YouTube Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video I

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Copyright © 2018, 2022 Sean Cannell & Benji Travis

All rights reserved. YouTube is a registered trademark of Google LLC. This book is not authorized or endorsed by Google LLC.

Second Edition

ISBN: 978-1-5445-1182-5

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This book is dedicated to the Video Influencers and Think Media communities. Your stories of sacrifice, hustle, and persistence inspire and encourage us every day. Together we can impact the world through the power of online video, and we are grateful to be on the journey with you.

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part One: Strategy: The Seven Cs

1. Courage: Ignite Passion and Transcend Fear

2. Clarity: Start with the End in Mind

3. Channel: Building a Home for Your Content

4. Content: Create Lasting Impact

5. Community: Engage with Your Audience

6. Cash: Monetize Your Content

7. Consistency: Hustle Your Way to Success

Part Two: Tactics

8. The Perfect Video Recipe

9. Social Media: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

10. Discoverability: Attract Your Ideal Audience on Autopilot

11. Collaboration: Grow Your Audience Exponentially

12. Trends and Tentpoles: Conspire with the Culture

13. Team: Scale Your Vision

14. Think Differently: Crush Conventionality

15. New YouTube Features

Conclusion

Appendix

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

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Preface

—Sean Cannell & Benji Travis, authors of YouTube Secrets

YouTube remains the most dominant social media platform. That’s not our opinion; that’s a fact. According to new data from Pew Research, some 81 percent of Americans use YouTube compared to 69 percent who use Facebook, and YouTube continues to see significant growth around the world.1

When we wrote the first edition of YouTube Secrets, we had already experienced the life-changing power of YouTube in our own lives and observed it in the lives of others. We had a hunch that YouTube would continue to grow and that more opportunities would unfold over the next few years. It seemed to us that YouTube still had plenty of open-door opportunities for everyday creators to build communities, impact people with their content, and make incredible income from home by starting and growing successful channels.

However, it turns out we weren’t dreaming even close to big enough. New data that you’ll read about in the introduction of this second edition reveals that the growth of YouTube has caught a fresh wave of momentum and is poised to reverberate around the world over the next decade. There are more opportunities than ever.

Of course, we’re fully aware that new creators face serious challenges. Indeed, you might be wondering, Is it too late to start a channel? Isn’t there too much competition? Maybe you started posting videos, but you’ve become frustrated that you’re not getting views, or you’ve hit a growth plateau. Maybe you’re overwhelmed trying to figure out camera tech and video editing. You may lack confidence, and you keep telling yourself, I’m not smart enough, experienced enough, or talented enough to succeed on YouTube.

If you feel discouraged, burnt out, or overwhelmed, we don’t blame you. Besides the normal challenges of growing a channel on YouTube, we’ve just come through a global pandemic, and we’re now facing an economic recession, ongoing health care challenges, extreme political divisions, inflation, and massive changes in the job market.

While you may have been knocked down, you don’t have to stay down because buried in every crisis is a hidden opportunity. More than half of the people on Earth now use social media.2 The global pandemic shifted our culture and habits, causing social media and online video consumption to skyrocket, triggering a digital and online shopping explosion.3 As one expert revealed, In years to come, we will look back at 2020 as the moment that changed everything. Nowhere else has unprecedented and unforeseen growth occurred as in the digital and e-commerce sectors, which have boomed amid the COVID-19 crisis.4

We all know this from experience. Some people who had never shopped online were forced to embrace it during the pandemic. Suddenly, even our parents and grandparents were ordering groceries, clothes, medicine, and other items through websites and apps. This has led to remarkable growth in e-commerce, and there’s a lot more room for growth in the years ahead as online shopping becomes even more widespread.

The rapidly growing e-commerce industry is already worth $4 trillion, so the financial opportunity is enormous. As we will discuss in depth in Chapter 6, as online shopping increases, YouTube creators have more opportunities to make money. It’s called affiliate marketing, and it’s one of the major ways creators are achieving financial success on YouTube. That means you get a cut of that $4 trillion pie, and since it’s all online, you can tap into it from anywhere in the world.

