HOW TO GROW A YOUTUBE CHANNEL – COMPLETE BEGINNER’S GUIDE! | #THINKMEDIAPODCAST #150
The reason the seventh C of YouTube success is so important is because YouTube burnout is real, and you might find that day you get monetized, you’re like, dear God took a lot of energy to get this far, you’re sweating, you’re exhausted. And so the seventh C of YouTube success. Consistency is all about building routines and systems so that you can avoid burnout and build a lasting creator career. Welcome back to the Think Media podcast. My name is Sean Cannell and we’ve been talking about the seven seas of YouTube success I and in the first episode of this two-part series, we talked about courage the first C and how you got to get that c right.
You got to build your boldness, you got to really punch fear in the face and press record. And in this episode we’re going to go into the second. 6 seas of YouTube success but today’s episode is brought to you by YT secrets.com The second edition of YouTube Secrets is out now. If you are a book reader, you can grab it at the website or on Amazon. Ebook is available as well, or audible if you like audio books, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that later, but let’s dive into Part 2 of the 7 seas of c success.
So after getting 200000000 views on YouTube and posting over 2000 videos plus. Testing out some of my tips and strategies with thousands of creators, I’ve formulated a system called the Seven C’s of YouTube success, and I talked about that more in my book YouTube secrets. The second edition is out now, but in this podcast episode I want to focus on the next 6 steps and I’ll break down and give you a quick recap on all seven and these are going to help you whether you’re just starting, you haven’t started yet, or if you want to scale your YouTube channel to the next level. This formula is really going to serve you and this is Part 2.
We go more into the first C, which is courage in part one. Of course, before you start, you’ve got to punch fear in the face and press record. You’ve got to start before you’re ready and you really have to have the mindset to overcome the fear of what other people think. And if you want a little bit more on that, I highly recommend going back to part one of this series. But let’s recap now and go through all seven. Number one is courage. Image number two is clarity. Start with the end in mind when you’re starting a YouTube channel, or even if you’re further along, you want to have really strong answers to these questions.
What is your channel about? You know, the problem people have is I don’t know what to make my channel about. What topic should it be about? This is a good question. Or think deeply about not just is there an audience for it, but what are your skills and strengths? What’ll keep you fascinated and curious? Another question under clarity is who is your channel for? The mistake people make is they try and reach everybody. They think, man, my channel is a gift to the world. You know what I mean? Like, I am God’s gift to humanity and ultimately everyone should watch my channel. What I’ve learned is there’s no channel that everyone in the world wants c watch.
What’s better is actually having a specific. Audience, because if you try and reach everybody, you’ll end up reaching nobody. But when you know exactly who your channel is for, then you can get a lot of traction. And the next question is, you know, what’s your YouTube business plan? Too many people don’t think this through. They think about just starting the channel. And how do I get views? I’d like to think or I’d like to ask, OK how am I going to make money from this? What’s the longterm plan for this? You know, the longer term you think into the future, the longer the time horizon that you reverse engineer your YouTube channel back from.
Like, what does winning look like in 5 or 10 years? How would you feel if we were having this conversation a couple years from now? What would have had to have happened in your life, in your family, in your business, in your bank account, and on your YouTube channel for you to be just pumped with the results? Like, think about that gives you an end target that you can work backwards from.
This is the second sea of YouTube success clarity. You got to start with the end in mind, and I’ve learned that the riches are in the niches, so it’s powerful to ultimately get clear on having a Clear Channel topic, a clear person, which we would call kind of like an avatar of who your channel’s for, and getting clear on what do you do, how do you do it and why do you do it now again, of course, that I’m throwing a lot.
That you and I’m just going to give you kind of an overview of the seven seas of YouTube success. I highly recommend checking out the book for Indepth walkthrough of each of these. And I’m kind of a recap of all these questions. But after you’ve punched fear in the face with courage, and after you have gotten clear on what your end goal for your YouTube channel is, number three is, you got to set up your channel is the third sea of the seven. See YouTube formula. So you got to set your channel up and this is as simple as going to Google and saying start a YouTube channel and you got to have a Gmail address.
You set your channel up, you got to pick a name. This is the home of your content, right? And so you know, how do I start a YouTube channel? Youtube will walk you through that. It’s free, the steps are all there. But you know what are the best practices of setting up a YouTube channel? And if you haven’t done maybe like spring cleaning on your channel in a while, make sure you have a good avatar that’s either a picture of your face. Picture of your logo for your brand. A strong channel name. A good cover image you want to link U your website if you have one.
