- In this interview, I talk to Amy Landino,
author of Vlog Like a Boss about
the three most important tips to have
a successful vlogging channel coming up.
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- What's up Influencers, welcome
to another interview with Amy Landino--
- Hello.
- Here on Video Influencers, where we'll helping
you build your influence, income and impact
with online video and guess what?
We have a best selling author, Vlog Like a Boss.
- Yes.
- We have an international public presenter
and fellow vlogger, so thank you so much
for being on our channel.
- Thanks for having me on.
- I heard you speak the other day, you crushed it.
- Thank you.
- And you were talking about vlogging.
Can you share with our audience
who might not know you about your rise to success
and how you got your start on YouTube,
and what you're doing today?
- I mean I really got my start on YouTube
cause I got excited about video.
I really liked the editing process,
I know that's weird, but my first video ever was,
because I was in a wedding, I was a bridesmaid
and I wanted to make the bride feel special
and I figured out how to make a video
with Windows Movie Maker and just hodgepodged
it together and played it for her.
And it was so cool to see something that I made
for someone very specific, but I played it at
the rehearsal dinner and so everybody there
was very excited to watch it and they were emotional
and I just thought you can make something
for one person and effect many more.
And I thought, that's really powerful.
I discovered that YouTube was a thing after that.
I had to burn that video on a DVD, by the way,
like I literally didn't know what was going on.
this was 2007. - I know what that was like.
- So, yeah, I found YouTube and I was like wow,
there are people that are making a trip
to Target look interesting.
What is this world, I need to know more about it.
And I just started sharing my life in vlog form
on the Schmittastic Channel.
And that teaches you a lot, when you're trying
to take something and turn it
into nothing, really and turn it into something.
You learn a lot about community building
and marketing and so that's how
I got into this industry.
I started the channel Savvy Sexy Social in 2011
which is now called Amy TV and that was meant
to help business owners just go after
the life they want with video and social
and just time management and all those things
that are important for getting work done.
- Boom, and you know, you're speaking
at events like this, Social Media Marketing World.
That room was full of people, you had a lot of fans.
- Yeah.
- I loved what you said, you love the editing process.
- I do.
- I know, because my wife, who is also a vlogger
and the reason why I'm a YouTuber,
she loves to edit, right, she loves
to create memories. - Awe, that's awesome.
I need to chat with her.
- Yeah, totally and the thing is,
I always suggest to people, not necessarily follow
your passion, but follow your fun.
So if you have fun doing it, right?
- Yeah.
- It's a great start and it's a great segue
to why I tell people that vlogging might
not be for them, but if they are,
make sure you have fun.
Because you're not necessarily gonna make money
right out the gates, and let's be real,
most people aren't gonna make enough income
off of AdSense to make it work.
Can you give people like two or three tips
on when they're first starting out
as well as like maybe some monetization strategies
because I know just your book alone--
- Yeah. - Right?
How many you've sold, been able to create this,
create this career to be able to make a living,
off of YouTube, but not through AdSense.
- Yeah, absolutely.
AdSense should be icing on the cake.
If I cared about Google's check to me
every single month I'd go get a regular job.
It's called worrying about an employer,
what's the point of that?
You should really diversify everything,
but before that, you have to know
who you're doing this for?
And you can't have a product for them
or you can't have a way of making money
if it doesn't make sense for them
and you have to provide a lot of value
in advance, like you're saying,
it's gonna take some time to monetize.
Because you're building a relationship.
So, I think the biggest tip right out the gate
is consistency is key.
Because unless you're in someone's life enough,
and providing value enough, they're not gonna buy
from you in the future.
There are the instances where the product pops up
in an Instagram ad and people are just down with it,
but the reality is is making YouTube videos,
you're inviting people to learn about you
throughout your life, that's a process.
That's not like a one and done situation.
So, consistency is the biggest thing.
When you say you're gonna show up, show up.
Just do that, it doesn't matter how often.
They say industry standard on YouTube is once a week.
If you can have a channel that is killing it
once a week, why bother going more than that?
Just do a really great job.
So I think that's the biggest thing.
In terms of monetization, you can monetize
tomorrow if you wanted to.
If you join any affiliate program of a product
that you believe in and aligns perfectly
with how you talk to your audience, your person,
I personally have named my person, so I know her
really well and I know if that sponsor
or that affiliate partner is gonna be a good fit.
So I can make money right now with Amazon
or anything like, um, I talk about TubeBuddy a lot.
I love their product, I believe in them.
It's very easy for me to make affiliate dollars
from that because I believe in what they're doing.
And so I just look at those things that are
closely aligned, but if it's not for them,
it's never going to work.
You have to find your fun as the creator
so you can keep it up and actually continue
to be passionate about it when it's hard.
But the reality is you're doing it for somebody else.
- One of the things I loved about
your talk yesterday is obviously consistency
is key, you want to like be passionate about
what you're talking about, but you specifically
talked about editing, right?
- Mmm hmm.
- And like how you have to grab
people's attention and keep it.
