- I know a couple of creators who literally make
$1,000,000 per sponsored short.
I have like probably one of the best strategies
that I haven't seen anyone do.
I think that a Shorts creator could make
just as much money as a long form creator.
- Today we are diving into the world of YouTube Shorts
with one of the fastest rising stars on the platform,
Jenny Hoyos.
Jenny is by far one of the top creators
making Shorts on YouTube,
averaging about 10 million views per short.
In this step-by-step breakdown,
Jenny will be sharing her best strategies around ideation,
hooks, storytelling, analytics, monetization and more.
And by the end of my talk with Jenny,
you should be left with a crystal clear blueprint
for creating high performing Shorts.
First things first, what do you feel like
your overarching strategy is
and the mindset that enables this level of consistency is?
- I think the biggest overarching thing
is treating YouTube like a business.
So, I'm just making sure that I'm very
on top of my schedule, like all my content is scheduled,
all my content is on a calendar.
I make sure that no matter what,
there is a YouTube video posted on Saturday at 10:00 AM EST.
So I think for me it's making sure
that I do quality, quantity.
So I want my videos to be quality,
but I also want to make sure
that I'm uploading consistently.
- Even at the age of 18, Jenny has made the decision
to treat her YouTube channel like a business.
She's investing so much time and effort
to not only grow the business but also make it profitable.
In order to be profitable as a business,
you need to go out and find yourself a potential customer,
or in Jenny's case, a target audience.
One of the things you mentioned recently was that
as creators we want to be in a blue ocean
as opposed to like a red ocean.
But how do you deliberately position yourself in a
space with little competition,
which is basically what the analogy is, sorry to spoil it.
- When I think of blue ocean,
I think of having your own unique twist.
So granted we're all gonna have idols
or steal an artist, but at the end of the day,
you should still have your own unique thing
that makes you unique.
What's your unique advantage?
What are things that you're skilled at?
Things in your situation that help benefit you, basically,
is the way I like to see a blue ocean.
I was always into entrepreneurship and business,
so I knew I wanted to make videos about finance or money.
And at first, I was actually copying Graham Stephan,
like one-for-one, I kid you not,
the exact same style, the exact same everything basically,
I've unlisted those videos 'cause it's very cringe.
That's just like a red ocean
'cause everyone's trying to be Graham Stephan.
But then I looked at everyone else
in the money/finance industry
and I noticed that there's no one doing it for kids.
So I knew that there was a gap in the market, essentially,
and I had to do it.
- Well, I would say she bridged the gap just fine.
Coming from a family of extreme money savers,
she picked up tips and relatable humor from them.
In other words, she took an experience
that was unique to her life and used it to make content
that other people could relate to.
But what's equally significant here is that
her being a younger creator made it
so that she could relate to other young people
who wouldn't normally think about saving money.
And if you want to attract an audience of people
who wouldn't normally think about saving money,
you need to make sure that your hook is spot on
to get them to stop scrolling immediately.
So let's talk about hooks for a little bit.
Walk me through like the process for you
for coming up with an incredibly catchy and effective hook?
- So a good hook is concise, no more than three seconds,
it needs to be very visually pleasing,
very visually appealing.
It needs to be so good that you can be
watching the video on mute
and still understand what the video's about.
So I try to make sure that the composition's good.
What I mean by that is like,
everything's centered, in frame,
I try to make sure there's no more
than three objects in the frame.
It needs to be so good that you can use it
as a thumbnail on one of your long form videos.
I think the most underrated thing in hooks is foreshadowing.
So a good hook not only stops your scroll,
but also makes sure you get to the end of the video.
You should foreshadow what is to expect at the end.
Some things that are very easy to apply is like,
here are three reasons why X.
So now we know the video's gonna end on three,
so it doesn't need to be too complicated.
Or my favorite example is,
I started a video by giving my grandma
a $5 Christmas present and showing her reaction.
So I started with the cold open
of her reacting to this $5 gift,
but the thing is you don't see
what the gift is until the end of the video.
- I hope you can appreciate that
the tips Jenny is giving us here are pure gold.
Grabbing an audience's attention
to get them to stop scrolling
is everything when it comes to YouTube Shorts.
It's important to note though, that's not the only thing,
because you also need a good average view duration,
you need people to watch the whole thing.
In order to do that, you need to tell stories.
Now I know some people kind of feel like
they have a natural ability to just tell stories,
but if you're anything like me,
it's something that is a bit intimidating.
Fortunately though, for you and me,
this is something you can learn,
this is a skill you can develop.
So, what storytelling frameworks
and techniques are you using?
- I'm gonna start with the simplest
ending with the hardest, retention tactic.