Many people already have. Since we wrote the first edition of this book, millions have started YouTube channels and created a part-time and full-time living. In fact, a recent study revealed that being a content creator is now the fastest growing small business type.5

We’ve received countless emails and direct messages from readers of YouTube Secrets who have used our principles and strategies to overcome fear and start channels of their own. Business owners, leaders, and professional service providers are using the Seven Cs framework from YouTube Secrets to grow their revenue and scale their businesses, and many of them have crossed the 100,000-subscriber mark and received the coveted Silver Play button from YouTube for hitting that milestone. Many are also earning from $1,000 to over $10,000 a month from YouTube revenue alone. You’ll hear their stories in this updated version of the book.

As you know, we are living in times of rapid change, and YouTube has continued to evolve over the past few years. While the foundational principles of success remain the same, the platform and the overall landscape of the creator economy have shifted. That’s why we decided to put together this massively expanded second edition of YouTube Secrets.

We’ve completely overhauled the book with new data, new case studies, and new chapters that will give you an edge when it comes to what’s working right now on YouTube. We’ve tweaked some of the tips and completely removed a few outdated strategies so you can feel confident that you’re holding a reliable roadmap for achieving your YouTube goals.

We are in a new decade full of new opportunities on YouTube, but like William Arthur Ward said, Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.

So, turn the page and we’ll guide you step-by-step on your journey to YouTube success.

1 Peter Suciu, YouTube Remains the Most Dominant Social Media Platform, Forbes, April 7, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2021/04/07/youtube-remains-the-most-dominant-social-media-platform.

2 More than Half of the People on Earth Now Use Social Media, Hootsuite, July 21, 2020, https://www.hootsuite.com/newsroom/press-releases/more-than-half-of-the-people-on-earth-now-use-social-media.

3 Suzin Wold, COVID-19 is Changing How, Why, and How Much We’re Using Social Media, September 16, 2020, https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2020/09/16/covid-19-is-changing-how-why-and-how-much-were-using-social-media/.

4 How COVID-19 Triggered the Digital and E-commerce Turning Point, UNCTAD, March 15, 2021, https://unctad.org/news/how-covid-19-triggered-digital-and-e-commerce-turning-point.

5 Yuanling Yuan and Josh Constine, SignalFire’s Creator Economy Market Map, SignalFire, July 8, 2021, https://signalfire.com/blog/creator-economy/.

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Introduction

When most people think of YouTube, they still think of cat videos, viral memes, and homemade videos. In reality, there is a secret community of people on YouTube who are turning their creativity into careers, amassing huge followings, and creating lives on their own terms.

CNBC shared the story of Karina Garcia, known as the internet’s Slime Queen. In less than three years, the twenty-three-year-old turned her one-time hobby posting do-it-yourself (DIY) slime videos into a full-time career and went from waitressing to making millions. While her story might have seemed crazy a decade ago, it’s becoming more and more common.6

Imagine if you’d told your family and friends a decade ago that you wanted to make a living as a YouTube creator. Chances are, you would have been asked, Why don’t you get a real job? Today, there is no debate. Being a YouTube creator is a real job. After all, YouTube generated $19.7 billion in revenue in 2020, and roughly half of that revenue goes directly into the pockets of everyday people like you who upload their videos to the platform.7

According to an article in SignalFire, being a YouTube creator has become the fastest-growing type of small business. Tens of thousands of channels are earning seven-figure incomes, but new data reveals that over a million are earning six figures. Millions more earn five figures. All of these numbers are expected to double in the next few years.8

By the way, ad revenue is only one of the ways YouTube creators are monetizing their content. Later in this book, we’ll share many other ways you can make money through online videos. It’s a revolution. You may be hearing about it for the first time, but this is a very real opportunity. Regular, everyday people from all walks of life are discovering the power of building influence, creating income, and making a massive impact on YouTube by creating content based on their hobbies, passions, and professional lives.

