[00:00:00] Hala Taha: Hey, young improfiters, you are listening to part two of my YouTube series with Sean Cannell. If you don't know who Sean Cannell is, he's an author. He's also a huge YouTuber himself with his podcast channel, Think Media, that has millions of podcast subscribers. And he's also one of the top YouTube experts and teachers in the world.

He's also an entrepreneur. He's the CEO of Think Media, a media agency. And Sean is absolutely incredible. I was blown away with all of his YouTube knowledge in this episode. So much so that I asked him to stay on an extra 45 minutes so that I could break it down in a two part episode because I just didn't want to stop learning from him.

I'm trying to grow my YouTube channel myself. And selfishly, I had a lot of questions to ask him that I think all of you are going to find super, super relevant. So this is part two of our conversation. We're really focused on monetization and growth strategies. If you haven't heard part one yet, I would recommend that you go back, listen to that.

In that episode, we talk about foundational things, why YouTube in 2024, what are some of the questions and considerations we need to ask ourselves before we start investing in a YouTube channel. So again, listen to part one if you haven't yet. And if you have already checked out part one, then enjoy part two of our episode with Sean Cannell.

Let's talk about the different ways that entrepreneurs and people in general can monetize YouTube. What are the different ways when you're just starting out to when like you've built a following? 

[00:03:01] Sean Cannell: The best way to monetize when you're just starting on YouTube day one. Also, if you don't have an offer.

and a sales process or a sales funnel yet, the very best way to get started is affiliate marketing. And even JV relationships. What's exciting about this is you can start a real business, adding value through free content on YouTube, and when appropriate, giving calls to action and integrating in affiliate relationships.

Let's say you started a YouTube channel about productivity for W2s and entrepreneurs, And the best tools for that. So then, you can make a video on how to use ClickUp, or how to use Money. com, or ClickUp versus Money. com, or Slack versus ClickUp. Well, all these different SaaS products, software as a service, have affiliate programs.

And by using your affiliate link, Putting it in the video, adding value, and then educating about it. You can not only get a commission if someone purchases the software, but oftentimes you get continuity. You may be paid every month. So, I think about one of my friends, Pat Flynn, who has a podcast called Smart Passive Income, and through talking about an email CRM, I believe it was ConvertKit or something, and there's AWeber, and there's been these other ones, but I think it was ConvertKit.

Fill in the blank, whatever CRM. Over time, through adding valuable content, people signed up for it and he got continuity. And I want to say it led to like 30, 000 a month in reoccurring. There is actually a YouTube software that we recommend that we're at about 22, 000 in reoccurring revenue a month.

Because again, it's not just the transaction that person signs up on. When someone gets this tool, loves it, uses it for years, 99 percent of people listening to this have things they pay for monthly that they love. And so if you were the originator of that transaction, What's cool about that is from day one, if you make the right videos, especially if it was something search based and there's, we could spin off on a thousand different ways to make money as an affiliate for a conversation sake.

If you were to do convert kit versus active campaign 2024, really break down the pros and cons, and those are email CRMs, then you could affiliate link to both. This could be your first video on your channel. And that video could get discovered, get views, and get transactions, and you could have 50 bucks of reoccurring revenue a month, 300 bucks of reoccurring a month.

Over a couple weeks, especially if the video keeps getting views, and that's what we teach people, our favorite thing to do is rank videos in search. Like, create a video today that keeps getting viewed for weeks, months, and years to come. And not just rank videos in search, our definition of ranking is rank videos also in suggested, which simply means either someone types in a search and the video shows up on the first page, or Or, as people start looking for things, the video gets recommended at the end of other videos or suggested by the YouTube algorithm.

Either way, if you can get views while you snooze. You've got a ranked video, and if you've connected it to an income stream like affiliate marketing, you're in a sweet spot. Good news about that is you don't have to be monetized by YouTube yet to start earning money. You can pretty much start from day one.

The second thing I would say is once you hit a thousand subscribers and 4, 000 hours of watch time, you can apply it to the YouTube Partner Program. YouTube will start paying you for views on your videos. And for 99 percent of entrepreneurs listening to this, I wouldn't recommend focusing on this.

However, just talk to my friend Lewis Howes. He makes tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars in terms of YouTube ad revenue, not even his core business, but the size of his show has grown to such a level. We make around half a million dollars a year from YouTube ad revenue. Now, if you spin off YouTube, other income streams, you can make super chats when you're alive or premiering a video.

Somebody can basically tip you. People can also actually tip you. You have to make sure you turn this on. So one of the smallest tweaks for an established creator that's like a business owner doesn't even think about this stuff is to just turn on these features because sometimes by default they're turned off.

And when somebody, it's called like tip jar or thank you, they can do a thank you. It's like two bucks, three bucks, five bucks. So if you just add great content, people out of the goodness of their heart will just tip on a video and you could do super chats, super stickers. That gets more into like the gaming entertainment live stream.

But if you got fans, they get by certain stickers. You got channel memberships. People probably very familiar with memberships. I recommend doing them off platform because YouTube takes 30 percent of your If you had a hundred grand worth of reoccurring revenue a month, they'd take 30 grand if it was all through their channel memberships.

It'd be like premium subscription and you could just upload exclusive content. You could do exclusive live streams. There's an exclusive community tab. So you just have kind of a sub community. Now the benefit is YouTube does all the heavy lifting and you don't got to go anywhere else or whatever. So it could bring you peace of mind.

But no matter what at high dollar, I mean at low dollar figures, but it's really painful at higher dollar figures. I'm like, shoot, And if I had all those people integrated, you wouldn't want them to lead. I'd be like, I don't want to give you 30, 000 a year. That's because you could use Kajabi or school or these other things.

You could save a lot off that. However, you do have to move people off platform. So Super Chats, channel memberships, super stickers, thank yous. YouTube shopping is integrated now similar to TikTok shopping, and you could go direct with different retailers. It's basically like affiliate marketing, but on YouTube shorts you could point to things.

And this wouldn't just only be if you're like a fashion, makeup or skincare channel. This would include cameras and tech and consumer electronics. And they might pay you five, 10, 15%. So you can look in the back end, what retailers there are. So then I think the biggest thing though, for this audience is just this idea that you got to ask yourself is YouTube the business and as content, the business itself, or as YouTube, a marketing channel for your existing business.

