133. How do you start a money-making YouTube channel?
Wish you could make some cash from YouTube? 📺 After you listen to this episode, that wish could become a reality! In this fun Brand Therapy episode, Hosts Phil and Lauren discuss everything they've learned about creating a money-making YouTube channel. From establishing a workflow to prioritizing a consistent schedule, you'll get all the info needed to unlock an additional income stream!
Episode transcription
Phil
Hello there, welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is the podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brands. For a second I just couldn't remember the order. Was it introductions and then position, build, promote? I'll be honest with you, I just woke up from a nap.
Lauren
You were napping?
Phil
Yes, I was napping before this. My little alarm went one minute before we were set to record. And so I'm just coming back to life.
Lauren
I knew you were checked out. That's why I messaged you in Slack and I tagged do. I was like Phil, please open audition, because audition always takes 10 minutes to open and it crashes.
phil
For our listener, that's the software we use to record our sweet, soothing voices. I'll tell you what's not sleepy, me. That's not the answer. But what's not sleepy is the topic of this episode. In fact, I'm actually quite shocked we haven't tackled this topic yet, because it's one that is of particular interest for us. And it's relevant, and it's exciting within our business, what growth we've seen in this particular topic.
Lauren
I would argue that out of all of the social media channels we've experimented with, continue to post on blah, blah, blah, and by we, I actually mean you, because I don't really do anything except for bark from the sidelines. Anyway, I would say that YouTube is the most successful.
Phil
Would you? You would say that's more successful than any other platforms like Instagram, etc.?
Lauren
Completely because it's led to the most business results. YouTube, has now generated about 80 signups a day to your newsletter.
Phil
That's true.
Lauren
YouTube is now paying you money for ads.
Phil
That's also true.
Lauren
And YouTube is giving you another outlet for sponsored content.
Phil
Which, by the way, I'm enjoying. I've discovered this year, one of the most important things is that within business, like I need to be having fun, or I don't do things. Even if you look at it, there's types of things that I continue to do within our business. I don't even talk that much about this. I don't even know if people actually know what I do within a branding project other than just talk about it on social media and teach people things.
But I still make websites. And I make websites, our client websites, I've learned coding. And I've been, of course, designing them for many, many years. But I do it because it's fun. Sponsored content right now is fun. I've done websites for 10 years, because it's fun for me. And quite frankly, I keep up with my YouTube schedule, which is weekly, some months where we're busy. I do it once a week, which I think is still pretty impressive because we put out high quality content. And other months that are not quite as client heavy for us, I'll actually scale up to two videos a week, which is what we're doing right now. And I keep this up and I enjoy it. It's a lot of work. But I think, yeah, let's dive into it today.
Lauren
Okay, so first of all, question for you. Why do you think YouTube is important for a brand, particularly a personal brand?
Phil
So there's something specific about YouTube that I love, that's not the same as other social media platforms. Maybe Pinterest comes close, but the Evergreen nature of YouTube really rivals every other platform in terms of worth it, the time you put into it being worth it for the output. And I'll elaborate on a second. I have a video that I scripted maybe in an hour, about a year ago, less than a year ago. And it was last summer, that's when it was. And this video, called three free apps for content creation was one that I just kind of made without really thinking about. It was a topic, I had three apps that I thought were really cool that we'd been using more recently. And I thought oh great, let's make a YouTube video out of it. That has made me a decent amount of money in advertising. It's at over 110,000 views now. And most impressively, it's sent over 6000 people to our email list. So it's amazing. And guess what, that's not something that I concocted recently or spent hours fussing with Instagram carousel that was actually something I made almost a year ago. And now it's working for me now. So the Evergreen nature to tie that up in a bow, the Evergreen nature of YouTube is unrivaled the ability for you to create something and then have it work for you a year from now. No guarantees it might be the best video topic or positioning you've ever come up with and it still might not take off or it might be a topic that you thought of last minute you throw a video together and an ad performing really well. But I think just the Evergreen nature.
So final comment on this. Creating a piece of content that's not time sensitive, does not root it in specificity of you consuming it on a Tuesday, are you consuming it on a holiday, are you consuming it right now, because of a particular political climate. If you can create interesting content that's not tied to any of those variables, then YouTube can be incredibly powerful as it has been for us.
Lauren
And it's been useful for you with fueling the content on your other platforms, right?
