Hello creators! How are you guys? It's great to hang out with you for this
Creator Academy Master Class on how to turn your YouTube channel into a
business and how to really dominate the monetization side of what you're doing
on YouTube. In case we haven't met before, my name is Tim Schmoyer. I am a YouTube
creator just like you. I uploaded my first video to YouTube on March 2nd 2006,
and then a few years later in 2010 I started professionally working with
creators, helping them grow their YouTube audiences. I love it. And one of the
things that I love doing is helping creators make their content financially
sustainable. Now my channel, over at Video Creators, six months after I launched it, it
had around 3,000 subscribers and it was generating about $10,000 a month.
Yes, YouTube has an awesome way of generating revenue right here on the
platform with Adsense and Super chats and other things we're going to talk
about here, but having a bigger business model around your content is very
important for making it financially sustainable. Which is what we're gonna
really dig into here today. In order to grow a really solid business around your
channel, you first need this grow a really solid audience around your
channel. But to really do that well, we're gonna have the change a little bit about
the way we think. Most people, most creators, they come to YouTube with an
employee mindset. An employee thinks that "it is my job to put in time, and it is
someone else's job to give me money, a paycheck, as a result of that". A small
business owner thinks "it is my job to figure out how to create value and then
monetize that value". And that's the direction we want to go with this
Master Class series. So what is a business model in the first place? A business
model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and
captures value. The cool thing about being a YouTube creator, is that you
already have most of the elements of a successful business model in place on
your channel. The main thing that you're missing probably, is a mechanism for how
to capture good value. In order to really start delivering and capturing value
well on your channel, there's a few things that you need to define pretty
clearly. The first one is "who is your target audience?". Who is
the most ideal person to be a subscriber on my YouTube channel? Make this person
pretty specific. It's easiest if you're targeting someone who's just like
yourself, because you know yourself, so if you are in your own target audience that
can make it really helpful. But you just need to know who that person is, so that
that person one, wants to subscribe to your channel because they feel like, like
"I love this creator, I feel like this creator is talking to me". The second
thing you need to know is "what is the value proposition of your channel?". The
value proposition is just a fancy word for what value do you propose to deliver
to your target audience through your YouTube videos. Being able to answer the
question "why should someone subscribe to my channel? What value are they gonna get
from me predictably, consistently in every single video? What is it they're
coming to me for? Why are they watching my content? What difference is it making
in their lives?" Like all those questions are really important, because that's
actually the value you're delivering and that's later the value you're gonna end
up selling. For example on my channel at Video Creators, the target audience - I
actually named it after the target audience, Video Creator so that was
helpful - but it's like, it's hobby YouTube creators like yourself. That's the target
audience. And then the value proposition is "I'm gonna teach you how to master
YouTube so you can spread a message that reaches people and changes their lives".
So that's the "what" of my value proposition, is to master YouTube. And
then the "why does that matter? why should we care?" is because this is an amazing
platform for reaching people with a message that can like really make a
difference. I'm sure you've experienced lots of stories on your channel of
people who are like "this story changed my life, this changed my perspective, this
may be think differently about this thing" or whatever. So the best value
propositions include both the what you're doing and the why it matters. The
"what" tells people what they can expect, but the "why" is what's gonna get them to
start getting emotionally engaged. So if you have an educational channel for
example - it's like a tutorial, DIY, teaching channel, showing people how-to
stuff, whatever - like those have a very clear value proposition, like my channel.
Like we're gonna teach you how to do something that you care about.
That value proposition is easy. What about those of you who are making more
entertainment based channels, though? Would it be more like you're vlogging,
and you're gaming, and more narrative-based content. Like what's the value
proposition there? Like what value are you actually providing? Well you guys are
actually providing a tremendous, very powerful value that's maybe a little bit
beneath the surface, but often it's a very high relational value. You guys are
making people feel like "I'm hanging out with this person. I feel like this person
is my best friend. I feel like I know this person. I really love the stories
this person is saying because they give meaning to the story that I'm
experiencing right now, that I'm living, or whatever". Right like that
relational value is so, so powerful. I know we've been throwing around a lot of
fancy terms here so let's just recap make sure you're on track with where we're going
here so far. You have the remember that it's important to grow an engaged audience
around your YouTube content. And then you also need to grow the audience with the
strategy of how you're going to capture good value from them in return. And the
plan that you set in place for how you are going to create, deliver and capture
value is what's called a business model. In order to best implement a business
model on your channel you need to know one, who your target audiences, that is
who you are serving and the people you are trying to reach through your content.
And then two, your value proposition, that is the value you propose to deliver to
them that's going to get them to want to subscribe and watch your content in the
first place. I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments below - what have you
done to start growing your YouTube channel into a business? Share the
insights that you've learned, the things that you've discovered with the rest of
us so we can all learn from each other. Thanks for hanging out with me a little
bit here, and we will see you guys at the next Creator Academy Master Class. See
then. Bye!