So I think leads becomes the biggest opportunity to your own products or services, and. You can start doing that day one without your channel being monetized. So I think about one of our students, Jen DeVore Richter, when she had 546 subscribers, she emailed us and said, I just had my biggest revenue week ever in my business, 11, 000.

Cause of what I implemented from your program, video ranking Academy. so much. And she only had 546 subscribers and her videos were getting 26 views, 88 views, a couple hundred. Her best video is a couple thousand. She hadn't even crossed a thousand subscribers yet. Her channel wasn't even monetized. But if her channel got monetized by YouTube with those amount of views, they'd be paying her like 6.

She'd be at a level like 22. Whereas she had an 11, 000 new week, which, that's why for business owners and entrepreneurs, the question then becomes, how can I create a video that will attract my ideal audience? How can I then add value in that video that builds trust and helps them get to know me? And then what call to action can I give that they'd be interested in to something probably free or even just to book a call?

We help a lot of loan officers and real estate agents. A lot of that is just add value and like jump on the phone with us. Add value, fill out the form, and then we'll follow up. Then it's on you. I mean, you've had many guests and you're an expert yourself. Your sales process is now taking people off of YouTube.

How good are you at follow up? Is it email follow up? Is it social selling? Is it they are going to book a call and then that's up to you. But the power is that YouTube itself can then drive traffic. into that funnel, if you will. And you could start monetizing instantly when you start creating smart content.

You know, one other story that's interesting is I think about my friend, Levi Lastic, read our book, YouTube Secrets. His business partner, Travis Plum, Dallas real estate agents. Small team, six people working for him or something. And as far as marketing goes, they're not investing in any marketing. No billboards, no yellow pages, no classified ads.

Which, by the way, whatever works. As a digital YouTube guy, I'm all for traditional stuff if it's gonna work. But all they did was focus on organic YouTube content, not even paid ads, not paid Facebook ads, not paid leads from Zillow. His focus on creating YouTube content after reading our book and thinking about that.

And wouldn't you believe it, after six months, how many transactions had they converted in their business? How is that for a good news? Like, that's pretty exciting. I mean, so, okay. So that, but I love this story because it's realistic. They committed seeing, okay, I can see that in my local market for them.

It was Dallas. Their channel is called living in Dallas. So they do neighborhood tours, house tours, pros and cons of moving to Dallas, different neighborhoods, all this stuff, six months. They got some leads, no transactions. I think it's around 2021. In the following 12 months, they do 90 million, which leads to about 2.

9 collected real estate commissions, 2. 9 million from just organic YouTube traffic. They started realizing that, you know, if they're getting 10, 000 views a month, that equals 77 leads. And here's also what's crazy about the leads. The leads were so qualified.

He told me stories of docusigns getting signed. They never met the person. They go, Oh yeah, no, I trust you. You know, whatever. I've been watching your videos. It's kind of weird to be on the phone with you. I've been watching your videos. I already know, like, and trust you. I already have got a vibe. I feel like I already know you.

Or when they meet in person, there's already like rapport. And even though Levi might be meeting them for the first time, this person had got to know them in video. They tapped into search discovery, search terms, as well as viral approaches. Should I buy a house now? Is the market crashing? All this different stuff.

And only using YouTube. And again, as they've scaled, you start realizing we can hire somebody, we can do paid ads. Why not? If anything works, keep scaling it up. But that's just the power. And to that point, at the end of nearly 3 million in revenue, their channel was still under 5, 000 subscribers. Wow. Wow. a small YouTube channel, but they were attracting the right people.

And I've heard real estate called high ticket affiliate marketing. Because if you recommend 10 lipstick and you get 3%, Then you just made 30 cents. But if you sell a million dollar house and you get 3 percent and you just made 30, 000. So real estate is like high ticket affiliate marketing. And let me throw in one nugget for your community.

If you were looking for a business model or like the shortest path to making big money with a small channel, JV partnerships would be the best way to do that. Meaning being an affiliate for somebody else that has an event, coaching program, mastermind, or course. And the reason why is because of percentages.

Amazon gives me 4 percent on cameras and ticket price. But let's say it's a thousand bucks, camera, I get 4%, I make 40. If you recommended somebody's educational program, that was a thousand dollars, probably you're going to get a 50 percent commission. You'd make 500. So this is just a leverage conversation.

So if you could start creating videos and one example, if you go to a website like clickbank. com, you could find somebody like marathon training program. So if you started like a running channel, marathon training, and maybe you're also like, well, I'm not really an expert, but I'm a hobbyist. This is the marathon training program.

I did my, uh, stepbrother, Alan Eskland did an Ironman. And. He paid for a couple thousand dollar program because those Ironmans are no joke. So, if he documented his journey and got other people inspired and then recommends that as an affiliate, he can make thousands of dollars in a commission. If he learns how to rank videos, passive income, I mean, you only need a hundred transactions if you make a thousand dollar commission to make six figures.

So, I think that this goes into that framework of you could be A knowledge broker, a reporter, and eventually the expert. I think one of the coolest ways to start a YouTube channel is to be a reporter, to do what you're doing. And you could bring on other guests, a knowledge broker of other people's knowledge.

And when they have products and programs, you recommend those. And again, you might be getting 77 views on your videos, 376 views on your videos. But if you're attracting the right people with the right titles and the right information, and then someone's like, Oh cool, I can go deeper with this person.

compared to a super chat, someone tipping you 3 on YouTube. And that's where 99 percent of creators are stuck. Is there a kind of in a somewhat small minded money mentality by not thinking about better vehicles to earn bigger income? 

[00:16:01] Hala Taha: So, so smart. So many things that I want to dive deep on.

And one thing that I want to add is sponsorships, right? So once you actually have an audience, you can do things like what I do. If you guys are watching my channel, I'm always doing like host red ads that sponsors are paying me for. But of course, it just depends on how far along you are because you need thousands of views for that to actually make sense monetarily.

You mentioned this at a high level, but I'm curious to understand, can you give us an example of a sales funnel for like a coach or an entrepreneur? What would that sales funnel look like on YouTube? 