Phil
Let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about that for a second. The two most important long form pieces of content that we create YouTube videos and this podcast. I've said before, that even if zero people listen to this podcast, it would still be a very valuable use of our time. We are on a schedule, we happen to be pretty busy. It's summer right now, the time of recording this episode, and you and I also enjoy frolicking outside. Would we rather be frolicking outside right now, I mean, kind of no offense to the listener, we're happier here. But having this form of content creation gets your brain and my brain together in the same virtual room to be creative, to riff and develop ideas that honestly will probably be something we teach to clients, or something we incorporate in our group coaching program. This gets us together, we create together. And having this block of audio, this could be turned into a YouTube script, it could be turned into a blog, vice versa. You've written blogs that I have taken almost word for word, changed a few little words that I might trip on if I read the script. A good example of that is you wrote a blog about LinkedIn summaries, which is hilarious. I don't even show you the number of messages I get from people wanting me to write their LinkedIn bio, daily emails, LinkedIn messages, Instagram, DMS, Phil, I need your help blah, blah, blah. And they don't even know like, I don't write that, you write copy. I don't write copy. So I have to politely decline all these people. Well, I can't I'm sorry, I can't help clients one on one. But this gives me ideas for content if you drag centrastate, something like that.
Lauren
You have 35,000 views on that video.
Phil
Yeah, I know, when you wrote the script, and I read it. That's I mean, listen, content repurposing. This is another thing I love. So YouTube. And I would say flip it as an origin because I have to stay on schedule, like YouTube is the origin of that content. Not always the podcast, the podcast sometimes is but if I have time in a week, I'll tackle a topic I haven't talked about before. So I'll spend an hour and a half, two hour sometimes I don't spend more than that on a YouTube script. But you know, if I have to pull in necessary visuals, or I have to reference files, that stuff takes a while to compile. And it's easier for me to do it than to delegate someone. There's this old picture of you know, this client from 2014. In this folder Now, like I have to do it myself. I find that creating a YouTube video is just it's always worth it. Even if it takes a long time. It's always worth it, I can quickly create an Instagram carousel, I could quickly from the script written, I could write an email blast from a written YouTube video in like five minutes. Right? It's already written. Another thing course modules, we have three courses. And I've expanded on topics I've already written for YouTube and gone in more detail for the courses. It's just great. I just love this platform. Because the reason it's a better use of time, then, frankly, Instagram, is that your Instagram content lives for like four or five days, Max. And unless someone is creeping you and scrolling back on your posts, or your post is living on a hashtag for a little bit longer than that, they're not going to see it. Whereas content I created nine months ago is living and thriving on YouTube without even me having to actively promote it or post it.
Lauren
Yeah, one thing that I also appreciate about YouTube is that people who might not naturally being on the camera have the flexibility to really build their skills over time and expand on their thoughts in a long form way. I think about someone like Mike Russell, for example, who's a pretty shy contemplate of thoughtful guy, a little more reserved, like so nice, but he's definitely shy but he is incredible on YouTube. truly incredible.
Phil
What's so interesting about Mike so we're talking about Mike Russell from Music Radio Creative If anyone has ever gone to YouTube and looked up how to do something, how to make your volume louder, how to do this in Adobe Audition, chances are you've watched and learned from Mike Russell, who has no fear behind a microphone. He's actually a trained radio announcer that's what his first career was in the UK. But video was uncertain territory for him originally, and now he's just doing so so well. And he is an authority, and he has hundreds of 1000s of subscribers that learn from him and generates a lot of business from it.
Lauren
Yeah, I just think that YouTube's really cool in the sense that if you like to teach, if you like to explore, if you like to really dig into new topics and share what you've learned, it doesn't really matter whether you're naturally comfortable on a stage, you can find your own voice and style and really build a long term community.
Phil
Definitely 100% and you have to stick with it. It's not something that happens overnight. It's like an investment of time and energy. And it might even cost you more. It will cost you more, let's be honest at the beginning, unless you're doing everything yourself, which I do not recommend. There's a lot of steps. I'm sure we'll talk about workflow, but there's a lot of steps to pull off a YouTube video.
Lauren
Well, let's talk about that. What is your workflow and what have you done to get where you are today?
