As a new YouTuber, it's easy to make mistakes. In fact, I've got a list of 10
mistakes that all new YouTubers seem to make. So by me sharing them to you, I'm
hoping that you'll have a shortcut and you'll skip past these mistakes.
The first mistake that new YouTubers make is that they're actually afraid of
making mistakes. They want it to be perfect. They want episode 1 to be as
good as episode 500. Now, I love the way that my friend Chris Kitz almost said it.
He said, "Start ugly. Just don't stay ugly." If you get started, you're going to get
results. You make an ugly video, you're ugly video will get results and you can
just go from there. But if you wait for your video to be perfect, guess what?
You're not going to get any results because that video isn't going to go live until way
in the future. It's okay to put out content that's a little bit embarrassing.
But just be real. Put real value in your content. Put it out there and it's okay
to make mistakes. If one video flops, another one what will succeed. You know,
if you make this mistake, you'll learn from it. So, that's the first mistake is
not willing to make mistakes. The second big mistake that new
YouTubers make is they create a variety channel. So, it doesn't have a focus in
one area but they want to talk about this subject and this subject and their
hobby. And they also want to vlog and they just want to try it all. And you can
do that once you have momentum. You can do it more experimentation especially if
you have a following. If you have celebrity status, people will follow a
variety channel because of the personality. They like the person and so
they follow them wherever they go and whatever they talk about. Like Casey Niestat,
could make a vlog about snowboarding throughout New York City
and the next episode could be about a new lens that he's giving a review. And
people will just watch all of his episodes because he's built the
following that he has. They follow him as a personality. But when you're new on
YouTube, that doesn't work so well. In fact, let me give you another example. The
channel that I produce. Amazing channel, actually. Paul Jenkins, Live On Purpose TV.
He's a positivity psychologist. And we were talking about all the different
areas and he wants to talk all about positivity and being happy. Wants to talk
all about parenting and relationships. And how to strengthen relationships. We
decided not to eliminate any of those. So, we we did an equal spread kind of
covering all three different topics. And one of them has really taken off. The
parenting videos have really done exceptionally well. Especially in the
beginning. One video "How to get your children to listen without yelling."
That's the video that took off the best. And so although we were covering three
different areas, one of them really stood out. So, we kind of shifted our focus and
did the majority of our videos on parenting. So, while we still did videos
on all 3 categories, we shifted the majority of the focus towards the
parenting videos to really capitalize on that. Paul created a parenting course. He
created his positive parenting playlist. And it's really worked well to grow his
channel. Now that his channels got more momentum, he has started to get traction
in the relationships and in the positivity categories but still
parenting is the one that's dominated. Here's a piece of advice that I recently
heard that I'm going to share back with you. If you have a hard time explaining
what your channel is about, then it's too broad. It's too confusing. People will
have a hard time subscribing. Okay, mistake number three is people aren't
willing to stick with it long enough. YouTube is definitely a long game.
There's a lot of advertising and marketing campaigns that you turn it on
today. You'll probably start getting leads and
results tomorrow. Definitely within a few days, right? But YouTube is not like that.
YouTube can take a year or 2 or 3 depending on the way that you're going to
monetize it. If you're going to monetize it without revenue, it can take several
years. It took four years for my ad revenue to get to five figures where
it's something really significant that I could live off of. If we're funneling
leads from YouTube into a business, it's still going to take a year or more
before you're making enough sales that your channel is profitable. Most people
quit too soon. I mean, I teach a strategy where I tell them if you follow these
4 ingredients then in 4 months, you'll experience a spike. I've seen so
many people quit a month 3. They create all these that
so than they quit a month 3. Yeah, don't do that.
Stick with it. Mistake number 4 is very, very common. You post a video to
YouTube and you're worried about promoting it. Like, "Oh, it's not getting
any views. Can I share it on Facebook? Should I set out an email? What can I do?
Is there somebody I can pay? How can I promote this? How can I get more views on
this video?" When instead, if you're to put that same energy in just making another
video, that's the mistake. Focusing on promotion rather than just making more
or making better videos moving forward. Mistake number 5 is not paying enough
attention to thumbnails. The thumbnails are so important on YouTube. The
thumbnail is that still images that you see when you're deciding whether you
want to click on it or not, right? It'll have the picture and then the title of
the video below it. You can make subtle tweaks to the thumbnail and drastically
improve your click-through rate. You might be getting three percent of people
clicking on it and you change the color of something. And it will go up to 7%.
And that's just huge. Most people don't even design custom thumbnail. So,
that's that's a huge mistake. Now, I want to recommend a video that you watch
that's created by veritasium. He talks a lot about how to make a video go viral
but he spends a good portion of this video really talking about thumbnails
and how important they are. So, I wanted to have you watch that video after this
one so you could learn all the ins and outs about thumbnails. Mistake number 6
is letting fear stop you from getting started. But happens all the time. People
hear me speak or they take one of my courses and they know that this is the
right strategy for them. They'll tell me, "Yeah, this is the strategy I've been
looking for." But then months goes by and they haven't
acted on it. They think that it needs to be perfect. Right? And my recommendation
is to start ugly. I learned that phrase from Chris and I love it.
