YouTube Success: The Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made on YouTube and How to Avoid Them!

1. Introduction: This particular class, we are going to focus on the largest mistakes that I made throughout the growth periods of my YouTube channels, and then how I had to fix those in retrospect. It made my life a little bit more difficult. It would have just been much easier to not made the mistakes in the first place. So I'm going to break down four of the main mistakes that I made throughout this entire class that you can then understand, so you don't make them for yourself, or if you have already made them, you know how to obviously go ahead and fix those from the approach that I've done in my own personal YouTube channels. The continuation of my YouTube roadmap to success. If you haven't watched any of the other videos in this series, go over to my main profile and start from the very beginning and work your way through to this point. The topics we will focus on in the next series of videos are vital to ensure you have sustained success on the YouTube platform, and you just blow up, and then flatline. You can keep that growth going at a healthy pace, and obviously keep creating content that resonates with your viewers. 2. Over Optimising Content: Are four huge mistakes that I made, growing too fast on YouTube. And in this module, I want to break down these key issues and highlight them because it does cause me a lot of problems, now the channel is largely established. The first mistake I made was over optimizing my content too much for the views, rather than for creating a relationship with the audience. Specifically, I want to talk first about YouTube shorts. Now, as we've established throughout this course, YouTube shorts go viral if they have over 80% swipe rate. So you're keeping only 20% of people are actually swiping away from the video. Also, the watch attention is pivotal to be around 104% on average, so basically people are watching for, like, 1.5 time, so they're getting the full loop of the content. And then, of course, things like the hook and pacing are pivotal in all of these elements that are mentioned above. There was some stages during my YouTube growth where I was literally pulling 1 million views a day on the channel. Like in the last 48 hours, it would say you had around 1.9 million views. It was very, very crazy. And when you were initially blowing up the channel, I remember it happening and sitting looking at my analytics each night with my dad, and you would just expect that to be a sudden falloff, like, it was just a mistake. It was just a week or two because I had put the content strategy in place. We managed to sustain it for ages, where we would just keep on growing and growing and growing, and then you'd slow down a little bit, but the views would then come back up. And as a whole, we sustained the entire amount of the momentum on the videos. But what happens was, as I initially seen success coming through the doors, so we make a video pop off, make a video pop off. Died to discover a recipe and format for all of this content to make it replicateable and duplicate it. So that meant it became formulaic my content. So I had, you know, clear to do list effectively of things that we could do. So do this and that will result in that, do that result. That use this hook and that will result in that. Use these types of clips, that will result in that I'm not even kidding. The content was so mathematically calculated. I knew exactly what to do, and I've broke down a lot of this in the process of us making the YouTube shorts, so you're already aware of what those are. There's times where I would make one video idea, and I would basically make that same video four times because I knew that it just worked as a format, and then that would sustain the views and keep the channel going. The problem that happened here was, I was over optimizing the content now solely for views. You would get a video that would do 6 million views. You think, how can I get one that does 10 million views? Then you'd have one that has 10 million views, and then I think that video is now like 16 million views, go right? How could we make another video like that that might get 8.6 million views? So I was hyper obsessed about figuring out how could I get the average views up per short? I. How could we basically get it to like 4 million views to 8 million views on a short over its sort of lifespan of it being on the platform. That was mostly for a couple of factors. One, it was great growth because you might pull like 40,000 subscribers or something per video. So when you do the math spe bloodyL, if that's what we managed to average, that's insane. Second factor, though was also revenue. Because the shorts only pay about seven p per thousand view, you had to obviously massively multiply the amount of views a piece of content would get to make it profitable or at least a decent amount of cash coming through on YouTube ad sent. So you would have to target 10 million views on a short to basically make the equivalent of what you might make off of, like, 100,000 views or something like that. All along form. Because in the early days of my YouTube career, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be a hybrid content creator concrete creator. Content create. I didn't know if I wanted to be hybrid or solely vertical, because I personally felt like vertical is the future of video. It's just unfortunately the revenue side of it hasn't matured yet on YouTube. So I was left sort of deciding whether I wanted to run this channel almost effectively a loss leader, but be a market leader in short format content. Or you go for this hybrid approach where I would have to dedicate a lot of time to making long format content. So during this process of trying to figure all of that out, I was trying to find out the most proper way to make short format content, that would be a guy that would pull like 10 million views on a short. Now, obviously, that's something very difficult to sustain. You know, 4 million views on a short, 5 million views on the short. We do have a few that do that, but there are other forces against you on the YouTube algorithm that just simply stop that from happening. At of what I did, I could never surpass effectively sort of 24 million views a month on this channel. And I believe there's caps on the algorithm that stop you from doing this. And unless you are a part of certain groups, certain, agencies, certain parts of the YouTube family, you don't enter the next arena at all, because I've had conversations with some talent managers that wanted to sign me. Can't obviously say who they are. And they said to me, Ben, are you a part of the YouTube Shorts program. I assume they just meant the partner program. I was like, Yeah, yeah I'm a partner partner program, where you get, like, you know, seven p per thousand view on the thing. They're like, No, no, no, no, no, we're on about the YouTube partner program for Shorts. What it transpired, they then told me was there were certain creators that were on their roster that were being paid around $50,000 Per year to make one short per week. And these shorts, I'm not even joking. These shorts were being boosted on the algorithm. And they showed me the different acts that were signed on their talent management, and these people were pulling 18 million to 27 million views per short. And it all made sense to me. Honestly, if you've done any form of competitor research, and you go and look at some YouTube channels, and you They got 27 million views on that video. Whoa, whoa whoa, whoa, how have they got 18 million views on that video? I've done that video. There was loads of videos I'd made first in the sort of summer when my channel was blowing up, and I'd only pulled 500,000 views on this video. But yet somebody else on YouTube and other channels on YouTube pulled 12 million, 16 million, 27 million views on the exact same style of video. And they did it after I done it. And I was like, That's really bizarre. It's not like they beat me to the market on this topic. The same was here with other channels I was researching. I research everything, every single niche, every single demographic on. I just go crazy. I figure out what everyone's doing, no matter what the topic of video. And I'd seen a lot of people pulling 21 million, 24 million, 27 million views on shorts, and I was watching their shorts and that's no different to what I make. In fact, my shorts are better. And I had this conversation with the talent management. Everything made sense. It all made sense. These certain people on the platform that get boosted on the algorithm because they're a part of special closed off groups. They're being paid by YouTube to create really bespoke fancy content, plus they have to do one a week. That's then obviously to make shorts look better than TikTok Instagram, et cetera. Personally, I don't think I should really be telling you about this because I shouldn't technically know. But because you become eventually successful and you talk to different people, you have conversations that other people just don't have access to. So when I found out about this, I went home actually raging. My dad was a part of the meeting with me as well. My dad comes in on all the really big meetings. Part of me was incredibly frustrated that I'd found out that this was the truth, because I'd feared it for a