If you have less then 500 subscribers DO THIS transcript

Everybody under 500 subscribers has this mindset that I'm too small, I can't make money yet, I have a disadvantage, and I am telling you you are wrong. In fact, you actually have really big advantages over bigger creators. In this video, I'm going to tell you how to take advantage of those, how to start making money before you get monetized. And if you're under really even like a thousand subscribers, this video will make a difference.

To start off with, most people think that if they have a channel with under 500 subscribers, that's like a problem that they need to fix. This is idiotic. Truth is, you have zero audience expectations at this point. You can pretty much pivot your entire channel, and nobody is really there to care. You can fail, you can make embarrassingly bad videos and not a lot of people are going to see them. Plus, the algorithm actually gives new channels like a testing boost pretty much because YouTube wants to figure out what your content's actually for.

It wants to make money off of you. And so, it's like putting it out and testing it. But, I think one of the biggest things is you can experiment and fail. You can try new formats, you can try new topics, and you really have that freedom, especially when you're starting, that as you get bigger and bigger, as eventually one of those things take off, as eventually you start first getting your couple of viral videos, then some of that freedom really goes away, and you get locked into one thing, or you're going to end up fighting the algorithm.

But really, like you have that freedom where if there's a video that bombs and gets six views, whatever, you can just move on. But, if that happens, let's say on my main channel with 800,000 subscribers, if I post a bomb video, it's going to cost me thousands or tens of thousands of dollars average views are going to be lower, sponsors will pay less, people might unsubscribe. In fact, I like lose subscribers until I usually hit like 30 to 40,000 views.

I'm actually losing subs every time I post a video. I'm telling you, having a small channel, you have so much more freedom. And I'm telling you this because it took me like a year or something to get to 500 subscribers, and I was posting like three times a week. [music] It was a drag, I am telling you. And looking back, I would have treated this so differently. I would have done so many different things, and that's what I've done on new channels that I've started.

And so, I just want to kind of share some of these things with you. Hopefully, save you some time and headache. Before we get into what to do with 500 subscribers, I want to tell you what not to do. First of all, don't buy a bunch of new gear. Your phone is probably fine. Maybe like a cheap camera that you can get somewhere. A good microphone is worth investing into. Most of the rest of it doesn't really matter when it comes to filming your videos.

So many people put so much emphasis on the video itself. This part right here that you're watching with this effect and this sound over here and the beautiful piano music [music] that is going right here. That turned into rock and roll. The video doesn't super matter. Don't obsess over the editing. Obviously, you want to be good, but you can have a nice simple edit. You can have no background music as long as your microphone's okay.

You can just have a slow simple style and that is okay. You don't have to be a master right from the get-go. Don't compare yourself with teams. If you look at my main channel for instance, I have people that help me with that. If you look at people like Matt D'Avella, Ali Abdaal, Peter McKinnon, you're looking at like the top 0.1% of people who have multiple people working for them, or spending thousands of dollars per video sometimes.

And if you're comparing yourself with them, you're going to very quickly lose motivation, lose interest, and not be able to compete. So, don't try to compete with the top people. Don't compare yourself with them. It is okay. Also, I want to stress this. I've talked a lot about having multiple channels. I have three. I'm thinking about it starting a fourth. It's bad. But when you're starting, don't start a second channel.

If you have multiple ideas to think about, to talk about on one channel, keep it on one channel or just talk about one subject and leave the other one until this one's running. You can run that in 5 hours a week. And then once you're doing that, then you can start another channel. Don't try to do it all at once, all right? And going back, don't focus so much on the videos. I'll tell you a quick hack in a second as well.

But the video itself, while it is important, it has to have a good intro. Intro is really important. It has to have a good pacing, a good story, a good payoff. There has to be something at the end that people are interested in getting. It has to be a decent quality video. But overall, that's not the main thing. The idea, title, and thumbnail are going to make or break your video. And so, for ideas, you want to find proven ideas that other people are searching for.

I love search-based videos or trend jacking, authority hacking, things like that where you're calling out Dave Ramsey, you're calling out a bigger person, doing lessons you've learned from them, you're using a book, you're using brand or something that people are searching for, people are interested in, and then they might click on the video even though they don't care about you, they care about Chipotle, they care about Costco, they care about, you know, Dave Ramsey.

And so, they'll click on the video for that and then you could bring them into your world. So, that's one thing I love doing is finding trending keywords and topics and people and brands that you can kind of build some videos around when you're starting to kind of hijack yourself and hijack some of that audience that's already out there looking for that and bring them into your world. And not just post about stuff that like bigger people can talk about.

Like, for instance, on my main channel, I just did a life update video. It got 75,000 views, which is crazy, right? Really cool. If I did that, whatever it is, 7, 8 years ago, when I was a small channel under 500 subscribers, nobody would show up cuz nobody cares about me. Nobody knows who I am. I've made 500 videos now, so people care about me, they know who I am, they've watched me, they've hung out with me for hours and hours, and now I've built that unfair advantage that now people care about me and I can make videos that I couldn't make before.

I can make videos that you might not be able to make. So, if you're looking at what big creators are doing, you're trying to copy them, a lot of times that's [music] not going to work cuz they have this unfair advantage of having name recognition. So, you can't exactly copy big creators, things work differently for small creators than big ones, so just be careful where you're getting your inspiration. But, anyways, next up is like thumbnails.

I got to tell you, like thumbnails are everything. Like, literally, ideas and then thumbnails are going to make or break your video. I would say it's much more important than the video itself is the packaging of the video. Cuz if nobody clicks, it doesn't matter what's inside, people need to click. Let me show you some AB tests, actually. [music] We're getting behind the scenes of Gabe Bolt here. All right, so this one right here that I just posted couple days ago, I'm begging you to manage your time.