So, the simplest one that anyone can apply is,
but so storytelling.
So it's basically setting up conflict
and then resolving the conflict
and then setting up new conflict.
So imagine a story where you say,
oh, I want to go on a walk.
So I went outside, it started raining,
and I didn't know what to do so I went back home.
It's like okay, it's a story I guess,
but when you use but and so
it just sounds more entertaining.
Like, I was at home but I got bored
so I ended up going for a walk, but it started raining.
So I ended up trying to figure out what to do.
I was looking for an umbrella
but I couldn't find one so I had to go back home.
So it's like the story just seems
so much more engaging when you use those words.
I probably like repeat myself so many times on these Shorts,
but every time I say, but, like it stops someone
from scrolling, it's like, "But what?"
So that's one method.
And the second thing I love to do
is dual narrative storytelling.
So with Shorts, you wanna keep your videos very concise
and it's very hard to do that
because you probably wanna get across
multiple different messages,
but you only have like 60 seconds to do that.
So what I do is this technique
where I tell two stories at the same time.
I tell one story through my voiceover or whatever I'm saying
and the second story is told in what I'm showing.
So an example of me doing this is,
I wanted to give my grandma a $5 Valentine's gift present,
but the reason why I was doing that is because you know,
it was the first year she didn't have a valentine
because my grandpa passed away,
and I'm like, that's way too much context
and it's also almost like too sad.
I feel like people are just gonna scroll if I say that.
So instead, my voiceover was me talking about
me making the present for her,
but I never said the additional context.
Instead, I showed pictures of her with my grandpa
to almost show to the viewer
that this is the reason why I'm doing it
without telling them that.
- Jenny has admittedly studied these big creators
for thousands of hours to come up with these strategies.
So you can rest assured these are tried and tested
by the best out there.
Ryan Trahan is a prime example
of using visuals to add context.
But you may have noticed that Jenny and Ryan's Shorts
are packed with info, but very carefully.
You never wanna overwhelm
an audience in your YouTube Shorts,
it's all about finding a rhythm and a pacing.
What are some of your best practices
around structure and pacing?
- My favorite pacing when it comes to,
like structure and pacing since it's very similar,
it is quick hook, medium paced middle,
and probably a peak in somewhere in the middle,
like a funny joke,
back to medium pacing and then quick ending.
You wanna make sure
that it's almost a rollercoaster of emotions.
And there's multiple theories that back this up,
so one that I wanna get into is peak and theory,
and it's this theory that people only remember
their favorite part of a movie
or whatever they're watching and the ending.
You never think of like,
"Oh, I remember when this boring thing happened."
Which makes sense, but that's like the whole point of it.
- I think because creators are forced in Shorts
to keep their videos under 60 seconds long
and keep their energy up,
a lot of their ideas kind of get rushed through.
Oftentimes the videos can lose their flow
and confuse the audience.
- Do not talk fast, just talk more concise
and try to get the message across in the least
amount of words possible.
Usually you'll give like that concise,
quick, action-packed, value and context
and then right after giving so much context,
you need to let it breathe so that they can understand
the context that they just heard.
- Once you've finish making a video
that you're very, very excited to share,
it's difficult not to just go ahead and hit publish.
But before you do a good practice here
is to take a step back and ask yourself a few questions.
Imagine for a second that you're the viewer of this video.
Does it make sense?
Is it captivating?
Does it capture the right emotion?
Because you should absolutely be making it a priority
to understand how the audience is going
to feel when they watch your Short.
I don't care if it's Shorts or longs,
connecting with your audience is everything.
How do you get insight into your audience's
mindset and preferences?
- I feel like the best way to do it is
literally to send your videos to your avatar if possible.
So for me it's very simple to just send it
to a younger family member or, also my parents,
but if you don't have that,
utilizing your analytics is very important.
I try to look at the retention graph, not the percentage.
You look at the retention graph and you see like,
oh, this joke just did not hit
or I talked way too long for that.
And you just kind of have to come up
with your own assumptions and figure that out
and apply it to new videos.
But as for what content to make and content strategy,
I'm looking for videos that are a bit old
but performing in the last 48 hours
because like for example right now my last 48 hours
is one video from a year ago
and then a bunch of them are videos from like last month.
But then what what's interesting is like,
why is my number one performer a video from last year?
And that's how you understand what videos
are actually the ones you need to recreate
and what is actually resonating with your audience.
For example, I'll look at,
oh, what's my average duration of videos
that are my top performers?
That's how I know my best videos are 34 seconds,
so I'll usually just toggle as many analytics
as possible and see if there's any patterns there.
