. It's not about just saying, Hey, become a member, support me. It's talking about the benefits that they get from that membership, whatever the perks are from early access to content, exclusive access to you through some sort of platform, through direct messaging, if you have a slack page or some sort of community where you give more access to you, bonus content, downloadables, whatever it is, make sure you're explaining the benefit that they get by becoming a member. Or it could simply be that them being a member, it helps you put out semi frequent videos on a schedule or whatever it is, but explain that benefit. And this is going to be the same for a Patrin page. I would recommend checking out what other creators are doing with Patrion or with their memberships, see what types of perks they're giving away for their members, see what price points they're using for their different membership tiers and find something that works for your audience. If you have a singular project, Doing a crowd funding campaign might be a better approach. It will provide a quick boost of income to you for a project that you're working on. There's lots of crowd funding campaigns that you could use from Kickstarter to Indy GoGo. They each have the different costs associated with them. Some, like kick starter, I believe you have to reach a certain threshold before you can get paid out versus, I believe Indy Gogo. Even if you don't reach that amount, you still get the funds. That can help or hurt a campaign. Sometimes you want there to be a threshold that your followers and fans know they need to get past for you to complete the project, and that in itself will encourage them to give you more money and help you get past that goal. But just like a YouTube membership or a patriot, your crowd funding campaign isn't going to sell itself? You need to do the work of promoting it. And with YouTube, you should have a full campaign scheduled to support a crowd funding campaign. This means multiple videos scheduled ahead of time to let people know what's happening so that they can anticipate you asking for money. It's not going to work as successfully if all of a sudden you post a video that says, Hey, support me on India GoGo. You want to let people know that you're thinking about doing something, bring them in, build that trust with them. Then once it is launched, remind them and follow up. Follow up with them after the fact, one video or one social media post isn't enough. It needs to be a full campaign. Some examples to check out include utiplier, who has a huge, huge YouTube membership. His fans and members get access to exclusive live streams, game play throughs. And this creates that loyal community that also supports him financially. Also check out CGP Gray, which has a Patrion. So check that out there. Patrion.com slash CGP Gray. I mentioned Johnny Harris as well. This is just to give you some ideas for what types of membership tiers you have. For example, we have a $7 bonus videos tier that has access to bonus videos, deleted scenes, directors commentaries, membership to their subs stack. The $10 Wall of Thanks tier has all of those, as well as letter, as well as mention on their Wall of Thanks board. For $15 a month, you can get access to their live chat on Discord. And for $100 a month, you can be a top chicken. You'll actually be listed in their YouTube video description, which is pretty awesome. A crowd funding example to check out is Danny Geertz. He is in the filmmaking Niche on YouTube, and he crowd funded his own feature film, his first feature film. He did this successfully by collaborating with other top YouTube filmmakers out there in the video production photography world. And that created a lot of synergy when they launched this campaign so that other creators were actually promoting it to their audience, and he raised almost $70,000 from that from mostly YouTube fans. So I was trying to think of ways that I could do this sort of premium content within a membership for the photography and Friends community. Some ideas include weekly Q&As. This could be like a private Q&A, a private live stream that we do, access to our private community. Behind the scenes videos, access to our full online courses and our free light room presets. Think about the content that you already might have and how you could bundle and package it together and put a little tidy bow on it to make it part of a membership. You don't have to create brand new stuff from scratch. And one super important thing to take into account is to not bite off more than you can chew. If you offer to do weekly live streams for an hour with your members, you got to make sure that you're willing to do that, even if you only have one person supporting you. So perhaps start small, start off with things that are not as time consuming. And then once you have a bigger audience that you know, you can spend more time on, then offer those higher level perks. There's any other YouTubers out there that have good examples of memberships or patrions, or crowd funding that they've done, make sure you let us know in the course Q&A. I would love to check them out and share them with the rest of the students. Thanks so much for watching this video, and we'll see you in the next one. 27. Affiliate Sales: Making money while you sleep sounds like a myth and too good to be true, but a successful YouTube could be a 24 hour money making machine. Let's learn how to do that with Affiliate sales. My approach with Affiliate sales is going to be very similar to what we saw in sponsored video. So this isn't going to be a long lesson. The difference is that with affiliate sales, you only make money when someone purchases that product. You'll get a certain percentage from that. Sometimes there's affiliate deals where you can get paid per click that goes through a specific link to a page. But generally, you're only making money if someone purchases the product or signs up for the service. So a YouTuber might be an affiliate for a product that they then link to in the description. Through a card or perhaps they have on their website, but that they send traffic to from their YouTube videos. The most successful affiliate partnerships that I've done and that will work for you are ones that align with your audience. If it's a product that you use, that you trust, and that you think your audience would actually benefit from, it makes perfect sense to be an affiliate for that product. Also, there's programs on Amazon, being a partner, where if you're going to be reviewing a product or testing out a product or recommending a product, you might as well put an affiliate link in there to make some money if anyone actually purchases it based off your advice. But at the end of the day, you need to be transparent in your videos that you are an affiliate for that product. So our strategies to successful affiliate sales. The first one is to identify and select affiliate programs that you want to be a part of There are sort of affiliate sale hubs where you join that hub, and then within that, you can get links to all kinds of products, or there are specific marketplaces like Amazon where you can become an Amazon associate and then get links to products in Amazon, that track sales, and you can make money from that, or individual products or services might have their own affiliate program. Go to a products website and usually in the bottom menu or on that site somewhere is an affiliate page with more information or just do a search for product affiliate. Apple IMAC affiliate. I'm not sure if Apple actually does affiliate sales, but you could do it through Amazon because whatever is on Amazon, you could actually be an affiliate for. So once you've picked the products, you've signed up for the affiliate accounts, which will include likely putting in information about your brand business, connecting a bank account to get paid, then you have to integrate affiliate links into your channel. The links themselves could be in the video descriptions, on your channel description or on the links at the top of your YouTube channel. It could be in using the cards within a video. Or, and this is where you can be strategic with your comments, you can put it in a pinned comment. But beyond just putting it in there, find ways within your videos to mention that there's a link to this product if you want to make more sales from it. Third step is before you even put your links in your videos, you actually have to create value driven content. This could be as on point as creating a product review. I make a video about a particular camera lens, and then I link to that lens. I talk about it, and people can decide if they want to purchase or not. Or it could look a little bit more natural. I could go out on a photo adventure and below in the description. I can include links all the gear that I was using for that shoot. That's just an example. You'll have to tailor it to your niche. The fourth and a very crucial step is to disclose your affiliate partnerships. This is actually a legal requirement for YouTube policies, and generally with most affiliate programs. You need to disclose that. Typically, this is done in a YouTube description. And last, make sure you're tracking and optimizing the performance of those videos or those links. Typically, the affiliate platforms will give you some analytics where you can track the clicks you're getting. You can see what pages they're coming from, what videos they're coming from. In that way, you can see, while this video, where I was reviewing the product did really well. Was this video, where I was just using the product was more natural, I didn't work as well. O maybe the log where you're going out, taking photos, got a lot more views and engagement with your fans, and it actually did work better. You got more clicks and sales through that link, then the direct product review. Use those analytics to see what's working, and then optimize your production to capitalize on. Some real world examples of creators doing just this. MKBHD. You can imagine he makes a ton of money from his tech reviews. If you see in his descriptions, he'll often have affiliate links for the products he's reviewing. Lifestyle YouTuber Sarah's Day. She does a lot of blogs and reviews, but she'll seamlessly integrate her favorite fitness and health products into those videos. Binging with Babish is another food related channel. That often uses specific kitchen gadgets that are mentioned with affiliate links as well. And then Pat Flynn is a good example of a master at affiliate marketing and is also a good example to see where and how he discloses those affiliate links in his video description. Affiliate sales. It's another one where you need to be proactive, finding affiliate programs to be a part of, applying for them. Not everyone will get admitted. Sometimes there's a requirement in the traffic you might have to your website or your channel, the number of followers you might have to be accepted, be proactive in finding those affiliate programs that will work for you and your audience. Make sure that you are only promoting products and services that your audience is going to be interested in. That's obviously going to work better than picking any sort of random product. Also make it clear, disclose your affiliate relationship, disclose that you've included affiliate links in your video or in your video descriptions, and to make more money from them. It's not just a post it and forget it. You have to be active in letting your audience know that there's a link to click in the description where you can purchase these products. If you're a creator on any sort of topic where you have a set of tools that you use, whether that's photography tools, or it's tools you use in the garden or it's tools you use in the kitchen or tools you use in computer programming. Put together that list of tools and have it as a resource page on your website or simply a Google doc that you can share to your audience in your description that has all of your links in one easy defined place. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you in the next video. 28. Livestream Tips: Per chat and Super stickers are a great way to make some money in exchange for doing live streams on YouTube. This is a way for people watching a live stream to pay for a comment or a sticker to be pinned and highlighted within your stream. So the benefit is that you make money, and to them, they not only support you, but they get highlighted to the rest of the audience. Every channel or location is eligible for Super chat and Super stickers at this time. However, you would find this under YouTube studio under the earning monetization page under Supers. So how do you succeed with Super stickers? The first is to get more views on your live streams. This is a way of making money only during your live streams. They don't have this available for general non livestream videos at this time. Build a schedule for livestreams, promote your livestreams on and off of YouTube to get more people there, and then, of course, make your livestream super engaging and fun to get people excited to come back and join live over and over. Check out our full section on running a great livestream to help with this. Second tip is to actively engage with the Super chat and stickers during a stream. People are paying for these chats and stickers to get some sort of recognition from you. So during your stream, make sure you're paying attention, giving them shout outs. At the start of a stream, you also want to explain to people that there is a super chat feature and what you're going to do with it. So, for example, the next step would be to offer incentives for paying for a Super chat or stickers. This might be if you're doing Q&A type live stream that you will prioritize questions that have been paid for, or it could simply be giving a shout out to that person. So some real world examples of this in action include the live streaming that gamers, like doctor Lupo do. He does a good job acknowledging each super chat personally, which encourages more viewers to participate and contribute. Similarly, Cassie Ho does live workout sessions, She gives personal shout outs, answers questions for anyone who does a Super chat. The Science channel si show hosts occasional Q&A sessions where viewers can use the Super chat to get their science questions prioritized and answered by the hosts. And check out MKBHDs live streams to see how he explains what a Super chat is and how it helps the channel. Ultimately, it's a feature that if you have turned on, isn't going to sell itself, like everything that we've learned in this video, you need to show the benefit that someone's going to get by purchasing a super chop. Don't think this is going to be a huge moneymaker for you until you have a large enough audience to run live streams with many, many people there. I don't think Super Chat and Super stickers are going to be a huge revenue stream for smaller channels. And it might be something to consider in the future if you're just starting out, but work on growing your audience and figuring out how to do live streams that create a bunch of engagement and get a lot of viewers there. Only then would I consider focusing on Super C chat and stickers as a form of revenue for your channel. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next lesson. 29. Selling Your Own Products or Services: Whether you have existing products or services or you create new ones, your YouTube followers will be the first in line to pay for them. So in this lesson, we're going to learn how to make some money by selling your own products and services. Doing this can be the most lucrative method of making money because you have more control over this than any of the other ways that we've talked about in this course. You have control over the product or service itself. If it's something that you want to do, something that your audience is going to want, and you have control over the pricing of the product. Break down the strategies for success. The first step is product development. Make sure you're creating something that your audience needs. This can be done by conducting audience surveys or polls to gauge interest in a potential product offering. I've done this in the past when I in brain storming new course ideas, I do a poll to see who is interested, and then I'll base the priority of course production off of that. You may have an idea for a product that you think is super interesting. Maybe you're creating a course or maybe you want to create an E book. But your audience might simply prefer getting a hat with your logo on it. It's so important for any business, which includes a YouTube channel. It's a good idea for any business, including a YouTube channel to do this analysis up front. The second step is to put your product online, somehow set it up so that it's seamless for someone to purchase it. There's lots of platforms out there like Shopify, whoo commerce that allow you to put a product online, any sort of digital product. Other platforms that are more specific to certain types of products like T spring for hats, merchandise clothing. There's platforms like Utomi or teachable or T Giffi that are for online courses. Put your product online, get the links to that product and run through the entire customer experience of going to those links, purchasing the products, and having that product delivered to make sure that it actually works. The next step is to promote the product. You could offer exclusive discounts to your YouTube followers in a video. You could have links to your products in all of your descriptions, use cards on your channel itself. But just like any business, you're going to need to do the work to promote it to make any sales. Once you have sales, make sure you're utilizing the social proof that you have to get more people to purchase your product or service. Throughout the customer journey, this can be done in a follow up e mail or some sort of post tagging purchasers, ask them to share photos, videos, testimonials of themselves with the product using the product or what they thought of the product. You could use this in future videos when you promote a product or on your website, on a product page as well. And throughout the entire process, make sure that you prioritize excellent customer service, especially when you get started and you first launch a product or service, make sure that customer journey is seamless and easy. So first have a contact page or an e mail that people can reach out to if they have any concerns. Also do the follow up work of surveying customers to see if there's ways you can improve that customer journey. Let's look at some real world examples of YouTubers doing this. Mango Street has put out a digital product, light room recess. So these are presets that make photos look a certain way. It's a super simple file to deliver online, and it's one that they continually promote in their videos. Another example of an actual product that was created is the switch pod by P n. He collaborated with Caleb Wagi another Tuber to create this handheld logging tripod. He saw the need in the market for something like this, and he actually developed it, has a factory manufacturing them, and it's a full scale business now. That's a little bit extreme and not for everyone. Peter McKinnon, the photographer sells his prints, and that's an example of another product that you could sell. And back to Pat Flynn, he has some examples of services that he sells in terms of horses and membership to his community on his more entrepreneurial side of his business. A great example of merge is yes theory and their Sk discomfort line. They have a full website dedicated to this. Not every YouTube is going to need or want to create a full website and brand with all kinds of merchandise. Maybe it's just a simple hat or one T shirt with your logo or a design that you're selling to support you. But they have done a good job at creating Whole line of clothing that they promote. One thing they do that really does well is have limited time sales or limited numbers of the product that they sell, which encourages people to buy right then. So check out their channel to see how they promote their merchandise. A lot of it is by wearing their clothing within their videos. And then lastly, let's look at an example of a membership service different than the Patrion or YouTube memberships. There's other platforms where you can host a community or have a membership that gets access to different things, met safety of I will teach you to be rich, has a personal finance geared membership that he promotes in his videos. So if you can do any sort of coaching or educational, training that's a great service to promote through your videos. Let's look into photography and friends. We actually have products and services that we already promote. One is our courses. So here's an example of one of them, the Photography master class. This is our main beginner friendly course that we promote to our audience. We also have coaching calls so members can actually sign up and get one on one support with one of our teachers. And then we have different digital products like our light room presets. As a content business myself, most of our revenue comes from selling online courses and teaching people. YouTube drives a lot of traffic to those courses, and we make some money from YouTube ad revenue, from merchandise. But the bulk of our revenue comes from the digital products and memberships that we sell related to our educational offerings. And I think it's a much better long term approach to build a business off of YouTube than to build a business on YouTube. That makes sense? With ad revenue, with YouTube memberships, live chat, Super chat. All of that revenue depends on people watching your YouTube videos. If you build a business of products or services off of YouTube, even if YouTube disappeared, you can still run that business, and you can use YouTube as a promotional strategy to build that business. But you could also use other platforms like social media to drive traffic and grow that business as well. It really depends on what you want to do. You might not have digital products or services or physical products that you want to promote on a YouTube video. And maybe all you want to do is get brand deals and make ad sense money, and you just want to be making money on YouTube the platform. And at this time, that is still a viable option for making decent income for many creators. In conclusion to this entire money making section of the course, making money on YouTube is not easy. It's not going to be quick, but if you stick with it, I believe anybody in any Niche can be successful. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next lesson. 30. Best Practices for Livestreaming on YouTube: Have a question for you. Are you ready to get intimate Intimate with your audience? If you said yes, then it's time to live stream. That's what this section is all about. Live streaming is a great way to engage at a deeper level with your audience, to turn those casual viewers into loyal fans. I actually really enjoy live streaming, but I know that it can be daunting to have the setup, to do it right, to make sure it looks good, but also to be there to be vulnerable, you can't edit out the mistakes. You have to be there ready to go on with the show as they say. So let's look into strategies for successful live streaming on YouTube. The first strategy is to get the right gear for your live stream and make sure you test it out and you are ready to go. It's a good idea to run a private, not public live stream, to make sure it all works properly. Both your gear and your studio, your lights, your camera, connecting it to your computer, as well as the on computer apps that might be helping you run the show. We'll talk all about that gear Next tip is to plan your content, make sure you have a loose script or set of bullet points that you can follow that keep you going, but also be willing to be flexible and change things up, depending on what your livestream is all about. It's one thing to have a livestream of some sort of existing event, or maybe you're doing like a gaming livestream where you're just playing a game, you're walking through it, talking through it versus if you're doing more of like a show, where you're on camera, you're talking through some tips, doing some education, or just talking through something, and then you have your audience there, and they're wanting to participate as well. Having that plan will make a higher production product, though. And some of my favorite live dreams have been when I've actually created a schedule. I have a slide show that we're going through. And then we also have time for Q&A and audience interaction and all of that. My next strategy is to make sure that you are promoting your livestream. You want to have people there, right? Live dreams don't do that well in the YouTube feed after the fact. YouTube, the algorithm treats it as something that would have been more beneficial to be there live. And so you need to get people there. Whatever audience you have, which might be small when you're starting out, but it's on YouTube, if it's on another platform, if you have an email list, whatever it is, make sure you're actually promoting your livestream ahead of time. And I know that It takes more than one touchpoint. It takes more than one message to get people to a live stream. Even if they've subscribed, even if they've RSVP a week ago, make sure you're sending out a follow up announcement the day of before the Live Stream starts and potentially right when the Live Stream starts as well. The good thing is that YouTube automatically will send an e mail to the subscribers who have those notifications turned on when you are going live. However, if live streams are going to be a part of your core content, regularly, it's a good idea to set up some other way to announce this. E mail is probably the best, or if you have a community platform somewhere else, and of course, social media too. The next strategy that you need to remember when you're doing a live stream is to engage with your audience. Even though it might feel a little awkward when you're talking to the camera, You need to remember that there are actually people there listening and watching you. So come up with ways to engage with them, ask questions, have a list of topic ideas to get opinions on. Don't just be sitting there talking about your content like you would in a normal video. You need to figure out ways to actually be engaging with the viewers who are watching it. And that means making sure you have the comments up and you can be paying attention to comments coming in during your life stream. Could also incentivize engagement. You can turn on the Super chat if you want to and highlight specific comments or questions or answer those questions, and that's a great way to increase your revenue through live streams, but I wouldn't focus on that until you have a pretty decent audience, where you're getting hundreds of people to your live dreams every time regularly. Next is to have some follow up after the stream. Your streams can create a ton of valuable content repurposed as shorts or repurposed as a highlight video. So don't just let your stream die in stream graveyards. Make sure you're using that content in other ways. This is also something that you might want to consider outsourcing or using AI tools, like get Munch video or OPS clip that will actually automatically select clips from a longer video and edit them out into shorts. Or you could take the transcript from a video and plug it into something like chat GPT and ask it for the top moments from that transcript, and it'll help you edit faster. Let's look at some real world examples of people doing this. Here we have Pat Flynn, who started deep pocket Monster. I've mentioned this before, but he does regular live streams. Check out his channel, check out his live streams. He's a master at doing live streams, engaging with the audience and making it just super engaging for people watching live. And even after the fact, you can also see his setup. He's got different camera gear and tools that allow him to switch camera angles and all sorts of stuff. We'll be going over some of that too in this course. Other example is Ninja. He's one of the top gamers out there, and if you're interested in doing a gaming livestream, then might as well learn from the best, so check out his channel. And then also check out our live streams. We have a number of live streams that we've done for the Photography and Friends community. You can see a couple of different examples of what this looks like. November. November, welcome to our Live. So here you can see that I'm on a call or a stream with two co instructors. We use a tool called ECAM Live for this. There's other tools that do that. And we just jump forward. So in this example, what we are doing is we're looking at lots of questions that we have previously gotten on our community space. So this is a great way if you are an educator to condense the amount of work that you need to do, rather than spending time answering questions on a forum, in your courses, every day. You can say that every week, I'm going to be going over the top questions and answering them live. Here's an example of that. Yeah. Her follow up or another question was business related base to make selling wildlife and landscape prints. Here's a spot where you can see lots of comments coming through, and with ECAM live, you can highlight comments and actually quickly bring them up onto the screen with one button. And here we're answering those questions live. So that's one example of how we did a live stream, which is a little bit more rough and ready. Here's an example of one that is a little bit more polished where we have a slide show presentation prepped for it. Maybe you want to just talk a little bit about what this course is and why it's awesome. Even those, and there's prizes. Cash prizes. Actually, Amazon. Buddy. Amazon gift card prizes. Will and Sam and bring them in to do, like, exclusive interviews or Q&A. So this is just some examples of the slides that we put together. And the way we run these typical livestreams is we have a presentation. We might be going over some sort of topic. But then we open it up to Q&A. But you've seen here that we've used our livestream as a way to promote some outside products, new courses, services, also to get feedback from members. It's a great time to survey your audience and get immediate direct feedback for anything you're doing. You could actually have somewhat of a conversation with them. And that's what we were doing here. And then later on, we have this live Q&A little title card that we bring up. If we are just answering questions. Here you can see that we've pinned my comment up here for posting comments, but lots of people asking questions here and always fun to do a live stream. If you're wondering, should I do a live stream, I definitely think you should. It's a great way to build that relationship with your audience. You do have to be vulnerable. You do have to be open to making mistakes and just rolling with the punches and continuing with the show, but it's a good skill to have, and it will help grow your audience. Now, I don't think that it's practical if your audience is zero, if you're just starting out. But even once you have 100 subscribers, 1,000 subscribers, it can be a really great way to turn those subscribers into loyal fans, which will eventually help get more and more subscribers and grow your channel. So in the next lesson, we're going to tackle the equipment you need to Livestream. I'll see you there. 31. Equipment for Livestreaming: This lesson, we're breaking down the equipment you need to live stream. We're going to go over a basic and more high end version of this. I always think starting out with basic, more affordable equipment is the right thing before you invest in something super high quality. Although you might have equipment that you could use like a nicer camera for a live stream, but you might just need a way to connect it to your computer. Increase in quality can make your videos look more professional, be more visually pleasing and ultimately create more engagement and keep people on your live streams, rather than of course, if your livestream looked or sounded bad. There's this balance. But let's start with the basic setup that I would start with. In terms of a camera, you could use your computers webcam. However, there are some affordable webcam options like the Logitech C 920. They also have the Logitech Brio, which is a four K camera make your video look better for a fraction of the cost of a full blown professional camera. These webcams are also plug and play. You don't need any other equipment to connect it to your computer. Also, it's much easier to compose your image right with proper eye level and with a good framing than moving your computer up or down. You also might want to use your computer and do some live screen casting during your live stream. Which can get awkward if you don't have a separate camera. I would definitely recommend upgrading your microphone even before getting a separate webcam or camera. One example is the Blue Yeti, which is a USB microphone plug and play again that you can get for less than $100. Many YouTubers use it. There are so many other options out there, and the price can really jump up. But again, I think having good audio is more important than video quality for pretty much any video, but especially for live streaming. So you do not want to just use your internal computer microphone for a live stream. Lighting is also important. Unless you have a very nicely lit room with lots of windows and light coming in. Even if you're using a webcam, you can make it look pretty good with some light. Newer is a super affordable video equipment brand. You can find their stuff on Amazon, BH photo video. They have a ring light that looks really good for anybody streaming on to a webcam or on a computer. There's also a brand called Aperture, which makes higher end products, but they have a sort of mid to lower tier called Amaran which is LID panels, and I'm actually using one of their panels right now to light me, along with the window, I have a back light from another brand called Dre cast, and then the room light, which adds a little bit of ambience, it's a pretty professional setup. However, the light I didn't cost an arm and a leg. Let's go over some more advanced equipment that you might want to consider. So if you want to take your video to the next level, I would use a DSLR or mirrorless camera. Most of them will have an output, which is a mini HDMI output, and to get that onto the computer, because you can typically just plug a camera straight into a computer via USB and have it stream properly. You'll need a separate link device, a converter, such as the legado Cam Link. I'm using a different capture card, which is another term you might hear for them from Maj Well, MA GGE WELL. And I'm using my Fuji film camera. Right now, it's the Fuji T four, and I can use it for recording or for live streaming. And once you have it connected with one of these tools, it usually just pops up as an option when you're selecting cameras for your Beyond the Blue snowball or Blue Yeti, that kind of quality of USB microphone, we have higher quality microphones like the S SM seven B, which is super popular with U tubers. There's the road podcaster, which is a USB mic. If you are using another mic like the SR or what I'm using right now, the Hyle PR 40 which is an ER microphone that's the input. It doesn't connect directly to a computer either. You need a middle box which converts the signal to the computer, such as this focus right scarlet two I two, which is what I use, and you can plug microphones into it, and then it has a USB output that goes to your computer. Are other audio interfaces as well. But just if you're trying to do your own research, search for audio interface L R to USB. Another thing that can take your live streams to a more professional level, if you like that style is to do green screens. And so Elgado makes a green screen. They have some lights as well. You could use any lights for a green screen. However, what's important with a green screen is you need to have the green screen itself lit evenly, meaning that it's not like brighter on one side versus the other. So what you typically want to do is have enough lights to light the subject, as well as lights to light the green screen itself. At the basis, you need two lights shining on the background from either side evenly, and then you'll need one extra light on the subject. And you could get away with maybe one light on the subject and one light on the background, but it will just look better, and the green screen will be able to be removed by whatever software you're using more easily if it's lit more evenly. And so that'll take a couple lights to do that. There are different options for software and encoding tools that can use to switch camera angles, add title cards, live stream or screen cast from your computer screen and switch between all of those while you are live streaming. OBS is a free tool that a lot of people use because it's free, it's open source. It's multi platform. However, I use another one called ECM. And let me show you that really quick. You can see me on the computer now. This is what ECM Live looks like. You can see that I can switch between my webcam, which is on my computer, and then also my Fuji camera, and you can quickly see the difference in what that looks like. You can change it so I can see my desktop. I can move my video around. If I had someone that I was interviewing, they could come in here and I could put their camera on here as well. You could have multiple people as well. You could play files. So if I want to play a video, I could choose that file from this menu. And there are so many other tools. You can set up scenes as well down here with the scene menu, where you could have a scene with U split screen with another interviewee. You could have you in the bottom corner with a green cast. You could have you with green screen being removed. And so you can set all of that up with these scenes and then quickly using keyboard shortcuts, one, two, three, jump between those different screens or scenes rather. You have all of your audio and video settings here that you can use to make it look and sound a different way. We have our camera effects. So right within here, I have a green screen option. I can adjust some of the settings like brightness and color and everything like that. I can mirror this. Make it black and white, et cetera. Blur add blur to the foreground. And you can do this for any camera that you are using or a guest that you are interviewing. Also with ECM Live, it records to your computer so that you'll have the file available to edit after the fact, as well. Now that you have a basic understanding of how the equipment works and the different options for on the computer software, I'm actually going to show in the next lesson how to set up and start a live stream on YouTube because it can get a little bit confusing. So we'll head into YouTube studio and learn that next. 32. Step By Step Livestreaming on Youtube Demonstration: So now in this lesson, I want to go into YouTube and show you how to set up a live stream. The easiest way to do that is just clicking the Create button and choosing G live. I'm going to show you how to do this both just using YouTube's live streaming software built into the platform, which has some good options for streaming from a camera. Doing your screen, but it doesn't have all the options that using OBS or ECM live would do, which we'll go over in the next video. So once you choose Go live, you'll want to choose webcam over here. I'm just going to say Test webcam test. This is where you want to include all your SEO optimized keywords so that this shows up later on. It's going to be set to your webcam here. You could choose all your stuff that similar to what we've seen in the YouTube studio setup. Then click next. Here we have customization for your live chat. So you can turn on or off live chat. You can turn it off for the replay or turn it on. So that if people are watching it after you've streamed, it's like they're commenting with other people at that moment in time of the video. You could also turn on or off who can do it. So anyone, just subscribers, or just people who are live watching with you, And then also, you have a message delay option here. If you're getting too many comments, if it's just too crazy, you can have a pause between when people can how often people can comment. Next, you have your visibility. I'm going to keep this unlisted because this is a test. The schedule, it's basically right now unless we want to choose a later time. We can set that at a later date and then come back when it's time to stream, and then click Done. And once it's done, we have this option for going live. Here we can choose our camera or our audio, so I'm going to make sure it's on my good camera, good microphone, and then click Go live. So once it connects and says, You're live. That means we are actually technically live streaming out to our audience. Here, we can see chats coming in. We could add poles and start a Q&A with this menu down here. We could share our screen or a tab right here. You could edit your settings over here and then end your stream right here. And that's what I'm going to do, but it's pretty cool because if this was public, I'd actually be going out, reaching out to my audience. We'd see the number of people watching this, the likes, and all of that here as well. I'm going to go ahead and end that stream because now I