few months at this point. I knew there was something wrong because no matter whether I did two short a day, one short a day, one short a week, no short a week, our views every single month would always come out to be around 18 mill to 20 mill, well, 22 23 mill. Regardless of whether I increased the upload edable, decreased the upload gable, made really crazy shorts, specifically recreated shorts that were guaranteed to go viral. There was always a weird thing on the algorithm where just some content wouldn't get pushed out, some would get pushed out, and then if it flat lined, it would randomly get pushed out like three months later when there was effectively bandwidth on the algorithm for my algorithm allocation. I believe each channel gets given an allocation on the algorithm of bandwidth of the amount of impressions and views that that channel can get. So, for example, a common number I see amongst some of my fellow colleagues on YouTube, on long format content, they get around 1.3 to 1.4 million views per month. Again, some of my friends upload 23 videos a day, long format because they're like, news based channels and stuff like that. And they still get this exact number. I myself, who pulls 20 odd million views per month with shorts and everything, I on average, will do 1.3 to 1.4 million on long format. Again, regardless of if I upload two videos a week, three videos a week, one video a week, or I'm not even joking one video a month. We tried it where I uploaded one video a month, and then two videos a month to see if that dropped the views, increase the views, and Believe it or not, the number was still 1.3 million. And then we did a test where I did three videos a week, and the number was 1.9 million. It went up. I'm going to explain why it went up next. 3. I'm not crazy for thinking this...: My channel has had more than 1.31 0.4 million long play views in a given month. The best we've ever done was 2.1 million views of long plays in a month. And what happened here was, it had nothing to do with the brows feature. I used to be a huge fan of the brows feature for pushing content out and getting views quickly. But I believe the brows feature has a cap on how many views it can get on there. I think there's an allocation on the actual views that are available. I think there's an algorithm cap on the views. What happened was, we changed our strategy to be search as the actual traffic source that we were targeting. So we were doing more search based mixed with a bit of brows for fast quick momentum views on the content. What happened was because we were doing so much search content, it was also EX MS T. It was back Friday, I was the holiday season. Because it was Black Friday and the holiday season, people were actively searching. Sheer velocity and demand in the marketplace were actively searching for product reviews, tutorials on products, which is the best gift guide, which the best tech products to buy is Christmas presents for obviously the Christmas period. Because of the sheer velocity of market forces, all these people wanting to know about technologies. Millions of people everywhere I wanted to know about technology. This forced our views up because people were actively looking for it. We weren't relying on YouTube to push the content out in the brows feature, which is why it usually just flatlines, because you hit your algorithm cap of 1.3 million here. So because there was sheer amount of velocity in actual human beings wanting to see technology content, we pulled 2.1, 2.3 million, whatever number was, I can't remember if the top my head. Our views were basically 800,000 views more from search as the traffic source, and that's because we've made more things like how to build a gaming PC for your first ever PC type build. Ten things to do when you get a new playstation, stuff that's very search based. Now, I think basing a whole strategy off of search is bad. I think a lot of the YouTube Guru like bang on about using Qu buddy VDIQ, and you want to do evergreen content by a search, Search is just an element and a degree of adding stability to your YouTube views every single month, whilst also leveraging your allocation on brows to actually get the fast growth on the platform. These two leverage together will hopefully allow you to pierce through that 1.3 million algorithm cap and actually hit something much higher in the two millions. I think once Personally, personally, I think once you PS pass a certain level on the algorithm, you sort of in a new arena. As my dad would say, you've entered a new pitch. You've got you've got your different football pitches, and you've maybe entered a new pitch here, so you've got a different allocation on the algorithm at this level. Honestly believe this is true that there's an algorithm cap in certain niches on YouTube because the views never make sense. Some days you'll have the views go up like so. And then you think, Oh, things are looking good, and then out of nowhere, it'll just rock it down. And you think, Why did that just randomly rock it down? And then it'll go back up, and then it'll sort flatline, then rock it down, and then it'll go back up and then go back up. When every single time, regardless of how high it gets, even if it gets all the way up here, I've pulled, two, 300,000 views in a day on long formats before when lots of stuff was blowing up, even if we managed to do that, I'm not even joking, like, two days later, straight back down. And what are you going straight back down to? Well, it's always on average about 25,000 to 35,000 40,000 views a day. This seems to be a common flatline on everyone's analytics. And when I look on my analytics over the last two years, it sounds crazy, but Even though I now have half 1 million subscribers, we still almost average the same amount of daily views on some content as we did when I had, like, 30,000 followers. Like, we were averaging down here. Then there's a few crazy spikes, and it goes back down to here, a couple of spikes back down to here. And it gradually gets a little bit larger, but always goes back down to here, and then it goes a little big, then back down to here. Why is it it always bottoms out at the exact same 30,000 mark, regardless of how much content you add, how much larger your channel gets, how much more loyal the audience comes and watches the thing. So when you actually are actively getting bigger on the platform, why is it that the views always go back to 30,000? We all know why. There's clearly a cap there. 4. Views DO NOT mean success!: Switching our focus back on track and actually talking about what I mean by over optimizing the content. Because I was so hyper obsessed with not necessarily chasing the views for vanity, but actually trying to chase the growth and figure out how to escalate to a new level. And then I had the realization that that level just simply didn't exist. I had exceeded the maximum growth this channel could do, which is 22 odd million views per month. 'cause I was so hyper obsessed on that audience retention and basically the swipe ray. I lost the relationship with the audience, I believe in the content. Because when you watch this online course, if you've watched any of my other content, you'll realize how chill I am. I'm just talking about YouTube. I'm talking about features. My voice is natural. I'm not shouting. I'm exerting very minimal amount of effort. The only time I get animate is when I'm passionate about something, and then that's when I'll raise the energy in the content. Whereas when I was doing all these shorts and all of the long format stuff, I was Mr. Best defying it. I was like, This is the coolest Xbox controller. And when I look back on that content, I'm shouting, and it's irritating. But it's because I had to do the stupid YouTube voice to try and increase the watch tension on the content and give it that pacing and energy that that sort of age group is used to seeing. And then because Mr. Beast does it, everybody else does it. And it's not that I was imitating or copying Mr. Beast. It's just that was how you got the energy through and conveyed within the YouTube short. Because of that, it meant my personality wasn't being translated in the content. So if I would have a funny joke or like a funny moment, I would just remove it out the edit because I think Nana and Ana that that's not going to help with the watched engine. So I'll just keep it strictly to the script. Like, this is the coolest d d D. It's got these features d D D L subscribe. I would just keep it strict to the word for word stuff. Was more recently when I was trying to add a little bit of personality into the content. But because we have such a focused audience that's used to that contrived sort of content where it's just scripted word for word, you know, energetic. It's Welcome back to D. It's all shouty. It's been quite difficult to pivot into a more mature style where I'm slower paced. I'm talking. We've got more log shots in there. I'm talking about, like, Vegas, and I'm laughing at different things. So we've had to be quite clever in how we've gradually phased that into the content without alienating the viewer. So if I just suddenly became a logger and I was like, Hey, guys, I'm in America, we're gonna go check out this technology. They wouldn't watch it, think of what the hell. This isn't what I subscribe for. Whereas, if I still do videos, like, This is ten of the coolest tech that