- Yes, understanding your analytics is great
for helping to increase your views and watch time
and find trends within your content,
but the real win lies in making content that people love.
When you watch something that you love from a creator,
you go back and you wanna watch more of it,
that's how you build a community and grow on YouTube.
What else do you intentionally do to build loyalty
and get viewers like coming back habitually?
- Buckets is probably 90% of creating returning viewers.
So, buckets are repeatable formats
and I try to keep mine very similar titled.
For example, my bucket would be,
$1 fast food item versus restaurant.
So it would be like $1 burrito, $1 boba,
$1 everything, basically.
And because everything is titled and structured
and formatted and the video is very similar,
like all the videos are metallically linked.
YouTube can easily be like,
"Oh, the viewer liked when she made $1 pizza.
Oh, they're gonna like when she makes a $1 sandwich
or a $1 burger."
It's very easy for YouTube to understand
what your viewer is gonna wanna watch next.
So the goal with returning viewers on Shorts
is to make videos that your viewer
is probably going to watch next.
And you do that through structure,
format and metadata such as title.
If you're uploading once a week,
I think two to four buckets is really reasonable.
- Even though making Shorts is awesome
and all this advice is really helpful,
there is one glaring issue when it comes to Shorts
and that is your return on investment.
Honestly, are Shorts even worth it?
I'm sure you've seen the adsence on Shorts
for most creators is very small.
But you yourself are someone who's admitted to everybody,
"I love money."
How can somebody who's getting into Shorts
and seeing a bit of success leverage them to make money?
- Shorts is totally a viable way to make money,
I don't know who thought that it's not.
I think that a Shorts creator could make just as much money
as a long form creator, maybe not as much ad revenue,
but you can make the same money.
I average like 50 to a hundred million views
per month on Shorts.
So because of that it ranges between
five to 10K per month in ad revenue,
versus if I was doing long form
and I was getting those views,
what the heck, I'd be at what, 100K a month?
Like so, theoretically ad revenue wise, it's much worse.
But if you have products, courses, sponsorships,
that's where the money is to be made.
I know a couple of creators
who literally make $1,000,000 per sponsored short.
I'm just saying, so,
and they get less views than me or probably about the same.
You just gotta be a good businessman,
good businesswoman, good business person.
- I could say firsthand we've witnessed a huge surge
in channels that are exclusively making YouTube Shorts,
but a lot of the creators we've spoken to
have a business-minded plan of eventually branching out
into longer form content.
Expanding your reach with long form videos
is easier said than done, but not impossible.
What would you tell someone who's enjoying
a lot of success on their Shorts
but they're struggling with long form?
When I say that, I think of you as somebody
who can get 10 million views in a short in your sleep,
and then you know, you post a long form
and you're not enjoying those same views on average,
what would you say to someone
who's kind of feeling the same way?
- It really sucks.
I think you have to see it as like two different games,
like they're two completely different challenges to me.
With long form, every second doesn't matter
as much as it does in Shorts,
because one second on a short is over 1% retention,
but on a long form, one second isn't even 1% retention.
So if you lose one second percentage wise it's not huge,
but with Shorts it's like everything is so exponential.
My strategy to convert from Shorts to long form
is to literally make very similar feeling content.
What I mean by that is bit-based videos,
essentially creating 30 second Shorts
until it adds up to an eight minute video.
For example, I easily have 20 Shorts
where I recreated fast food items.
So imagine a long form where I did,
I recreated 100 fast food items,
and it's basically the same thing
'cause I know my Shorts viewers watch that.
- I mean, and that sounds like a fantastic way
to keep a Shorts viewer potentially hooked
on a long form video.
But as I'm sure you're well aware of,
a lot of people struggle with this,
getting people to watch...
- If I created my own YouTube channel,
all eyes would be on me
and I would make every puny human YouTuber
disappear off this platform.
- Getting people to watch your long form videos,
who watch your Shorts is almost impossible.
How are you handling that challenge
and what are you seeing in your data?
- So for context, my Shorts average
10 million views per video,
but my long forms range between 50 to 500K,
it's a very wide range.
But my top performing videos on long form
are literally almost all returning viewers.
So, what I am identifying is,
yes, people are converting from Shorts to long form
and the retention's actually great.
In fact, even when I link a long form from my Short,
like with the related, the new related feature,
my retention is crazy high on my long forms
even though they're coming from Shorts.
And I think the reason is
because the feel is just like very similar.
- Let's be real,
growing any type of channel on YouTube is challenging,
Shorts, longs, algorithms, analytics, it's all too much.
So, that's why we've made a video packed with 150 tips
for small channels to grow fast on YouTube.