AI is killing your small channel transcript

[music] >> AI is probably the reason your channel is failing. Like for real though, AI is amazing. It's super helpful. I'm also seeing it destroy a lot of channels. After working with hundreds of creators and testing and using a lot of the AI platforms myself, I want to explain how to use AI as a small channel, how I use it across all of mine, and how not to use it, how it's probably the thing that is hurting your channel the most if you're someone who uses AI a decent amount in your in in your content.

So, I actually turned down a five-figure brand deal for this type of video because I really don't believe that AI is the thing that is holding your channel back. In In fact, I kind of believe the opposite. The reason why my main channel has blown up and gotten 800,000 views, makes routinely more in a month than I used to make in my whole day job, is not because of AI. It's not because of AI [music] ideas I got. It's not because of AI generated thumbnails.

It's not because of AI scripts. It's because of me. It's because of creativity, and it's because of being different. I feel like a lot of people look for a magic bullet when it comes to their content. Even sometimes when people join my program, they're asked like, "Hey, what niche should I pick?" I don't know what niche you should or what what video idea. I I can't always tell you what niche you should pick, what video idea you should make, how you should script your videos.

A lot of that has to come from you. If you get your ideas, if you're looking for a magic pill from somebody else, you're never going to get that. And a lot of people see AI as that magic pill. They see AI as, "Hey, I had Claude write this script for me. I had whatever." And they they they really dive into that. And And some of those can be good. You can get good ideas. But ultimately, most creators that I know that are successful, I know a lot of the top creators, they use AI as a tool, not to do their thinking for them.

And if you're having AI do your thinking for you, you are going to fail when it comes to YouTube. And I want to go over a couple different sessions that YouTuber going through and what I see working really well right now. And then of course the ways that, you know, I still think it's worth using. One of the worst ways I see people use AI is VidIQ. Now, don't get me wrong. I actually use VidIQ. Um I use it a lot a decent amount.

But this is what I what I see happen. Um people pretty much check out VidIQ. They come up with an idea and then they put it into I don't know how they're doing this actually. They They come up with idea like title ideas based on VidIQ's. Like, "Oh, this got a VidIQ score of 96. So, clearly it's a good idea." Stupid. Literally stupid. Let me show you something. I actually do have a thing with them where you can get like 30 days free for a buck.

Check that out cuz I do kind of also credit VidIQ and kind of the AI stuff for blowing up my channel. But let me show you how people are using it wrong first. How do I get into VidIQ? All right, this one right here. Like VidIQ doesn't know that this style of thing style of thumbnail works really well on my channel. This clear simple shot and like what this video is about. And so, technically this got a 26 score. But on an everything is changing huge life update, I got 83,000 views, which is crazy for a simple life update video.

It performs better than like videos I put a ton of effort into. And so, particularly for my audience, my backstory and stuff, this was actually a pretty decent thumbnail. And I could try testing it out and see if it works better. I don't know. But it doesn't know all the nuances that you have to know. In order to succeed on YouTube, you have to be the master. You have to really understand your audience. You have to understand the backstory, the inside jokes, what people click on.

You have to understand your niche, what keywords are working well in other spaces. If you outsource that knowledge, the thing that gives you the competitive advantage on other people, you're never going to make it. You're just not. If you're letting AI do the thinking for you, you're not going to make it. And this is one of the things that I really stress on with a lot of my students is like, "You have to become the top 1% in your I teach you how to comb your dog's tails space." You have to understand what everybody else That's probably not a good space to be in.

Sorry. Regardless, you have to understand but like minimalism for instance, on my main channel, I know what every other minimalist creator in my space has posted in the past 3 months. I understand what thumbnails work right now. They all copy my thumbnails. I know what they're all trying to do. I know keywords. I know backstory. I know colors. I know everything that is going to work, title, thumbnail, music, what everybody like puts in in their music.

And so technically, if AI could give you a score on music, it would give me a bad score. But this is what works in my space. So like you have to understand your space very well, become an expert at it, and then not trust what score something is giving you, okay? Clearly, this is not sponsored by VidIQ. Missing tags, like it's telling me I have missing tags. Tags make [music] almost no difference. Like sure, that's okay to put in.