[00:16:35] Sean Cannell: My favorite way to do it, and this gets very granular, is I like teaching and I like teaching with numbers.

So if you're a coach, what's three things? So insert pain point that you solve. Three little known tax strategies to save thousands for business owners. You get in the video, number one, Augusta rule, number two, cost seg bonus depreciation, number three, whatever. After number two, tie in the second point that you have a free thing that goes deeper on it.

And by the way, if you want access to my cost seg bonus depreciation calculator, or just in the whole video, these are just three of the strategies. If you want my guide with 21 of the best tax strategies for entrepreneurs, just hit the link in the description or go to think tax strategies. com that doesn't exist, but you give that pretty URL.

Maybe it does. I don't know. So, uh, it's not ours though. Um, one of the reasons why I like making it point number two though, is because If it polarizes the right people to download it, good. But it's also going to potentially stop the viewing session, which is not what YouTube wants most. I think you absolutely should call people off the platform, but do it in such a way that also people could stay on and there's still a reason for them to stay on for the next point.

So that's why I would do that on point number two and I would tie it to the point. Do you teach a little bit about that? And then you're like, Hey, listen, if you actually want to go deeper, my entire LinkedIn navigator deep dive training, I will give it to you for free. It's 20 minutes long. Click the link in the description.

So that's how I would do it. And then it's like online marketing, best practices. I think the naming of whatever you're giving away free, the desire of what you're giving away free alignment on the entire thing and congruency. Congruency is that when they land on the page, they're on the right page.

People have horrible landing pages, navigation above. It doesn't even seem like it's them. There's not authority there. It doesn't load malware notification. I mean, it's just kind of stressful. Someone's like, man, there's so many things you just want to remove friction. Sometimes the biggest mistake is.

You're making a video that have people thinking one way and giving a call to action that's not related. Think about what video would attract the ideal person for your opt in. What opt in would attract the ideal person for your offer? And that's it. Those things are broken all the time in people's businesses.

Someone opts in, but they're not the right psychology, psychographics, demographics, because it was a cool free thing, but did it really align? And then the YouTube videos. If you were talking about how to hire team members in a video, and then you were like, and by the way, if you want to download my 21 tax savings guide, like, not horrible, because maybe some people are like, that does sound interesting.

The reason they're there, the better guide would be a freebie that's like, you know, and if you want to get my scripts, my job interview scripts for how to really filter out the wrong candidates and lock in the right candidates. Bye. Just go to thinkhiringscripts. com or click the link in the description.

So that would be my biggest thing. The strategy of the content that attracts the right people, then the opt in that ties together congruency in the whole thing. And then, again, a good sales process and funnels. You probably have endless episodes in your own library of some good stuff on making great funnels.

But what's powerful about that is it is a psychology. Everybody listening to this needs to know, thinking about their whole, you could call it sales journey, the whole customer journey, thinking about the entire thing, start to finish. And that is a never ending process of tweaking. All of us can improve it.

Ours is probably a six out of 10 and we've done pretty well. Small tweaks lead to giant peaks. And so just being willing to be like, can I change my opt into the future? Can I change my offer page as I'm just my offer page, the checkout page and the thank you page. And then follow up. And what do I want to do next?

And is that all aligned? And usually when things are not working, it's just cause a piece is broken and there's some cognitive dissonance that happens or something sometimes from YouTube to your landing page, it's not quite what it looked like and all these little details like that. 

 One of my favorite things to do right now is to take every sales funnel that we have, break it down into each actionable chunk, get all the historic data, understand all the different averages for click rates, conversion rates.

[00:21:17] Hala Taha: And then you're able to see where is everything falling apart? Where is the leak? Where do I need to improve? And you can even do like bottom up forecasting where you can say, okay, if I want to generate 50, 000. I need to send out this many DMs. I need to get this many clicks. This many people need to show up to my webinar.

This many people need to convert and you can work backwards. But it first starts with being intentional, intentional when you're designing it, intentional to track your data, intentional to get your averages, and then think about where you can improve. 

[00:21:48] Sean Cannell: One hundred percent. 

[00:21:50] Hala Taha: Okay. So, couple more growth strategy questions for you.

In terms of growing your channel organically, you said it's very important to get top of the search results. Also, the suggested sidebar is really important. So how can we get better at actually being discovered organically on YouTube? 

[00:22:07] Sean Cannell: So there's two big ways to get discovered on YouTube. The first is YouTube suggested, the second is YouTube search.

The fastest way to go viral on YouTube is to tap into YouTube Suggested. That is the YouTube recommended engine. 75 percent of views basically come from YouTube. YouTube recommending content and the true generator of virality is YouTube putting your video on people's homepages, putting in the suggested feed, and then the velocity of as, as people are exposed to the title and the thumbnail, they click on it, they watch it, and YouTube promotes it to more people and they click on it and they watch it.

That's the viral side. The remaining 25 percent of traffic is from people searching on Google or YouTube or elsewhere. External traffic, you can send an email to your list, go watch my video, share it on social media. And there are a few other surfaces, channel pages, internal playlists. So, let's go in reverse then, and say, to tap into search though, even though it's not as viral, what I love about it is it's practical.

It's slow and steady wins. And it also is very much evergreen, because sometimes viral can go up, but then it goes down. And some people are known for maybe getting a lot of views on a singular video. They can't sustain the pace of always trying to make these viral videos. So they disappear. So for example, like our channel is so heavily search based.

We like can't drop under 4 million long form views a month. We just stay there because of our library. It's like anti fragile, unbreakable. It's a mindset that a lot of people can't even relate to because some people might then hit a 10 million viewed month, but then they fall off. It's like a yo yo diet.

So what I love about search based is even though it might be slower, it's kind of like compound interest or investing slowly or letting your real estate appreciate slowly. Just a long term mindset. And so, search based would be about using keyword research tools, understanding psychology, what are people searching for, and writing good titles, of course, still making good content, title, thumbnail, content, description, some video optimization, and going into it knowing I'm optimizing my video for search.

Now, there's also, it's kind of two different ways of thinking, because how you'd optimize your video for search, you might title your video, How to Interview Potential Employees. That would be a search based title. Probably not viral. That niche and business advice like that usually wouldn't go viral anyways, but the thing about that, right, is it becomes a resource that may be watched for the next 10 years.

