- We recently discovered a channel on YouTube
that hasn't published a video in nearly two years
and yet in that time, it's been able to generate
nearly $20,000 in revenue.
How did we find this channel?
Well it was pretty easy, it's my channel.
Oh yeah.
- [Man's Voice] vidIQ.
- [Woman's Voice] vidIQ.
- [Whispering Voice] vidIQ.com
- Hello, I'm Rob and welcome back to vidIQ,
the YouTube tool and channel that educates you
on your YouTube journey.
For all of the latest YouTube tips, tricks and advice,
make sure to subscribe to my channel and do this
(bell dings)
so that you're notified whenever we get brand new content.
As always, school is in session.
Don't you dare ask for some butler.
Two points of audit before we jump into this video,
if the length and tidiness of this beard
changes halfway through this video,
it's because I went for a trim halfway through recording,
hashtag continuity errors.
And to do this video justice,
we're going to need a wardrobe change.
(claps)
Jesus, there's cobwebs in this thing.
That's right folks, for those of you who don't know,
I had a life before vidIQ,
running my own YouTube tech channel
called The Video Gadgets Journal.
Look that's me without a beard
celebrating 100,000 subscribers two years ago.
Ah, simpler times.
Now I've already chronicled that part of my YouTube journey
in the creative stories that we did here at vidIQ.
There is a link to the one all about me
in the top right hand corner now.
We also did a collaboration with Brian G. Johnson,
where I went into a lot more detail about
how I grew that channel from absolutely nothing.
There's link in the video description to check out that one.
However, what I haven't looked at is what happened
when I stopped making videos on that channel.
I started working for vidIQ full time in October of 2017
and I had ambitions of continuing to run my other channel
as a hobby on the weekends and when I had time.
But lets be honest, a YouTube channel is all consuming
and I absolutely love what I do here
in serving you the community.
So I made decision six months into my time with vidIQ
to stop making videos on the Video Gadgets Journal.
I simply didn't have time and I was worried
that I was just going to burn out.
And you know what?
After 450,000 subscribers and over 30 million views,
I think I made the right choice.
I am as passionate as ever about what I do here at vidIQ.
But just because I stopped making videos for my channel,
didn't mean I killed it dead.
Because you see, for a lot of YouTube channels,
they act like massive oil tankers in the sea.
They are very slow to get moving and finding traction,
so building up an audience,
finding those first 100 subscribers, 1,000 subscribers,
monetizing your content,
it can take months, years.
For me, I was running my channel
for about six to seven years.
In the same breath, when you stop making content,
it doesn't mean that all of sudden those views stop.
Those pieces of content are on YouTube forever
and if people still want to watch them, they will do,
even from the very first video
that was published on YouTube.
And you know what that means?
Passive income.
(mellow pop music)
This I what your typical channel
will look like over time in terms of views.
Many spikes throughout the week,
bigger spikes when new content is released,
huge spikes when videos go a little viral,
a gradual climb in baseline views,
and plenty of new content
for the channel's audience to feed on.
Now to give you a little bit of background
on what the Video Gadgets Journal did,
it was a tech educational channel,
where I showed people how to use mobile phones,
record iPhone screens in particular,
it was essentially evergreen content.
So what happens to a channel with content
such as this when you go cold turkey?
It looks like this.
What you might expect, when there isn't
a single piece of new content being published,
the channel is going to suffer a decline of sorts.
But astonishingly, for almost a year,
the channel maintained its traction.
And whilst the decline has been steady throughout 2019,
I'm astonished to discover that still,
over 7,000 viewers a day find my years old content
useful and relevant today.
I think these graphs represent three things.
First of all, just how cool is YouTube?
The opportunity to upload content for free to the internet
and then have people watch that content
years into the future.
Second of all, it represents the power of search
and suggested content when you are making evergreen videos.
I made these videos to hopefully serve a user base
for current technology.
That technology is now two, three, four years old
and yet people are still finding my videos
at the top of the search rankings
and watching this content.