you need to know about this year, that's got exciting features. And then in between each product, I then interject some of the footage of me walking around America, blogging. It gets the personality in gradually where they start to realize, Oh, I quite like the way this guy's formating his content. And then eventually through time, we can phase out all of the scripted sections like, you know, this is the coolest da da da da, and just go straight to that format, that's obviously much easier for me to create because it's all natural. And in the moment. But the biggest mistake I made was over optimizing the content for views rather than connection with the viewer. Even though a video might pull 16 million views. That's great, and it got a lot of growth, but the viewers didn't really mean much to an attachment to Ben, and it would have actually been better if the video only pulled 60,000 views, but it was all orchestrated around building an actual audience and loyal following to then result in them wanting to buy my products, wanting to watch every single video, wanting to meet you in person if you did an event. Because again, when I go to all these events, like Twitch con and games C, they'll be these meeting greet areas. They'll be doing meeting greets for different, like influences, and I'm not even joking, like two people will be there. Like, that's it. And this person will have millions and millions of followers online. You're talking millions of followers on the Internet, and zero people will be there for the meeting greet. And when I started to see this at Twicon and different events like that, it was quite alarming to me. It made me think, Oh, you know, yeah, I've got a lot of status on the Internet. But what does that actually mean in real life? Are you still technically a nobody in real life. And some of these people were way way bigger than I was, and nobody cared about coming out of their day to see them. They're just a person on the screen with no attachment to it. So that gave me a huge thought about, right, how are we going to frame our content going forward to ensure that if somebody does bump into you, they're super high. Oh, my God, you're Ben Roland or O my word. And it's not that that's important, but it is in terms of an audience relationship, where they recognize you as an authority and also see you in a bit of a special light, so they're going to follow you and actually become a loyal fan rather than just a viewer. Because there's a huge difference between a subscriber. And a fan, huge, huge difference. You may have load of subscribers, but absolutely zero fans, which that means you make absolutely no money on the Internet, because the cleverest way to make money is obviously creating products for those fans, building out stuff for those fans to connect to, and that results in obviously being able to build a proper business with like at sustainability too. Because again, it's better a video gets 100,000 views from super loyal fans, rather than 2 million views off of a load of kids that don't really bring any value to the brand or really care about you, they just view as another face on the screen that's talking about products. Was probably the largest mistake that I personally made was the optimization of the content and forgetting about the human that was on the other side of it, because I would even say things to my dad I was like, Yeah, no one cares about me in the video. It's just all about getting the views and getting the product. Like, I was aware. I was I was like, Yeah, no one cares about the guy in the content. Just focus on making the product and getting the product views. So I was hyper aware of what I was doing. But in retrospect, it was a bit of a mistake because now I'm just the guy that they watch for the products, and if that product isn't there, if it isn't an Xbox we're talking about, if it isn't a playstation they're talking about, they might not click on the video or watch. 5. Supply/Demand: Biggest mistake I made when growing on YouTube, was not understanding supply demand when it came to an upload schedule. Now, no YouTube guru ever talks about supply demand. They'll probably start talking about it in the next couple of months because I've started to make videos mention what it is, how it works. I'm not saying they're gonna copy me. But these guru just copy and paste what other people are saying in the space, anyways. They're just watch other people's tips video and then just regurgitate the same nonsense, even if it's right. Anyways, supply demand is a fundamental of business that applies to anything in life. You have a product. You don't sell the product, if there isn't a demand for the product. You've got to supply the customer accordingly. If you oversupply the customer, the value of the product drops, it becomes cheaper because there's not enough people to buy it. Pretty simple on paper. But when you actually apply it to your YouTube business, it works exactly the same when it comes to you making the amount of videos that's right for the viewer every single month. And nobody looks at it that way. Because YouTube is a platform, people seem to view it as if it's different. Isn't business, it's algorithms. You got to cheat the algorithm. You got to SEO. You got to do all these different things. Because the guru and all the people giving you advice on how to grow, aren't viewing it as a business. They're viewing it as a platform. They're treating it different and not applying the fundamentals of business to how you would operate that. Because fundamentally, yes, it's a platform, but at the end of the day, it's just a customer that you're serving. This is one of your customers that you are delivering products to in the form of videos, and you deliver those products to your customer, and then they enjoy receiving them. Now, when it comes to upload schedules, I see the worst advice. I wish I could name the channels, but I'm not going to name the channels because should I. But anyways, you'll know who they are. They're the biggest sort of guru channels that have been doing YouTube growth tips for ages. But these channels will say things like, you need to upload daily. Daily videos is the way to grow at the moment. Oh, you know, you need to do shorts daily, or you need to upload three videos a week, and that'll give you a consistent schedule to stick by and you'll get your content out, and that'll get you momentum on the algorithm. They'll say all these silly things. You'll even hear some guru that be like. You need to upload 70 pieces of content every single day across all platforms. You know, then that way, you'll get recognized and people if you're not doing that, you're failing. If you're just doing one piece of content, that's not enough. One piece of content is too much sometimes when it comes to actual accounts. Now, we'll talk about creating clips and distributing clips in a viral manner in a different video, because that is a separate strategy in itself that is very effective, especially for combating caps on the algorithm, depending on what topics you're talking about.'ve tried everything when it comes to upload schedules. I have gone through phases of doing daily videos. I've gone through phases of doing one video a week, three videos a week. And what I learnt was, you have to increase and decrease your upload schedule, depending on the time of year and the habits of your viewers at that period of time. Nobody talks about this. They forget because it's a platform, they just think it's an algorithm. On the other side of that algorithm, are human beings that are actually clicking on, watching the consent, and those human beings have got their own life that they run, and at certain periods of time, that life becomes busy, and they don't have any time to watch any YouTube videos regardless of how many U upload. So here I want to first give you an introduction to supply demand in terms of the viewer habits on a channel before I explain what you should do with your videos and why. We're here on a standard month in May. Now, May is the worst month for views on YouTube for me, because the kids are doing their end of year exams, whether that be GCSCs, A levels in the UK, and whatever the equivalents are in America. They're doing their final exams before the summer holidays hit. So inherently, an 18-year-old, a 16-year-old is not going to be on YouTube as much because they have to revise for those exams. And then once those exams conclude, boom, they're back online, they're catching up on all the content. They're doing different things. Now, you would assume my career was finished in May, because we went from doing 20 odd million views a month to 81 a half million views per month. But that was just audience supply demand. No matter how many videos I would have uploaded in May, I would not have been able to increase the views much more than what they just naturally did. But it would have cost the fortune in production costs, editing costs, products that we needed to buy in my time and effort on pointless content for no reason, just trying to force growth when it's just not simply there. Before we deep dive into when we change the upload schedule, let me just show you how you identify when the viewer is online and not. So you can see here there's some predictable spikes that were happening throughout May, and that was whenever it was the weekend. So you can see here Wednesday, Thursday, Friday