So that's what's kind of cool. Now, interesting thing you could do, though, is. The suggested angle on that same video would be one outrageous mistake business owners make when hiring. That's still niche, but that's the kind of titles that are going viral right now. It's more open loop, more curiosity based, less how to, keyword format.

So, if I look at some of our even newest podcasts, which we kind of do both, We just did an interview with Lewis Howes. It's called 85 Minutes of Strategic Content Tactics with Lewis Howes. We don't even say what it is. Now, some people might say Lewis Howes on AI, personal branding, and the state of influencer marketing in 2024.

So I think it's just picking and choosing your positioning. Genius personal branding tips with Chris Do. I'm thinking if the person has authority or not. If they aren't known, I may not even include them in the title. This gets into the tactic of naming your YouTube videos different than your audio podcast, too, because audio podcasts cannot see thumbnails and they also longer, more detailed of what you're about to get is hard for us to sustain.

We're talking about it right now. It's like the track of how they're positioned differently, but here's one. This YouTube strategy will guarantee views in 2024. And then the thumbnail is kind of an open loop. So that target there would be suggested because then it's like what YouTube strategy. Whereas if I said, how to use affiliate marketing to make money with YouTube, interesting thing is that title probably wouldn't perform super great, but would be rankable over the long haul for people that already know what affiliate marketing is.

Whereas the reverse would be how to make thousands of dollars a month. With this simple YouTube strategy. And the answer in the video is affiliate marketing. So that's pretty high level in terms of, are we going after suggested? Are we going after search? If you get really advanced to this stuff, you can pivot later.

Ride suggested for a few months, the video tapers off, then pivot it to make it search based for a long time. Because you can edit it. You can edit it, yeah. And it's kind of, now it's like down, it's already got its established watch time. But sometimes, the problem with the suggested style, if we even want to search our own library, and we do have like a customer service and stuff, and they try to link our videos, they can't find it.

If they search affiliate marketing, because you can search a channel. There's a little search bar on people's channels on desktop. So, yeah. Well, it doesn't come up because it just is like how to make 1, 000 with this one strategy. So I'm not trying to, uh, overwhelm the listener to be indecisive, but those would be two different skill sets to master.

And what I've noticed is that a lot of people lean on one or the other and the most powerfully positioned creators tap into both. It's like diversification of your portfolio too. You've got longterm search based evergreen videos ranking, and then you also got some breakout videos. That are crushing. I did a video about an AI tool.

If I would have just revealed what the tool was, it wouldn't have done nearly as well because no one knows about the tool yet. There's a good book, a couple of books to get. There's one called. Great Leads by Michael Masterson, but it has to do with awareness of where the audience is right now. So if you give away too much in the title, it means they're already problem aware.

Are they problem aware? Are they solution aware? Are they pain point aware? we call it the mass appeal method. If you're gonna go more viral, you wanna be more mass appeal. Whereas if you go all the way down to like solution aware, how to use ClickUp step by step is solution aware. Whereas how to overcome overwhelm.

And organize your digital life. Click up is the answer, but you went much broader. I'm like, oh, I'm overwhelmed and I want to organize my life. So I did a video called, This AI tool creates videos in seconds with no editing. With a sick thumbnail. Video has 418, 000 views. It's getting 115 views per hour. And it's 17x outlier score.

It's doing 17 times better than other videos on the channel and still going up. So it's getting tons of clicks. But you don't know what the tool is. It's creating videos in seconds. What? No editing? What? All this curiosity around it. And you'll notice a lot of the quote unquote viral videos. For us, we also say VFM, viral for me.

So it encouraged the listener, if you get 50 views on your videos, then following some of these tips, if you get 500, that's viral for you. You just got 10x views, like viral for me. We might be able to get you 1, 000x. Because if you get 50 views, then if you get 50, 000, 1, 000x more views. Using these strategies could be that, okay, would it be appropriate?

And then the final thing in all of that is, as skilled as you get at psychology, copywriting, and I could even say ethical clickbait writing. Because clickbait is manipulative and deceptive, but you need to learn how to get the click. So you just want to do it ethically. To do so, what's so important in all of this is not just trying to come up with some amazing title, but then realizing the content doesn't deliver.

Transcribed You want there to be congruence there. And so the dream is to say, okay, even if I'm working by myself, we now do it as a team. But if I do it by myself, I never write only one title for a video. I always write at least five. And then I say, after I've just. Challenge myself to write five, to come up with five, use AI, chat GPT, massage it myself.

Look at this, look at that. Boom. I got at least five. Then I can score it. A tip is also if you have Facebook group or you have some way to survey, there's limited characters on X and some other platforms, but the YouTube community tab gives you enough characters. I did it this morning. I took five titles of a video that I wanted to pivot because it wasn't doing that well.

Posted them on the YouTube community tab, people voted. 50 percent of people voted for the winner. The next highest was 21%. That right there, only 103 votes. That right there, small data will map to big data. That will tell you which title's best. So challenge yourself to write five titles, write it all down.

But sometimes the best one, then my final question is, yeah, but do I really actually deliver on that in the video? That's a good title, that's a really good open loop, but does the video let people down after that? Because making short term decisions To get a click that ends up leaving people feeling dissatisfied after watching the video or deceived is the wrong move for your brand.

But writing clickbait titles that actually deliver on the promise, thus being ethical, is the ultimate skill set in 2024. For not just winning on YouTube, but I think winning with copy across platforms. 

[00:31:28] Hala Taha: So many great strategies. I'm gonna have my video team rewind that piece back because I feel like we need better support with our titles.

So the other question that I have about getting searched and ranked is the algorithm. Because I know that every social platform is considering different metrics to decide whether or not they're going to serve content to users on the platform. So what are the different metrics that you think the YouTube algorithm is judging to decide whether or not they'll show your video to users in the suggested feed?

[00:31:57] Sean Cannell: Yeah, here's the cool thing. YouTube themselves have revealed the criteria for how the algorithm works, but a lot of people don't know this. The first one, and the often misunderstood one, is they consider watch history and previous viewer behavior. So it's not just about being the coolest viral trend, it's about the fact that people are different.