Phil
Okay, well, to get to where I've gotten today, we've certainly ironed out that workflow, and I've got people on our team that help execute. So there are five steps to creating a YouTube video, five steps. So I'll go through those steps. Now. The first step is research. I allow myself I think it makes my video better. If I take even five minutes to research a topic that I already know a lot about. This is a good way for me to learn things. Well, you know, can you relate to this, we're so busy doing day to day working through our to do list and sometimes we forget to learn new things, especially if it's a topic, something I've been preaching for a long time. So I always make time, even 15 minutes to research every topic that I talk about, because I learn new things that I can incorporate into what I share that are timely, relevant and updated. So the first step is researching. That would also include going to YouTube itself with a topic in mind and seeing what already exists. Or watch one or two videos that are popping up right away that grab my interest. And not only do I click them, but I watch what grabbed my interest. Was it the colorful thumbnail? Was it the creativeness of the text on the thumbnail? Or was it the text on the thumbnail working with the way that the video is titled. When I click on watching it, what keeps me watching it for a few minutes? At what point do I click out because I tune out? So I watched to see it's like a little bit of market research to see what else is out there, particularly what's performed well, and why. And I keep that in mind as I tackle that topic. And again, research can be done in 15 minutes, I normally don't have half an hour to spend on research for one video title. So that's the first step research. Are you ready for the next step?
Lauren
Sure am.
Phil
Step two, right? This is the part that I tend to squirm out of once in a while because it requires pinning me down at my computer with no distractions, looking at a screen and writing what I'm going to say in a video. But the good news is because I've created well over 100, I follow a script to a tee. And so really in this video sandwich, the bread top and bottom is already done and I need to change very little. And it's just the middle meat of the sandwich that I need to customize for that video. So when I'm writing a script, I follow a format. By this point, I generally know what the video is going to be titled. I don't know the exact title because that comes later when we're looking at SEO and keywords. But let's say a video I did recently, what I've learned in in creating 100 YouTube videos. Okay, so Miner who works with us will actually create the title with lots of keywords after research he does, but I know generally what it's going to be so the first sentence of the video is going to reiterate the title. Okay. I've created 100 YouTube videos in the last year and a half. I can't believe it. I've learned so much in this time, and now I'm going to teach you what I've learned so that you don't have to spend the time learning it. Stick around. By the end of this video, you're going to have a brand new, fresh perspective to incorporate in your own content. Let's get right to it. So in just a few sentences, I reiterate the title, I reiterate the promise, this is what I'm promising you're going to get from watching this video, so stick with me, and then get to it. Don't promote anything in the intro. Don't go on any tangents. Which by the way, you can look at a lot of my videos where I have done those things, and I've learned the hard way. Get to it. Three sentences max. And then I do a little clip. We have a drone, so it's a little clip of me and whatever place I'm in at that particular time. And then I tie it back to the content. So because I'm a nomad, I have fun with my locations. We shoot a little drone clip in all the places we go. And so it's my little logo, and it's me wherever I am waving, and then we come back and say hi, I'm Phil, I'm a brand strategist. Today, I'm in Tulum, Mexico. And the topic I'm tackling is this. Okay, and then you get right to the topic.
Normally, I have between three and seven, usually five teachable moments, points that I reiterate, and that's my template, essentially, in the middle. And then at the end, if I still have them, I realize people will have dropped off by this point. But if I have them to the end, and I incorporated an email opt in, I have a brand new freebie. I say that and it's not brand new. But my business checklists for new businesses, or my branding checklist for new businesses, sign up, the link is in the description below. And then at the end, I have a few calls to action. Now I want to hear from you. Ask a specific question related to the video comment below. Let's keep the conversation going on down there. I respond to those comments personally. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up that helps other people discover these videos that we work very hard to create for you. And for more of my ideas on positioning, building and promoting your brand, don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell to be notified when I post next. Hmm.
Now, final thing on this little writing of the script. I'm doing this off the top of my head. So I do it so often. And then at the end, you never say bye. Never say bye to them. Thanks for watching. See you next time. That's really awkward because they might choose to watch more of your videos. So don't send them away. Don't assume you're losing them. So I always say this idea came from Liron are wonderful friendly Liron. So you have he's a YouTube, amazing mastermind mastermind, Liron said, invite them to keep watching.