would hit. Views would instantly go up on a Saturday because the kids are off school. Or whatever that factor is, they're maybe having a break from the. You can see it was spiking up on a Saturday. Even here when the views were bad, the Saturday still went up in its own way. It's not as big as a jump, but it still went up. It's still following the same trend. Fast forward another week, Friday, views go up on a Saturday. Fast forward another week, Friday, views go up on a Saturday, and et cetera There were views day because we uploaded a long play. But you can see here, there's clearly some viewer habits that are occurring within a predictable pattern that you can learn from. I also have data from a music channel to backup that this is true. So my music channel had about a whole 12 month period where we didn't upload any videos at all. So basically, the data was completely unaffected. It was natural. I sat down one evening with my dad, and we were trying to figure out what was happening on the viewer habits on music to find the best date to upload or just to figure stuff out. So what we noticed was Every single week, when it came to the Sunday, views would go up. Obviously, the views aren't as big on the music channel because it's a tiny market. But still, it applied to even such a tiny channel in comparison to the tech channel that these spikes and drops were still happening on specific days. So Sunday would go up. So fast forward another week. This one defied it a little bit, fast forward, another week, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, up. Fast forward, another week. Saturday, Sunday is up again. So nine times out of ten, it was backing up what we were seeing again, Saturday, Sunday, up. So what we did was, we made a video for the channel and post it on a Sunday. And as you can see, obviously was a new video, so the views go up, but it performed better in the first 24 hours because the musicians are online on a Sunday. But let's think about why there online first on a Sunday before we sort of guess. So the reason why these kids, sorry, these guitarists or whatever are online is because they gig on a Friday night. They play gigs on a Saturday night, and the likelihood of them doing a gig on a Sunday is much lower, unless they play Kristins, and maybe a birthday party, something that's most likely on Friday. Stday. Unless they play Kristins, so they're solo acoustic guitarist that sings Ed Sheeran. Most likely, they do not gig on a Sunday. So they gig Friday and Saturday, and then Sundays, their sort of chill out day before they go back to the 95 job on Monday and they're using obviously music as the sort of hobby that makes the money at the weekend playing in a band. So that matched up with the consumer habits of a ideal viewer for that music channel. Sunday was their time off to actually finally play about and get the music equipment set up for the following weekend before they went back to work. So they would watch music review videos to figure out what they wanted to buy. They would watch tutorials to figure out what setting they could tweak on their piece of equipment on that Sunday because it was their lazy day off, and they just enjoyed music on that day rather than actually performing music. So, supply demand applied to this music channel crazily, because when you look at it across its lifetime, there was phases where I would make daily videos on this channel and three videos a week go to Absolute Town. And you can see this is when I used to be full time on music. I was doing three to 45 videos a week, absolutely working my socks off and only pulling about 4,000 views a day, because there was a cap on how big that audience was. It wasn't an algorithm cap like we've discussed in previous videos. It was literally a cap on the market in terms of the Niche. I couldn't get any more views on this topic because there wasn't enough English speaking people in the world. Interested in pedals to this nerdy extent. So you'd sort of met the maximum market reach, nothing to do with YouTube capping off your channel. So you can see here that even when I was cracking out three videos a week, we were pulling 3,000 views a day. I then stopped the music channel and started on technology around here in 2021, and then boom. You can see we are still getting the exact same amount of views without even supplying the customer. Yes, there's a tiny drop of maybe 1,000 views a day, 500 views a day. But fundamentally, the channel still grows at the exact same rate and gets the same amount of views as if I was actively uploading or not uploading on it. And that's because we build out a huge content library that's compounded over time, and it's supplying the customer. And because we oversupplied the customer in the early days of the channel, that content has legacy, and it's living on while the new audience gradually finds it slowly, but surely over time through YouTube search. So this is a proof that, no matter how many videos you make in a week, it's heavily dictated by the demand from the viewers ultimately at the end of the day. So whether you were doing three videos week like I was here just being a busy idiot, a busy fool, versus doing absolutely nothing here exact same amount of ws, exact same amount of growth, and even the subs are the same. We to average like 2030 supies a da. I still average 20 to 30 sues a day without doing absolutely anything on this channel. You start to understand this when it comes to supply demand on the platform, this will now allow you to optimally upload the correct amount of content without overworking for no reason. You're not doing daily videos. You're making pointless videos just to get something out, everything now has a purpose to while you're uploading it, and also it makes your life easier. It means the business can potentially be ran at a much cheaper rate because you don't need to actually make as much content as you first thought, and also it frees up more time for you to make better videos or do other projects or do other channels or do other businesses while YouTube is acided. Switching my focus back over to my tech channel. Here it is over the summer period. Now, as soon as June starts to hit, when the exams are starting to conclude. We start doing daily videos. So in this period of June, roughly sort of the mid to end of June when that school year is definitely finishing off. We start to do daily videos ramping up for the summer period. And as you can see, as soon as the schools finish around the 15th and 16th, the views rock it up right there. You see that, they rock it up, and then they just keep going. They keep going. So the rock it up a the weekend, kids go back to school for one last couple of days, they finish on the Wednesday. Bang. Now you're into the summer holidays, and the views go up to effectively 1 million views a day. Now, when my channel first blew up, I time the market perfectly in accordance to the summer holidays and also doing daily videos for this exact factor. When we were doing daily videos during that period, the growth was off scale. We were pulling like million views a day, 21 half thousand subscribers a day. Perfect. Whereas, this year around, the second time at doing it? Tackling the summer holiday period with the same strategy. Halfway through, I actually decided to drop off the daily videos, because as you can see here, the views just randomly drop. We hit the first week of the Somer holidays. I was like, Why is the views dropped of? We're doing daily videos? We're doing everything the same. All the videos are just as good as normal. Then they picked back up and thought, Okay, yeah it's maybe just a blip in the system. We're back to where we're at. Okay, we're straight into the summer holidays now. And then they dropped back off. And I thought, What? Why are they dropping off? This makes no sense at all. Now that I understand algorithm caps, it makes complete sense. I couldn't exceed effectively 20 to 24 million views per month on my YouTube shorts allocation on the algorithm. No matter how many videos I uploaded, I could not exceed that view cap. And this makes complete sense because when you fast forward 12 months from the year before, I was 1,000 times better at making viral YouTube shorts because of everything I'd learned in that 12 month period. So this summer period should have been off scale in terms of growth compared to the year prior to it, because I actually knew what I was doing this time, whereas last time I was learning as we were going along as we were getting the data in real time as to how to act on it. Whereas this year, I had a complete plan for the entire summer mapped out to a t that would guarantee we would basically go and push maybe 1 million subscribers or something crazy. But out of nowhere, we were getting capped off on the algorithm. Video would pop off and the next day drop off, pop pop off drop off drop, and videos were underperforming, and nothing was making sense other than the fact there was just no more bandwidth for me to be pushed out on the algorithm. I exceeded what was allocated to the channel. And this is why I do believe it is real. You may think I'm deluded. Oh, stre. Mr. Bees does hundreds of millions of, but go and Google who owns Mr. Bees talent management company, and you'll be shocked. You know. You'll go, Oh, that's why he pulls 100, 200 million views of video. No disrespect to the guy, I think he's