So, if you are helping people with weight loss, intermittent fasting, helping people get in keto, when YouTube's recommending videos, after someone's viewer behavior of searching for keto, keto diets, keto meal plans. Then YouTube takes that data and will start recommending similar content. Now we can take that even further.

You start having these associations that YouTube makes. Meaning that it's likely for many people who maybe start pursuing ketosis to maybe also be into Andrew Huberman, They're into sleep. Should I drink alcohol or not? They're into biohacking, so Dave Asprey. So maybe they're also looking at red light therapy and some other things.

And then maybe more high level, again, they're looking at just the personal development or self development. Of like a Tim Ferriss. So when you start to understand that aspect, that this is why having a niche and having boundaries around the type of content that you are creating is so powerful because you want to start getting recommended along other content.

This is why competition is a good thing, not a bad thing. Because competition and the consumption of subject matter in these various niches. is making a bigger pool for everybody. When people start to go deep in a particular subject that they love, they don't watch just one video about it, they spin off and watch multiple videos about it, multiple different angles around it.

So, I'm a big Bible guy. It's part of my faith. And so you could get into like Bible study. And then you might get into like some obscure things in the Bible like, this is pretty niche, aliens. You get into the Nephilim, you get into these different things. Well, when somebody starts going down that rabbit hole, they'll watch one person's 45 minutes, somebody else's 45 minutes.

And now your title and your thumbnail, you just need to know your goal is to get recommended and discovered along other people. Tactically, this also could be why you react to, or even commentate on and join the conversation. Because your goal is to get your video recommended with other videos that are ranking.

So number one is people's watch history and their previous viewing behavior. Number two is click through rate. And bottom line, YouTube has two major metrics, click through rate and watch time. So it's, are people clicking on this video? One of the cool things YouTube's doing right now is it's recommending a lot of brand new channels and small channels.

This is totally true. Channels with only a few subscribers, channels with only a handful of views, they're showing up on my watch page, they're showing up and most of the people listening to this, just take my word for it, because I don't know how much YouTube you consume. But if you do consume YouTube, watch what happens and notice that obscure channels will start getting recommended.

I will keep it vague, but I was following a scandal that an organization is in right now. And there's, I now, because I've just consumed one person talking about that, I'm getting recommended to all kinds of other channels. This is me. I'm meeting total strangers. So people feel overwhelmed, like I can't break out, I can't grow.

It's not true. But you want to be talking about the right topics, thinking about, this is a little bit of having a where. Being aware of the zeitgeist in your industry, being aware of the psychology in your industry. You don't chase trends unrelated. Talking about the new and the now and understanding how to do culture surfing is important.

And so YouTube is recommending brand new channels, but here is the painful part for you listening to this. If you get a chance on this free platform to get in front of a complete stranger, are you going to miss that opportunity or are you going to get it? 

 good news is it doesn't just come once in a lifetime. But what I've noticed is that sometimes when those channels get recommended, I'm like, that title doesn't really grip me. That thumbnail is not that great. And those are going to be the two metrics

Actually, there's three metrics. It's title, thumbnail, but the biggest one is topic. Because what is included in that topic, right time, right place, so it's the topic itself, and then a good title that makes it even more interesting, like, that's an irresistible video. And so, you want to get the click, and those are what you're optimizing for.

What videos am I talking about? What title? What thumbnail? And then you want to keep, hold the viewer's attention. Now, the question might be, what's a good click through rate? It's actually kind of unanswerable because actually a good click through rate, your most viral videos will have ever decreasing click through rates because YouTube continues to expand the amount of people it's giving you impressions in front of, which drives the click through rate down.

[00:37:09] Hala Taha: It's similar to social. Engagement rate always goes down as you get bigger. 

[00:37:13] Sean Cannell: Yeah, so I've got videos with millions of views and click through rate is 3%, but I'm glad I got the millions of views. Some people go, I got a 75 percent click through rate. How many views did the video get? 33. It's like, well, yeah, because your 33 subscribers are super engaged, which is awesome and shows you're really resonating with them.

But if you want to go broader, it's going to drive the click through rate down. Now, if you could get a click through rate above 10%, and then here would be the key. If the staying power, if it stays high, As it's increased to more people, this means psychology wise, starting to think about one of the ways you could open your videos is like, Hey, guys, welcome back.

Well, cold traffic, people who don't know you, they're not, Hey, guys, and they're not welcome back. They've never been there. So thinking about not just talking to who's here now, but is your video positioned to be digested? To build a relationship, to build bridges with people who are just discovering it for the first time.

How broad appeal is the topic, and how effectively does it connect with new people? That'd be kind of a key to hacking the algorithm. So then, how do I get the click? How do I keep people watching? From a good hook in the beginning, to the way the content's optimized. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, said a quote that really changed my life.

It's something I've applied, but it can be applied to us as YouTube creators. https: otter. ai And it really reminded me when I'm in a rush. And the quote was that oftentimes the difference between good and great is an extra round of revision. Now to be clear, James Clear wrote Atomic Habits, which is like the best selling book in the last decade.

It's like the best selling book every week, and it'll probably be the most perennial seller for years to come. So we're talking about someone. Who didn't just do shallow work and just try to rush their social media content for this week or their podcast episode or their video. They went deeper. Just an extra round of revision can give you exponential results.

When Mr. Beast was interviewed on the Joe Rogan podcast, he said if people would just put 20 percent more effort into an individual video, they could get 10 times more views. So, I think there's something about when I say, how can you keep attention? Spending some time in editing, trimming the fluff. Right about that point, I got a little long winded.

For the YouTube student, as you continue to post videos and commit to getting 1 percent better with every upload, what it would mean is actually going back to your audience retention curve and noticing if there's any significant dips. Or if there's any points. Because then it starts helping you say, okay, maybe I should cut those parts off or I'm going too long, but you want to be brief, be bright, be fun and be done.

You want that content to hold attention. And if you could have an over 10 percent click through rate and an over 75 percent average percentage viewed. Then you can really trigger the algorithm. The other thing that is interesting is longer form videos, if they're generally good, call it an hour or two hours, can also just get 15 minutes of watch time on average.