If you saw the video couple weeks ago, I mentioned the I'm begging you trend. This one just got me 150,000 views because I followed that trend. Worked for a lot of my students, as well. And so, I had this video, and I was trying to come up with a thumbnail. I was doing research, and I had a few ideas, but I didn't really have a good place to shoot a thumbnail right now, cuz of the kids. Anyways, I use this tool called one of 10 to generate some thumbnails.

Let me show you. I was trying to come up with some ideas. I put in the name of my video, and then the text that I wanted that was proven, and it came up with these thumbnails here. So, like this one here, which was actually decently solid. We had this one here. This one's trending one, one of me writing or whatever, but had a clock. And the cool thing is, I want this clock here. Make the round clock digital. Then we can just type that in, and it'll actually make change it.

So, I never had good thumbnails, cuz I don't know how to make a thumbnails. I never learned anything. And I've been using this recently, and it's won the last two videos that I've done. I've made my thumbnails the conventional way, and then I've also made them with one of 10, and the one of 10 ones have won the AB test each time. So, now I am going to tell you, they are sponsoring me, because I actually talked to them after doing some of this, and now we're going to start working together, cuz this is like a tool that literally is changing my process.

I totally recommend this to you smaller creators. Make it like a black digital clock that has the 10:58 on it, not a round clock, and take away the phone. All right, we'll try that again. I've worked with 600 creators now. I've gone through my 5-hour YouTuber. The ones who have success, I have worked with so many. The ones who have success make their thumbnails better. They simplify them. They make them higher quality, and I'm going to be honest here, like one of 10, if you don't know how to make a thumbnails, upload pictures of yourself, or it'll pull from there, and then you can just edit it by talking to it, by texting to it, and it can totally change how a video is going to perform just by having a better thumbnail.

All right, here we go. So, now it edited those two out, and we have this thing here. I could obviously change anything else I want to about this. I'm just going to upscale it, and then I'll download that. Though, not every single one is going to work great. Like this one here, my face looks a little bit weird. It's still pretty solid compared to, like if your thumbnails are bad, this is still probably going to be better than like a crappy picture.

I actually kind of like that one. But, anyways, you can pretty much just tell it something about your video, what your video is going to be about, put it in here, and then just edit the text. So, anyways, if you want to check out 1010, I just partnered with them right now. I just have them and Storyblocks. I probably won't work with anybody else on this channel for the foreseeable future, but we'll see. If you want to check them out, you can get started for a buck down below for your first month, I think.

If you actually use this and make some channels, it might take you like eight thumbnails to find one really good one when you're creating, but you don't have to have to create them. But, if you add that in, I'm pretty sure you'll see success. So, check it out. It's definitely worth it. This is one thing that is totally worth investing in is high-quality thumbnails. So, unless you're like an expert already yourself, even if you are, then you don't have to edit them, but whatever.

Even if you're an expert, if you're not the top of the top of the top of the line thumbnails, your videos probably aren't going to get views. So, this is a really cool tool that we've been using on my main channel with 800,000 subscribers, and it has outperformed what we've been doing before. So, we're actually going back and using them on all of our old inventory. So, anyways, check them out. Really cool. All right, let's talk about making money because now you have like a decent video going on.

You realize that making search-based content, but you're not making money, right? [music] The number one way that I do it personally is making money with affiliates from day one. The reason that I like affiliates is because just in the past year, all right, listen to this. Just in the past year, I've gone from few hundred dollars a month in affiliates to over $20,000 a month in affiliates. And this was just with stuff that I already have going on.

So, you might not get to that level right away, but I had the small channel that's made over $35,000 in affiliate revenue. This channel of Natasha's went from $0 to over 10k a month in affiliate revenue with a small channel. She started another one that started making money. She then started a third channel that's under 1,000 subscribers, I believe, [music] and that one's made I think she just closed like a $5,000 deal recently from having these smaller channels with either a high-ticket product or affiliates.

And the reason I like affiliates is because you don't actually have to sell anything. [music] So, obviously, it depends on what you're talking about, what your channel's about, or whatever. But, if you're reviewing any type of like product that people are searching for that's relatively expensive, like $500 to $3,000, people are generally going to look up a video of that before they buy it, and then you can be that person.

So, you're you're taking advantage of search, taking advantage of brand, and you're have a decent [music] chance of getting paid, and that's how these videos right here are able to get 80,000 views on a channel with like 1,000 something subscribers. [music] It's because of that hack. As you can do it with physical products, I just started doing it with digital products, bank accounts, things like that. Started a whole like another funnel.

That's been doing crazy. You can do this with websites. You can do this with softwares. You can do this with budgeting app. You can do it with almost anything. You can earn affiliate income, and you don't have to sell something. You take something that's proven it has a market. They do all the work for you, and you're just connecting people who have a problem with the solution to that problem and getting paid for that.

Very scalable because I have friends literally making over $50,000 a month in affiliate revenue with channels that are under 100,000 subscribers, under 50,000 subscribers. It is absolutely doable. So, that's one thing I would look into way sooner. I thought like I didn't have enough traffic or whatever, but when you can make $100, $300 on one sale, you just need a few sales a month. You just need a few hundred views.

Like Natasha was getting one out of four people who click on her links to purchase the thing. And so, to get four clicks is not [music] super hard to do. And so, you could probably make money with 20 views, with 50 views, with 100 views if it is a hyper-targeted video. Anyways, that's kind of the system we teach in the Fiverr YouTuber just because it works for smaller creators to like make really good money. But either way, don't wait till you're bigger.

Don't focus only on the video put no thought into the thumbnail or title. Anybody can have success on YouTube if you follow proven path, if you make high-quality research, titles, thumbnails, and ideas. If you solve people's problems at scale, you can get paid for it. And so, please just start.