Can you give some suggestions to people
just starting out because you and I both know like
there's a lot of vloggers out there that just think
we all want to see you brush your teeth.
- Yes, please get in there. - We all want to see you--
- Please. - grab that bottle of milk
out of the thing.
And don't get me wrong, like, there's some people
that do that and they get a lot of views
and you're wondering like why can't I do that?
Well, there's so many other variables,
but what are your quick tips on terms
of editing to be able to not only capture
people's attention, but keep it?
- I think to your point, this is basically
everyone wanting to go to what they see working
and thinking, oh, all I have to do is copy it.
But if for some reason I'm watching
somebody brush their teeth and I'm into it,
there's a bigger reason for that.
You're not gonna be able to copy that.
I think at the beginning, I didn't want
to spend a lot of time on editing when I started
cause I was doing three episodes a week.
I would film them all on Monday and I would get
them edited to go out Tuesday through Thursday.
And for me, keeping the eyes moving with editing
just meant jump cuts, so when my content
for about three years, and still lately,
you don't hear me breathe very often,
I cut out all the breaks and I would kinda crop
in sometimes and make sort of a dynamic movement,
very slightly, that would keep your attention
and keep you engaged.
I also made sure to deliver the value
in less than five minutes.
Significantly less than five minutes.
When you're first starting, you may think
more minutes means more watch time,
but if you actually deliver faster, you'll have
them watching more videos on your channel,
which is more watch time and they're more impressed
by you when you're able to
do something really, really fun in a short
amount of time.
You show them you're not wasting their time.
- Yes.
- So I say keep it short, when you're starting.
Bang out the content, make it great
and use jump cuts to your advantage
because it's totally within the cadence
of YouTube, it's the perfect, perfect thing
to describe YouTube a lot of the times,
but that's gonna be an easy way to edit
and keep it interesting.
- Absolutely, and thank you so much for bringing
that up because a lot of people are watching
other successful vloggers, right,
and thinking I need to just duplicate that
when they don't understand that.
Number one, everybody wants to be a YouTuber, right?
Like, if you're watching this, you're watching
because you want to build your influence,
build your income with online video,
specifically with YouTube, right on this platform.
And the thing is, a lot of the YouTuber's
that are doing this for a living,
make a full-time income or just super successful,
they had a lot of practice before--
- A lot. - They got to this point.
Right?
- Practice, practice, practice.
- And right now, people aren't just sitting
down sold on you at zero subscribers.
You have to like sell yourself onto their interests.
You have to make sure that they're gonna
be interested enough to watch that second episode
or to subscribe.
- Right.
- So, great advice.
Anything else you want to say on that?
- No, I think you nailed it.
I mean it's so funny how we think like,
oh, YouTube needs to send us views.
Well, I'm gonna show up and have the most bomb video,
but then they don't do a custom thumbnail
or they don't take care of their SCO or anything like that.
YouTube doesn't owe you anything.
You need to show them you bring traction
to their platform so they'll share the love with you.
Your videos have to be good,
your marketing has to be good,
it all has to be good, for a long period of time,
for you to get that back.
- Yeah and you know, those are great tips
for people beginning and let's give a little bit
of hope because one of the things is like
you know obviously there's AdSense
and we're talking about affiliate marketing,
but can you talk about some of
the bigger successes you had from the book
to speaking at events like this, internationally,
and like what kind of opportunities you've
been able to have because you took
and embraced YouTube and built this audience
and then created these businesses?
- Yeah, well it was kinda wild, I guess
because when video is so,
or at least I had tried to treat it this way,
video is so much like you're sitting here with me.
So, because I'm making that connection
with people they feel very close to me.
On the speaking sense, I'm getting offers
to speak because people feel like they're connecting
with my message and they think, oh, you're so good
at talking about this, why don't you come stand
on stage and talk about this as well
and it's like oh, well, I'm literally sitting
in a room alone talking to a camera,
you think I can get on stage and speak?
So my speaking career taking off was really kind
of wild but it's cause I put my face out there
and people want to know what you're really like
and so the more they can do
that research on you, it's great.
Same from a building, a business perspective and more.
But the book came because, not just speaking,
when you get off stage, people are like
where can I buy your book?
And I was like, just go watch my free videos
and they're like no, I want to buy a book.
And I was just like that's weird, cause I make videos.
The audience said they wanted it,
so when they said they wanted it, I made it,
they bought it, they read it, they also bought
the audiobook and listened to it.
It's really wild when your audience tells you
we will buy that thing if you make it
and then you do it, it's really cool.
- And there's not really a lot of good vlogging books
out there, so we'll put the link down below,
make sure you guys check that out,
especially if you guys are looking to make
a career out of vlogging, or you're just starting out.
Great resource for that.
Share with people where they can find you
and any last thoughts you have for people
that are just starting their YouTube career?
- Absolutely, you can find me at youtube.com/amytv
and just know who you're talking to.
Lock eyes with them and deliver on a very regular basis.
And you have no choice but to succeed.
- Boom, thank you so much for watching, as always,
helping you build your influence, income
and impact with online videos.
We'll talk to you later.
- Bye.