Hello and welcome to the livestream,
whether you are joining live with me now or if you're catching us on the replay.
In this live stream, I'm going to be answering the question,
giving you questions to answer on should you start a YouTube channel?
This is a question that I know a lot of you ask yourself.
And I'm going to talk about the reality of what it's like to have a YouTube
channel, as well as the questions you really need to ask yourself to understand
whether or not you want to invest and commit to this journey.
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help you grow
your business using video on social media with ease.
Now, whether you are joining live with us now or if you're catching us
on the replay, please drop your questions in the chat or
in the comments section, and I will get to them at the end
of the livestream after the broadcast. As usual, all the time stamps
and everything that I mentioned will be in the description.
Let's talk about what it's like to create and start a YouTube channel?
Now, I think when it comes to starting a YouTube channel, there's a lot of advice
out there, particularly from larger YouTube creators,
right?
And they will tell you things like, you just need to start,
you'll get better over time. You'll
get better over time
just keep uploading, overcome your fears.
And, you know, YouTube will change your life and the money will just come.
You just need to do it.
And whilst I think this is very motivational and I think this is very
encouraging, what it doesn't address is the hard questions you need to ask,
because there's a lot that comes with growing a YouTube channel.
But I'm here to ask the questions for you.
These are the four questions I feel
that you need to ask so it can then get the juices flowing and you can then start
to understand what it's like to grow a channel.
The first question that I want you to ask yourself,
if you are looking to start a YouTube channel or if you have one and you're
looking to grow it, right, is are you doing this for the money?
Just for the money? And I feel this is
an important question to ask, because a lot of people,
when they, well, when I work with creators and I ask them, why do you want to start
a channel? Why do you want to, you know, go through all this YouTube pain?
And when the answer is because I need
the money or because I want to make more money.
And that's the only reason why, for me, that's a red flag.
And let me tell you why.
When it comes to making money on YouTube,
particularly when people think that, oh, I'm just going to start a YouTube money
and the YouTube partner program and AdSense start paying out,
and I'm going to be like a massive creator
and get thousands and thousands of dollars every single month.
That's not the reality.
When you think about YouTube money,
you know, lots of people think this is what happens.
They think that, you know, it just starts raining money and,
you know, the cash registers or the money just keep falling and falling and falling.
And that's what people think about YouTube money.
But the reality is that it takes time.
One of the YouTube creators that I or
that my husband watches and that I also follow is Phil DeFranco.
Phil DeFranco currently has over six million subscribers on his channel.
And I love Phil
because in one of his videos and he releases daily videos,
one of his videos, probably a month or so ago,
he talked about YouTube money and he talked about how he now makes a decent
living off YouTube, you know, six million subscribers.
And he has a daily show and he has sponsors, but he talks about how
the YouTube money didn't start paying for two years, well over two years.
And he was doing it full-time effort.
When people say I'm doing it
for the money or when people say that I need the money,
I say this is a problem because the money doesn't come for a while
for most creators. If you really need the money, you need to get a job.
You need to find another way to supplement
your income, because the reality is it's just going to take you time to start
earning money from the YouTube partner program and from AdSense.
If you're thinking that this is your way to get out of debt, your way to get out of
all of your financial problems, you're going to be really sorely disappointed.
But if you're, if the answer is that I want
to start a YouTube channel because it's it's a creative outlet for me because I
have a message and I want to get it out there.
I want to build a brand.
I want to, you know, make an impact.
Those are the right reasons to be creating a YouTube channel.
But I think that, you know, if it's solely because you want to make
money from Google ad sense alone, you're going to be
very, very disappointed.
In addition to that, I highly recommend if you are looking to make money, you know,
and YouTube is part of the ecosystem in the equation, that you diversify.
I make money from a couple of sources with YouTube.
I make money from the YouTube partner program.
I make money from my courses. I make
money from affiliate marketing and coaching.
I don't purely rely on AdSense alone. Why?
Because it's something that you can't control.
It's inconsistent
so it fluctuates and it takes time. Right?
I really feel that we need to address the fact that YouTube, you know,
AdSense money isn't going to solve all of your money problems and if it's the reason
that you want to get into YouTube, it's probably the wrong reason,
right? Ask yourself the question.
Why are you doing it? Are you doing it just for the money?
If so, YouTube is probably not the best platform for you.
The second question I want to ask you,
I want you to ask yourself is, are you committed to creating quality
content that's relevant and focused on user needs?
And the reason I get you to ask yourself this question is I see a lot of creators
who come to me and they say particularly new creators, right,
and they say, oh, you know, my channel's just not growing.
Can you look at my analytics?
And first of all, it's like I don't need to look at your analytics.
When I look at their channel, I can see that one,
they either don't have any videos or they've released, you know, a bio video.
And like, oh, my channel's not growing. I was like, yeah, because you haven't,
you know, created enough content. Or they've got like 50 to 100 videos.
And when I look at those videos, I'm like,
oh, you've just uploaded for the sake of uploading,
like maybe because someone's told you to do that or you got the idea somehow.
But if you're going to play this YouTube
game, you have to be willing to commit to a couple of things.
You have to be willing to focus on improving your content.
And that means taking the time to do
the keyword research so that the content you create has actual demand.
That's one. The other thing you need to focus on is
spending the time to make sure that your content is good.
However, that looks like whether that's
researching the actual content or whether that is, you know,
taking the time to film, create, produce, these things take time.
And I find that when creators start on YouTube, some of them just start
throwing stuff out there to see what sticks.
And that's not what will help you grow a channel,
right? You really need to look at, okay,
is the content that I'm creating relevant for my viewers? It's not about you.
I see a lot of people go,
I want to show my personality and they'll be dancing and singing in the video.
And I think that's great.