fantastic, but the infrastructure has is definitely funded by a few other things. Identified this. I sat down with my dad and we had a meeting like we do he's very good at dissecting things, and we just decided to drop the load hedwill down because there was no point in oversupplying a customer that just didn't exist. We weren't going to reach any more human beings with the overworking and adding all these extra videos because we'd exceeded what we could. So we just stripped it straight back down to like two to three a week, and you can see it stayed exactly the same as when we were doing daily videos, which backed at the point that you can't force the growth, that becomes a point where it is what it is. Need to be hyperaware of both the viewer habits that you have on your channel. When to increase that upload chee and also when to decrease it. A the kids online, on holiday? Have you got an older audience or they maybe your way on holiday because it's Christmas with their family? Are they taking time off? Are they having a break from the screens because been working from home too much? All that plays into factor still. And then obviously, there becomes a point where you just can't really influence it anymore. No matter how much force you put into it, I can't possibly get this channel to grow any faster. And I've come to terms with that as a realization. Like, I sure I want this channel to get 1 million subscribers. It will get 1 million subscribers, but probably in 12 to 18 months, and no matter how hard I work on that content, I cannot bring that timeline forward any more than I already have because I've maxed out absolutely everything possible on this channel's growth. 6. How I Would Launch a NEW YouTube Channel: All of that in mind, I'm going to show you what I personally think is the perfect upload schedule for any channel, really, and also how you can build out a channel in preparation for Max growth, because I do believe you do have to have a large content library with daily videos for a certain phase in your YouTube career to actually build out something that's worth subscribing to or following. So I'm going to show you exactly what I would do, especially if I was a new content creator. So if I were starting a brand new channel, so right now we've got a new channel. This is a new project. This is the exact approach I would do. Would launch the channel before even uploading one video. I would go ahead and make, like, 15 videos. So I'd go ahead and I'd make ten long format videos, maybe, ten to 15 long format videos, all fully edited and, you know, written out, filmed, done, completed thumbnails. And on day one and two of that channel going live, I would drop these videos basically every couple of hours. I would basically have these videos go live every two to 3 hours over those first two days. So then when people log onto the channel, there's a huge amount of content on long format that's been populated within a very short period of time, which has given you a degree of momentum on the algorithm because you just keep adding a couple hundred views here or there to these new pieces of content. So you've built out the main page of your channel, and it looks attractive. It's got good thumbnails and it's all been thought out before it went live. Most people start a YouTube channel. They upload like one video and then go, Oh, what should I do for my next oh oh, this way you've actually thought out how each video links, and then also how you're going to push people at the end card like. By the way, if you want to learn more about free Xbox games, if you're on a budget, you should watch this video next. So that way, you've ought all out how the videos interconnect, and you can actually create a viewer journey across all of those, almost like a sales funnel, sales funnel to the subscribe button. That also what I would do is, during this phase, I would do daily shorts. So if maybe for the first two to three weeks of a new channel, I would do daily shorts as an optimal strategy. So we do daily shorts, That be dedicated videos that you're actually specifically making, or whether those are like clips, if you want to be repurposing it. I personally would make dedicated videos. It'd be like three things you need to know about making money online or three things you need to know about your Xbox series S. Stuff like that, stuff that's actually got a purpose to the short format. You can obviously then repurpose this to Instagram, TikTok, other platforms that you may also want to grow on and see how it performs on their Tube, because it's very interesting. Sometimes content performs better on TikTok than it did on YouTube shorts. That's just depending on how it was formatted and how it got pushed out on their algorithm, and how they tret that piece of content. Maybe the swipe rate was rubbish on YouTube shorts, so it didn't get pushed out. But maybe the watch tension was still very good on the content, so it did get pushed out on TikTok because they didn't judge the swipe rate as aggressively as a YouTube short. Very fascinating. Sometimes how stuff gets pushed out differently on each platform. So I would then also do dead shorts for two to three weeks. This is then going to build out a beautiful upload content library effectively where you've got a bunch of shorts creating discoverability. And then you've also got all of your long formats that went live on this first period. And then it means your channel looks like it's alive in doing something with intention. And you've built momentum on both of the algorithms. You've got your short algorithm that's got momentum going, and then you've also built some form of momentum, though a little bit smaller on the long format algorithm. And then as we've already established in this course, both of these algorithms are linked. So eventually, they'll just become a nice balance point between these two where it'll create a nice but of steady growth. Channel once you start to sustain it with, regular video uploads. Next, what I do is after I've created this main bulk of content that's there on the channel, I would now go back to a much more regular uploading schedule. So you've had an intense launch, and then now you've set up the new foundation of what this channel is going to look like, what it is about. And now you're going to go to your regular upload content strategy, which is one shot a week, so you just upload one YouTube shot, and then you'd also upload a long format somewhere in that week. And I think that would be the perfect balance for most people to do because that's 52 long formats a year if you were doing on every single week. Then it's also 52 shorts a year. You've got 104 pieces of content going live on that channel plus all the stuff you did at the front end, and that's just a nice way to keep it ticking over and it doesn't become too stressful. I personally used to do three shorts a week during the main growth of our channel. And I found this workload fine for me, but as I previously stated, this was oversupplying. There was no point in me doing these extra two videos, because we were still getting the same amount of views, whether I uploaded one short a week or no shorts a week or one short every couple of weeks, it didn't impact anything because of all that content library. So have to be hyper aware at which point is right to increase and decrease it based off what you're seeing in the analytics, and now that you're aware of some algorithm caps, whether there's more bandwidth available to you or not. 7. Evidence of Algorithm Caps: I see the summer period for us and our audience is the biggest time for growth and opportunity with the YouTube channel. But because I found out about the cap on the YouTube shorts, I felt a degree of disappointment and just what's really the point in me pushing out more content because it's not going to do anything, whether I upload three long format videos a week or one. It's still going to be the exact same amount of ws every single month, but it's cost me much more to produce two to three long plays a week because of the production costs of that content, same as well with the shorts. So part of me didn't really seize the moment as much as I was planning to when it came to the summer period, because I just realized there was no point that I couldn't influence it any more than it was already influenced. And it wasn't the fact that I'd given up. It was now just a matter of me finding a way to maximize the opportunities that I had. So, as you can see here in this data set, you can see we went from doing two long format videos every single week, and we were averaging the typical 30,000 views a day. And no matter what we did, whether we did two a week, three a week, the views just didn't go up. The views just stayed exactly where they were at. And then as soon as you get some momentum, they drop it straight back down. And then as soon as you get some momentum, they drop it straight back down. It was ridiculous. So, at this point here, I decided to screw it? We're just going to do one long format every single month because it doesn't matter whether I do ten or one, we're going to get the exact same amount of views. So I didn't upload any for ages, none at all. And you can see, out of nowhere, the views go up. Oh, suddenly, the views go up because YouTube now was just recommending older content. So obviously, we were now in the summer period as well, so there was a