- A friend of mine has been active on YouTube
for over 10 years, he has close to one million subscribers
and last year, he discovered one little thing
that grew his revenue by tenfold
and today he's here to share with you guys exactly
what that is and how you can do the same.
(electronic music)
- Pretty much everything I say doesn't make,
doesn't matter if you are just creating content for fun.
But if you are really trying to make a living at it,
it's pretty important to, you gotta see those signs
that, okay, how much longer is this going
to be sustainable on the model of using AdSense,
sponsorships, Patreon, T-shirt sales,
you know all of these things combined,
realistically how long can you sustain that?
I was starting to get frustrated
that I was seeing that the videos I really wanted
to produce are not the ones that people were watching.
It starts to feel like more of a grind,
like okay, I'm just cranking out the content
that people want to see,
but it's not really the content
that I got in here to do.
I started out making woodworking videos,
as just a fun thing to do.
I think in 2008, that's what a lot of people were doing,
it seems like now everybody has a whole strategy in place,
I was just making fun videos.
Eventually, that became bigger
and it became my full time job.
And that's what I've been doing,
ever since maybe 2011 or so,
is when it really became the full time career.
My experience with brand deals was,
has always been pretty positive.
I've never really had too many issues
with brands expecting more than I can offer,
I've always treated them very seriously
and I actually have fun doing my ad spots
and so as a result, I spend a lot of time doing my ad spots,
you know a 60 second shout-out ad for Casper Mattress
or whatever on there, I make those fun
so people will actually watch my videos sometimes,
just to watch the ad spots.
I'm not sure exactly what you would do with this,
but I don't know,
I could, you know, lock up my Porter-Cable router with it.
So thanks for watching guys
and a special thanks to that tool company
that sent me the new router.
There was mostly a time there where I could do,
pretty much anything I want.
And now, more and more brands are being,
I guess a little more savvy.
There's more and more stuff,
they're wanting me to pack into a 60 second spot,
which leaves less room for me
to make a really fun and engaging spot.
I really like having my content free,
I like having, being able to provide this stuff
for people at no cost.
It took me a long time to jump over that hurdle,
to think this is something maybe I should explore,
maybe I should explore some paid content,
off of a YouTube to replace some of this,
grinding that I'm doing on YouTube
for AdSense and for sponsorship deals.
The motivating factor for me
to start a course were three things,
financial, secondly, personal development.
I just wanted to be able to really produce what I,
when I first, my very first video on YouTube,
was a seven part series on how I built a chess board.
It was a long form and I wanted to show every step
of that process.
And people still go back and they still watch that video,
I don't know why they like to watch it,
it's so horrible, I was embarrassed by it,
but it's that kind of content that I started doing
that I wanted to do.
The third thing that was important to me was to be able
to reach these people who really want that content.
So the first thing I wanted to do,
before launching a course,
is I wanted to separate what I'm doing,
I wanted to make it different
from anybody else that was doing a course.
And so in order to do that,
I wanted to hire people who were able
to do the stuff I couldn't do.
And this mostly involves marketing, market research.
There's a lot of details involved in finding out
what my audience wants.
So I was able to survey the audience and ask them,
what kind of things do you struggle with?
What kind of things are important to you?
What do you wanna learn in your shop?
Why do you watch my videos?
Do you watch 'em just
because you just enjoy watching somebody build something,
or do you watch them
because you actually wanna learn things?
We were able to follow up with those people,
with actual phone calls and get further into
what kinda things to develop an actual demographic
of who my audience is,
who's willing to buy a course,
their ages, what they live, what their occupations were
and the really interesting things we found.
And so once we had all of that in place,
then it was a matter of again,
more research, more polling,
what kinda projects do people wanna build,
what is, do they find useful?
What kind of tools do they have?
All of this data went into this course,
all of this research before I shot any video at all.
So we were armed with a lot of information
and that's, I think the main reason,
why the course is so successful.
So we launched the course in October,
late October last year.
It was no way I could have done this alone,
if you are going to do any kind of course work
or any kind of business venture,
you have to establish a team of people,
who are better than you at this stuff.
The week of the launch was kinda fun for me,
because they had already written out the copy
for my Instagram post and Facebook
and okay, here's, all you need to do,
of course I get to approve everything,
make sure it fits within my brand,
it's Woodworking for Mere Mortals,
it's still, it's still me,
it's still everything I wanna do,
but they've put this together for me,
they think, this is what's going to work and it does.
If it had just been me doing this course,
I would have been like,
hey guys I got this course if you wanna sign up that's great
but don't worry, you don't have to,
the importance of really telling people
what they're going to get in this course,
that was huge.
The best thing about setting up this course
for me, for personal reasons,
is that it rejuvenated my excitement for making video.
I feel like this is the content
that I wanted to make 10 years ago,
that I didn't have the skills to make.
Now, I'm not so interested in subscriber counts,
I'm not so interested in
how many people are watching a particular video.
It doesn't really matter.
Having my own product has enabled me
to make at least eight to 10 times the income
that I was making with all
of my other revenue sources before.
And keep in mind, there's a lot of revenue sources.
I've got 'em all, you know Patreon
and AdSense and brand deals at almost every video,
I've got merchandise sales,
all of that stuff pales into comparison
to what I'm making with my own product.
The advice I would give all of you,
is to have something, have a product that you believe in,
that you can completely own.
That you have control over
and don't be afraid that your audience isn't gonna like it,
that they're gonna call you a sell-out,
that they're going to think,
'cause it just isn't the case.
It's the opposite.
People already watch your channel,
they already watch your content
because they love what you do.
They want more of it.
And there's gonna be a core group of people,
who want that so bad, they're willing to pay for it
and it's kind of your job to be able to supply that to them.
You're giving people what they want.
Again, it's a win-win.
The only thing I wish, is I wish I'd done this sooner.
- I know you've heard me talk about this a lot,
here on this channel,
about forming a business model around your content
and knowing what value you're delivering,
who you're delivering it to
and then selling like 10 x that value,
in a format people are willing to pay for.
That, hands-down is the best way to make money on YouTube
and to go full time on this platform,
even with a relatively small audience.
It doesn't have to be a course,
it could be events, it could be tips,
it could be product sales,
it could be like don't start with the product,
start with the value, determine what that is,
and then figure out how you sell that value.
For example, you guys subscribe here
to Video Creators because you wanna learn
how to best grow your YouTube audience
and how to reach people and impact their lives
and make money on this platform
that makes all of that sustainable
and so I have a course, a video course
that teaches you guys how to do that,
it's like you get one x the value here in this video
and this is like 100 x.
In this course called, Turn YouTube into your Career,
if you're interested in it, link down below
but it is like the step-by-step process,
that's very similar to what Steve went through
that allowed him to monetize his audience,
in the way that he did.
I put together a short playlist,
which you can see it right here,
it goes into more depth about
how to make money on YouTube
and really make this sustainable
and go full time on YouTube,
even with a relatively small audience.
So click there, check it out, subscribe here
to learn more about growing your YouTube audience
and I'll see you guys over in those videos.
Boom.