want to show you the more advanced way. But if you're just getting started out, that's the simplest way to set up a live stream and get started doing it. Once you've finish, you can click Edit in Studio. There's actually a way to trim and cut your live streams using the built in video editor. You have all of your other pages as well for each video, such as your details, or you can add more things like tags and things that we didn't have before, all of these other options here. But now what I want to show you is how to go live with streaming software. So back here on the Go Live page, if I click Stream, here's where you can find all of the information for your stream. If you have software, you might not need to adjust any of this because you might be able to set it up on through that software. With ECM Live and OBS, you can set up streams with ECM Live, you could schedule out streams, and you never even have to touch the back end of your studio, which I find to be a little bit easier. However, if you're using OBS and using the studio, let me show you how you would do that. First, I would want to create a new stream key. So I would want to set this up as a test Photo Friends Live, add your description. Leave this as RTMP, and then click Create. Now, this is going to be a stream key that if you're using any other streaming software, that's going to be important because you can plug in this key and this URL, and it will connect your streaming software to YouTube and allow you to go live using that software. Now, what I'm going to do is open OBS and show you how to use OBS to do that. So I have open OPS. I'm already looking at my video camera and my audio. And this is not a full OBS tutorial. There's lots of YouTube videos out there for that. But I do want to show you how to connect your video and audio. Really, that's the main thing, this video capture device and audio input capture. If you don't see these options, just click this plus button, and then you could add audio input capture. And then if you scroll down, there's a video capture device. Double click each of those, and that allows you to change the camera that you are using. Once it's here, you can adjust the position, the size. You can see that behind me, I have my display capture. But for this stream, I really just want my video. And then same with audio, I can adjust the audio, make sure it's the right audio. I can see it coming in here, and that's the right microphone. Always double check that you're using the right microphone. Next, we can go into settings. We could adjust all of the things like our output resolution. I would just leave this as is, unless you know based off your software or something's happening wrong, you might need to decrease your video rate. You might want to increase it to increase the quality. You can also adjust the recording settings so that you can save the file to your computer and edit it after the fact. The most important thing here is the stream. So here on OBS, the easiest way to do it is to connect a video account or a YouTube account. And this allows you to just stream directly through OBS to YouTube without having to copy and paste that RTM PS code. So once you're happy with your settings, now we have to connect this to the existing live stream that we are starting on YouTube. To do this, it's a little bit confusing, but just click Manage Proadcast. Stead of creating a new broadcast, which we could have done by skipping this process on YouTube and just done it straight from OBS and done it all within here. We're going to choose Select existing broadcast and then choose this automatically created photography and Friends live stream and choose Select broadcast and start streaming. Now, what that's going to do is it's going to start sending this signal to YouTube. And we're going to see now that it has a connection here, and it's going to bring up our video here as well. And now we can see that we are pushing out signal from OBS to YouTube. So if you're using OBS and you're setting up your stream settings, the name of your stream here on YouTube, make sure you're using that existing channel stream and not starting a new stream right on OBS. And then we can see an OBS. We can see a chat window here as well so that we Se our live chat right within OBS. You could add your screen cast or anything else. You can share a slide show, anything else you want to do here in OBS, which can get pretty advanced. And similar to ECAM Live, you can set up scenes so that it's saved, so you don't have to be adjusting it right in the middle of a stream, but you could just click the button and it'll jump to your screen cast with a video of you or a green screen or split screen with a guest or whatever it is that you want. And then same thing. Once we exit out of this, we're going to exit our stream, and it's going to stop streaming to YouTube. And YouTube will automatically send the stream or you can click this n Stream button up here to end your live stream. Similarly, we could go in here and edit this video on YouTube, but I did want to just show you the one other option. So Sam here in YouTube or in OPS. I want to I'm not even on YouTube, and I want to start streaming. I can just click Manage Broadcast. I will call this Test Broadcast two. I'm going to make this unlisted. No, it's not made for kids. And then I'm just going to say, create broadcast and start streaming. Now, I haven't touched anything on YouTube. I'm going to start streaming right now. We can see that it's streaming. We can see our chat. And now, when I'm done, I'm going to say it. Yes. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to my YouTube studio. So we can see how that video ends up on our channel. So if it was live and not unlisted, if it was public, it would have been live on our channel. And then if we go to the live tab under content, we can see that this broadcast just appeared Test broadcast two. You do have to kind of decide how you want to set up your livestream, whether you're just using the YouTube platform. You're using sort of a combination of the platforms because I do kind of like the interface of what this looks like, especially with the chat. You have the options for engagement, polls and things like that that are a little bit harder to do with OBS. Thank you so much for watching this video, and I'll see you in the next one. 33. Livestreaming with Ecamm Live on YouTube: In this lesson, I quickly wanted to just show you how to set up a stream using ECM Live. It's super easy. So here, once you have ECM Live open, you can turn on Stream and record. If you just want to stream, you can just leave stream on, and then click New down here. Here you can set up the channels that you want to stream to, which is cool because with ECM Live, you can broadcast to multiple places, YouTube and Facebook and any other service that has a streaming option. Although, depending on your Internet connection, you can only do so many at one time. And then you would just say, give it a title description. Similarly, change the visibility to what you want. And then you could schedule it, which is cool because if you have it scheduled, it will just show up down here as an option. And once it's that date, you just click on it, and it will open up that live stream or go live now and then just click Go live. If I click Go Live, it's just going to start going live and similarly to what we saw with OBS before, it's just going to go live. But now let me just show a live stream. We're going to put it at a future date. Click Schedule. You can add your YouTube thumbnail here as well. And now we have this upcoming button down here. So if we click coming, we can see all of our upcoming live stream. So you can set these up ahead of time. Then once the date approaches for this, and it's right within that time frame, it will appear here and you just click a button that says, Go live. Super easy to do with ECM live as well. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in another lesson. 34. Overview of YouTube Analytics: Welcome to this new section all about analytics. I think this is a topic that lends itself to having its own section. It's so important, not only navigating the analytics page, which this lesson is all about, but how do we actually use these analytics to help us grow our YouTube channel? We're going to be diving into real world examples and covering all of this in this section. Here we are in YouTube studio on the analytics page. This can get pretty confusing pretty quickly. So first, I just want to give you a little overview of this page and what it has to offer. In the follow up videos, I'm going to tackle specific ways to use analytics to help you out. But first, we need to get sort of accustomed to what is all of this data that analytics is providing? When you go to analytics, you'll be on the overview page, which gives you just that, an overview of the past 28 days. So notice up here in the right hand corner, you could always adjust time, the length of time to what you want to see. So, we have our views, our watch time, our subscribers, and our estimated revenue for me for the past year. We can see lifetime, which is pretty interesting to see for this channel, which has done pretty well for being just a small part of my business revenue, 100 k does not hurt at all, and you can see some spikes here and there where I have a couple of videos that have gone a little bit more viral in there, which is pretty exciting. We can click on any of these tabs to jump to those specific metrics. Over on the right hand side, we have a real time look at our subscriber count views in the last 48 hours and our top performing content. If we scroll down, staying over on the right hand side, we see our latest content, which we sort of saw on our dashboard, and then our top content from that period in terms of total views. So you can see these videos of mine, and it includes for me both my longer videos as well as shorts that I've put out. Then we have our content page, which is how we can dive into analyzing all of our videos and how they are performing even more. So now we have an exact look at how many views, the impressions that we are making, the impressions click through rates. And this is that click through rate that we want to pay attention to, especially with individual videos, how good is a video doing compared to another one? We can analyze, Okay, what did I do for that thumbnail? What did I do for that title to get that higher click through rate. To see more information about any of these metrics, you can click the C More page, which opens up this window, that can get very confusing, and we're going to see different examples of this. But once we open that up from clicking on the impressions click through rate, we are on a stat that has that rate that we saw here, 6.9%. Now, right now, this doesn't tell me anything different. However, if I want to see the individual videos and how which ones have done the best? I can click on content because that's just sort of the average of our entire channel. So I can click on content, and now I see my top ranking videos based off of click through rate. So I can see, Okay, well, what is it about these videos that have done better in the past 28 days? Remember, we're still only looking at the past 28 days. Now, some of these videos are a little bit old. And so maybe I just want to look at my most recent videos. So up here, we have this filter. Right now it's filtering to just videos versus if I take this out, it will also include things like short and live videos. So without it for my channel, it doesn't matter that much because I don't have too many of those, but we can also filter by published date, for example. So I can choose, Okay, videos published in the past two weeks. I'm not even sure if I've published any. Okay, so I haven't published in the past two weeks, but I can go back and let's do let's just go even farther back. December 2023. To today. And now I can see on my latest videos what the highest clickthrough rate was. And I could then analyze that. Okay, was it something to do with the thumbnail? Is it something to do with the text? Is it something to do with the title that I used for these individual videos? I'm going to exit out of here so that we don't get to loss for now with those stats. Because back here on the content page, there's some other quick tools and things to look at. So we can go strictly to our shorts and see how well our shorts are doing. And then down below, whether you have videos or shorts, there's different metrics such as key moments for audience retention. So this is really helpful to know which videos are keeping the audiences Tension. This video, for example, all the way to 68%, this one to 66% versus these ones down here, which have a lot lower. And I know that because these are some promotional videos for new courses that I've released. And so that's why those have a lower retention. But we can use that data to say, Okay, well, maybe I shouldn't be posting these videos that have lower audience retention because that's hurting my channel on YouTube. We have this one video selected that has the highest retention, and over here on the right hand side, we can see a graph of that and see where retention spikes or where it can start to dip off. You could even click on these little filters over here that will show you the spikes and dip for your different content. Good to see. We can say, Okay, where does it dip? We watch that video? We can say, Okay, well, was I editing my video a certain way? Was I talking a certain way? Was it too slow? Something off topic? Why did it dip? And let's not do that again? And contrast that with Spikes. Okay, what was I doing where it spiked? And let's do more of that. If we scroll down, these are also some good metrics right here. How viewers find your videos. This gives you an overview of people coming from search. External traffic. This will be something like people searching on Google or if your video was embedded on another website, the suggested videos, which show up on the right hand side, when someone searches and plays another video. You can dive into the external data and see, k, what websites are driving traffic to your videos. Ed Puzzle. I have no clue what Ed puzzle is, but it's good to know. Maybe it's a potential partnership. I can see what that website is. And if it makes sense to maybe reach out to them and see if they can post more of our content on their site, that might help. YouTube search is also very, very important and helpful because we can see, okay, what specific terms are people searching for, and then they end up back on our videos, like Export After Effects, how to Export after effects, A for effects. We can click S More, and it will again pop up this in depth analytics window already on the traffic source page, which is where we can see those even more in depth analytics about these keywords and key phrases. Suggested videos is also very interesting because this is showing you, k, what videos on YouTube do your videos show up for as a suggested video? Ideally, it's videos that are related to your core topic and Niche. Switching over to the audience tab. Here, we can see how many returning viewers we have, which is very good to know versus new viewers. Obviously, we want a lot of returning viewers. We want those loyal fans. We have unique viewers. So how many individual viewers have come to our channel or watched a video of ours. We can see the subscribers that we're gaining. And the most basic way to use any of these metrics is to literally just look at this data over time, and see, Okay, what was happening right around here where I was getting more subscribers? Was there a video that I was posting right on this date around June 11 that led to more subscribers. Was there a video that got more views, et cetera, more retention at that moment in time? And let's do that again. Below this, we have some more analytics on who's watching our videos, when they're watching our videos, what formats they like, where they are located. All of these things can help. We talked about creating subtitles before if there is a specific audience that speaks another language. And you have a high percentage of people from that country or that place that speak that language. It might be beneficial to go ahead and create subtitles in that language. Down below, more demographic information, age and gender. And this can just help you decide, Okay, most of my viewers are male between the age of 18 and 34, maybe 18 to 44, this can help me tailor maybe the topics that I'm making videos on, maybe the way that I speak about a topic, or I could look at it and say, Okay, I really want to increase my female viewership. How can I tailor my content so that it's more likely that a female may want to view my video? We saw the revenue tab before. This is a quick way to see how much money you're making from your channel, your overall revenue. You can see past months. You can see the content that's performing the best, where you are making money, which videos, versus shorts, et cetera. And again, all of these things, you can click S More, and it will open up that bigger window with more data on that analytic. We're going to see more of that coming up in a future lesson as we dive deeper. And then lastly, we have this tab on research, which is pretty cool. It allows you to research topics. For example, it gives us some ideas for top searches related to our channel. We can see other videos related to the topics we've created content on. And that can give us some information on, Okay, maybe I need to create a video about AI editing with Adobe Creative Cloud or generative AI in Premiere Pro. And this data will not be available for brand new channels. You'll have to be posting videos for a while for YouTube to be able to analyze the types of content you're putting out, the keywords that people are finding your videos with or the keywords in your videos. And then it will start to populate this data. Alright, so that's a overview of the analytics. And in the next videos, we're going to dive into specific techniques you can use to grow your channel using analytics, even for small channels. I'll see you there. 