little bit more traction online. But YouTube was just recommending the old content, and we weren't almost competing for space on the algorithm against ourself. What was almost happening when we were uploading multiple videos a week? We were almost competing against ourselves for that allocation on the algorithm as crazy as that sounds. So I would upload one video on a Tuesday or something, and then I'd upload another video on Thursday, Friday, and I would slow up the pace of that other video because now YouTube would promote this video instead, and I would remove my position on the algorithm for that other video. So I was again over supplying it. I was oversupplying my allocation for the amount of monthly views that you can get 1.3 million views as we've established that seems to be the cap. So as soon as I stopped that, it gave the content time to breathe. So it suddenly went up to 40,000 views a day and I was like, That's interesting because it was just pushing out all the legacy content and it was just getting natural momentum on the YouTube search traffic. It was all looking good. So, I then said, Dad, right, the views are starting to drop off now back to where they're at back to the 30,000 views a day. So we'll drop a video. This video analyst has 1 million views. Probably like when you watch this course, it'll probably have 2 million views if you're watching it like a year or so later. Anyways, this then went boom, performed great first 48 hours, first, 48 hours. Then classic straight fall off. Straight back to 35,000 views a day. Straight back to the algorithm cap that was established during this phase of the channel. I like, Wow, that is frustrating. And then again, straight back down to the algorithm cap of 30,000 views a day. So many YouTube channels that just get 30,000 views a day on long format content. And it's definitely no coincidence that this exists. So, again, I uploaded one video in this month and got the exact same amount of views in that month as when we were uploading six videos a month. I basically two a week. So you could see that that reduced the cost of the business drastically. We were only having to make one video. And also the cost of all the editing was only about maybe 4500 pounds for that video. So I'd removed basically from spending three to four pound a month on editing to basically about 500 pounds per month on editing. And yeah, and the views were exactly the same. It was just more profit. There was also less pointless products I had to buy to make these videos. All worked out well. The same again, we did another one here that boosted up and performed decent. So I then sat down with my dad in September, and we had one more meeting, and he said, Ben, I want us to try doing multiple videos a week again. We both sat through the data, and we came to the same conclusion. He said, go ahead. Give it a whirl. So throughout October to December, I had a very intense work schedule of doing two to three long format videos a week with the aim of forcing the views to be increased. So the way that we forced the views to be increased this time was by changing the upload days. So we were uploading videos on a Monday, and then somewhere around Wednesday, Thursday, because what I'd noticed was in the patterns on the algorithm. Whenever Sunday came around, the views would fall off a cliff, because Monday, people are back at work, not really bothered. But Saturday and Sunday, they'd go up naturally because people were online, and, you know, the demand was up for consent. So people were searching for videos, and it was, you know, being served to them. So I thought, what if, Dad, we uploaded on a Monday and forced the views to stay a little bit higher. So what we did was, we uploaded videos, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, et cetera here. And this was the first time we tried it. Sunday came along, and I thought, right got a video lined up for Monday. Boom. I forced the views to be 10,000 views higher than the Monday prior because the views weren't dropping off, and I uploaded a new video, so all of that initial momentum went on that video with people excited to watch it. So it kept the views a little bit higher an normals. I thought, Oh, a, that might sustain the momentum on these videos, and it won't drop down on Monday, Tuesday, and then reset us back to 25,000 30,000 views a day. So this worked. I went boom, worked on Monday thug brilliant. Dropped off on the Tuesday Kind of expected, then we uploaded again on Wednesday, forced it up to 50,000. I thought, Okay, it's kind of working, then it dropped off, dropped off. And then same again, we uploaded Saturday here, and we managed to get a bit of momentum going on the Monday. So I figured it out. I was like, I figured it out. The unfortunately, it just sort of didn't really do much difference. It then sort of flat lined a bit here. Flatin a bit here again, we did a Monday video to get it back up. That worked, and then straightaway, straight dropped. If I skipped Wednesday, because as you can see here in all these examples, I was uploading on Wednesday as well, I I then skipped a Wednesday, straight back to our baseline, like, none of this work ever mattered. And you can see the huge increase in work here. You'd expect this to compound significantly higher than it did. But unfortunately, it just didn't. So then, again, Sat Day came around, we threw this video up. And then at this point, I sort of felt like we couldn't really change it. I sort of came to the conclusion that it was a bit of a waste of time. Because this video right here did ridiculous amount of views in the first 24 hours, and YouTube didn't push it out anymore. You can see here this is this video. First 24 hours, it did 30,000 views, which was crazy. Brilliant click th rate, brilliant performance for first 24 hours. And then NTube just flatlined it. The video is completely flatlined. There was no reason for it to be flatlined other than the fact they chose not to push it out because we were exceeding our cap on the monthly algorithm of 1.3 million views. It's the only logical explanation as to why this video didn't get pushed out, because we were already at 1.5 million view, 1.3 million views for that month. So it just just like, capt that out, because it was completely relying on YouTube brows and there was no search traffic coming for it, because it was a super rare Xbox that no one had ever seen before. Of the data proved that this video should have went flying. But unfortunately, it just didn't. So at this point, this confirmed again, everything that I feared prior to the other month. There you go. There you go, Dad. That's exactly what we thought because it took straight back to our baseline of 35,000 views per day. There was no reason to go back to that baseline, because we had a video that was going viral. All of this content was also performing brilliant, but then suddenly the algorithm capture off and put you straight back to this base getting ahead of yourself, mate. Woo, let's control him and keep him where he's at. That's the truth of what's happening here when it comes to the YouTube channel. So then again, we started uploading stuff. Again, here, there was some new playstations that launched trying to capitalize on those, and nothing just really changed. All the views were higher during this period. Nothing to do with the fact that I was uploading more videos than normal. It was just because it was the Christmas period, and people were looking at New Tech. They wanted to buy New Tech. They wanted to look at Tips videos on how to, you know, get the most out of the tech they were buying for Christmas. This was literally the week approaching Christmas. So last minute shopping buy None of these videos really had anything to do with those views going up. Again, they were tactically placed like ten things to do when you get a new Mt quest, three. Obviously, that was the biggest present of the year. So, you know, all these videos were fine tuned around that. And then, of course, your views go up on Christmas, because everybody searching for how to set up the new tech. So all our videos on how to set up an Xbox, how to set up a playstation, how to get the most out of your OCL Quest two, how to build a gaming PC. All of those videos were being discovered via a search, not YouTube brows. And that meant the views went up because of the supply demand. The human beings were needing this video right now so they were searching for. We weren't relying on the algorithm of YouTube to push us out because they weren't going to push us out any more than they already had because we'd exceeded our algorithm cap for that month. 