That'd be the average view duration. And that's not a bad thing. The percentage is pretty low. The percentage is much lower, but minutes matter most. So, YouTube just wants time on the platform, period. And so, of course, percentage viewed would also help. If it was a 10 minute video and most people watched till 8 minutes, But if you could just keep people on videos for 20 minutes, the average excellent amount of time on YouTube is around five.

So it's 4x the typical short video. So in YouTube's eyes, they're just like, who cares if the video is long? This video, on average, people are watching 20 minutes in a world where there's a million other things to do. So as we recap and we get to the final one, number one, watch history, previous viewer behavior.

This is why you don't have to copy the famous YouTuber. You just got to be yourself. We have people in ham radio niche, people that are doing collectible cars, collectible train sets, people that are doing obscure personal development, breathing techniques. You don't need to be fancy, have fancy editing computer, but you need to know your niche because once people start going deep, yeah, like I said, Bible studies, some different things.

What people are looking for, maybe the quality of the information, I'm not looking for like, fancy b roll. You're looking for somebody who's really studied or whatever. It's knowing, what are the other successful channels, how can I get recommended with those. Two, click through rate, how can I have the highest click through rate possible through topic, title.

Thumbnail. Then, how do I optimize my content for keeping the viewer watching the video for as long as possible? Average view duration, average percentage viewed. The fourth one almost nobody knows about, and it's viewer satisfaction. And one of the things YouTube does is surveys. Here's why this is interesting.

They don't always do them. What they realized was, okay, in some cases, maybe somebody will watch 30 minutes of a video. However, when they're done with the video They're mad because the video maybe was really good at keeping you watching, continue to promise you value. And we've probably all been in something like that, where maybe somebody was like, and I'm about to tell you the secret.

Of how you can lose 50 pounds in two seconds. And trust me, in just a second, but before we get there. And then once you get there, like the payoff is a letdown. So what they use these surveys for here and there, and I mean, small data leads to big data. They're wondering satisfaction, and the surveys let them know not just how many minutes did you spend on the platform, but how did you feel afterwards, and this is cool when you think about the developers at Google and YouTube.

What they want to happen is not just time on platform, long as possible, so minutes matter most, get people watching your videos, keep them binging your videos, there's tactics like creating series. They don't just watch one video, they watch multiple. That's another metric that's kind of more obscure.

Average video viewed per viewer. They don't just watch one video on your channel, but on average they watch four. It's a better signal because it's not just the minutes, but they binge your content. They go deep in your library. So if you can connect through end cards and different things, and series and part ones and part twos.

But the satisfaction's interesting because the final thing they want is they want to know that if they've spent all that time, that they're satisfied after and check this out. They want you to come back. So the worst possible thing that could happen in YouTube's eyes is that your experience after hanging on the platform made you not want to come back.

So if you're also a channel, my friend, Neil Patel, all star marketer also talks about YouTube is very happy if you send external traffic and when you have a good email list, blast that list, boom, a bunch of external traffic is sent to your video. YouTube's pumped. Because you're assisting in them reaching their goals of keeping people on the platform, getting them to come back to the platform.

And so, if they're satisfied, my experience was good in that viewing session, other people's videos included, and I come back later. And then furthermore, this is why you can go into your analytics and see return viewers and new viewers. It's now isolated in the analytics. If you are satisfying. And I might add of less weight, but they look at viewer signals like like comment.

99 percent of YouTubers say smash the like button and comment for the YouTube algorithm. That's actually not that big of a signal, but it is of satisfaction like or dislike. Even dislikes is engagement. What's YouTube likes, but they, again, they want that satisfaction. It's a lot to process, but if you think about those four things, And optimize for those.

And then, the final thing is this. Replace the word algorithm with people. You're not optimizing for the algorithm, you're optimizing for people. If they get a video, you start getting into a new hobby, you start getting into running, how do I train for a marathon as a woman in her 40s? And YouTube figures out that's your ambition, so then YouTube starts sending you running shoe videos, and nutrition videos, and training videos from all kinds of different creators, and you're pumped!

You want to run your first marathon in your forties. So now you're watching all that content. You're pumped. You're clicking on certain videos. Oh, that thumbnail looks good. That title looks good. They start recommending you more. And then again, you then also realize that mindset, the psychographic of that person is also into Andrew Huberman and is also into.

Rich roll and then you start going down these rabbit the reason those people get recommended is because they're talking about running and they're Runners and they might be some different nutrition things and even other things completely unrelated because people are weird They have different clusters of interests, but ultimately you're optimizing for people So if she's satisfied if she clicks on the video and then enjoys it and then is Satisfied and comes back and now you become her go to expert go to You helper, go to friend that is helping her reach that result and all the ancillary things that would come around that goal, then people like her and all kinds of other runners of all different ages as well start getting recommended and boom, you've hacked the algorithm, your channel is growing, views are increasing, and you're continually optimizing for those metrics.

[00:46:34] Hala Taha: I love what you're saying because algorithms change all the time, but if you think about people and human behavior, that stuff, it never really changes. And so it's a way safer, more sustainable strategy. So the other part that I wanted to talk to you in terms of growth was actually paid ads on YouTube.

Because I see a lot of people like Dan Lok, Lewis Howes. They're all doing paid ad strategy to grow their channel. I know there's some pros and cons to doing that. Could you just walk us through what you think about it? 

[00:47:02] Sean Cannell: First of all, typically it's not a very good idea if you just want views. There actually though is a new way inside of YouTube to pay for views that they added.

That's like better than Google AdSense typically used for marketing. 99 percent of the time though, paying for views. Via Google AdSense is not effective. The reason why is you didn't earn the subscriber. You didn't earn the trust. You didn't earn the person. So even if they're like, that's cool. Maybe check it out later.

It's kind of like how many things, if you're like, that download sounds cool, but it's lost. Whereas if people discover you on their own merits, this would be the organic traffic piece of things. When their pain point is highest, they discover you, they come to you, not because of an, if you will, intrusive ad, but because of them on their term.

They knock on your door, you didn't knock on their door, hey, do you want to buy this vacuum cleaner? They knocked on your door, wanting to buy the vacuum cleaner. Hey, do you have a vacuum cleaner? What's the best vacuum cleaner for 2024 for a small apartment? Boom! I'll tell you about the top five of them.