35. Use Analytics to Know the Best Time to Post a YouTube Video: Now that we know how to navigate the analytics page, let's dive into how to actually use these analytics, analyze them for our success. Use your analytics to know when the very best time to release a new video is. Go to the audience tab and then scroll down, and here you can see when your viewers are on YouTube. The darker purple is the time that More people are on YouTube versus the lighter purple. And this is the time that you want to be posting videos or just before this time so that your videos are there live for them. So here I can see that around 7:00 A.M. To nine or 10:00 A.M. Mostly on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays are the biggest viewing days, but also Mondays. So ideally, if I have a new video, I would be publishing videos right before then. So maybe at like 6:00 A.M. Monday through Thursday. That makes sense. That's typically a good time to post a video, but who knows? Maybe your audience is different. Go here and see when your audience is online and post then. 36. Use Analytics to Know What Types of Videos Your Audience Watches: You need a topic for your next videos, it would be nice to know what your audience is watching so that you can create a video with your take on that topic or your style. You can see that on the audience page over here under channels your audience watches, as well as what your audience watches. So here we can see some videos that my audience is watching, how to export with transparent background and after effects, how to design and animate an intro like Vox. I am trying to just ignore all of the baseball videos because that's not what this channel is about. And so this would say, Hey, okay, I should probably create some tutorials that show after effects animation like they do with Vox. That's a great topic to create, and I've never actually thought about that. So if you are looking for ideas that will have a higher chance of working, head over here and check it out, as you can see that might not have this information if you have a small audience, if you're not getting a lot of views. Even this channel doesn't have enough eligible audience data to show what channels your audience is working, watching rather. But if it does, that's super helpful because then you can check out those channels and see what they're posting, and hopefully it will inspire you. 37. Get More YouTube Subscribers with Analytics: Knowing where your subscribers come from is super important. So here we are under the audience tab under subscribers? Click S More, and we can get all of this information about where these subscribers are coming from. On this page, we can see right now, it's just bringing up our content, and we're seeing, Okay, who which video is driving the most subscribership? And this is a great way to see, After effect torial, Proper Ptorial. How do you sequences? These are videos that are driving subscribers? Contrast that with maybe some of these other videos that aren't. Compare and contrast the ones that have a high subscriber ship and ones that don't, and then create more videos that are related to those videos that bring in more subscribers. You can also use this advanced feature to compare to a different metric. For example, we can see year over year over the same period of time, which videos are driving more subscribers. For example, if we look at the last year, it brings up this comparison on the left and right, we can see, last year, Well, it was actually pretty similar. It was a lot of the same videos. But this would be good to know that, well, maybe this means that in the past year, I haven't been putting out videos that have been driving subscribership, and so something needs to change. And so that's another great way to use analytics to determine what types of content you should create to increase your subscriber rate. 38. Use Filters for Advanced YouTube Analytics: Way that we can use our analytics in a more advanced way is to utilize the filters to see exactly what we want to see. So we can pop open the advanced mode, which is basically the S more mode, but we can customize exactly what we want to look at with our filters, and then this drop down here for what we want to see. So if we go to more metrics, we can see things like average percentage viewed, which is a different metric than average view duration, and more important because it shows us which videos get the highest retention or the highest percentage viewed. Currently, this just shows it for all of our videos, but it's probably more important to filter it by shorts or long form videos. So if we want to filter by shorts, we can type in short and then filter by content type shorts, and now we can see just shorts. Super cool. Now we can see which short performed the best on our channel. If we want to filter even more, we can see filter by new, type in new, and we can see new and returning viewers. We just want to see new viewers. So this filters out our subscribers or returning viewers, which is super helpful to see, k, which short performed the best for new viewers to our channel. Let's go ahead and look at videos and not shorts. And let's also filter by published date and look at videos that were published in the past three years. But that filters out some of those older videos that just rank well and are solidified in that ranking and sort of outcompete the rest of my videos on this channel. So I can see here new videos, which ones have the highest percentage viewed? Alright, this premiere pro tutorial how to create a bullet list. Well, that makes sense because this is a super short video. It's only 29 seconds. Let's look at this one. A minute 45. Okay, another short video. So not terribly insightful to know that this got 52% watch. However, we can go down to some of these other videos and see, Okay, which ones that are a little bit longer got a higher percentage. This one right here, warm and bright, color grading and Premiere Pro, 40%, that's pretty high. Creating videos around that length might be a nice spot to aim for for future tutorials. 39. Increase YouTube Ad Revenue with Analytics: You're trying to make content that's going to earn more ad revenue. The best way to do that is to see which videos, do exactly that, make the most revenue. So go into your CMO or your advanced analytics. And here we can see based off of right now our past 28 days, the videos that have the highest earned revenue. And then we would simply just look at this and see, Okay, these are topics that are making more revenue, and I want to make more of those. Notice something, I just want you to show that not all of these metrics here are going to be clickable. If I open something like average percentage viewed, which we saw previously, that's a metric that we can't reorder by highest to lowest, which is a little bit frustrating. But if you hover over any of these metrics, the ones that are highlighted in black, you can see or in bold. You can click on them, and it will reorder highest to lowest based off that metric. For example, the video that has the most subscribers or led to the most subscribers, we can see, did that also increase revenue or how much did it make? Or we can say, Okay, videos with the most impressions, order by impression, how much money did it make? So the one with the most impressions was my short, which didn't make that much money at all? Simplest way to look at this is simply looking at the videos that make the most money now. We can also use that compare to year over year, which is super interesting to see, Okay, how much money are these videos making this year versus last year? You can see that the revenue has actually decreased for all of these videos. But that's not that surprising because the total amount of views has also decreased as well. Because there are different spikes in how much video is making over time, I've gone ahead and filtered over a lifetime to see which videos are making more ad revenue. And this is what gave me that data, which I talked about earlier in the course about how videos of mine, about personal finance, and those kind of related topics have done a lot better than ones about photography in terms of bringing in add revenue. So here we can see that top ten ways to earn passive income, how to retire early. What is the 4% rule? These are how to budget with Mint. These are videos that have done really well and add revenue, but have not done so well in terms of increasing subscribers, et cetera lately for my channel. And it's up to you to decide which metrics matter most to you in terms of choosing the topics that you're going to be making videos on. If making revenue is your most important Metric, then this is what you're going to pay attention to. If you want to get more subscribers, which will eventually lead to more revenue, then you might want to go to subscription source and then click on Content. And here we can see now which videos led to the most subscribers. My learned Premiere Pro over the lifetime of this channel is the one that has led to the most subscribers. But if your goal is to make more revenue, hopefully this quick tip helps. 40. Find Out Which Topics YouTube is Pushing with Analytics: It analytics, we can see exactly what topics YouTube is pushing out to the world using our analytics. Head into the advanced mode. Most people pay attention to the views column, which is the one that pops up when we open this up, and we'll say, Oh, wow, look at in the past 28 days. These are the videos that got the most views. Great. I want to make more content just like this. But a more important metric is impressions. So if we click on impressions, we can see this is how many impressions our videos are getting. And this tells us that YouTube is pushing these videos out to the world. Many top YouTubers recommend filtering to the past 90 days, which gives us a little bit more time and data to work with, and really lets us understand where the current state of YouTube's algorithm is. 28 days, seven days is a little too short. And then 365 days is a bit too long. This is also showing us our shorts. So I'm going to filter by content type to just our videos to see which ones get the most impressions. Skipping the baseball Explained video. We've got our how to Export and after effects, photoshop, after effects, Premier Pro, still some of our top o. So it's not completely different than the ones that get the most views. However, there's going to be some subtle differences, and if you're trying to determine what topics to make your next videos on, I would give more weight to the ones that get the most impressions. And then look at the impressions click through rates information. And this is where you can see, Okay, what did I do? And we talked about this before with my title and thumbnails and these videos to lead to a higher click through rate. Combining those two data points will give us a leg up creating new content. 41. Analyze the Initial Success of Videos: We've been paying a lot of attention to our overall channel analytics, to see the history of our videos and which ones have done really well. But it's also important to see how well our latest videos have done, clicking on the advanced mode and then going to compare to and then first 24 hour video performance. This lets us see the top performing videos based off of the first 24 hours of their launch, which is super important because now we can see, k, these are the videos that people want more of, right? They want these ones that From our channel, they want these ones that have more impressions in those first 24 hours. It's also beneficial to see how our videos perform in the first seven days as well. Again, to see which ones can carry on and continue performing well. One stands out above the rest. This is a Chachi PT course. Preview, which was more than just a promo for this course, but also a preview of the content. I can look at this and see, Okay, some of my other lower performing videos, let's see. This one is a promo video for a course, but it doesn't include any actual beneficial content for the viewer of YouTube. And using this data, I can say, Okay, well, this did a lot better. Maybe I should include some free preview content on YouTube with any promo that I post. This is views, but we can also change this to impressions to see what YouTube pushed out the most. So here, again, we see the Cha ch EPT video, but also we have this photoshop, this other generative AI video. So all of these AI based videos have performed the best for me. You can also go up here and adjust the published date to select more recent videos that you published older videos, but this allows us to see the performance just in a certain period of time, which can be super beneficial to assess and use to determine our next content. 42. Dive Into Analytics for Individual YouTube Videos: Something we've been doing in the past is looking at general data across all of our videos, but sometimes it's important to dive deep into a single videos data to see what's happening. We can get to that from different places, but the easiest way is to go to the content page, search for that video or find the video in this list and click Analytics. Once we're on this page, we have similar data points that we saw in our overall analytics such as our reach, engagement, our audience, et cetera. We also have some more interesting data down here. If we want to see audience retention for this video, we can look at and see, Okay, where is our audience dropping off? Many drop off after that first minute or so, and we can see this is a very long video, so many drop off, but we can see, k, there's a little dip right here as well. What is that dip about? Under reach, we can see how people are finding this video, which is super important. We can see the locations here, and we can even click CMre to bring up more data. Here on this page, we have all of the different traffic sources, and we can see the click through rates for the different traffic sources. So we can see, under YouTube search, we get the highest click through rate versus suggested videos, not so much. Back on this reach page, we can see other data like YouTube search terms for this specific video that people are using to get to this video. Clicking CMre will provide even more data on these search terms. So you can learn a lot by viewing the analytics for a specific video, and the easiest way to get to that is from the content page and then clicking analytics for each video. 43. Improve Your YouTube End Screens & Get More Subscribers: One of the most important metrics for increasing subscribers is getting clicks to your end screens. And the most popular and successful YouTubers will use en Screens to drive people to another video of theirs. The more videos that someone watches, at one time, the more likely they will actually subscribe to their channel. So to see which end screens are working best, go to your advanced settings. Here in this Plus menu, we're going to add n Screen element clicks. And now we can see which videos do well for end screen clicks. And we still have all the capabilities of filtering by video type by published date, if we want to just filter two videos that have been published more recently, et cetera. But the point is to look at your data, see which videos have a higher click rate and repeat that type of end screen for your other videos. Maybe it's what you're saying in the video that works better. Maybe it's the layout of the end screen and what is actually on there. I promise you that if you actually pay attention, you do a end screen for each video where you are driving that viewer to a related video and ideally a specific related video, and then you analyze your data, you see which ones are working, and you do more of that. You're going to end up with more and more subscribers. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you in another lesson. 44. What Are & Why You Should Use YouTube Shorts: Impact comes in small packages with YouTube shorts, and shorts are here to stay. So if you are not using shorts, it might be one of the best ways that you can quickly grow your channel now because not everyone is doing it, and YouTube is really prioritizing it. So in this lesson, we're going to learn why it's so important and talk about steps on making it easy for you to do in the right way. You've been living under a rock. Shorts are the vertical 62nd or less at this time of recording videos that have its own feed where people can basically swipe through them to go to the next one. It's YouTube's answer to TikTok and Instagram reels. With attention spans unfortunately decreasing and consumers wanting more quicker, shorter, engaging content. That's what YouTube Shorts answers. And just with more people on mobile viewing videos, it's that answer. It's crazy because when I first created this YouTube course, probably in 2015 or 2014, I talked about never shoot vertical video. And if you had any video shot with a phone vertically, then you would have to edit it in a way to make it look good for a horizontal viewing experience. Nowadays, though, that's completely wrong because we are shooting vertical. We are thinking about how we can capture shots for both a short in a vertical format and for a widescreen format. It's just crazy how things have changed. We also have a complete course dedicated to YouTube shorts and Reels. Now I'm going to go into best practices. We're going to talk and look at other channels and see how they're doing it successfully. However, if you want an extreme deep dive into creating shorts from behind the scenes with me and my co instructor, Dan, we have another course you might want to check out. You could find that over at video school.com find links to that course. But right now, let's talk about why YouTube shorts are important. There's three main reasons. One is increased visibility. YouTube is pushing shorts. They appear high in the feed for mobile and desktop viewers. And it's just a shorter form of content that more people are consuming. So the chance that you can get in front of a new person is higher. Also, not everyone is creating shorts, and because YouTube is prioritizing shorts in the feed, if someone is subscribed to your channel, and they're subscribed to hundreds of other channels, many of those channels won't be making shorts. And so your videos are going to start appearing in front of those people more likely than longer form videos. The next reason is that it can boost engagement with a new audience. Because the format is short, you're going to get in front of more people. It's a quick and easy to like your videos, and the potential to get more subscribers increases with shorts compared to long form videos. And lastly, you have some content versatility allows creators to create content that is a little bit more run and gun, a little rough and ready, not as polished, also just experimenting with other styles, formats, behind the scenes or comedy, sketches, or just other ways to share your story that maybe you don't want to have on your main channel long form videos, but makes sense for a short. It just gives you that flexibility. Let's look at the top five tips for creating successful YouTube shorts. First is focus on high impact openings. It's easy to just swipe past YouTube short if it's not engaging. It's a little bit harder with a longer video because you have to click on it, open it. You do have a preview of it if you're using the mobile app, but with shorts, you really have to pay attention to those hooks, and we already had a lesson all about hooks. So utilize those tips for your shorts. Try to leverage trending topics, music, formats, or templates for reels to increase your chance of going viral. Next, include a clear call to action. This shouldn't come right at the very beginning. You should create something engaging for a viewer, but by the end of the short, you should have something a very specific call to action. Perhaps it's to comment or like or to head to your channel to watch a full version of that video. This is probably the simplest way that you can create a short is condensing a longer video into like a preview or a teaser trailer for that long video, then encouraging people to watch that full video on your channel. Having a consistent posting schedule is going to make YouTube and their algorithm want to push your videos out to more people, and it can be a way that you can just consistently get in front of your audience and a new audience more and more. And even though shorts are brief, Pay attention to the SEO, optimize them with the thumbnail, as well as any keywords that you can include in the description and title of a short. We'll be walking through how to do this in the back end of the shorts platform and creating shorts, but you still have to pay attention to these things to stand out and get in front of more people. So let's look at some real world examples of creators that are using shorts the right way. First, we have a master at high impact openers and creative videos with Zach King. He's been making shorts ever since Vine was a thing that was, like, six second videos, sort of the precursor to reels and shorts. And so check out his way of using shorts and the vertical format. He's a master at it. Ryan Trehan is also another master at creating videos based off of trending topics. And I'm showing you these big name YouTubers that are doing this. But you can do the same types of videos yourself. Unlike Zach, which has a higher production value, Ryan's videos are often shot with cameras and in a style of shooting and editing that anyone can edit with a phone and even free editing software on their phone or on a computer. Mark Rober, this is a great example of having a clear call to action with this short, where he was trying to get to 40 million subscribers pretty incredible. I don't think it's necessary or even beneficial to always be asking for something. Always have a call to action like subscribing to your channel with your shorts. However, utilize them if you do have something that you're trying to promote, whether it's your own channel, if you're trying to grow your membership, if you are doing upcoming livestream, this is where you can actually use your shorts to help promote those things for your channel. Having a consistent schedule is always going to be beneficial for long form videos, as well as shorts, and epic gardening does this to a T. They just have it so that pretty much every long form video that they do, they either completely create a separate vertically shot video or they're able to convert the long form video into a shorter format video by editing. I've done both processes, both creating shorts from scratch, as well as converting long form videos. If I'm thinking about creating it as a short, it ends up doing better. A few examples of shorts that I've created. Let's go through them. So this was for video creation. These are very popular where you're comparing different gear or different shooting techniques. This is where I took a camera and I was shooting motion in a different way, and you can kind of see when I slow down what it looks like. I rode through the neighborhood in search of a photo, a city scape photograph that I had seen in my mind, one that appeared as I drove down the freeway towards the distant city of Los Angeles. I found it on an overpass as the sun went down. I was able to capture some magic. Hey. O. So with that one, I shot both vertically and horizontal as you saw. I had to kind of rework it to make the horizontal shots work, but it was a fun little experiment to just go out there and create a blog specifically for shorts. Macro photography is hard. Sometimes it takes me hundreds of shots to get one in focus. I was at the Huntington Gardens, and these bees were flying around. Here's one of the better shots that I got. I really like it. It's in focus. Also got this shot, this one, and this one. I was able to get some great B roll with my B roll with my 80 millimeter macro lens using the slo moo on my Fuji T four, which I really really like seeing. So that was just a little example of a phototip series that I did, and coming up with a format where I can use the same music, use the same template, and just throw in a little bit of B roll with a photo that I've shot and then do a voiceover made it super easy to have a consistent posting schedule for those sort of photo tips. The Mini blog took a little bit more effort as well as the FPS comparison. However, the one that did best was that FPS comparison video. And I think that's mostly because visually, it was the most intriguing for someone to watch. So hopefully, this gives you some advice on why shorts are important and what to do to make higher impact shorts. And the next lesson, we're going to tackle how we can fit this within our content production strategy. So I'll see you in that lesson. 