8. Audience is the Compounding Asset NOT Content.: Next mistake or misinterpretation when it comes to growing on YouTube is the fact that the content isn't the compounding asset. It's actually the audience. Now, I have never really believed in the Evergreen content. All these YouTube go throw around on the Internet. You know exactly who I'm talking about when I mentioned those phrases. But they say, Oh, build our Evergreen content of library, and then they'll pull up some video that they uploaded like 12 years ago and go, This video still makes me money by the Amazon Affiliate Links man, and you're like, Dude. No one's watching that video. No one's watched that video since 2016. Let's be real because it's so a date about some I don't know, some tech product that my granddad wouldn't have even used. One in the comment section of those videos or those Guru channels. They live off every word that they say, and they believe genuinely that they're going to build out an evergreen library of content, and every video they upload, the one video away from blowing up the channel and the one video away from changing the life, all of that is just a complete lie. You never one video away from changing your life because your next three videos could completely underperform and just get 100 views. But that video did 86,000 views, and you're just straight back to where you were at. But also, every single video has an expiry date, whether that be a week, whether that be 12 months, whether that be three years, four years. But the content library itself is always going out of date, and other people on YouTube are making the same video that replaces yours. The algorithm. So even if you make a video that you go, this is evergreen content, some person might do a 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027 updated version of it. And every single month, there's new videos being released on the topic you've made an evergreen video on that gradually is going to bump it down its space on the algorithm because the YouTube's inherently going to promote the slightly newer content over yours at different phases of its lifespan. Yes yours might sit second or third on search. But fundamentally, it will eventually lose its slot on the algorithm. And if you're in a hypercompetitive niche in space, This is going to happen much faster. You're never going to see the lifespan of that content mature because there's so many people duplicating and making the same pieces of content, which is an issue we see a lot on the technology channel because of how many people can make and copy those videos, whereas something like my music channel does have more of an evergreen library of content because the products we make on that channel have a lifespan of about ten to 15 years before they actually update and refresh the generation of pedals. Then also people then purchase those same old generation of pedals in the used market for a significantly cheaper when the new ones come out. So You have a degree of evergreen to those products because they have a large lifespan compared to a TV or an iPad or an iPhone that's like a year or two. And then, of course, obviously, IOS. If you do tips and tricks on IOS, there's a new IOS every single year, new MacOS every single year. So you can't create Evergreen Tips and Tricks videos in the same way that you talked to. Because a year later it's out of date and irrelevant. No one cares about IOS 14 from bloody years and years ago. No one's watching that video. You have to be aware of the context, the content you're actually creating and whether that actually applies to yours, the loop pedals that we do videos on, it's also not a competitive space. I've made hundreds and hundreds of videos on these pedals. I've outworked absolutely every single musician in that category of video, and no one's going to beat us because we've made so many videos on these pedals and we dominate the market, and we make the best quality videos as well. So the products obviously have a long shelf life. So that content to a degree is evergreen. So even though I didn't see an initial return on investment of my time when I first made those videos as assets, the online courses. Every single month, I still get paid off of the back of those online courses. And years and years later, now I see the total revenue those courses have generated. It was completely worth my time and effort. But what I actually think is the most important asset that you're building. It isn't the library of content that you're creating. It's the audience. Over time, the audience is the compounding asset that makes it all worthwhile. A long period of time, I didn't want to make news based videos or short shelf life videos that would only last a week or two because I was too concerned about the fact that it didn't have an evergreen approach to the content. Or that piece of content isn't going to last more than six months or a year. There's no point in me making that video. That's a way I thought for quite a while over sort of about 12 months ago. I used to have a video idea or something would happen. I think, there's no point in making a video on that because no one will be watching it next week because it's just a piece of news. But what I was missing there was, I was too focused on the fact that the content wasn't Evergreen and rather thinking, Oh, what audience are we going to attract and bring in new eyeballs onto the channel that's going to be a part of the community that that is the compounding asset over time because the more short shelf live videos you might do in your little news bits here and there, that get 200,000 views quickly, but then die, but bring in 1,000 new subscribers. Te thousand new subscribers remain within the audience and hopefully keep watching new and future content over the next 12, 18, two, three years that you keep making content on. Mental ship for me personally was quite huge because there were so many videos that I was just ignoring or products that was being offered to make videos on. No point, no point. And then obviously, it might have pulled a decent amount of views up front and then flatlined. But it would have brought in a completely new audience that would have compounded over time and grew the channel in a slightly different way rather than making some content that might simmer slowly, but surely and maybe do 1 million views in 12 months or 18 months. 'cause ultimately at the end of the day, every single video you make will be irrelevant. In ten, 15 years, it will be out of date, and nobody will be watching it, regardless of what the topic is. But the viewers that you gained from making those videos, hopefully, will still be with you and on that channel or on whatever platform, you are on because you've built an attachment with them. So over time, they are the compounding asset. Nothing to do with the videos you make. The videos are just the vehicle to attain their eyeballs and get them to be a part of your mission. 9. You NEED to have a plan!: Final growth mistake on YouTube is not defining a clear mission as to why you're making the content. And I feel like a lot of people, they just make videos, and they want to I want to grow a YouTube channel, or I want to have financial freedom, or just some rubbish phrase like that, O I want to know be self employed and do YouTube. You know, it looks really cool and fun. Think everyone fails to think about why people going to watch the videos, and how are they going to monetize people watching those videos. Now, not everything in life is about money. But as my granddad would always say, it sure does help. You know, money doesn't make you happy, but it sure does help. And he was 100% correct. If you ever have a medical issue, you could go private. When he needed a new hip, dad could send him private, he could get a new hip instead of waiting on the NHS and limping around his house for years and years and years. So it helped him, and it sure did help, you know what I mean? And it definitely increased his lifespan because of the resources that you have, and it makes your life a little bit easier. You get access to things that you don't access otherwise. At the end of the day, YouTube. Yes, it's a creative outlet. It could be a hobby. It could be whatever. But it's still a business. You have to fund the video somehow. You have to fund the production budget of making the gaming PC and building buying $102,000 worth of parts to build the computer. You have to buy all of the cameras, the lights, the desk setup, this entire set up here. This is a pointless setup. I do not use this room for anything other than sitting in front of this camera. I have an eight KTV in the background that we use for benchmarking and testing stuff because of its resolution. Don't sit and watch any movies on that television. The sofas behind the wall for starters. You can't even sit and watch TV on it. I have a whole desk setup here that's full of different equipment that's only used for making this course and filming in here. We've got an MAC, a bloody 2000 pound display, audio interface, a microphone, a whole desk that's just used as a prop for putting all this stuff on. Lights just for filming in here. I don't edit in here. I don't eat my dinner in here. I don't watch movies in here. I don't do anything other than sitting in front of this camera. Then same as well, all the lights in the background. We've got lights in the background, all specifically to add vibe and mood to the setup, otherwise it would look rubbish. You have to treat it like a business from day one. You can't just go, Oh, I'm going to make videos, man. It's my passion. I love making videos. You have to think, why are we making these videos? Who's going to watch these videos, and how are we going to transform that person's life? And what could we basically sell them? Could that be an online course? Could that be a membership? Could that be coaching? Could that be physical products? And this is something that I made a mistake of with the technology channel. So with our music channel, we started off doing music tutorials and I was sort of figuring out how to make videos, which is fine. I figured out a way to monetize that and actually