"Start ugly, just don't stay ugly". Create a video today. Post it. Your video tomorrow
will be better. So, don't let the fear keep you from getting started. Now,
mistake number 7 that I think we all make, I've made it many times is trying
to be somebody else. Now, an example would be Casey Neistat.
When I first started vlogging, I don't think it's necessarily
to get ideas from somebody like Casey or other vloggers. But I've seen some people
take it to the extreme. They start blogging and they're on a boosted board
and they move to New York City and they start doing everything like somebody
else. Personally I think that's a mistake because you have value. People want to
get to know you for you. And most of the time, when you do something exactly like
somebody else, people know that somebody else. They know that you're copying and
they don't follow you. But when you step into your own power, you step into your
own uniqueness... When I found my own voice and I recognized... Like Kris Krohn, he's real
dynamic. He's a real powerful speaker on stage. He uses a lot of body language,
he's loud, he's quiet. He's back loud again. And I tried to be like that but
I'm not... I'm not like that. I'm not Kris. And when I get on stage, I actually use
power points. I don't read all off them but I show images of things and I really
get in the zone and I get energized just by showing things and explaining things
and it's that's just me. That's my style. And for the longest time, I struggle
because I was trying to be somebody else. So, that's a mistake that I made
then and that a lot of YouTubers make is trying to be somebody else. Mistake
number 8 is not having a clear strategy. They just think, "I'm going to make
videos and I'm going to post videos on YouTube." And eventually, it'll get results.
And it doesn't really work. There's a lot of channels like that that have got
hundreds and hundreds of videos yet, they're only getting 10 views per video.
And they've only got 37 subscribers. One of the best strategies
you can implement is to do keyword research before you film. So, how this
works is you find the questions that people are asking. So, instead of just
making videos on random topics, you're making videos that answer questions that
you know people are searching for. So, you post this video and you've got people
that are going to find your video. That's what I mean by being strategic. Knowing
how you're going to get traffic and have that strategy before you film. Now, I made
a whole video on this specific strategy. So, I put it up here it's my Leaf
Strategy video. Make sure you watch that one after this one. Because I teach you
how to find those questions. I give you examples of what those questions look
like and then I show you the tool you can use that just finds those questions
for you. Makes this job really easy. Mistake number 9 that new
YouTubers make is wearing all the hats. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, you are
the videographer, you're the editor, you're the talent, you're the star of the
show. You're the content writer. You know, you
come up with all the ideas. You're the thumbnail designer. You're the
YouTube manager. You do all the transcriptions and the posting and
everything. Okay? You're wearing all the hats plus you're trying to figure out
how to monetize the channel. And so, you need to create a product to sell or put
on an event or know what affiliate links to put in there. Or create a patreon
account. At some point, I think we do need to wear every hat. But I call it a
mistake because people continue to wear all the hats for a very long time almost
indefinitely. When you can very easily like I hire my editors in the
Philippines. You know, it's like to be able to create and put my ideas into
something and then know that somebody else is going to edit it the way that I
would. Or even if in the beginning they edit at 80% of the way. And then I just
go in and tweak things here there is that frees up so much of my time. YouTube
burnout is real. And when you're wearing all the hats and you're doing everything
from filming to finish, you can get burned out really, really easy. So that's
why I call it a major mistake. Okay, a mistake number 10. I've actually got 11.
So, there's one more after this. Mistake number 10 is not collaborating. That's a
mistake that I've been thinking about a lot lately. Because that's a mistake that
I make. I've done a few collaborations they've worked well every time. So with
the collaboration, you've got YouTuber A and you've got YouTuber B and they
create some type of video campaign together where my channel will link to
yours your channel will link to mine. and you do it in a way that makes it fun,
you're bringing in somebody else who's creative it has a unique spin on a video
that you can make on your channe.l I've done this a few times. It's a lot of fun
to do but for some reason I just haven't done a lot. And that's what I'm thinking
about. I've actually got notes of people that I want to reach out to and
collaborate with. So, that's a mistake that hopefully I fix.
I've actually got a bonus. So, this is mistake number 11. Mistake number 11 is
trying to predict what other people want on YouTube, right? Now, why is this a
mistake? Because you can't predict. I mean you look at trends and you're just
chasing trends in often doesn't work. But there is one
exception. There's one exception and this is something that I teach heavily and
that's to do keyword research before filming. So, in this way, you are
predicting what people are searching for based on averages people search for this
every single month. So, if you do keyword research before filming, you kind of can
predict what other people want and that's a huge advantage of. The YouTube
search engine is such a good job. Now, I made another video on this. It's my leaf
strategy video and I explain in that video how you find the questions that
people are searching for. So, I definitely recommend. You know, eliminate all these
mistakes that I've talked about and this is something you got to start doing
right. You'll learn it in that video.
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