People use it for that. People worry about that stuff and stuff. I don't worry about that. Um but let's go to what I was trying to talk about here. Where did it go? So on this last video here, it's saying my thumbnail is a 71. If you got a 71 on a thumbnail, you'd be like, "Oh man, maybe I shouldn't use this thumbnail." Um yeah, let's go to my channel, shall we? Yeah, this is a one out of 10 by a long shot. I know my audience better than AI does.

And so if I didn't post this cuz oh, it didn't get a good VidIQ score, you'd be missing out on a one out of 10. It also is trying to give me shopping as ego satisfaction the real problem. It's saying that these titles are going to perform well. These are literally the stupidest titles I've ever seen in my life. And so when I see a lot of small creators, again, I've worked with literally five or 600 people have gone through Fiverr YouTuber, the main thing that I see when people have a horrible title that it literally has no chance of success, it's because it got a good score with VidIQ or something like that.

Like please do not trust this stuff. It is horrible. AI can give you a good jumping off point. These tools can give you a good jumping off point. If you're just like, "This is what it said." has a No, it's not going to work. I promise you unless you randomly will get lucky, but these are just horrible because I know my space. This does not. We do have these simple tests running. Again, this is all based on things that I have seen and I know are proven to work in my space.

This one I kind of figured it was going to do the best because it was based on one that is again worked before, not something AI recommended to me. Actually, I'm surprised this one's doing well cuz this one was just something I was like, "Bam." Anyways, uh just because VidIQ says that this is a bad thumbnail, doesn't mean it's a bad thumbnail. It doesn't mean it's a bad title. But real quick, before we get off VidIQ, I will say I think they are the thing that really helped me grow, and especially this one feature is pretty much the only feature of VidIQ I use.

I'm not sure if it's on the free version or the boost plan. I pay for the boost plan, but I don't really know. It's like 20 bucks a month. But again, I do have like a link thing that I don't think I've ever promoted anywhere. But you can get started for like just a buck for a month. Try this out. This one thing right here is what actually helped me. It is this keyword optimization thing, and this is just research, right?

It's giving me data that I can use myself. So, I found this keyword 6 years ago now, maybe, something like that. And it was VidIQ. And it was that this keyword frugal living had a high score. There's a lot of volume, not a lot of competition. It's still like that today. I can still make a frugal living video, guarantee 100,000 views, guarantee probably like a top three out of 10 video because this is a a good score. I also did this with sauna box.

This was a really good score like a couple years ago. I did uh this video on this tiny channel here. First video, brand new channel, had like I think this one has made almost $5,000 now. This one video with 8,000 views. And then this one real really popped off, but because it went viral, I made a lot less money. I think it was like 10, 15. I think it was like $10,000 maybe on this video. But a lot of this is just based on the and then me figuring out how they best fit into a title structure based on what's proven to work in my space, rather than some silly VidIQ score.

And again, and I like break down exactly how I make money on uh very small channels uh on a workshop that I'm doing coming up. So, if you're interested in that, I'll leave a link for that down below as well. Totally free. You can show up, learn some stuff. People have told me that it's better than courses that they pay for. So, anyways, when I found frugal living that it still a good score, I think honestly, if you're looking for something to get into, this is authentic to you, you have some stuff.

I would almost guarantee that I could take anybody in this space from zero to 10k subs in like maybe 6 months. It's not the best space for making money, but it is very underserved and there's a lot of bad content in it. And so if you just make good high quality content that's slightly different, it's a very easy space to succeed in. It still is for me as you can see. I am the top one in this space just because and there's not a ton of hard competition here.

This is also another student of mine, The Frugal Rich, who went from 2K last year to 90, 92K just in that time. A lot of times just talking about the keyword frugal is in a lot of his titles. He now has another series that he's running with everyday millionaires type deal. But kind of within 2 weeks of just optimizing some stuff, he went from 2,000 to 20,000 subscribers after working with me. So [music] anyways, I drew it 4,000.

It's 4,000 to 20,000 regardless. But anyways, because I found this one keyword, I was able to make a career out of this. this keyword, I milked it for everything it was worth. I made all the frugal living videos that you can possibly make in order to optimize on this. We have frugal living tips from the Bible, we have weird frugal living tips, we have 50 frugal living tips, 20 frugal living tips, frugal living might be keeping you poor, I'm begging you to quit frugal living, every single frugal living, the problem with frugal living that no one is talking about.