Laura Vitale’s passion is cooking, and she always dreamed of writing a cookbook. She started her YouTube channel shortly after quitting a restaurant job, making videos with her husband in her own kitchen. Ten years later, she had grown her channel to such an extent that she landed a position on Food Network as a regular host and got a book deal for her cookbook. She’s now a bestselling author, due in large part to amassing 3.8 million subscribers on her channel, and she has become one of the most highly recognized food personalities on the platform.

John Kohler, a passionate gardener, has one of the most highly watched gardening shows on YouTube, Growing Your Greens. The first video he uploaded in 2009 was shot in one take, wasn’t high definition, had no editing, and he wasn’t even in the shot, but he had an obvious passion for gardening. Fifteen hundred videos later, with over one hundred million views and eight hundred thousand subscribers, he’s a little savvier about video, but more importantly, he is using his channel to grow his core business: selling juicing machines.

Then there’s Glen Henry, a.k.a. Beleaf in Fatherhood, a father of four children who started posting vlogs documenting his parenting journey. After a few years of hard work, his commitment to consistency on YouTube and continuous learning paid off. He had the opportunity to work with Dove Men+Care, and he was in a feature film, Dads, on Apple TV+ alongside celebrities like Will Smith and Neil Patrick Harris.9

Through YouTube, he has built a powerful business and brand and hired a team to help him in his mission to equip fathers, give hope to mothers, and inspire children. And it all started by punching fear in the face and pressing record on his smartphone.

We’re not saying everyone is going to become wealthy on YouTube. For some people, that might not even be their ambition. What’s exciting is how people are taking their passions and hobbies and using them to create communities, connect with like-minded people, and make some money for themselves and their families.

Heather Torres is a great example of this. A homeschool mom with three kids, she started a homeschooling channel to share tips with other parents. After a year of posting videos in her spare time, her channel grew to over eighteen thousand subscribers, and her videos have been viewed over a million times. As a result, she has created a side income for her family and opened many doors of opportunity.

Now, you might be thinking, These people started early. It’s too late now. YouTube is crowded and there’s too much competition. That’s simply not the case. There are countless examples of creators of all ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities—from countries around the world—who have built successful and profitable YouTube channels.

YouTube was the number one most visited site on the internet in 2020! There’s a massive audience looking for new creators and fresh content. That means now is a great time to get started. Don’t put it off any longer.10

Additionally, you might assume that all of these successful YouTubers had startup funding. Maybe you lack the money to buy the kind of expensive equipment people use to make professional TV shows. The good news is you don’t need any of that. All the equipment you need to make compelling YouTube content is in your pocket right now, contained in your smartphone, a device that can create and upload high-definition (HD), even 4K, video.

Some people fear they don’t have the talent to create quality YouTube content, but talent is not the number one requirement on YouTube. Things like passion, excitement, fun, information, education, and answering people’s questions are far more important. The most successful creators today aren’t talented in the ways that Hollywood stars are. In fact, many of them are introverts in regular life, but they have a passion for the content they create. That’s the real secret of YouTube. If you’re passionate enough to help others and excited enough to keep their interest, you’re ready.

Successful influencers on YouTube are just average, everyday folks who care about something and have developed some skill or knowledge about a subject, whether it’s fitness, faith, or decluttering a home. Any kind of interest or hobby can become valuable content without the need for fancy editing or an ultratalented creator.

Why Video?

In general, we all prefer to connect and do business with people we know, like, and trust. The problem with connecting online is that it’s harder to look someone in the eye, have a real conversation with them, and gauge their facial expressions. This is particularly true with blogging but also holds true for audio content. That’s one reason we believe video is absolutely the best way to communicate any message.

Through video, it’s much easier for an audience to get to know and trust you. The most successful YouTubers have regular viewers who feel like they have developed a friendship with them. Only video engages people on that level.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but digital marketing expert James McQuivey of Forrester Research estimates that a single minute of video content is equivalent to 1.8 million words.11 For anyone who has a message, dream, business, brand, or something they want to get out to the world, video is the most effective way to do it.

Video is also growing like crazy. Almost every social media platform has adopted