45. How YouTube Shorts Fit into Your Strategy: Lesson, I'm covering how shorts fit into your overall strategy. Let's break down my five tips. One is to use shorts to highlight or tease longer form content. So this could be a summary of a new video shot separately. It could be a condensed version of the video. It could also be just a completely different shot video that visually might look better for a short, but then it purpose is to lead someone to watching that longer form content. The next strategy is to have standalone short content. So this might be identifying topics or formats that work better in short form, Quick tips, jokes, reactions to other people's content, something that can diversify the content you offer on your channel. The next strategy is that you can cross promote these videos on multiple platforms. That's the beauty of spending time creating shorts, also be posting them on Instagram reels, on TikTok so that you can get more bang for your buck and spending time creating shorts content. And if you're doing this, I would still focus the energy towards sending traffic back to YouTube because I find it to be the best platform for creatives like you and me. So on Instagram, TikTok, wherever else you're posting the shorts, make sure you're driving traffic back to your actual YouTube channel. My fourth strategy for utilizing shorts is to use it as a way to engage with your audience and experiment with different ideas, different formats, different topics. Because shorts are easier to create and you can put out more of them. It's a great way to analyze what's working for your audience and what's not working for your audience. And then you can use that information to tailor your longer form content. And my last strategy for fitting shorts into your schedule is to try to be regular but flexibly regular. Plan for a balance of schedule shorts and then impromptu releases that capitalize on trends or current events for that maximum relevance or engagement. If there's a trending style or format of a real, make sure you have that flexibility in your schedule to just go out and create a video copying that style. For your own audience. Some real world examples of creators doing just this include Mark Rober, using shorts to tease upcoming projects or experiments that he's working on. It's a great way to build excitement and anticipation for any sort of long reform content that might be coming out at a future date. In terms of creating standalone content, check out Rosana Pencino, who creates shorts around her baking and lifestyle content that are separate from her traditional longer tutorial videos. Peter McKinnon does a great job cross posting his shorts to other platforms like X and Instagram, drawing more viewers back to his YouTube channel. To start out, I would have a one for one strategy. Ideally, you're putting out about one video per week on a normal schedule, and that means putting out one short as well. I would combine both having teaser shorts where you're trying to tease a longer form video as well as standalone shorts. Try both options and see which ones are more successful. And within analytics, we can see how many subscribers you're getting from shorts compared to longer reform videos. Now, you have to be careful about creating a channel that's based solely on shorts, bringing in subscribers versus your long reform content because you could fall into a trap of your long reform content not working. However, there's definitely a balance that you can find with both formats. Make this easier for you, there's a few key things I would do. One is batch process your shorts. To is come up with a template that you can re use for your shorts, and then three outsource. Outsource the editing of this or even the creation of this by converting your long reform map videos into shorts. You can find editors on Upwork or Fiber or in your local area to help you with this. Thank you so much for watching this lesson, and we'll see you in the next one. 46. Using the YouTube Mobile App to Upload & Create Shorts: In this lesson, I want to walk through the process of creating and uploading a Tube short on the app. So go ahead and open up the Tube app. And then at the bottom, you just click that little plus sign right in the middle. And here you go. You could actually start recording a video. You can swap cameras if you want, by clicking that flip button. Say, H i. Hi, everyone. There you are. And there's my dirty closet. You have all kinds of other filters and effects that you can see on the right hand side, if you click that little arrow to drop down that menu, we can retouch. We can change the lighting, all kinds of stuff here. Alternatively, you could actually upload a video that you've either edited or you can put together a video by going to your files or your photos down in the bottom left. I'm going to click this photo of this awesome guy playing accordion at the local farmers market. I love this. And here we see that currently there's a 62nd limit for shorts up at the top, right. And at the bottom, we have our little timeline editor. So if we don't want this entire clip, we can just take in the left intro mark, maybe right after this person walks by. And then we can I don't mind having people walking by. And then we'll go for a few more seconds. This is a great little video. If you were the marketing department for this farmer's market. You could put this out there the day up after the fact, really showcasing the vibe that's going on. And then you click Done. So at this point, you see at the top that red bar. That's how much time has been taken up in your short. We can add a clip to this by either recording now or adding another video clip or just click this check mark in the bottom right. Now is the time to add your effects, your titles, your graphics, everything to this specific clip. So the first process is lining up your clips in the right order and adding them to your sort of like your time line. And so now we can on that right hand menu, add things like titles. So pressing that title button brings up our title. Similar to pretty much any other social media out there, if you've ever done a real or a short or a post, you'll see something like this. So I've typed in some text. We can change the background color. In the top left. You could let justify at center, right justify. We can turn on or off the background or the style of the text. Up at the top in the center, we can change the font. Let's get something a little bit more farers Market. On the right side, you can increase or decrease the size of the text with this little slider bar. And then once you're happy with the text as it is, we can press it done, and it pops up on our short. So now we can rotate it using our two fingers to pinch and squeeze and rotate, put it up at the top. Something like that looks pretty good. Over on the right hand side, you also have options for going back to the timeline. The one below that is filters, so we could add a filter to this. Let's see if we have something like this golden tone or maybe the vintage one looks pretty good for this clip, and then press the check mark to save that. You could add your voice over or Q&A, and then you'll want to click next. Tap next. And then on this page, you write your caption, you choose your visibility. You can tag products, allow video and audio remixing, so people can use this short in their own shorts or videos, add turn on comments or not. One thing I will mention is that the thumbnail or that initial still image is super important. And at this time, there's not a separate image uploader for the thumbnail. So we're going to tap that little pencil icon in the top left. And now we can scrub through to find the perfect thumbnail. And what many people do is they might cut in a scene that looks like a good thumbnail or have it at the end of the clip or at the very beginning and have a more dynamic thumbnail that's more eye catching. So when people are looking at the feed or if they're on the desktop version, it's more clickable. You would want to use all of those similar best practices for designing thumbnails that we taught you earlier in the course. And that's it. You can tap upload short, and it will upload and post. You can save the draft. If you want to schedule this, you can tap the pup visibility and change it to schedule and do everything like you did with a normal UTub video. So that's how to use the app to create Tube shorts. Best of block. I can't wait to see what you create. Send it over, tag me, and I can't wait to check it out. Thanks so much, and we'll see you in another video. By 47. Introduction to the Equipment Section: Welcome to this new section of the course all about equipment. In this section, we're going to be tackling cameras, audio gear, soundproofing, lighting, and all of the important gear for any YouTube channel. Some of these lessons come from another course of mine, so you'll notice that the design of the graphics look a little bit different, but rest assured that equipment that I recommend is still exactly what I would recommend today. Also note, this is important that equipment models get released every year, every so often. So if there's something that I recommend and you're watching this course in a month or six months or a year, there might be a newer version of that equipment, but still, in general, it's going to be the same recommendation for that brand, for that camera, for that microphone, et cetera. Know you're going to have a lot of questions about equipment, and that's where we have our Q&A discussion on the course. Go ahead, post questions, myself, my assistant, or other students can also help provide feedback to you. Thank you so much, and let's dive right in. 48. Cameras: Talk about cameras might be the most important piece of equipment that you have for your video creation studio. After all, without a camera. We can't be recording videos. Cameras are more affordable than ever and the ability to be able to record straight to your computer in high quality live stream content from your phone now is easier and just more available than ever. We really live in a golden age of being able to create great content. Even when I started creating with my first studio, it was very difficult and expensive to set up your own home studio with a nice quality camera and especially one that can actually record directly on your computer. So let's just all say, thank you. We live in a great age in terms of this. Now, I have a few questions for you that are going to change what type of camera you might get. The first is, when you're filming, are you stationary or are you mobile? And for most of us, this is we're going to be in one setup place, which helps us out. But for some of us, we might be moving around in our studio, we might be changing the angle. Things like I'm going to be doing in this course itself. The next question is, what is your budget? Cameras can range from $100, 2000s upon thousands of dollars. Little secret I'll tell you is that you don't have to spend thousands of dollars to get great footage from your camera and actually more important than the camera itself is the lighting and the audio setup that makes the video look and sound amazing too. So you don't have to worry about if you don't have a lot of money. But this is going to determine some things like maybe you have to start with a webcam compared to a nice fan miles camera that has that nice blurry background. Then the last question is, do you want something just simple or advanced? If you're not into video creation, if you don't know how to work a camera, there is a learning curve to doing so, especially on getting one of those mirrors or Dillar cameras set up on your computer for live streaming, that can be difficult. Or if you want to be dealing with memory cards and importing and exporting, if you want it just to be simple, there are webcam options that look really good nowadays. These are the three questions I have for you and I'm going to go into all of the different choices that you have. Unlike some other courses, I'm actually going to be giving you some specific options that I recommend. The first camera that I want to talk about is the interchangeable lens camera. This is a camera where the lens can actually come off and you can switch it for another one. The benefit of this is that the lens really can determine the style and look of the video. For example, right now, I'm using on my Fuji film, XT four, as of recording, a 16 millimeter lens. Now, this is a crop sensor camera. I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. But this is what this look looks like. I can be pretty close to the camera. We have that closeness as a creator and a viewer have that intimacy that I'm right here with you with this particular lens that allows me to shoot with not too much light, get that nice blurry background aesthetic. You can also see the full background of my home studio space in this shot. This is a mirrorless camera. There are DSLR cameras, and really all you need to know is This is a technology that has changed over the past ten years. DSLR is the older style of digital camera, where when you started to film, there was actually a mirror system that opens and closes to cover the sensor. With a mirrorless camera, there is no mirror. It's mirrorless, and that sensor just starts to capture light directly coming at it from the lens. There's different benefits to this, like the size of the camera, the quality, the low light capabilities. This day and age, really any of these cameras can be great, but most modern camera companies are moving towards mirrorless cameras as there really only new type of body type of camera body that they're making. This is really that one camera to rule them all. It's a camera that can do both video, photo. It can be great for your home studio setup, but it can also be something you take around, travel with you, film out in the field as well, unlike a webcam. The two pros of mine for this are the quality is amazing. You can get better looking video in lower light, which is harder with most webcams. Also, you get that nice blurry background aesthetic that we've come to love in a lot of videos. The cons are, it's more expensive. There's more gear to deal with. You've got the camera, you've got batteries, you've got the lenses. Then also, you may require a middleman card A conversion capture card that takes the video and converts it to be able to do live streaming or recording directly to your computer. If that's something you're interested in and having it all set up so that you can just record from your computer live stream to YouTube with a camera, then depending on the camera you choose, you might need that extra piece of equipment, which will cover in a second. This just ends up being more complicated. Can see all the brands over here, and there's even more. We've got Cannon, Sony, Nikon, Fuji film, Panasonic, Black Magic. These are all great brands that make great cameras. And at this day and age, you can get a camera from any of these brands that will do a great job. Now, you might be asking me, Phil, what's the one brand that I recommend, and that's an impossible question because brands It's just like how we're setting up a studio space in a different style, or you might have a YouTube that you like because they're aesthetic, cameras are the same. Some cameras are more fun to use because it looks a different way. Some are easier to use because the menu system is easier. Some are cool because the quality is better than others, and there's so many variables to the different cameras. When I recommend to people, what you should do is you really should go out and practice with them, go to a camera shop. I know it sounds so old school, but put it in your hands. Hold the camera See how you like it, see if it feels natural to you. But if you're looking for some top popular camera models for YouTube studios here are a few to check out. The Sony ZV one or the ZV E one is a super popular inexpensive mirrorless camera. The Sony A seven S three is also another one that's a little bit higher quality. The Fuji film X S 20, the Panasonic Lumicx GH six, the Canon R five, which is their mid tier mirrorless camera, the Canon power shot G seven, which is a more affordable point and shoot camera. Then the nConZ 30. Now, I mentioned these specific models, knowing that when you watch this in a year or two years from the time of creating this course, there's going to be a new version of these cameras. When you're looking at these camera models in the future, make sure you check the cameras website if there's a newer version of this specific line of cameras. For example, with the canon R five, there might be a R five Mark two, or there's other R series cameras like the R six, and they have different capabilities, but also the prices might be more or less. These are some semi budget friendly options that I've listed here. Now, I do have to pause and talk a little bit about lenses here because with any of these cameras that are not the point in shot cameras that have a fixed attached lens that you can't change, you'll have to decide what type of lens you want. This is also going to change if you have a crop sensor or a full frame sensor camera. To put it simply, the full frame sensor is bigger than the crop sensor. What that also means is if you have the same lens on a full frame camera, like let's just say the 16 millimeter right here that I'm using, it would actually be a wider shot then what I'm shooting with a crop sensor camera. To try to understand that better, if you are trying to get the widest shot possible, then a full frame camera will allow you to do that with a specific lens. In other words, if I put a 35 millimeter lens from a full frame camera to a crop sensor camera, the view or focal length of that lens will actually get tighter or look more zoomed in basically. This is going to change depending on your camera. But my general advice for picking a lens is for a crop sensor camera, pick something between that 12 to 28 millimeter range. You also have lenses that are zoom lenses, so they can cover that whole range, whereas a prime lens is one that is one specific focal length. This lens I'm using right now, I can't zoom in and out with it. It's just this field of view. But if I had a zoom lens like I have another lens, the 16 to 55, I could change from what this looks like, 16 and then zoom into 55, which is very helpful, especially if you are demonstrating things, if you're doing gear review, if you want to get B roll of other footage, you might want to go for a zoom lens. Now on a full frame camera, a 12 millimeter lens might be a little bit too wide for most people. Some people like that aesthetic. Sometimes you tubers use that, and you can see their full desk in front of them and them and the background, and the camera is still just a couple feet away from them. But it can start to feel a little bit warped if you're too close to the camera. Something still along the lines of a 16 millimeter to a 24 millimeter, 30 millimeter should work with full frame as well. It's just going to be a little bit wider. Maybe something more like a 16 to a 35 might be the best bet for your full frame camera set. Quick tip about choosing lenses. If there is one of your inspirational creators out there. Oftentimes, they will list the equipment that they use, either in their YouTube videos or they might have a page on their website somewhere. There's also a lot of people who analyze this. They might have done an interview where they've talked about it before. Search for your favorite creators and what lens or camera that they use in their setup. Let's talk about webcams. Now, webcams don't get a lot of