Affiliate links in the description. This person's so awesome! And then your expertise. So that's thing one. Thing two is you should absolutely use paid ads across platforms when you have a converting offer because if organic is slow and steady growth like a garden, paid is jet fuel. But I'm a big proponent of direct response brand building.

So brand building period is let me pay for views and awareness and a billboard, let's say. By the way, if you're Louis Vuitton, respect, you know? If you're Nike. Yeah, you should have billboards. This is a different game we're playing. But if you're a small startup, even if you're doing 8fig, like you're still a small startup, I'm just like, why not pay for direct response brand building which would simply be this.

You're just doing paid traffic on YouTube, Meta, X, Pinterest, at a profit, and getting millions of impressions in the process, and millions of earned followers Now, the depth of those followers, like for example, when we do like a promotion, I always grow like 4, 000 Instagram followers. Now, sometimes I lose a thousand, but I'm like, I'm, it's fine.

Like of course, they, like during it, they follow me. They decide they don't like me. Good. It's a self filtering system. Like I didn't vibe with him or I didn't want to stick around. But then mind you, that promotion was profitable, meaning we are going to have 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x ROAS, return on ad spend, and I grew 3, 000 followers.

That's direct response brand building. Whereas if I just paid to grow 4, 000 followers, I'm still going to probably lose one or 2, 000 and I'm out of the money. So all day long, I am only really a proponent, because why wouldn't if I can grow my brand at a profit, then it's just how much can we scale that profitably.

And that's how I would approach it. The final thing, and this is new school 2024, there's what's called. The, uh, self sustaining funnel, and Ravi, Abu, Vala was just breaking this down. Some of the top YouTubers like Iman Godzi, top entrepreneur YouTubers, young guy, huge. We're living through a trust recession.

Lowest level of trust in like 40 years. Less people are opting in, less people are going through sales processes, and so this is a new wave. People are just putting their web class on YouTube, and selling on YouTube. No opt in. Value based, 30 minutes of value up front, 20 minutes of a sale. Doing the whole stack.

Organically letting that video serve people. Just being like, hey, if you want more, here's the deal and this is what it is. Not behind an opt in page, not anywhere else. But then, they run ads to that. And what you have happen is you have cost per view. You also have cost per earn view, because the video is public, so you start getting organic lift.

So the video gets organic lift, you get cost per view. Now, you're not getting a lead, although you are if you're smart and retargeting. And so, ultimately, you can retarget, you don't have their contact information first party, but you can retarget people who've consumed the video. So you can at least, with further paid, follow up on a warm audience that's been created off of that video.

But all that to say is, if I'm doing paid ads, I'm That's kind of a hybrid of thing one, don't do it to just get views. You'd be doing it in a dark post method, which is how most people run YouTube ads. This pre roll can only be seen as a pre roll. And now mind you, you're not just uploading like, Hey, don't skip this ad.

I'm about like that kind of, you're not doing that. What you're doing though, is you're taking in a way like a free web class, free value, really good, valuable content that really serves. And. Like a YouTube video with a great title and a great thumbnail that people would want to watch on its own merits and would do well on its own merits organically.

But rather than being like, okay, and then go watch my class and whatever else. And then pivot and you just go into your offer. 

[00:52:02] Hala Taha: Cause the YouTube ad can actually be really long, right? 

[00:52:06] Sean Cannell: YouTube ads can be as long as you want. I've seen two hour YouTube ads. It's a public video that's now also, it's getting both.

And we did have this debate and I don't know, I have a clear answer, but it was also do paid ads hurt the organic on your channel and YouTube employees have said there are two algorithms. Meaning if you start running ads on that video, the metrics are going to be separate because here's what would happen too.

If you talk about just like watch time and click through rate. You're going to really push that down with paid ads. And if then by pushing those numbers down so dramatically, it was harmful to you, then it would hurt the organic. According to YouTube employees, it's two different algorithms. There's sort of like the paid side of what you're doing on that video.

And there's the organic side. That's a new wave, new school thing to test. Think about that. And it's sort of back to like authenticity, vulnerability, radical transparency. It's like, Hey, here's some free stuff. Later on, I'll tell you about my other stuff. We can help you at a deeper level. You're going to enjoy this regardless, and you're just putting it out there.

And Ravi gave me a specific numbers on our podcast. We dropped an episode about those things. It was like normally doing some higher ticket stuff. End to end marketing agency, he paid like 30, 50 a lead for qualified leads. All of this to say, when I think about direct response brand building, what you're also after is brand lift.

And what brand lift means is when you think about like Purple Mattress or there's the whole Squatty Potty thing, you have the direct response ad, whether or not that converted, but when you do that much spend at that level. You can search how many people search your brand name on Google. Why did the amount of just organic search of your name go higher at the exact same time you were running the ads?

Well, obviously because you were running the ads, but the brand lift is the brand name. And that could be your personal brand or the brand gets lifted because of the paid traffic. So, the integration of all the above strategies we just said would be the goal here. And that is, I think you could consider putting a value based sales and then sales presentation on YouTube publicly, run ads around that, absolutely do paid traffic at a profit, because why wouldn't you anyways?

It's kind of a separate conversation. But my personal advice, the way I would do it, some people have pulled off the ability to convert paid ads into viewers that care and subscribers that become long form subscribers, but it's rare. I'd rather just run ads at a profit and with the brand lift. Discover a percentage of people that are like, man, that's so cool.

The reason that they discovered me was because of paid ads, but they stuck around, but I was able to run those paid ads at a profit. So I didn't just be like, Hey, was that billboard, did it work or not? And I think what I like about this, it's all measurable. You know, it's the two different worlds of the idea of, yeah, I don't know.

We feel like, how are we measuring? And we're living in a world with digital, right? Where we can track it, track, spend at a profit. Yeah. And how we measure it, sometimes maybe that brand lift is less measurable. But I'm okay with that because I already made a profit on the spend. So I go, yeah, I mean, we grew 4, 000 followers.

Looks like we lost 1, 500 on Instagram. I'm sure some of those were organic. It wasn't all from the paid because we also were posting. But we grew. We measured that. People on sales calls mentioned they saw this here or this there. It's only one person that said that. But chances are we could attribute that to more.