I made this video on a train actually, quite fun. I was on like the longest train ride in America from Miami to Alaska with a friend for a video. I did I found this keyword and I built a career off of it. And then I found the keyword minimalism. It's not really that good anymore to be honest, it's it's very saturated now. Still has a decent score, but like not like a 70 kind of like the other one. And again, some of these are like subjective numbers like doesn't really mean a lot, not really.

All I can see here is that high competition is that there's high search volume, right? So I want to find something that has a lot of space in it. And so for me, uh still up there in the top three of this, but and minimalism is I still think a good, you know, space to be in, but this is something that allowed me to see what people are searching for, what they're interested in, what the market's saying, and then I can make videos about that.

And I've probably made a hundred something videos with the keyword minimalism in the title or the thumbnail, generally in the title. And so, this is where you need to make things for people, you need to optimize for people, you don't need to optimize for an algorithm. Whatever, this can give you a good tool. Again, the VidiQ or the whatever tool you're using is telling me that there's people interested in this. Now, how can I see what the market is doing and make something my own, right?

How can I look at like, okay, this is the only other thing that that I use this for is the outlier score. So, it's like 6.8x better than her average video. So, like this thing's 30 Things Minimalists Don't Do. Okay, so she copied me on this one, but if I hadn't already made this video, I would probably be like, oh, somebody with 7,000 subscribers who has 50,000 views, this has worked recently, I should take inspiration from on this.

I should use the text on screen, My Life Is Simpler. I should use the list of 30 things I don't own or buy as a minimalist. She got inspiration from me on this, so I can't really do that, but this would be a good sign that I should act further and analyze myself so that I can understand what works. I can understand when a video doesn't do well, and I don't rely on a tool to do that for me. So, before I go into what I actually use AI for, I do want to say that I think there is a general direction here.

There's the people who are embracing AI and who don't mind getting AI slop, who are kind of just becoming a little bit non-thinkers. I think people who consume a lot of short-form content. I know I was really into it last year, I was consuming way too much content in general. My brain didn't function as well, I couldn't think as clearly, and so now I'm really focusing on like, no, I want to make sure that I can think and I'm not relying on AI to think for me, even like just not instantly Googling stuff, not instantly ChatGPTing stuff, just like really thinking regardless.

So, I think there's going to be a general swing of like people want real, authentic, original content, and then the people who don't mind just being getting slop, right? And so, you have to choose what side of the direction you want. I always want to be personal. I want to be AI-proof. You cannot copy my experiences. You cannot copy my authenticity, my stories, my experience, uh my whatever. You can't copy anything about And so, that's something that I'm really trying to stick with, even to like sitting on the floor next to a bed.

Yes, I could have like framed this the best way that I could frame it, maybe, but like my goal here isn't to impress you or to lie to you. Like, I am in Rhode Island right now with my family working for like an hour a day, and I was really thinking about this subject, and I just kind of wanted to share it. So, like I'm really leaning into this more raw, authentic, hardly edited kind of just delivering value and being real and being myself more than trying to be polished, trying to be perfect, and trying to like trick anybody, right?

I'm not here to trick anybody. I I'm very honest with the amount of money that I make to how I make money. Like, you know, that VidIQ link, I make $31 a month from that. So, like I'm not trying to make a bunch of money, but like whatever. And so, I'm not even promoting them. That wasn't the point of this. I was trying to show regardless. My point is here, you have to choose the direction and then really embrace that direction.

And I am embracing something that AI can't replace. There's never going to be an AI video that does this. There's never going to be an AI video like has the same thing that I can replicate, right? So, anyways, so what do I use it for? I do use it for scripts, first of all. I generally use something called WhisperFlow, which is like push the function key. Uh it's like a extension or something. I push the function key and then I can just speak.

So, I speak for about 5 to 10 to 20 minutes into my computer, and then I have Claude or ChatGPT or whatever one I'm using at the time, Perplexity, uh actually a lot recently, and I have that turn it into a script, right? So, it's all 100% my original ideas, but I suck at typing, and I'm good at like verbally processing stuff. I'm be "Oh, by the way, add this. Never mind, just forget what I was talking about there. And so, I I'm really good at that.