And it represents how all of the work, effort,
energy, and resources in YouTube videos is fruit loaded.
You spend an intense number of days and hours
to create the video and then once it's out there on YouTube,
it can generate metrics, audience, community,
and income for you for years to come.
So how does all of this translate into cash?
Well let's take a look.
Without publishing a single video, for almost two years,
relying on the content that's already on my channel,
the Video Gadgets Journal has made
over $19,000 in ad revenue alone.
Now the distribution of that income
is fascinating in itself,
look at how over the second half of 2018,
despite views staying stagnant, income doubles,
supporting the eternal truth that advertisers
spend most of their budgets during the holiday season.
And then of course you have the typical January slump,
whether or not you're making content,
you will always suffer from this.
So my advice is if you do want to
take a break anytime of the year on YouTube,
January is your best bet.
Ironically, we made a video
all about this last year in January.
And not because we're in the January ad revenue slump,
that video is peaking in terms of views.
YouTube really is a weird and wonderful place.
Now if you can just bare with me for one second,
I need to go trim my beard.
Nice.
And apparently ginger.
And I also did my head as well.
Can you tell a difference?
Also for regular viewers, keep the beard or not?
Vote in poll over here.
It is inevitable with the erosion of time
that my channel will continue to bleed views
and in the revenue.
But I am utterly astonished that the channel
has held up this well.
I literally haven't touched anything
on The Video Gadgets Journal in over 600 days
and yet in that time, it has generated enough income
to pay the rent.
Unless you live in Vancouver,
it is shockingly expensive here.
I've already explained some of the reasons
why a YouTube channel can sustain itself
in the broader sense,
even if it's not pushing out any content.
However, I think there are some subtle reasons
why my Video Gadgets Journal channel
is sustaining its life,
even though it is currently moth-balled
and this what I think they are.
I have already mentioned this concept
dozens of times on the vidIQ channel,
but it does bear repeating.
Evergreen content, especially for search based
educational channels, is the elixir of life.
It is really difficult to establish yourself
as evergreen content, but once you're there,
it's incredible difficult to shift you
from evergreen content.
Evergreen content is like when you're playing video game
and you're on an undefeated streak of some kind,
and the game starts rewarding you with multiplying bonuses
that just keep going and going and going.
And the reason I know evergreen content is so valuable
to a channel is because I've repeated this success
on the vidIQ channel.
How to delete a YouTube video,
how to add subtitles to your video,
how to create a playlist,
how to hide your subscribe account.
All of these things and dozens more,
you've been able to do on YouTube for years,
but thanks to the new creative studio,
the way you do them has completely changed.
And throughout 2019, we have been systematically
working our way through a big list of beginners guides
for the new YouTube creative studio.
And you can see the results,
vidIQ's tutorials on these topics
have positioned themselves at the very top
of the search rankings.
Now as of time of recording,
both the classic creative studio and new creative studio
can be accessed by video creators.
But when YouTube turn off access to the creative studio,
all of those old tutorials on the classic studio
will be obsolete, leaving our new studio tutorials
ready to clean up.
All of these new creative studio evergreen pieces of content
follow a similar analytical journey.
It is not uncommon for evergreen content
to tank very quickly after its launch.
It's usually not a sexy topic,
a small number of people may be searching for the keyword,
but the power of evergreen content
is that the same number of people
will likely be searching for the term tomorrow,
next week, next month, next year.
And if your video delivers the value
the expected audience wants, this is what can happen.
Almost as many views per day
as the day the video was launched.
This has been our side project throughout 2019,
creating simple tutorials to do important things
in the new YouTube creative studio.
As you can see, some videos
have been more successful than others,
but each and every one of them is still getting views today
and fingers crossed,
those should be guaranteed views for years to come.
I followed this evergreen strategy more loosely
with my old channel too,
the idea being to create tutorials for mobile phones
and screen recording tips for iOS devices.