Or maybe a link to your email. List a newsletter that you have? A free gift you give away. As a business owner, you’re collecting leads. You want to have links to your social media accounts, fill out your about page, connect an email so people can get in touch with you, and then after you’ve posted content, the way you organize your YouTube channel is with videos in playlists. And so ultimately the home page of your YouTube channel is not just your uploads. You can select a channel trailer, you can select what non subscribers see, new people to your channel, that’s typically a channel trailer, and you can select a video that returning subscribers see all those different things.
Can eventually build your channel up. That sounds overwhelming if you’re just starting and the first thing you want to do is just get it started. Like just set it up, get it going. You can improve it and decorate as you go. The next one is content and that is now you’re going to start uploading to your channel and the goal is to make videos that people love to watch and.
You might be wondering, well, how do I make videos at all? And I would encourage you just start. Grab your smartphone. It’s a great place to start. On our think media channel, our main channel, Heather Torres and I did a series all about how to make a YouTube video with your smartphone only from start to finish, recording the video, editing the video on your phone, creating a thumbnail on your phone, and uploading everything just from your phone. Nolan and Omar now have done an entire series. Nolan’s got a series, and we’ll link these up in the show notes. No one’s got a series on setting up your channel, which we were just talking about, and Omar’s got tons of videos on how to make content, so we have lots of free content that’ll help you with these kind of YouTube basics to get things going.
And some of the questions you might ask, though, is, again, what Cameron gear should I use? And again subscribe to I think media channel. How do I outline a video? What types of videos actually get views and how do I edit videos? And what are the best video formats for getting views and making money? Now I can’t cover all this in this, you know? Episode that’s why I wrote an entire book with my friend Benji about it. And that’s also why we have an indepth online course called Video ranking Academy. But I kind of want to give you a 30.000 thousand foot view of these building blocks of YouTube, and those are some of the things you should be thinking.
So as you have mustered the courage to start, gotten clear on what your channel is about, who it’s for, you started your channel, you got it set up. You have uploaded one or two or five videos or just one. You can start posting content over time. The next C is community. Your goal is to build a community of super fans. Youtube is not a one way conversation. The mindset you need to know is it’s not just a place you want to post content.
It’s a place where overtime not maybe not when you’re starting you might say I haven’t got a comment on my videos yet. But over time, you’re going to start seeing a community form, especially when you really study the best practices of building community. You know, one of the books we recommend in addition to YouTube secrets is a book from my friend Pat Flynn called superfans. And it really goes deep into this community. See, it’s like, you know, how do you actually really make meaningful connections and intentionally build a community? And one of the things on our community is also this idea.
Of the of the idea that you don’t need a large community. The myth is I need a million subscribers to ultimately make a living or make serious money on YouTube. I know I need a hundred thousand subscribers for this to be a substantial thing or for me to even feel legitimate. It’s not true. You actually only need a thousand true fans. What does that mean from a monetary standpoint if there’s a that essentially a hundred dollars with you per year? Then that’s a hundred thousand dollars a year. And that doesn’t mean necessarily that you have to create a product. It simply means that if a thousand people, whether you link to some affiliate links, they click on those and it adds up to 100 over 12 months for one person.
You know if you have enough views to get a little bit of Adsense coming in, if you were to create a 100$ product and a thousand now, maybe you have five thousand subscribers. But a thousand people are true fans then. That’s the math. A people essentially transact a hundred dollars with you in a year’s time. That’s a sixfigure income. And this point is not even about money, it’s just about depth.
It’s about the fact that stop thinking you need 400,000 thousand subscribers. What you really want is meaningful connections with the focus group of people, and your goal here is just to care deeply and to connect with the viewer. Speaking of money, I’ve learned this that your income is directly correlated to the amount of value you add to the marketplace. So if you focus on adding value first, starting a channel that’s valuable and helping viewers get results or be entertained, the byproduct of that is that you will have significant income.
So if you can go out and create content, that really. Connects with and serves a thousand people. And think about it this way. It doesn’t have to be 100$ Imagine if it was 50$ per person that’s fifty k in a if. It was twenty five dollars per a thousand true fans that’s twenty five thousand dollars. That could be extra. And again, I don’t even need to bring up money on this point. I just mean depth because your incomes correlated to the amount of value you give. It’s a result of really serving, really entertaining, really educating and people’s reciprocity towards that is they are grateful and as you give them opportunities to support you on Patreon or buy me a coffee or YouTube channel memberships or you do an online event or you do a meet up or you sell merch, there’s all these different ways to do it.
It’s just that relationship with the viewer that’s going to be everything, that relationship with the listener. And so the goal here is to go the extra mile. To build relationships, foster community and make meaningful connections, the next thing now is cash. After you’ve set up a channel and a community starts to form. You know we say you got to build your influence income and so you can ultimately make an impact. You know, community is that influence piece. When zero people are watching 0 money is coming in. But as your influence grows, you’re following grows. Now your goal is to monetize your content in multiple ways.