So I always say next, I'm linking through some videos that I think you're going to be interested in. One is about Instagram, and the other one is about branding. And they're going to be interesting for you on this topic. I'm Phil Pallen. Thanks for watching. And those are coming up next. And then we put links to, to relevant videos next. And that's my framework. That's how I write a script. Unlike other people that might be better winging it, I get too distracted when I wing. If I'm on a stage, it's different. If I'm standing on a stage, then I'll speak without a script. But on a YouTube video, you're juggling so many other things. You're trying to be authentic, and honestly, it cuts down time and editing by less than half and we tested it. So for me I use a teleprompter. I've used one for years, I've trained and practiced on it so I know how to do it in a way that looks natural. So that for me is my go to. I travel with it in my backpack. And that's that and then by taking the time to write a script word for word, I have that for email and for LinkedIn posts and Instagram carousels and it's all written out. So that's how I write YouTube videos.
Lauren
What's Step three?
Phil
Step three will move faster. Those were the busiest ones. Step three, honestly, is the easiest part of being on YouTube, which might shock people step three is filming the video. If you've done the work ahead of time to make sure your topic is great little bit of research. Then you've taken the time to write it. If you read from a prompter, I suggest getting a prompter for an iPad and practicing practice, practice, practice, practice. I have a iPad or I have a teleprompter for an iPhone and for an iPad just based on whatever I'm creating and it's so easy. I love it. But some people don't want to read or they don't want to take the time to write a script. So instead I recommend having bullet points on a notebook or on an iPad, have them on your lap, get the note. So the bullet point could be there three steps of branding, positioning, building and promoting. So take a second look down, get the note, even read it out loud in your head, then look to the camera and deliver the thought. And you keep doing that, because then you just edit those little pause moments out. But I just find that style for me, doesn't work. It doesn't work.
I can do videos that I script my sets different if someone else has scripted them, even if it's a blog post you've written, I must go through it again. And I must change words because I'll trip up on it because my words, simplify, simplify. When I write it, I know how to write it in a way that's going to be true to how I speak and I do all my YouTube videos in one take. Sometimes I like stop or I mess up a word and I'll redo a sentence. But I never have to film YouTube video twice. But that's the joy of having a system and having practice every single week you become asteroid stuff. So step three is easiest. This is the one people overthink. If I have a hair out of place, or I have a stain on a shirt, and I notice it in the edit, it doesn't mean that I go and refilm it again. The show must go on there's a new video next week. I don't really care. Sometimes I go, oh, why is it framed that way, or oh that shirt looks so frumpy, etc, doesn't make a difference, the show must go on. And so filming is like 10% of the process.
Honestly, if you look at my times, like the timing of YouTube videos, a video takes me eight minutes to film 10 minutes, 15 minutes, max.
Lauren
That's wild, what’s step four?
Phil
Step four is editing. This one I am still involved with. And while I'm not physically editing it in the writing stage, or after I film it, I'll go back to the script and I insert all of the graphics that need to be shown. I now prefer to do it in the writing stage. But I mention it in this stage because it has to be done. You must communicate with your video editor, what your expectations are. For me, I find if it's a written graphic, we have a style and a template for that I don't have to create those. But if I'm referencing a photo, or I'm referencing a graphic, or I'm referencing even a logo, in some cases, I'll take the time to prep the graphic so that it's easy to be used.
Editing, I don't do. I don't have time for it. So we have video editor not only for our YouTube projects, but also for all of our client projects, and he stays on top of it. And it's all organized and awesome. He'll generate a rough cut of the video, which is normally perfect, I might change one or two things. If we're in a time crunch, I won't change anything. And that's what gets uploaded.
Phil
And the fifth step, fifth and final step. So again, one research two write, three film, four edit, and five is post.