love, but there are some pros to them like being plug and play. They are decent quality nowadays. You can get HD and even four K video with them. The cons are that they can't be used easily for a lot of B roll or video unless you're just really sitting at your desk doing that. The quality or that style is not as good as an interchangeable lens camera. Are some new webcams that are attempting to get that blurry background. There's even the filters that we have with blurring your background on tools that you've probably used before like Zoom or different screen capturing software that automatically do this. In the future, it might get easier and easier, but it's still not as easy or good or natural as the mirrorless or DSLR camera. But what's great is you just plug it in. It's USB, it connects to your computer and you can start recording videos like that. A couple of options that you might want to check out are the PLC one. This is the one that does attempt to have nicer quality video and that nice background aesthetic, but you're going to pay a higher price for it. The Logitech C 920 pro, this is one that I've sworn by for over ten years, they've upgraded it a little bit, but the quality is just really good. It's often better than what the internal webcam might be for a laptop or computer, and I highly recommend it. Logitech also has the Brio, which is their four K option, which is great if your computer can handle it, which is another thing to consider. If you're recording in four K, which is higher resolution quality video, your computer has to be able to handle those files, both recording those files and editing those files. And so you need a fast decent quality computer to do that. Then lastly, check out the razor Keo P, which is used by some other YouTubers out there, and they also like the quality and aesthetic of this camera. More thing I want to mention is multi camera setups. With any of these cameras that I've mentioned, you could purchase multiple of them. You could have a combination of them and use them together. But there are systems that are made to work together with multiple cameras. This would be good if you're doing interview setups and you have multiple people doing podcasting or educational videos where you are working with your hands. You want a talking head video, but then you want to be able to cut to trap and vegetables or painting something or designing whatever it is. You might want to have that top down overhead camera. There's one system out there that I will recommend the Logitech Mivo, which works together really well. Again, this is a quick and easy plug and play option. However, as I mentioned, you could have multiple mirrorless cameras. I could have two Fuji film T four recording right now. You could even tie them into a computer and be recording and switching live with them. But if you're not going to be doing live switching, then you just have to deal with Syking later on, multiple cameras, multiple files, and all of that, which is great to improve quality, but it does end up adding a lot of work. I hope this long video answered a lot of questions you had with picking the right camera for your home studio. I know you're probably going to have more questions, so feel free to post them in the course and we'll be happy to help you out. Awesome, I'll see you in the next lesson. 49. Microphones & Audio Gear: Now that we've talked about cameras. Let's talk about audio equipment, which for online videos is even more important in some cases than the video quality. Some key questions to ask yourself, are you mobile or are you stationary? This can determine what kind of microphone you'll be able to use. Next is, do you mind having the microphone in the shot with you? Lastly, what's your budget? There's several styles of microphones out there. There's the podcasting or studio mic. This is what you'll see a lot of YouTubers using where you see it on the camera. This is what I use for my tutorials, and even a lot of my online courses, you'll see that big microphone in the frame. That microphone, that style gets really high quality audio and oftentimes does the best job at not recording background noise. If you're in a noisy environment, you can still get high quality audio with these. Next, you have your lavalier or Lapel Mike. This is what I'm using right here for this course. This is the one that clips onto your shirt. They make them really, really high quality now and they're not too expensive. This is great if you're mobile, but it's also great if you just don't want to have a big microphone in your frame and still get high quality audio, and they make them so that they can easily plug directly into your camera or even plug into your computer as well. Then lastly, you have the boom or the shotgun microphone. This is the one where if you've ever seen a film set, you see someone, your boom operator holding a big pole and at the end of that is a big microphone. This is great if you have a studio setup where you can put a microphone that's directly over the frame. Usually it would just be pointing or peeking right over the frame out of frame. Usually it would be just right out of the frame right here, and I've used that microphone for a lot of my videos in the past in different studio setups because the quality of audio you get with shotgun microphones is often Not always, but often more full, better quality than something like a lavalier microphone, and it's one where you don't see it, which is nice to have that clean frame. Now, with all of these different types of microphones, there's different ways you actually connect it to your computer. Some are USB where you can simply plug it into your USB port and start recording. Oftentimes, it's not as easy as that. Non USB microphones will have either the mini 3.5 millimeter mic jack. That's just that little plug. It probably looks like the old headphone cables. It's like this one here. This is a road micro onboard shotgun microphone. This is a small one that I sometimes use on my camera when I'm out blogging, and this has that 3.5 millimeter little microphone jack. Higher quality microphones like this big shotgun microphone, the road NTG three. This has an XLR output. This connection is a little bit higher quality. It allows higher quality sound to get through to your recording device, but obviously this doesn't plug directly into your computer. Now I want to go through some examples of different microphones that I suggest, and I'll talk more about the pros and cons and the different types and when you would use them. Let's start with USB microphones and the pro quality options. The road podcaster is a popular one. Again, this is going to be a big microphone that you have to be close to to get good quality. That's the thing with these podcasting or studio mics. You can record with them far away, potentially just out of the frame of the camera, but really they're meant to be right up within six to 12 " of your face to get the best quality. Sure M V seven is another one that is great. Again, these are USB mics that plug directly into your computer. Here are some budget friendly options. We have the Blue Yeti X, Blue Yeti, the Blue Snowball. These are some of the standards that content creators have been using for years. The quality will not be as high as the road podcaster or the S M, but the budget is a bit more friendly. We have the Audio Technica AT 20:20 X. Audio Technica makes a really great quality microphones for the price, and I would actually recommend there mics a bit more than the Blue Yeti. There are some USB Lavalier microphones like the San Heizer X S Lav USBC mic. This is a great microphone company, San Heizer makes some of the best audio quality products used on professional film sets, and they have this plug in play, USB Lavalier microphone, which is great. But with this one, you're going to have to be close to your computer that you're recording on. The benefit or the use of this would be if you don't want a big microphone in your screen or maybe you're moving around a little bit, you can use this, but you still are going to be wired to the computer, so you can't have a lot of mobility. Now, with a non USB microphone, you're going to need an audio interface that is either recording separately or can be connected to the computer. Now, this is a question for you in the process of making your videos. Can record all of your video separately. So you can record directly into your camera, or if you don't have a camera that has the right input like an Celer input, you might have to record separately into an audio recorder. Or you might want to set up so that you're able to film everything directly into your computer. The Zoom h4n or the h6n, these are very similar. They just have different inputs. This is a great tool that has multiple uses. You can take it out in the field, record with it, you can plug multiple LR microphones for podcasting with multiple people, and you could individually just the levels if someone's talking higher or not. You can also plug these into your computer and use it as an audio interface that basically takes the audio signal and transforms it so that your computer can read it and use it as a USB plug and play microphone. Another tool that I have is the focus right Scarlet two I two. You can't see it right now, but I'll show it to you close up in the studio buildout lessons later on. But this is also a simple interface that just plugs in with USB and you can plug in your microphones directly into it. Similarly, the audience 04 is another similar option. If you want a simple option, the sure bx two U is a great LR to USB tool, where it doesn't have any of the other options of changing the sound quality, the levels really of your audio, but it just takes your LR and makes it USB basically. Here are some examples of microphones that you might want to look at that are not USB microphones. Some higher quality microphones like the Hi PR 40. This is the podcasting mic that I've used for years. I love it. I use it for my tutorials. I love the sound quality of it. The Sure s7b. This is a YouTube favorite. You've probably heard of this one before, and it sounds great. It looks great, super clean. It is a bit pricey too. Both of those are pretty pricey. You are wanting to go with a lavalier setup, there is the road wireless go setup. That's what I'm using right now. It's super cool because I have it plugged into my camera while I'm recording this course, and it records directly into the camera. But in this little pack that I'm using, here it is, it's the microphone. It has this little wireless transmitter. It's also recording in this. So Some issues you might have with a wireless setup is if you get too far from the camera or from the wireless receiver, the audio quality starts to cut in and out. This solves that issue because it's always recording a backup of the raw audio right in the device. DJI, the maker of great drones and video products also has the DJI mic, which does very similar things. There's also the road Smart Lav plus, which is for smartphones. If you're recording out in the field or even in your studio and you're recording directly to a Smartphone, this is the lavalier that I would recommend. If you are looking for a higher quality of a Lavalier setup, the San Heizer M K E two is a great option. I use San yz wireless mics for a long time. Lavalier is the G three kit, and that was my go to for filmmaking. It is higher quality than the road series, but it is about three times the price. Now, let's look at some shotgun options or the boom mics. You have the Seniser MKH 416, the road NTG four, NTG three, NTG two. As you can see, there's a series of these microphones, and the price goes up, the higher quality. For most of us creating YouTube videos in a home studio, the cheapest option is going to be fine. Although there are things like reducing the background noise, having a higher quality, more directional microphone that focuses on just what's in front of it, which is what a shotgun mic should do. Where if you go with the higher quality higher priced option, it's going to sound better. The Seniser MKE 600 is another popular option. If you're looking for something that's an onboard microphone, so if you're just filming directly to your camera or even if you have something like a mirrorless camera plugged into your computer, You might want to just use the audio from that microphone. Oftentimes, it's not going to be as high quality as a separate dedicated microphone, like a Lavalier, a podcasting mic, or a shotgun mic that's putting and closer to me as a creator. But the onboard video Mike pro from Road is one of the best out there, and you can also use it for going out in the field, doing blogging and that kind of thing. Might be saying, Phil, this is all great information. How do I pick the one that I want? Well, it goes back to your purpose. What are you doing? What are you creating? Are you a podcaster? Are you a tutorial doing educational tutorials? Are you mobile? Are you out in the field? Are you in a noisy space? Are you in a quiet basement office that is fairly quiet already? All of these factors are going to determine what microphone you might need. If you were to ask me, I'm just getting started out and I am going to be filming in one place in my studio. I would go with one of those USB podcasting mics, like the road podcaster or one of the more budget friendly USB microphones like the audio technical one that I mentioned. A few audio accessories that you might want to consider are a pop filter or a wind filter. On my ile PR 40, I have a little cover that cuts down on the those pop sounds, because if you say P words, it often blows air into the microphone and you'll need a little wind filter or a cover that's going to cut that down. You'll need a stand or a boom arm depending on the type of mic, something that will hold up your microphone. As I mentioned, if you are using a non USB microphone, you'll need an audio interface that converts your microphone to your computer if you're recording on your computer. And a biggie is good quality headphones so that when you're editing your videos, you're actually listening with high quality headphones and not just your computer speakers so that you can really hear what your microphone sounds like and edit it to make it sound the best it can be. We're going to be looking at how we set this up, how it works in the studio setup sections with Dan and myself even more later. I hope you enjoyed this lesson and we'll see you in the next one. 50. Sound Proofing: Let's talk about sound proofing. In most studio spaces in a home or an office or anywhere, you're going to need to do some sound proofing to reduce the background noise and the reverberation or the echo you might have when your audio, when your voice is bouncing off the hard wall, floor and ceilings of an empty space. How do we do this? Well, like anything, there's the budget option and then there's the expensive professional, but ultimately higher quality option as well. DI Y method of sound proofing, which you're going to do regardless, even if you're doing some professional audio sound proofing is things like adding a carpet to your space. Before having a carpet or a rug, record some audio on your phone on your camera and then add your rug and see how much it changes. It's a dramatic change when you add a nice fluffy rug that absorbs some of that reverberation. Adding more furniture to the room, especially softer furniture will help this like having a chair or a couch. Even if it's not in the camera frame, especially if it's actually in front of you, in the direction of what you're filming will help with this. Having a big fluffy dog also helps with soundproofing, highly recommended. One DIY trick is to actually hang up blankets right around you outside of the frame of the video. This is what I've often done in my studio spaces when really wanted that best quality sound. I was filming in my garage, which I converted to a studio for a few years. But that's a big space. Whenever I was filming a course, I would set up using a background stand or a couple of light stands. I would set up some blankets around the camera and that really helped reduce the echo and the background noise. So more professional options are acoustic panels or they're often called absorption panels. Now, you can find these cheap online on Amazon and they might work a little bit, but you could also go through a professional company that makes them that they're actually engineered to reduce echo. It's not just like putting a egg crate soft film panel on your wall, which can help, but it is more of a DAY option. There's acoustic blankets that work in a similar way. Again, these can be hung up. They can be draped over furniture, put around the room, put in front of a wall so that it doesn't sound as echoe There's also sound booth options. You could literally build out your studio as a sound booth or you could build a sound booth around your microphone and I'll show you some options in a second. Then lastly, one cool thing if you're looking to build a nicely designed looking set is using acoustic canvases where you can actually print or have a blank canvas that just looks nice. You might not even be able to see or tell, but right behind me over here is an acoustic Canvas panel that is hanging on the wall. I have a couple behind my computer as well that absorbs a lot of that. Then behind the camera, I'll show you in the studio section is a photo that I actually took and printed out, but it's an audio sound acoustic panel that works just like the other panels, but now it's a piece of art as well. Specific examples of products that I use and recommend, I'm going to be showing that to you in the later section in my studio setup section. Hold off. I'll show you there and until next time, I'll see you in the next lesson. 