But then it doesn't have anything to do with the video.
And they're spending all this time showing
their personality as opposed to just getting to the content.
I think that there needs to be the question of are you really committed
to creating the content that's relevant and focused on the viewer's needs?
It's not about you. It's not about you.
It's about your content and how it fulfills the viewer's needs.
And if you can focus on that,
YouTube will reward you and send more viewers, you know, send your video to more viewers.
That's the second question that I want you to ask yourself.
Now, the third question that I want you
to ask yourself is, are you in this for the long haul?
I think that a lot of creators look,
when they first get started, they look at these massive creators, right?
They look at the Phil DeFrancos,
they look at the Casey Neistat to have millions of millions of subscribers.
And what you don't realise is those
millions and millions of subscribers happened over decades.
For the most part, it takes a long time.
You know, five years, 10 years, years, not days, not weeks, not months,
years to grow a channel, particularly to that size and that scale.
And a lot of people think, oh, you know,
I'm just going to be an overnight success because I see that.
But those cases are really rare.
I think you really need to be committed to creating that content,
creating consistently over time, improving your content.
And this takes time, particularly if you are brand new
to YouTube, you're brand new to video, you're brand new to editing.
The reality is, as most things that you do
for the first time, you're probably not going to be really good,
right? It's going to take time for you
to create, it's going to take time for you to improve.
And, you know, the trajectory of your
improvement may be exponential, but that's still going to take some amount of time.
So are you willing to commit the time it takes to grow your channel?
Because this won't be, you know,
this is not weeks, this is not, you know, a couple of months.
It could take six months,
12 months, a year before you start really seeing some traction until you start being
really confident in creating really amazing videos.
So are you willing to
take the time to grow your channel?
The other thing, let's talk a little bit more about time is that Youtube takes time.
It takes time to come up with content.
It takes time to really produce good content.
It takes time to do all the things.
And people don't realise that.
And a lot of times I also hear creators go,
I want to do YouTube, but I don't have time.
And it's like, well, something has to give, right?
You can do anything, but you can't do everything.
So you need to sacrifice that extra hour
that you're spending watching Bridgerton on Netflix,
all that extra hour that you're spending, scrolling on your phone each night.
You need to find the time to do the things
that you want to do, to do the things that are important to you.
That's the next question I want you to ask yourself.
And then the fourth and final question I want you to ask yourself is,
are you willing to take full responsibility for your channel growth?
Too often I hear things like, oh,
you know, the YouTube algorithms just not showing my videos. Or YouTube,
you know, it doesn't like small creators.
It's really, really hard.
And I say,
in one sense, but on the other
side, if you are focused on the content, if you are focused on creating
the content, making sure it's optimised, producing it consistently and not focused
on, oh, YouTube only sent me 12 views for my video.
It's like, well, that's great.
Okay, let's focus on the next video
and how we can make it better. If you focus instead of that,
if you focus on the keyword research, if you focus on how can you improve
your video by one percent, whatever that is, whether it's you know,
you work on your delivery, whether it's you work on the content side
of things, whether you work on, you know, the production side of your video,
whatever it is, taking responsibility and not blaming
YouTube or other people is a key thing to helping your channel grow.
And I see it's the people who don't blame forces outside of themselves
who go, okay, you know, my video
didn't get a lot of views,
but I can see that probably I should have done this, this and this.
I'm going to take note and improve it for the next video.
And that's how you grow a channel and that's what it takes.
So those are the key things I want you to ask yourself when it comes to,
you know, whether or not you should start a YouTube channel.
I think that everyone can start a YouTube channel.
But whether they should or not, they really need to.
They, you really need to ask yourself
the questions of are you doing it just for the money?
Right? Because if you do it just for the AdSense
revenue, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
And honestly, you're better off getting
a job because you're going to go months, years without any decent money.
So go get a job.
The second one is,
are you committed to creating quality content for your viewers because your
content is the heart of your YouTube efforts?
The third one, are you committed to the long haul
of growing your channel and, you know, taking the time to improve your content,
taking the time to do YouTube and understand that it's a long-term play?
And fourthly, are you willing to take full responsibility to grow your channel?
Like, stop blaming the algorithm, stop blaming everyone else.
It's on you. It's on you to grow your channel.
No one else. So if you focus on these four questions
and you focus on these four areas of YouTube consistently over the next six
months to 12 months, a year from now, you'll have the views,
you'll have the subscribers and you'll have the success that you want on YouTube.
I promise you that. If you do all these four things right, keep creating content,
keep optimising it, making sure that it's relevant, you know,
focusing on delivery, focusing on getting better
each time. In a year's time, you will have so much growth and you'll have
everything that you want in an actual YouTube channel.
So those are basically my handy dandy
little quick questions for you to kind of ponder if
you've been thinking about should I start a YouTube channel?
And that basically wraps up the live stream today.
And thank you so much for joining me for being here.
I think that, oh,
I'm just going to jump quickly to the comments.
So David Pearl says,
unless you want the singing and your personality to be your content.
Exactly. You probably should then add it.
I am totally in agreeance to this.
So I see people who are like, you know,
I'm going to start dancing at the beginning of the live stream or I'm
going to add some dancing to the video because that's my personality.
And it's like, well, unless you're actually good at it,
unless it's actually, you know, the content that you're delivering,
it kind of distracts from your message, right? If you're doing a tutorial
about, you know, software, a software, tutorial, and suddenly your dancing? It's like
people went there to see you, they're there to see the content.
So get to the content. Stop all this
dancing. No one wants to see that.
Anyway, that's a little comment that I have there.
Yeah, so that basically wraps us up for today's live stream.
So, as usual, if you found this video
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So I'll show you how to go from stuck
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Thanks for joining me today and I'll see you in the next live stream. Bye for now.