Here’s a question I like to ask based on your niche. Meaning, based on the topic of your channel and the specific style of content you’re creating, what is the shortest path to revenue? Maybe put it another way, what is the shortest path to significant revenue? What do I mean by significant revenue? I mean what is the shortest path to your desired? Income target monthly. Let me simplify. If you’d say Sean, like how much money do you need or do you want to live on in a month so that you could hire more people, quit your job and go fulltime, or start making a parttime income on YouTube like it clear on that target I need twenty hundred dollars a month seven thousand dollars a month.
I really want to generate thirty thousand dollars a month because if I do that then I could rent out the space and build out the studio and hire this team. So it’s a personal question, but what’s the shortest path to get there? See, depending on your niche, you might say, well, I’m kind of doing this like comedy channel to entertain people and my goal is to get it as big as possible. The shortest path might be you really focusing on videos that are going viral because you want to get Adsense and you want a lot of views to work with.
Maybe like wider generic mass market brands like you want to work with a toothbrush company, what needs to be just pretty general, you know, where is the flip side is maybe you’re in more of a high ticket consulting type of a niche and so you actually are like I just need a couple hundred people that are very specialized and if I could get three clients a month then I could reach my revenue targets.
So what is the shortest path to revenue for you? That’s a good way to think about it. And then ultimately, your goal is to tap into the 10 different ways to earn money from your YouTube channel. There’s more than 10, but I break down 10 in the book. And so that would be your goals to think about which of the best of those ten you know serve you the most. All right. And then number seven is consistency after you muster the courage to start and you get clear about what your end goal is, and then you start your channel and then you post a few videos.
1-1 a week for four weeks. One a week for three months, one a month for the last six months. You’re doing the best you can, getting as many videos as you can. You’ve seen a little bit of growth. You got some subscribers coming in, you’re seeing people leaving, some comments, maybe you really went like you really hustled and you you’ve posted like as many videos you can, seven days a week you’re posted.
You did a 30 day challenge. You’re posting as many videos as you can. You started to post YouTube shorts. You know, you’ve seen a little bit of money coming in. You just got monetized. You’ve been hustling. You got a couple clicks on your affiliate link. Some money’s coming in. The reason the seventh C of YouTube success is so important is because YouTube burnout is real. And you might find that day you get monetized. You’re like, dear God, took a lot of energy to get this far. You’re sweating.
You’re exhausted. And so. The seventh Sea of YouTube success. Consistency is all about building routines and systems so that you can avoid burnout and build a lasting creator career. And so the questions you should be thinking about or how do I get more done in less time? How do I create more content with less energy? What is the mindset do I that I need to stay consistent? Another way to put that would be am I intentionally building mental toughness to? To stay consistent on YouTube through the highs and the lows and my building stability in my emotions, to be able to press through the quitting points that get a lot of people stuck in their YouTube career over years of creating content.
What are the rhythms of effective content creators, you know? And how am I committing to continuous learning, growth and reinvention so that I don’t actually get stuck and maybe have? 15 minutes of YouTube success. But because I didn’t reinvent myself or constantly evolve my channel or my strategy or my systems or the way I’m spending my money or the way I’m, you know, building a team or delegating or hiring as money starts coming in, these are all big questions.
And you might be thinking, wow, this YouTube thing. It goes a little bit deeper than I thought. Like I was just trying to upload a few hobby videos. Listen here, I think media, we are committed to helping you not just succeed on YouTube. We want to help 10.000 thousand purpose driven people create a fulltime living doing what they love while making a difference in the world with YouTube and experience that success without losing their soul. What does that mean? It means that you don’t just succeed in YouTube monetarily or with a lot of subscribers, but then you’re burnt out.
You know, you blow up your relationships. You you’re exhausted. You’re in pain. You know, like, it means that you’ve created cadences and rhythms and that you continue to learn and grow. And it also, it doesn’t mean that you just you hit that success for 12 months, but then you go into a plateau in a death spiral. Like how do you continue to stack success? And not just compromise to get a little traction and then lose everything and lose your soul in the process. You know what I mean? And so it’s not easy. That’s why we created this podcast. Like you got to be serious about this thing. Constantly thinking about sharpening the acts, constantly thinking about learning that, leveling up, pacing yourself, having a good work ethic, a good study ethic, but also a good rest ethic so that you could be in this thing for the long haul.
And what you’ll notice about the seven seas of YouTube success is they’re not just like a start and an endpoint. They’re actually a continuous cycle that you want to return to again and again. I’ve learned that I have to continue to go back to the beginning and develop a new level of courage for the challenges I’m facing today, courage to scale my business, courage to risk investing in team members and hiring. And am I going to be able to keep them on payroll? And can I balance the budget or courage to be bold? When cancer, when culture is trying to cancel, people courage to share my opinion.