So this can't be rushed. This is a really important part of the process, Your description, your title must be SEO friendly. There's a tool called Tube Buddy that has a keyword explorer feature. This app is paid but is not very much and is worth every penny. Every single YouTuber should be using this tool. It gives me tons of ideas. I use it before I even write just to even like give me ideas on how to structure the content. But you can use it right before you post to make sure your title is keyword friendly. And then you need to have an awesome thumbnail image. I don't design those myself, I used to and I stopped doing it because I found that it was inefficient for me to design a YouTube thumbnail because I fast with like my look and my appearance and like that's not important. So by having someone on our team, a graphic designer, create a bright, color filled not on brand, thumbnail, which not on brands, sometimes they are in sometimes they're bright and instagrammy colors, but they grab people's attention. And it works. And so we stick with it. It's the one time that I tend to go off brand. But I think because my face is in the thumbnail, my typography is in the thumbnail, I think it's on brand enough. It's really important to have a thumbnail that grabs people's attention. It's one of the most important things. And even though it's one of the last steps in the process, you cannot rush ahead, it cannot be an afterthought because the video you just worked so hard to create on average for us, it's five hours per video. Imagine that we do two videos a week is 10 hours a week, across the team on a YouTube video, a lot of work. The thumbnail cannot be an afterthought. It needs to be great. And the beautiful thing is that there's tons of inspiration on YouTube. So anytime you find that you pay attention in particular to a thumbnail that grabs your attention, save it, screenshot it, keep it in a file for reference, so that when it comes time to either you creating your thumbnail or delegating that task, you've got actual examples that could inspire that design. Wow, that was fast.
Lauren
Yeah, so comprehensive. Okay, so just to summarize tools. We've got TubeBuddy, I feel like Pinterest is good for also getting ideas related to your subjects. Canva is great for thumbnails. And what about for camera types? Like, is there a camera you recommend people get?
Phil
No, I don't even want to talk about tech because I think people get hung up on this.
Lauren
You just use your iPhone.
Phil
Yes, to start your first 10 videos. I don't want you to buy any equipment other than a microphone. The visual quality doesn't matter as much. It could be the camera built into your MacBook, my great friend Becca Harpain, who creates for Squarespace, she's been on our podcast, would you believe she's just now after well over two years of postings, switching to an actual camera. She used her her webcam to shoot all of her content. Proof that no one cares about your equipment, they care about your message. And I think you should earn good equipment. Everyone should have a good microphone. This audio people will not watch your video. If it doesn't sound good. They will watch it if it sounds good and doesn't look picture perfect. I tend to believe like get into a rhythm and earn better equipment before spending it all upfront.
Lauren
Great. I love it. So if someone wanted to start do recommend that they do a batch recording, do you recommend they do just one video and watch it back? What is your advice for someone to actually do this and stick with it?
Phil
Batch recording is a great idea. I think it's unrealistic to film one video at once. It takes time to get in the zone, it also takes time to set up to be able to film to remove distractions to get the right sound environment, etc. So I never film a YouTube video unless I'm filming at least three videos at once. The max that I can do in one sitting is six videos, and that's pushing it. Normally I do between three and five in one setting. In some cases, that's an entire month done in one sitting. And that's awesome. Definitely a fan of batch recording. I think it just takes too much time to set up and tear down to just film one videos, that's definitely a good idea.
Give yourself time, I'd say give yourself time, give yourself permission to spend time in the early days to experiment and play. Your findings are only going to come and your lessons are only going to come from doing this a bunch of times. And your first few videos might not do well. But then you might be shocked. If you are positioning your content around things that people are actively looking for, then there's a good chance you can tackle a topic and a lot of people are going to enjoy your perspective on it. Just try it.
Lauren
Well. And I think yes, just try it. But if you want results, try it and stick with it. one video per week for a minimum of six months, ideally a year. Because I think I have a feeling a lot of people just try it and then they're like, oh, this week was too busy. I'm going to post next week or oh, I don't know, maybe it's just not working. I haven't gotten any results yet. And it's been like three weeks. So I think mindset wise, if people are going to try YouTube to get the most out of it, you've got to put a lot into it at the same time.
Phil
If you start you can stop. I guess you could stop after a year, year and a half. But I don't think you will. I don't think we will. I think the the return on that investment after that amount of time is just too great, especially if you enjoy doing it and you reap the benefits of content repurposing that we've talked about. But I think yes, don't start if it's easy for you to stop. There's no point. There's no point. So well, we packed a lot in there, didn't we? We'd love to hear from you. Hopefully these are very tangible steps. I didn't really hold back I shared everything I know when it comes to YouTube. Also people should check out the video that I posted recently 10 things I've learned after creating 100 YouTube videos, type in those keywords into search, you'll find it. And let's continue the conversation on social media. I'm @philpallen
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore
Phil
#brandtherapy to continue this conversation. And you know if you enjoyed this episode we ask you very kindly to head over to the iTunes Store and leave us a review, five star, five star. That helps other people discover this podcast we work very hard to create for you. Well you know until next time, we will see you right here on Brand Therapy.
Lauren
Bye bye