So, I put it all into there and then I either have it give me bullet points that I can riff off of or I have it like turn it into something that's mostly my own and then it's just cleaned up, really, because my Google Docs are complete train wreck. Like, this is my current script right here. It's like there's literally nothing to it. It's like full of typos and whatever. So, when I have more complex ideas, I need it a little better looking than this.

So, that is one thing. I don't be like, hey, make me 10 tips to save money cuz that's not going to work cuz then you're going to be generic. I'm going to do like, hey, these are the 10 ways that I've saved money. Let me think about this. Ask me some leading questions so I can answer the questions, things like that. And then I go off of that. So, that's one way I use AI. Another one is like thumbnails. I do use it to kind of change things like on the most recent video I have here, actually.

This one right here. This is a real picture of me. Can we zoom in on this? But then, these things on like the the different stuff on the counter here, that was all added with AI. So, I do use it for things like that that are manual. Like, I want to have a coffee cup. I want it to have Starbucks logo, which is a noticeable logo, which will help the click-through rate, whatever, blah blah blah. And then, I have these different ideas.

We even have I think we have the Ford logo on there as well. And so, I'm always thinking about how can I use this as a tool and not have it do the thinking for me. And so, so, that's one way I do it. I also do use one of 10 as well. They have their One thing that I like with them is this like format that they have. They they look for outlier format. And so, we do edit a lot of thumbnails using this, which you can like type stuff in, you can add it in.

You can have it generate them. I'll say like one out of seven to 10 are actually decent with the AI-generated thumbnails. A lot of them just look too AI, so I don't like that still. But, I use it to come up with a lot of things. And again, even like my friend Antonio, who's dude's going to pass me. When he started, he was at 2,000 subscribers like a couple years ago. Anyways, like I was just talking to him a couple days ago and he was very against AI thumbnails.

And now, his most recent one, 100% AI. Nothing is real about this thumbnail. Uh it looks really good. It's getting millions of views. But I believe he uses 1010 to edit his thumbnails. And they're not actually sponsoring this video, but I have worked with them. And so you can use AI, but again, this is totally his original idea. He didn't just have like, "Oh, generate me a thing." It was like, "I know the perfect layout for this.

We need a yellow colored tube to draw the eye, a red drink, we need blue sun, we need a big resort, we need a tunnel laser like he's really, really, really, really thinking these out adding one by piece by piece by piece and so the the people who are just like, "Oh, I can spend 5 seconds and just come up with something and or not even come up with something and just have it think for me." That's going to kill your channel.

When you use it as a tool, it can help your channel. And so that's just really what I wanted to to to come on here. I see so many people think it it's just like a quick solve to them or oh, what AI, you know, do you use ChatGPT or Claude or whatever to come up with scripts and like it doesn't matter. You need to have be something original. You need to stand out and be different and help people and serve people, entertain them or educate them or whatever.

Right? Even like these AI ideas, right? So I got I just had to come up with some AI ideas for my channel. How to actually save my first 100K step-by-step. Like that's actually a decent idea, but again, I need to take it a step further. I need to take it from just being something super basic to something unique. I also use a decent amount for back-end stuff for anything that I can automate, whatever. Can be great for a lot of those tools, but I just kind of wanted to share this out here.

If if you're using AI, I would just go back to the basics. I am actually going back to literally just typing things on a Google Doc and then add living as much as possible because I feel like that's a lot more real, a lot more authentic, a lot more impossible literally to replicate and you are impossible to replicate. You become AI proof, right? If you are a authentic person who connects with people, who is engaging, who is unique perspective, which again, you can only have a unique perspective, you can only do all those things when you can think for yourself and the more you use AI to think for you, the less original ideas that you have and the more generic you become, right?

And so, to stand out on YouTube when everybody wants to be a YouTuber right now, you have to be original. You have to be different. You have to be unique. And you also have to You also have to use proven keywords. You also have to use proven formats. You have to become an expert in your space. You have to be, you know, engaging and whatever. But, like, if you are just getting [music] started and and, you know, AI is doing everything for you, it's going to be very hard to stand out.

Very hard. So, that's what I got. If you want to see exactly how I make money on YouTube and make a full-time income on three separate channels and Facebook, as well, I guess. So, like, four full-time incomes. All using the exact same copy and paste format. I have a free workshop that I'm running uh in a little bit. So, you can sign up. It's totally free. And I'll see you there.