51. Analyze Your Space: Talked a lot about equipment. But something you need to do before you start setting up your space is to really analyze it for the sound, the light and the backdrop that you'll eventually choose. Depending on things like windows, doors, the size, and of course, your purpose, it's going to change how you can set up your space. When thinking about the lighting of your videos, if you have a window, you have to decide if you want that window to be a part of your setup or if you want that light coming in from the window, help light your set, or if you want to block it out so that your videos have a consistent look. You can block out the light with blackout curtains, or you can cover it up with a blanket, which will work if the window itself is not a part of your video in the frame. You can also utilize the window light as your key light, your main light, which is great if you have a big window, But depending on the direction it faces, and when you can film, you might not have enough light to light yourself, light your videos, and it's going to be changing. If it's a cloudy day, if there's clouds going across it, if it's sunny, if you're filming in the afternoon or the morning, it's going to dramatically change what it looks like. I like utilizing natural light. But for most of you, I would recommend having artificial lighting that will have a more consistent look But the light from the outside window can add to it. As you've probably seen in this course, the light coming from behind me has actually dramatically changed. It's a cloudy day and it was sun earlier on when I was filming this. But because I have artificial lights, I'm still lit fairly well. I also have this sheer curtain covering the window so that you don't see the dramatic change of lighting, it filters it and it softens that lighting coming in from outside. I'm also filming earlier in the day where the sun is not shining on that window, which it only does late in the afternoon. Which also makes the light a little bit less harsh and directional because it's just bouncing off everything outside of that window and spreading out, diffusing rather than being harsh into the frame. That light can be used as a side light or a field light. If you have one light that's lighting your face from one side as the key light, that window can add additional light to fill out the shadows on the other side of your face. This might have to be the case if you are choosing to use the wall that is the biggest cleanest wall without a window as your backdrop. You might just happen to have a window that's on the side of you that will help light your face, or you can block it out. If you're in a setup where there has to be a window behind you. The main thing is that you'll need a key light that will overpower the light coming in. I used to always recommend never, never, never film with a window behind you, but I'm doing it right now. The reason I'm doing it right now is I like the look of this. I chose to film this way, which is not my typical way of filming in this office, but you can see my whole studio setup, which I really like, being able to see that in this shot. And I have, again, the key light that's overpowering any light coming in there, so I'm not a silhouette. When you step into your space, also think about sound. The first thing you want to pay attention to is, is there echo? Is there reverb? Is there carpet or not? Are the walls hard? Is the ceiling high? Are there things like that that will create more echo? Is it a large space, or is it a small space that will be easier to add sound proofing? To reduce that echo. Then also, is there background noise from outside. I know a lot of friends and creators who live in bigger cities that deal with loud noise outside. This is going to determine the microphone you get, the sound profing you can do, and maybe even when you can film. I know people who film only at night in the middle of the night, and that's going to determine what kind of lighting you will need. You can see that you really have to analyze your space ahead of time before you can actually start setting it purchasing equipment and actually filming. And then, of course, you have to look at your background and see in your space where you want your background to go. Depending on your camera, your style, it might be important to have some space between you and that background. If you want that nice, blurry aesthetic, that sort of style that people go for, then you're going to have to have space behind you. You might not have that space. You might be in a smaller space that doesn't allow it. Or maybe you're designing your space and you want it to be an office or there's another person in there with you and your desk has to be in a specific spot, and you're going to be a little bit closer to the backdrop. So you only have so much space to work with. The key point is that really what is important is being able to focus on you, the subject, you can do that by either cleaning up the background, so there's not much in there or by focusing on you by literally having the focus of the camera on you with a blurr your background. To get that, you need space between you and the camera and you and the subject in the background. Another thought just to think about is, do you want everything to be square behind you with a flat wall behind you, or do you not mind being at an angle? A lot of YouTubers, the aesthetic, the style now is that squared off look. It didn't always used to be that way, but this is just again, something that maybe a specific wall will look better squared off, and you may or may not be able to have your camera in the position where it looks squared off. This is going to take a little bit of playing around on your end. So you might want to go into your space, set up a camera and see what it looks like before you start actually placing elements in your background. Then lastly, do you want to have multiple shots or angles as options in your space? As I mentioned here, I'm filming in this one direction, which is great. With this, I need a separate light than the one right there on my desk, which is my typical key main light for my filming setup when I'm at my desk filming tutorials. I've designed this office to have at least three different options for shots, which you'll be seeing in my setup section. But this is something to think about with you. Do you want to have a space setup with multiple filming locations or angles to be able to change it Okay, start to analyze your space if you haven't done so already, think about things like lighting, sound, and what your backdrop is going to look like. We'll see you in the next section that will hopefully inspire you on your journey. See you there. 52. Lighting for YouTube: This lesson, we're going to learn about lighting your YouTube videos, and I've made the lights in here a little bit more dramatic than I typically do. I'm actually going to just pass this to Phil from another advanced videography class where I've broke down my entire YouTube lighting setup, talked about where I place slights, how I play slights, the settings, and everything like that. So I'm going to pass you over there to learn about lighting. In this video, we're doing a little bit of a deeper dive into a few different lighting options. So this is a setup I would use for a YouTube video, an online course video, where I'm talking directly to the camera. I'm centering myself in the frame. I spent a little bit more time setting up my background, which has some photos that I've taken, and I'm in my garage studio, as you can see, over there from that camera, I have a little bit of room to work with, which is really nice. Now, right now, the lighting that I'm using is just a bunch of light coming from behind the camera, which is my garage door opened. What you can see is just a lot of ambient light. It's not direct sunlight, but that's typically better. This would be the same idea of having a big window and sitting in front of it or to the side of it with that light coming in from that window. It's a nice set up. I'm looking at my monitor right here and I can see it's very soft light, very even light. There's light coming from both sides of my face. There's a little bit of a shadow behind me from this light stand right here that I'm going to be using as a back light or a hair light. But overall, it's pretty good. But if I want a little bit more of a dramatic, different look, what I'm going to do now is close the garage door and start by turning on my key light, which is right here, then we'll add my back light right here, that's going to be my hair Then I'm going to add this third light, which is going to be shining up on the background, which is going to really make me pop from that background. Let's go do that. Here I am with one key light. Now, I can change the position of this a little bit. Right here, it's just a little bit off to the right side of the camera, if you were behind the camera or to my left. It's pretty harsh though, and it's pretty direct. Now, the settings on my camera, I'm using a wide 16 millimeter lens on my crop sensor Fuji camera. But I'm still at the one 48th shutter speed. I'm at 160 ISO, which is pretty low, and then I have my aperture to really control the brightness and the exposure of my image. It's a little bit bright. But if I'm going for that ultimate shallow depth of field look, and I want to open up all the way to F 1.4, which is a pretty shallow depth of field. Then this is what that's going to look like like. So the benefit of having an LAD panel that I can dim down is to be able to control my lighting with the light panel itself so that no matter what settings I have on my camera, it's still going to be exposed properly. So I'm going to move this light in a little bit and dim it down just a bit. That's pretty good. I'm going to add about 20% power on this light panel. So these panels come in different brightnesses and things, but this is a typical 1 ft by 1 ft LED panel. It's the equivalent equivalent of 500 watts. So this looks pretty good. Now, F 1.4 is super shallow depth of field. And so I might bump it up, let's see. F two is going to be still super shallow depth of field, but give me a little bit more room if I'm moving in and out so that I'm in focus. Now I'm using my auto focus to try to get focus on my face and then switching back to manual focus. Obviously having another shooter there would be beneficial to make sure that we have perfect focus manually, or I get set up sometimes I set up a tripod with like a T shirt or something that's right here in this plane in this focal plane to get focus manually before I sit down. So now you can see though from the first natural light setup to the one light setup, how different this looks. I think bringing that light as close as possible with some of that diffusion on gives it this very cool vie with the background falling back into darkness. You get that by putting this light as close as possible and as low as possible. If I had this back further and brighter, the background is going to be brighter as well. If you want that dark background look, Bring it up close, just like this. Now, let me add my backlight. Now, this backlight was a little bit of an issue because this camera is very wide. So I had to move that back light pretty far away, so we're going to see what it looks like right here. So you can see on this side of my face and on my back, how it sort of lights me up, and it gives me a little bit more definition from the background. Now, I think it's a little bit bright. I can also see it sort of shining in the top corner of this video frame. Dally, I want it to be positioned opposite from what my key light is. In a perfect world, I would have it closer or up higher, and if I wasn't using a wide angle lens, I would be able to get away with that. We're having to deal with the elements of our situation, but that's fine. We're working with it. So I'm just dimming it down because it doesn't have to be so bright. It's just still a little bit of definition. Now, I want to show you what it would look like compared to this shot right here where you can see some light on this side of my face, which I'm not a huge fan of. If I'm just let me just put it right behind me and show you what that looks like. So, this is a more ideal look with this hair light behind me. Obviously, you see that light stand, and if you're going for a shot where you want to see the light stand, that's perfectly fine. If I was using a more telephoto lens and the shot was a little bit closer up, I would be able to get away with something like this where you wouldn't see the stand. And I like that a lot better than having that light on this side of my face, which can sometimes be a little bit awkward or shiny. So Just things you have to deal with. If I'm going to use the wide angle lens, I'm going to have to push this out of the frame. Another option is to try to come from down low, and I can try to do that from over right behind me. And maybe I'll try that. So now I have it directly behind me, and it sort of gives us a little bit of separation behind. It has some light behind on my shoulders. But it kind of looks like one of those like crime scene sort of videos where it's got this direct up light coming from behind me, and I'm not a huge fan of that look. So I'm going to put it back over there off screen and see what we can do to minimize the light on the side of my face. Now, let me show you what it looks like with it on and off. Both are great options, and sometimes I would prefer just this. But you can see with it on, it's going to give a little bit more definition to this side of my face, which I'm okay with that balance, and then also the back of my head. One thing to note, though, is, when I turn it on, can you see it in the reflection of my picture frames back there? You see it? You see that reflection back there. It's not the end of the world, but it's just something else you have to think about if you're using lights and you have picture frames and glass in your video frame. Pay attention to those light reflections. I'm okay with that. It's a little bit. You would barely notice it if I didn't point it out. Now I have my key light setup, I have my back light setup or my hair light. Next, I'm going to add an ambient light that's going to bounce up against the wall behind me. So here's the light. It's another one by one LED panel. I don't have any diffusion on it right now because partially that filter that goes over it is kind of big, and I need to block it with my body in the main shot. So what I can do is add this right here. So if I turn it on, you can automatically see what it looks like in the main video shining behind me, and I'm probably going to have it dimmed quite a bit. Another thing I can do though, I do have a little bit of diffusion right here, and I want to show you what this looks like if I put this in. Pay attention to the background. See how it softens it off on off, on it. It's cutting down the light a little bit, but it's also just spreading it out and making it a little bit softer. Now you can see it with me sitting here with it on. And with it off. What do you like? Do you like it with it off right now or with it on? To me, I like how it sort of creates sort of like a spotlight in the background where I'm in the center of it. So it creates the sort of natural vignette around the frame of the video with me in the center. I think that sort of style is something that I have gone for in my YouTube videos in my course videos, and for me, it's what I prefer. Now it's dimmed down pretty low, let me dim it up all the way. That's pretty darn bright, and it gets to a point where the background is competing with me in the foreground for what's exposed properly. So I think there's a happy medium with me somewhere like that, that I think looks pretty darn good. Now I have my key light, I've got my rim light or my hair light right here, and then also the back ambient light up there. And then also my back ambient light shining on the background. Now, another light that might be common is what's called the fill light. That would be a light that's coming from this side of the frame, so opposite the key light, and it would just be filling in some of these shadows that you see right here. Now you can do that with a light itself. You can also do it with a reflector if you don't have another light. Let me get a reflector and show you what that looks like. This is a great little reflector here. It has a cover that has a silver and a gold side. You could also take it out and use just the white, which is a good filter or it can reflect light as well. The gold side will give a little bit of warmth to the light that's reflecting on it, and that might be what you're going for. Sometimes it's a little too warm in my opinion, but let's try it out. I'm just going to hold it like this so you can see what it looks like, and I'm looking at the monitor, so this is with it on off. On off. You can see that with it on, it does definitely add a little bit of light to the right side of my face. Now, let me switch it from the gold side to silver. This is gold. And this is silver. The silver is definitely a bit of a cooler light. I actually like the warmth being added just a little bit. What I'm going to do is just figure out how to im this to set up right here. And I think that's going to finalize my setup. Here you can see the setup that I have. So I just attach this to a light stand with a couple clips. That's my back light. Hopefully, this deep dive into my lighting setup for my YouTube and course videos gives you a deeper sense of how you can use your different lights to give different scenes in vibes. Now, the natural light video completely different than what you see here. Now, some people might prefer that. Sometimes I like a natural light setting. This is a much more professional setup that just makes, I think the video a little bit more dynamic. Of course, it takes having lights and a light kit to be able to create this look. But that's what you're going to have to do as you invest in yourself in becoming a better videographer. Now, in terms of the specific models and things like that, it doesn't really matter as much, but for your education, I'm using a d cast LED light panel kit. As I mentioned, the 21 by ones are about 500 watt equivalents. The backlight is half the size of the one by one. There's lots of other brands out there for lights. Aperture is a very popular brand for YouTubers and content creators. But once you understand how a light works, where you position it, you can really create the same setup with all kinds and brands up lights. All right. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in another video. 53. Introduction to the Home YouTube Studio Section: Welcome to this new section of the course. In this section, I've included lessons actually taken from another course on designing your home studio. And I think this is going to be super valuable for you because what I did was I showed exactly how I set up this home office studio, from scratch, from deciding which angle I was going to set up my camera and my backdrop. How I chose to put things on the wall to create different shooting environments and to be able to have different angles, how I sound proof, lighting, all the equipment I use, how my desk setup is, with my computer, my lighting, my microphone, so I can just get in and start recording. So all kinds of good stuff in this lesson. So let's get started, and hopefully this will inspire you with some ideas for designing your own YouTube studio. 54. What is My Goal & Inspiration?: To my section on my home studio build out. I'm so excited to share with you my entire process of what I was thinking and what it turned into. So the first thing is, what was my goal, and I'll show you some of my inspiration as well. I actually had two goals with this space. One was to have a nicely designed office space, and second was that it could be used as a video studio. Notice the ordering of that. And you'll also, as we go through my space. I'll make sense that I designed the space with the number one priority being it was a nicely designed space. I have gotten older and matured as a content creator over the years. And as I mentioned earlier on, I started with a home studio next to my bed, where sometimes you would actually see the bed in the background, which was terrible. And sometimes I set it up where you couldn't. And the goal was, I want a dedicated video studio space in an office or wherever that was a video studio space. And I eventually got there. I built out and spent a lot of money creating my garage as my studio space. It was still a nicely designed space that also was utilized as a garage. But it was primarily designed so I can have my own office that was a working video studio space. Now, we moved to a new house, and there was an extra bedroom that was going to be used as an office, which was a big change for me because I was coming inside where I have little kids right now who someday will be at school for more hours where I will have more freedom to film. But The office is right next to the bedroom. It's visible to anybody in the living space of our house, and I didn't want the office to look like a video studio. And that was a personal choice of mine because I wanted it to look like a nice room in the house, and I wanted to use it as a room in the house. That was not just a video studio. And so that was my goal of designing the space. At the same time, I needed to be able to record videos. So there's things like sound proofing and lighting choices and microphone choices that I actually changed from how I used to do it to the way that I do it now so that it still stays looking for the most part, like a nicely designed living space and can be used that way. So let's look at a couple of YouTubers who have inspired me with their own spaces. Before I do that really quickly, I do just want to mention that in terms of choosing a style, for my office and my studio space. I have transitioned from wanting that clean nondescript video studio that looks great because it's clean the background, I use maybe plain backdrops or just like that plain studio look to something that fits my personal brand and my personal style a little bit more, which I was inspired by these YouTubers to do. One of them is Johnny Harris. He has a an apartment that doubles as a studio, and office for his YouTube channel and his company. And the way that they've designed his space is really on brand with what he does. And it changes now and then, but he has a lot of maps. You have the globe in the background, the warm lighting, the different textures that kind of give off the vibe of being worldly. And that's ultimately what he does. He creates content on stories around the world, oftentimes, dealing with really cool maps. And you can see in the setup that it has that nice warm sort of vibe. Daniel Inskeep is another YouTuber. He and his wife also created a great photography channel called Mango Street, which was always an inspiration because what they did was always aesthetically pleasing, atheticly pleasing, very clean, but also warm. And that was as I was picking my inspiration for my office, that was a term that I kept coming back to. I didn't want it clean, cool tech. I wanted it to be that sort of warm vintage vibe, and he has that in his videos. One other creator that the vibe is not exactly what I'm going for, but the way he's set up his studio has inspired me is Pat Flynn. Pat Flynn has a YouTube channel on entrepreneurship and business, but he also has a separate channel on Pokemon of all things. And for both of these channels, he has set up spaces that really showcase his personality in the backdrop and in the background of those videos. And again, that was something I wanted to do with my new studio spaces, have something that really showcased what I'm about, what I'm passionate about, what I like, so that when I come into the space, I enjoy