make it sustainable with the online courses and the online education element of it. Job done, you' nailed it. You've created an asset that has got videos on there, and it also now has customers that come through every day and buy stuff on a website. You've now created something that's beyond a full time income job sorted. I technically could just run that, and I wouldn't have to do all this other stuff. But obviously, I want to do all the other stuff because that is so self sufficient in its own right. So we've created a business and a compounding asset over time, that's just a complete cash cow that just simmers away, and I don't need to maintain it too much. On the flip side, my technology channel is very hands on, and at times, I am a busy fool. I have to make a ridiculous amount of videos because I'm competing against so many other channels, as we've established, you know, you've used drop up and down on them long format. Somebody copies your idea. It slows off your thing, you exceed your cap on algorithm. There's all these things that you're battling against. You then got all of the brand deals that you've got to do on the channels. You've got the contracts. You got to deliver them. You've got to get that uploaded. You got to get approved, got to get that edited. You're rushing around, rushing around, because the only business model that channel has at this moment in time is make money off of ad cents and then make money off of sponsorships because it's a very pragmatic format for a YouTube channel, because I originally thought when I set that up, I thought the sponsorships would be a great way of monetizing the channel, but then when I started to get the offers, most of the time I turned them down because I just don't like selling out and being this video sponsored by then having an integration on it. There are certain things that I didn't feel comfortable of when I was started to get the offers, and I also thought the money wasn't good enough for what they were asking you to do. And I thought, So, fortunately, the business model, I initially thought for that technology channel didn't transpire in the way that I wanted it to. It still does great, obviously, I buy everything that I want in life, but it isn't what I initially thought of. So now, I've been retrofitting a business model to that huge channel that we've created. That's in the form of we're testing at the moment, physical products. We're testing out different merchandise, dif fashion clothing, wallpaper packs, different digital assets. We've been testing different products that have came after the fact, whereas, what would have made sense would have been to go right. We're going to build this channel for this reason, and this is what we're going to sell at the end of it. Then that way, everything was even more calculated. That channel for me was mainly focused on figuring out how to grow on YouTube, how to get views, how to get attention, and I hadn't really thought about monetizing it until I'd actually achieved the ultimate goal of having a successful YouTube channel. So now I'm playing catch up. And part of that, you feel a little bit frustrated because you look at the 300 million views that channel has. And you think, Wow, if we'd have thought of how we could have monetized that better, you know, where could I be in my life right now? So I would recommend from the off, when you're starting your YouTube channel, think a how you can actually monetize it and have a few things in place, even when you launched a channel, whether that be a PDF that people can download, whether that be a mini course, whether that be something super simple like a wallpaper pack. In that way, you just get into the habit of finding alternative revenue streams and then building out something of substance. Because when we started to launch other YouTube projects and other YouTube channels, we've took this exact approach. We're now going right. We're going to sell this to this viewer, and this is going to be the purpose of the channel, and it's going to result in this. Doesn't matter if we're going to get 1 million views or 2 million views a month on this channel, because we're going to be making all this money off of this attention here. So it results in obviously a much more sustainable business model that doesn't rely on YouTube at all in terms of their add sense and their add rate and the fluctuation in views, because it has a degree of stability because of all of the customers that you're funneling away from YouTube over to e mail addresses. A website. So I think that's super duper important, and that's the only way you're actually going to create a YouTube channel that gives you that financial freedom, all that buzzwords that people say that you truly want. It's going to be more effort because you actually have to build up something proper rather than just run around with a camera and do some sponsorships. But that's actually going to give you the control that you're chasing ultimately from pursuing this career path. So on a side note, I think when you start off from day one, selling products, for example, like if I ever do a sponsorship now, or if I ever mention my wallpaper pack, a little $5 wallpaper pack that you don't have to buy. I just mentioned it. The kickback in the audience is ridiculous. The amount of kids that are go, Oh, my God, I can't believe you charging $5 for a wallpaper pack. You such a sell out doing that. Because you get this kickback in the comments, it obviously prevents you from mentioning a lot of the products that you actually have, because people have an expectation of you. Originally, they subscribe to you when you weren't selling them something, when you were just a guy making videos as they would view you. Then you now have the resources and you're trying to obviously fund bigger projects and bigger videos that you're trying to make for them that you can't fund any other way unless they purchased the wallpaper pack, and it gave you the resources to go ahead and make that video as little as $5, but it allows you to make ten insane videos because of what you can go and do. Because you're now suddenly mentioning a product, the viewer feels betrayed for some ridiculous reason, even though they'll sit and watch adverts on Netflix, Amazon Prime now has adverts on there, even though you pay a monthly subscription, or they'll sit and watch adverts on Sky TV, even though their parents pay like 50 pounds a month for Sky sports, and it should be ad free, but they'll still put ads on it because Sky get away with it because it's TV. Even though they'll sit through all of that type of stuff and not care, as soon as you start to try and sell a product on an already established channel, there is a degree of pushback from the viewer because they feel like you've changed. Always now we're just selling products like everybody else. Whereas, if you are selling products from day one on your YouTube channel. So from day one, from 100 subscribers or zero subscribers, or a couple of thousand subscribers, you are going hey guys and trying to funel them over to a landing page to a product. They have that expectation set there already. So if you grew from 1,000 subscribers to 100,000 subscribers, and from day one, Video one, you were pushing them over to products over to your own website, then there's no miscommunication between you and the viewer. That was the expectation they already had set of you. They thought, Oh, this guy sells products. Cool. I'll subscribe, whatever I don't care. So there is less of a kickback when you do try and start to monetize the brand properly because of how you basically the type of viewer you attracted in the first place, because they're like, Oh, cool he sells products. No problem with that. He's got to do what he's got to do. Subscribe. That's fine. Then forever an attorney, you can keep mentioning products. Oh, we got this new rg or we've got this new membership, or we've got this new community area. Oh, I do one on one coaching, and they don't go, Oh, my word, you charge that much for an hour, because you've set a precedent for how you want to operate your channel from day one. So I do think it's very, very important to just make your life much less stress free when you do try and then monetize the attention that you've gathered over the next few years of you building your YouTube channel. 10. Thanks for Watching!: Getting value from our YouTube room ap to success course. Be sure to leave some of the classes a review here on Skillshare. It's very important that Skillshare get this metric in order to ensure that the content stays on the platform. They've got these different requirements that they have now on the video side. Highly appreciate if you were to do that. And also let me know what you thought of the course, so I can obviously update and add even more content to this huge library of data and videos all about YouTube growth and success on the platform. Be sure to check out the class down below. These are very beneficial to complete along the way, too for your own development to ensure that you're actually applying practically all of the things that I'm showing you. As always, I've been Ben Rowlands, thank you so much for watching. Be sure to follow me here on Skillshare because we are uploading classes pretty much every single week on YouTube growth and various other skill sets around content creation. And I will see you in the next one.