So I would never in a marketing conversation be comfortable with only. If I was working with an agency or something with only that kind of language. So I'm like, okay, we talked to one person and so that means thousands are being reached. I'd be like, dude, if you can't measure it, I mean, for sure that one.

But I think that's what's cool is if you could figure out how to crack the code on paid ads at a profit and track tangible and less tangible brand lift results, conversation, sales calls, feedback here, a DM here, whatever. Then you're just in such a win win combo that you want to scale that to the moon.

[00:56:09] Hala Taha: It's so good. And with the YouTube ad strategy, I was always told by other experts, don't do it. It will ruin your channel. You just said right now, YouTube told you it's two different algorithms, so it shouldn't impact your channel negatively. 

[00:56:23] Sean Cannell: And as I was mentioning, Ravi, Abu Valla, and me, we're going to reconnect in six months because he's aggressively doing this.

We're not doing that aggressively. We just run dark posts. AKA unlisted YouTube videos that are just for the purpose of ads that again are actually less value based. And they're more like, Hey, come in. All right. Now it's like for our event. It's like, Hey, our events coming up. If you want to hear Dave Ramsey and Chalene Johnson, then come out.

[00:56:48] Hala Taha: So you're not publishing them, but you're able to run them as ads and you can also publish a video and run it as an ad. 

[00:56:55] Sean Cannell: You could also publish a video and run it as an ad because it's going to be in your YouTube library one way or another. It needs to be in your YouTube library if you're going to run it with that account, which we do.

[00:57:05] Hala Taha: And a lot of people do that unlisting strategy, right? Where you basically run ads on an unlisted video, and then you publish it with views already on it so that it has social proof. 

[00:57:15] Sean Cannell: You could. I would never recommend buying views. But if all you wanted was social proof, like you just wanted the video to have a couple thousand or ten thousand views, It'd be way cheaper than using Google would be to buy views.

That's not a recommended strategy, but like 10, 000 views on your video would be like five bucks, it'd be like 2. 

[00:57:32] Hala Taha: you just dropped so many knowledge bombs. So really appreciate your time here. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests, and then we do something fun at the end of the year with it.

So. It doesn't have to be about the topic of today's episode. You could just speak from your heart. What is one actionable thing our young improfiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? 

[00:57:53] Sean Cannell: Win the morning and slay all day. Your morning routine is critical to all day success and your morning routine starts at night.

So I often think. Tomorrow is more important than tonight. When my willpower is low, when I'm fatigued, when maybe I'll reach for food or beverage that's not going to serve me in the morning. If I get good sleep, write down my goals at night, it sets me up for a powerful morning, which sets me up for a powerful day.

And if you string together multiple powerful days in a row, Next thing you know, you have a young and profiting life that is unstoppable. 

[00:58:33] Hala Taha: I love it. And my last question is, what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business. 

[00:58:40] Sean Cannell: My secret to profiting in life is reverse engineering everything back from what matters most.

If I gain the applause of the crowd, but lose the love and respect of my children, I failed. If I grow the biggest business, but blow up my marriage in the process, I failed. In my definition, I've failed. So I want to make sure that the people closest to me love and respect me the most, and that more than anything, my relationship with God is close, and that He loves and respects me the most, and that I'm living according to my highest values and principles.

Life's about order, and I want to have the right things in the right order. I'm all about wealth building, business building, but it's not everything when it comes down to the things that matter most. In my opinion, that's faith, that's family, that's relationships, and that's legacy. 

[00:59:27] Hala Taha: So beautiful. And I'm sure that so many of my listeners want to learn from you about YouTube.

They want to know about your courses, how they can learn more. So where do you want to drive people to? 

[00:59:36] Sean Cannell: Thank you so much for having me love the show. Sean Cannell. Rhymes with YouTube channel, uh, wrote a book called YouTube Secrets.

The second edition is out now on either Amazon or Audible. And then other than that, we do have a free class that people can watch, and you can link that up in the show notes. It's on the one strategy. We talked about so many tactics, but if you want to look over my shoulder and just see, talking about the one strategy for ranking videos as we described, and then three tips of how to implement that immediately, check out that free class.

And then Think Media is the channel. Think Media podcast. Think Media is the channel. And happy to connect with anybody on any of the platforms. 

[01:00:16] Hala Taha: Amazing. Thank you so much, Sean, for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. 

 Okay, guys, this was the second installment of my two part conversation with YouTube guru, Sean Cannell, and he had so many great insights about how to turn your YouTube dreams into a reality. And here are just a few takeaways from our incredible chat. First, there are two big ways to get discovered on YouTube.

The first is YouTube suggested the platform's recommendation engine. That's the true engine of virality and where about 75 percent of views come from. But Sean recommends focusing on the second less traveled path, YouTube search. Create practical, evergreen videos that are search friendly. They may not go viral, but they'll accumulate views over time.

And slow and steady wins the race. And if you can combine these ranked videos to another income stream, like affiliate marketing, then you YouTube sweet spot. But to make the most out of YouTube search, you need to get better at naming your videos. Sean says he does some of his own personal A B testing, coming up with at least five options and then getting feedback on titles from the YouTube community tab.

Success on YouTube also comes from a better understanding of the platform's algorithm. For example, longer videos, even if they're not fully watched, can boost the total amount of watch time and boost your exposure overall. Just remember, as Sean says, that ultimately, you're not optimizing for the algorithm.

You're optimizing for people. Don't lose track of who your audience is and what they want to enjoy, even as you get better at navigating the more technical aspects of a platform like YouTube. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Young Profiting Podcast. If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation, then please don't be shy about it.

Tell your friends, tell your family, perhaps you know somebody who's thinking about starting their own YouTube channel. Do them a favor and hit that share button and text a link to this episode. They'll be sure to thank you. If you prefer to watch your podcast as videos, guess what? We're on YouTube. You can find us on YouTube.

Just search Young and Profiting. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search my name. It's Hala Taha. And as always, I always have to thank my production team because I'm just nothing without you. I couldn't do this without you guys. I'm just a voice. Thank you so much for all you do behind the scenes.

This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.