And today, those videos are still getting 10,
maybe 20 views per hour.
All of these videos you see in this list
are well over two years old.
So the evidence is pretty clear and well proven.
Evergreen content will help sustain
your channel in the long term.
But we're already established that breaking
into evergreen topics can be really difficult.
So how do you make your content more desirable
to your audience and to YouTube
so that you find yourself at the top of the search rankings?
Can you spot the common thread that ties
all of these successful videos together?
They're all long formed tutorial guides,
often over 10 minutes, and they go above and beyond
what most of the videos on the topic deliver.
100+ tips, complete camera guide,
comprehensive device overviews.
When it comes to educational and tutorial content,
generally, the viewer wants an answer to their question
as quickly and efficiently as possible.
So what I decided to do
was give them every answer to every question they had
as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
And essentially become the best in class
for mobile phone tutorial content.
Now of course, this didn't always work,
there are many videos that I made
that never got the evergreen traction.
But those that did have stood the test of time,
as you can see.
As you will well know,
if you are part of the YouTube partner program,
the longer the video,
the more advertising you can plaster
around the video and inside the video,
so that not only do these evergreen videos
get loads of views, but they also get
huge dollops of watch time and ad revenue.
This top one alone is astonishing,
I couldn't believe it when I checked the analytics.
An average view duration of over 30 minutes
from a two hour video.
Now if you're regular visitor to vidIQ,
you will have heard me talk about this concept
many times in the past.
And by the way, if you are not regular visitor to vidIQ,
then it's about time you subscribed.
I feel like it bear repeating here
because now I've got $20,000 of ad revenue to back this up,
make content that works for your channel.
The metrics are there, YouTube is telling you what works
for your audience, and if you ignore it,
then shame on you.
Even though the channel is dormant,
thanks to vidIQ's channel audit tool,
the data is still as clear as day.
Views per hour, subscribers gained,
total watch time, average watch time,
all the metrics point to a strategy that works.
So repeat that strategy.
A lot of people hate this idea of being pigeon holed
into one particular niche on YouTube.
The way I see it is that, YouTube has decided that you
are the ambassador, the educator, the fort leader,
the authority on a particular topic on YouTube
and it wants to take the audience that is interested
in that topic and serve them to your content.
And it's all done for free.
How cool is that?
And in this particular example,
I haven't been stuck to one particular type of phone.
It's the style and delivery of the content
that is my niche,
making huge guides on different mobile phones.
And as proven, I've been able to take this concept
and apply it to YouTube education with vidIQ.
Those video creators with the talent
will embrace this idea and take it wherever they want to
with the topics they want to share with an audience.
As I said at the top of this video,
this success didn't happen overnight.
It took me years to formulate that video strategy.
But it is right now the reason,
you are watching a vidIQ video with me in it,
whilst I'm earning money passively from a channel
I haven't touched in almost two years.
Now you're probably asking,
what did I do with those $20,000?
I bought one of these.
(robotic noises)
Nice.
But here's one huge caveat about everything I've told you.
It's all very nice earning this passive income.
But relatively speaking,
it is a tiny amount of the potential money
you could earn from your YouTube channel.
Once you factor in the overt YouTube tools,
such as memberships and super chats,
and then the things that you can do outside of YouTube,
such a brand deals, sponsorships.
You can earn many multiples of that
icing on the cake ad revenue.
In many respects, ad revenue is the least reliable
source of income for YouTube channels
because at any point, YouTube could flick a switch,
or advertisers moods could change.
And that will leave you out of pocket.
Don't get me wrong, I am extremely grateful
for the millions of views that channel has generated
and indeed the ad revenue.
But it wouldn't sustain me
in a full-time position on YouTube.
And that's where vidIQ came in.
The opportunity to turn my hobby,
my passion, into a career.
Now if you found this video useful and entertaining,
don't forget to give it a thumbs up.
And enjoy the rest of your video making day.
(robotic noises)
What? No, no, no, no, no!