When haters are leaving negative comments, courage to continue to press forward. I am continually seeking clarity. I’m continually thinking about, Okay, where was this going? Where we going next? Where are we going? The law of navigation in the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. That’s another one we’ll link up. You know, check out YouTube secrets, super fans and if you haven’t been studying John Maxwell. 21 irrefutable laws of leadership the law of navigation is it’s the leader’s job to chart the course. Where’s this going? Where are we navigating to? And a good navigator is thinking about a lot of things.
Do we have supplies on the way? What are the supplies? Depots where we getting gas, gas prices are going up. How are we budgeting for that? You know, like you’re thinking about should we, should we take the highway or should we take back roads? You know, are you a Google Maps person or are you a Waze person? You know what I mean? You’re an underground back road.
Ninja if you have the Waze app on your phone clarity charting the path and this is a cycle that we continually go back to. Hey, do we need to update the channel? Have I created my playlist lately? You know, do I need to clean up some videos? Is there some videos that should just be unlisted or private? You know, what’s the experience on the channel? Is the cover art even accurate? You know what I think media podcast channel to this day, we’re like 2 years into this and there’s a random picture.
From our event like 2019 and it’s still our cover art like that’s on my todo list and here we are. We’re 23 people at think media and we have not updated the cover art of our very thick media podcast channel. So I hope you feel like you’re in good hands. I mean you’re in, you’re in likeminded company if you’re feeling a little bit overwhelmed. Hey, one step at a time, one thing at a time. And that’s why we want to give you frameworks like this as just reminders to go back to continuously be improving your channel. We’ve learned small tweaks lead to giant peaks.
And so I want to constantly be thinking about how do I, you know, maybe improve my cover art? Is it leading to the right website link? Are my links dead? I do channel reviews all the time. People’s links are dead, like the main thing of their business doesn’t even work. So you want to audit, audit your channel, you want to say how can I improve my content? You want to say, am I really taking time to connect with my community every week? Our team now does what’s called love bombs on Wednesday for at least 15 minutes, and we all just devote time to go into our d m ‘s our youtube, comments on multiple channels now, our Facebook groups, our email.
Inboxes there’s a lot happening at Think Media, but we say listen, we have to always stay in touch with our community, can’t just be pushing out content. We need to let people know we love them. We need to say thank you. We need to actually be engaged and we have to do it in a systematic basis. My friend Pat Flynn, author of Superfans every Friday goes on a walk and sends people audio messages. Now these are off platform. Youtube doesn’t let you do that, but he goes to Instagram.
And he sends the easy to send audio messages thanking people who’ve sent him a DM or connecting with people that are following him. But that’s community stuff, because what you’ll find is that your community will expand outside of just YouTube on the other social media platforms. That’s something you keep doing. You don’t just do it once you got to keep getting cash. You need money for the mission. You can’t just get cash once you got to keep getting it. And then you got to keep staying consistent and thinking about what are the routines for a new season, you know, as at the time of recording.
I got a 2 year old and I got one. That’s days away and so I need new routines and new systems for a new season. When I was no kids, it was different. When I was single, it was different. When you’re married two kids, it’s different. You’re listening to this. You’re like, I’m married 10 kids, that’s different. You need different systems for consistency, my friend. Keep working the seven seas of YouTube success. In this episode, I’ve been doing a 30.000 thousand foot fly over of the seven seas. But I encourage you to pick up the book or grab the audio book and to really immerse yourself in these principles.
This is an unbreakable framework. This is a cycle that we as creators need to continually go through. And I’ve kind of learned this. I study not just so that I know something, I study so that I never forget. That’s why I love repetition. And so as I continually think about tweaking and mastering these seven C’s I find that my results on YouTube in proof and so immerse yourself in this content.
I really believe you’re going to love the book. Plus, there’s so many other just new chapters. There’s like 90 pages of new content, or there’s a whole appendix with all kinds of listed out resources, tips on getting started with video editing and cameras, and direct links to whole series on all kinds of free tutorials. You’re really going to love the book and one ask if you’ve been getting value out of this podcast is 1. If you’ve read the book, it would mean the world to me if you left a review on Amazon as an author.
You know Benji and I wrote this in 2018 and then the rewrite and the update came in 2022 And as authors, one of the most meaningful things you could ever do to kind of say thank you is leave a review. Just to hear your thoughts, your feedback. And then secondly is if you share this with somebody, whether you share the book with somebody, buy it as a gift for somebody potentially or just share this episode with somebody, again, we’re always here to serve you whether you want the book or not. Cool, but I hope these seven C’s of YouTube success really help you go further, faster in accomplishing your goal of winning on YouTube.
This is the Think Media podcast and I can’t wait to connect with you in the next episode. We will talk soon.