it, but also if you're watching a video, you get a vibra and understanding of who I am and what I'm interested in. Now in the next lesson, we're going to backup and see the space that I'm working with. 55. Looking at My Space: All right, so we're going to switch it up a little bit. I'm going to be taking you around my office, and I think I need to switch lenses. Oh, that's a little bit better. I switched to the 12 millimeter Sam Yang lens, which is a very affordable, actually cheap lens that you can get for a super wide option. And now you can see a little bit more of the entire space. I'm going to be walking you around and showing you. But the first thing that I did when I walked into this space was think about, Okay, where's my desk going to go? And Thinking about that, I was also thinking about what the background was going to be. And which wall would be the best background. So you can see the three walls I'm working with here. And then the last wall I'll show you is actually where the door is. And I didn't think that made much sense to put either use as a backdrop or to put my desk. Because I also have over here a door that is a little closet, which is great for storage, but it wasn't a great spot to put my desk over here. So the question was, do I put my desk on this wall. Do I put it in front of the window, which could have been nice, except I didn't like the idea of my back being to the door way. And also, if I was filming at my computer, which I often do, I didn't like the idea of the door being in the background, or I could have put my desk on this wall over here. Now, putting my desk over here could have been an option. But again, then I would have a door in the background if I was filming at my desk because of the closet door. This wall over here is also the only wall without a window or a door, which gave me the biggest space for actually designing a background. And so that became one of the determining factors in putting my desk on this wall, so that this would be the background of most of my videos. I then could use the window as sort of a side fill light into me, as well as the background. But as I've mentioned, I've been able to design the space so that this is a backdrop I can shoot from where we've been filming this class, with this as a backdrop. I can film even closer with just the desk as a backdrop, or I could use this wall over here as a backdrop. Now, this isn't the angle that I would be using as a backdrop, but this is a photo wall. I picked a few of my favorite photos that I have taken, and I put it on this. And this one right here is actually one of the acoustic canvases that I printed. So this is sound absorbing, and it looks nice. So these are some of the things I was thinking about when coming into the space and choosing where my desk and ultimately my camera and backdrop that I would most often use where those would go. 56. My YouTuber Desk Setup: Let's look at my desk. The desk, it's your battle station. It's where you have your computer. And if you have a video setup like mine, you have a camera plugged in, you have your audio plugged in, you have a microphone plugged in so you can be a content creation machine. At your desk. First, the desk itself, this was a new purchase for the space that was going with the style and vibe I was going for the room. Previously, I had a pretty cool stand sit up desk. It was one of the original ones, so it didn't look as clean or was not electric, like many of the new ones. But Again, that style just didn't look good in this nicely designed space. So I went for this sort of mid century modern looking desk that has a nice warm tone and looks really cool and also has storage because the sit stand desk that I've used for years did not have any drawers. And so cable management and just being able to hide pens or pencils or hard drives was always a little bit of a pain. So this helps me keep my desk a little cleaner. Now, let's talk about equipment. So I have my MAC here. This is not one of the new M chip MAC, but it came out right around the time the first M chip MAC came out, and I was able to get it at a really good price and almost even more powerful than the sort of base model M chip MAC. In terms of the screen real estate, I love it for editing photos and videos. And also in terms of the look, it's a pretty clean look rather than having a dual monitor setup or a laptop with a separate screen, which some creators use, which looks good, but I just like the clean one monitor. Let's go through my actual video creation equipment. So behind me, I have my HL PR 40 podcasting microphone. I also use this for most of my screencast tutorials, and pretty much any video where I'm just sitting in front of my desk, I'll be using this microphone. And it's on this affordable scissor type desk stand, so I can move it around, I can angle it, and it kind of is able push out of the way, which is really nice. That is plugged into the focus right scarlet interface. So this is an XLR mic that plugs in here, and then that plugs in via USB to the computer. So that's my typical microphone setup at my desk. Over here, I have a camera. This is my Fuji film T two camera. It's an older camera, but It does an amazing job for filming directly into my computer, if I'm doing a live stream with one of my communities, even if I'm recording course videos, I'm often either recording directly into the computer or sometimes I record directly into the camera, and then I'll just have to transfer the files to the computer later on. But I've placed it right here next to my desk. Now, this was a little bit tricky because I don't have a lot of space, and at my previous studio, I had space behind my desk for a tripod. Here, I got these stands. These are little clamp on stands that tighten onto the desk, and I use them both for the camera and the light over here. And then I just have this little attachment converter that is a tripod mount. It's just the little screw that screws into the bottom of the camera, and then that attached here, which is sort of like a standard light stand head. The camera is not a USB camera. So I actually have to take this into a capture card. I'm using the Maj Well capture card, and that is using the HDMI out from the camera. And then this Mj well capture card converts the signal to USB for the computer. And you're going to need to do that with most cameras having a capture card that converts the signal into usable video for the computer. Again, most cameras don't directly plug into the computer. It really depends on the brand model. Then lastly over here, we have this big thing over here. This is my light. This is the aperture Ameran P 60 C. This is a new light I got because I wanted something a little bit smaller form. Now, this might not look small to you, but this is just the filter. If I didn't have this on here, the light from this little LED panel would be very direct and a little bit harsh. Having these filters in front of it actually helps make it even more professional and really nice. But the form factor of the light is pretty small, I can sit on the stand, and it doesn't fall. It's not too heavy, which was a huge problem years ago with lights like this, they would be super heavy. Now, this is a fairly affordable light for a desk setup like this for professional quality videos. There are much more expensive lights out there that you can get. I actually purchase the aperture light dome two, which is a very popular YouTube light. The light with the filter, and the light itself, and then Adding the filter. It cost over $100, and I actually purchased it when I moved into this office. But I set it up, and that thing was so big. It took up so much space that I ended up returning it because it just didn't go with the purpose or the vibe I was going for. I walked into this room, and there was just this giant light sitting there, and it felt like a video studio. And I wasn't wanting a light that I would have to take down and put up every time I wanted to film. I wanted something that could stay right on my desk or near my desk and look good and ultimately just do the job, and I didn't have to go overkill by buying this YouTube light that sometimes it makes you feel like you need to have these lights to make great videos, but you definitely don't. A couple other things that I love that I did here with my setup is to make the space look a little cleaner, I actually got a couple little stick on pockets for the external hard drives that I use. And those just stick onto the back of my iMac so that I don't have two or three hard drives sitting up here. For cable management, I purchased a large surge protector that I can plug any sort of standard plug into electronic. It also has USB ports. So I have all the cables for charging all of my devices, and I have them running into the drawers down here in the desk and also down below. But if you look beneath my desk, it's actually a fairly clean setup. You don't see a lot of cables. I've used some cable ties to route the cables along the legs and the post of the desk itself. But that was another important thing. I just wanted it to look clean. One other thing that I changed from my previous office was I got rid of the Mac keyboard, which just starts to get look so dirty after a while with, typing on it. One other quick little tip that has improved my computer usage and my experience here is I switched back to a USB mouse. So I'm not using a Bluetooth mouse, which is great, but you have to charge those batteries over and over. It started to get kind of annoying to me. So you know, I'm not crazy. I'm okay with a couple cords or cables going across my desk, and I'm able to stow them away and clean it up if I am using this direction. Oftentimes, I'm not using a shot like this where you're seeing my computer. We're looking this way behind me with my background, which we're going to be covering in just a minute. But that's my desk setup. The things I love most are the stands that I have for my camera, my light, and my microphone. Everything's right there. It's a simple setup. It's condensed. It's clean. I don't have light stands, tripods around the office, so it works really well for me. Awesome. Thanks so much, and we'll see you in the next video. 57. Designing My Background: Talk about my background. The background of your videos is one of the most important aspects, and it's a chance for you to show off your personal brand and for you to give the viewers something that feels consistent when they come back to you. And when they see that space, your space, they have that connection with you. So I spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to do with my background. And I ultimately decided, as I talked about earlier in the course that I wanted to move back away from sort of the clean aesthetic with no sort of personality to something that had a bit more personality. So I'm going to show some videos in this lesson with a variety of different angles that I've used in the past. Right now, I'm filming at a setup where I would be using a tripod that's sort of off to the side of my desk. This is not the view you see from my desk, which you'll see now, which is a really nice setup, and I do it squared off to the wall behind me, or what I'll often do is have it be a little bit angled. I kind of like having that window in the background as just another sort of element back there that brings in some light. The one thing I don't like about this cool shelf that I bought is that it has these angled posts on the side that make it feel like the shot might be a little bit tilted. So squaring it off is nice in that way. So a couple of things that I also wanted to talk about was this light stand here. I like having the light stand that's an actual light being part of the set and also something that adds a bit of color and light to the background. You don't see it, but I actually have a light shining on this right here. If I turn it off, it's going to look a lot different. So turning that light off, it really makes that background not pop as much. So I just have one of my older LED panels. It's a 500 watt cast light with a little bit of a soft box on it that is diffusing the light. So it's not so harsh. I'm trying not to get shadows here. Other things I was considering and trying to do with this background was find a color palette. And you'll see that across the entire room that I'm using warm colors, a lot of browns, Bigas, and not neon super saturated colors back here. So you'll see that in the chair choice, in this lamp choice, in the shelf. And then I have a few pops of colors. From different things like this typewriter. That was one of my favorite gifts that I got from my wife to a couple little pottery things that we've made or purchased. I have a globe up there that you can see in a wider view as well. Now, a cool thing is with this lamp, I put in a smart LED bulb. It's from Pro amp U X, and it's the Smart bulb, and I can change the color temperature of this bulb. I can even change the color, which is pretty cool. So I've played around when I'm doing different tutorials if I'm doing something like a premier pro tutorial The colors of premiere pro are purple. If I'm doing something that's more video school online related, I do my sort of teal, and you could actually preset color choices in here. And oftentimes it's just on this warm white color, which I think looks good, and it adds a little bit of differentiation to the cool lights that I'm using to light myself, and also that matches the daylight coming in from the window. And that's something to be considerate of when you are choosing lights for your home office, you typically want to make sure that you're using daylight bulbs or LED panels if you have light coming in from outside. Otherwise, those multiple colors are going to kind of contrast each other, and you're going to get sort of a weird white balance going on when you're filming. That being said, adding some warmer lights or other colored lights in the background to highlight either a specific part of your background or just to have in the background, I think is totally fine. And again, one thing I will note too is that as my goal was from the very beginning, I wanted the space to be something that I enjoyed going into, not only for my office and work, but also for just relaxing or just having the space walking by really and seeing the space look nice. And so there are some choices that I would probably change if I was doing something just for filming. If I had a specific niche that I was going for, let's say, I was doing a Pokemon YouTube channel. I probably wouldn't have my setup look like this with these items in the background. Because I teach a range of topics. I felt that the items in the background didn't need to be specific to one specific topic that I teach. So that's my background that I use. I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and we'll see you in the next one. 58. Sound Proofing My YouTube Studio: Talk about soundproofing and what I've done in this space. So again, going with my vision of having this be a living space, I didn't want to plaster the walls and ceilings with ugly foam panels, those egg crate kind of panels that you can get relatively affordably and work if you do plaster every wall and ceiling. So, I used a couple that I had previously. These panels to the back of me. These are white, addi mute noise absorbing acoustic panels. They hang really nicely on the wall, and I think that they sort of kind of just blend into the room. I also had one on the background, and then the canvas print that's also sound absorbing. So pretty much on every wall, we have something that's absorbing a little bit of the sound. Behind me, I have this cheer curtain that helps a little bit. And then on the ground, we got this big rug. Aside from that, we added the chair. We have a blanket there, we have like a little foot rest. All of these different little pieces will help a little bit. That being said, this is not a perfect room for noise dampening, sound proofing. And if I have kids running around outside, then I'm not going to be filming. So that's when I have to either be using my podcasting mic that's on the computer that actually does a really good job at canceling out any noise that coming from farther away, or even adding a little bit of noise removal in post production, which those tools have gotten better and better so that you can actually make your audio if it has reverb or background noise sound pretty good without having to have a perfect studio setup. Now, I placed these two here primarily because this wall was pretty bare, and I'm often talking directly into that wall sitting at my desk. And so the main vocals are going to be bouncing right off this wall, so I wanted to make sure that I had as much absorption on that wall as possible. And that's what I've done for soundproofing. 59. Office Storage: I want to talk about one of my favorite features of this office, is this little closet that I tried to create a space that was organized that inspired me to go grab different tools and also simplified my collection of tools. So that's one big thing, if you're building out a new office, I would encourage you to go through all of your equipment, think about if you really use it and keep only what you use in your office. If you have another space, or even if it's just in a box in office or somewhere else, put all the cables, all the tools that you sometimes use in that box, so it's not cluttering up your entire space. Now, this space is not as clean as it could be, but I wanted to show it to you as it is most days. I built out the shelf over here that has all of the lenses that I often use. It has the microphones. I got a go pro here, a little handicam, my Zoom h6n, if I'm out shooting in the field, extra external hard drives. And then I also added a couple of things that I'm proud of, like my YouTube 100,000 subscriber plaque, a couple plaques from UTM for teaching and getting surpassing a certain number of students. I have a couple of photos in there from my kids and from projects I've worked on in the past. And then I have these clear crates up here that they look unorganized, but they are semi organized with power cords, with cables, with office supplies. With there's one with like headphones, one with just like light bulbs and things like that. And same down below, I have some other organization down here for things like pens and batteries and things like that. I've got my backpack here. If I want to go out and work out at a coffee shop or something like that. Down below, I have my camera bag, my tripods fit down there as well. So all of my equipment, which actually took up a lot of space in the garage is all in here right now, and I really condensed it when I created this space, and I'm really enjoying it. 60. Charging Station: Here is my charging drawer, and it also has my external hard drives. And I really liked this because it keeps everything organized in here. These are the external hard drives that I use most often. And then I also have my camera batteries and then regular batteries that can charge here. And it's just all ready to go, and it's hidden. So it's not out in the open. It's not even on the floor. I was able to route the power cable here through the back of the drawer, and it hides, just like that. 61. Conclusion + Thank You: Wow. You made it. You made it to the end of the course, and I just have to give you a round of applause because that is incredible. I would say that 95% of students don't actually make it through the entire course. Getting here is something you should be proud of. More importantly, I hoped you learned a ton from this class. I hope that whether you were starting out from scratch or if you already had a channel, and you were using this just to give you some additional tips and advice. I hope that I gave you exactly that. This is a daunting class to create because there's so much content out there for YouTube creators, and I hope I did it justice in being able to provide you with real inspiring and real world information to help you out. If you haven't done so yet, now is a great time to leave a rating and a review for the class. These ratings help us know what you love about our courses. It helps other students know if this is the right course for them or not. So if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a rating and review for this class. If you're looking for another course to take, we have so many other courses related to video creation and also marketing that might be beneficial to you. You can find all of my courses by clicking my profile on this platform, or head over to video school.com, and you can find all of our courses broken out by category from video to photography, marketing. AI and Tech and everything else. I cannot wait to see what you end up doing with your YouTube channel. Best of luck. Have a great day, and I hope to see you in another class by