YouTube Just Changed Forever (and It’s Not Going Back) transcript

YouTube is going through a massive change right now. I've been on the platform for like six years and I have never seen what is happening. It's changing how people are creating content is changing how they're monetizing content and I think that like now is a really good time to get in on YouTube. So, I wanted to kind of break down some of these changes and how you can profit especially as a small channel. Um, so first of all, I would just say that like large channels used to mean that they would make money, right?

I have a channel with 660,000 subscribers, something like that. And yeah, some of my smaller channels make similar money to that one. Like I also have a channel with 500 subscribers and that one makes about $1,000 per video. Um, actually more than that, which is kind of crazy. So, what used to happen was you would need a ton of attention. You would need to be a big channel to get brand deals and AdSense. And to make money with AdSense, you need 50 100,000 views minimum per video, right?

Like on my main channel, if I get 50,000 views on a video, once I pay for an editor, I pretty much broke even or maybe made like 50 or 100 bucks, right? So, like that's you can't make a full-time income doing that. We've all heard about this. And then you might have a brand deal. Okay, that's where you make your money. But now it's going away from those big brands, those big channels are the only ones who are making money cuz they're getting the big brand deals and all that to now these smaller micro influencers with very small channel are making like 10 $20,000 a month and you've probably never heard of these people.

Like you'll find this channel with 5,000 subscribers that's doing 10 20k a month. I know uh probably about a dozen people doing this that you've definitely never heard of before. Um and it's absolutely crazy. And that the reason for that is actually because they're going away from the AdSense and the brand deals as their way to make money. Those can be great things that they're cool. There's definitely products that I use and love all the time.

Um but it's not the best way to make money on YouTube. It's actually a horrible way to make money on YouTube. The best way to make money is to have your own backend. And the cool thing about having your own back end or your own um products that you sell or your own coaching, your own services, your own software um is that it doesn't take a lot of views to do that, right? If you have a $1,000 product, then you only need to make $1,000 sales to make a million dollars.

You only need to make a hundred sales in an entire year to make six figures a year. And you can do that even if you're averaging a couple hundred views a video, couple thousand views per video. If you have a high ticket product, you now can make a career, make a full-time income relatively quickly on YouTube. And the cool thing is it doesn't have to be as crazy as some of those big channels. Some of those big channels, my own included, I put so much production value into those videos.

I have like thousands of pieces of B-roll. have a bit of a team that works on it. Like it's like a whole production to make those. I'm moving all over the place. But the cool thing is, right, YouTube doesn't just want that anymore. People don't just want that anymore. They've gotten so much like Mr. Beastification. They've seen so many highly produced videos and those still work for sure. But there's also this niche that has opened up for this raw real person who is talking, who is sharing, who who you can connect with.

With this world of AI and social media and shorts, people want real connection. They want real people. They want this right here where it it is somebody sitting down and talking to a camera, very few edits, u just just a simple video. And that can be a style. I I've seen tons of people just blowing up doing this raw authentic style where they are they're sharing themselves and sharing their expertise, sharing their their problems or whatever. they have some way to monetize on the back end.

But um this is also like a much more efficient way to make videos. Honestly, just sitting down and talking without really um doing too much uh production or anything like that. Not only do you feel more connected with me, I hope uh I feel more connected with you when I'm doing it this way as opposed to like always thinking about angles. But not only do you feel more connected, uh, people trust you better, they might convert better, but it's also much easier to make more content.

And you kind of get out of this trap of like, oh, well, I have to do this, I have to learn the camera, I have to learn all this stuff. Or you can just throw it on auto. Pick something that you think is important and that can help people and then make a video about it and edit it in under an hour and now you have a video up, right? It takes away some of that excuse that a lot of us used for a long time. And this has really just popped up in the past um year and I think is very much going to change in like the end of 2025 2026 is going to go to this more raw authentic style of content um that's really been doing well.

Now before we get to um a couple more things on the monetization aspect of YouTube that I think are really changing, I do want to tell you about the sponsor of this video, Story Blocks. The reason we're doing this because I get asked all the time um what like stock roll that I use and I've been using them for couple years now. Absolutely love them. So uh when it comes down to brands that I love like this, I'm always going to talk about those.

With Story Blocks, you get unlimited downloads of high quality stock video audio graphics. So like a lot of times when you hear music in my videos, when you see shots of different stuff, cool gra like all of that can come from Story Blocks and it's all royaltyree. you don't have to worry about like using anything in your videos. Personally, I like to show things visually. So, if I want to show something and I don't have like shots that I've taken for it, I will use Story Blocks to show my point to illustrate what I'm talking about.

The reason it works is cuz they have actually highquality realistic stuff that doesn't just look like cheap stock B-roll, but that it's actually like real people, real experiences, some real getting away from AI is something they're focusing on and like really making authentic content on there that we can use for ourselves on YouTube. And I really like that it is a simple subscription. There's no hidden fees, no pain per clip.

You get to download as much of this as you want. And if you want to try them out, you can get 2 months for free when you sign up to the annual plan. Just go to storeblocks.com/theprocess or check out the link down below. And thank you to storeblocks. This is literally the only sponsor I've ever had on this channel because I actually like them and I think it's really fun to work with brands that I've been using for such a long time.

This is kind of cool. All right, so let's talk about micro channels. This is actually why I have multiple channels. um myself and I've actually seen other creators like I have some friends who have like half a dozen to a dozen channels and that's because like one channel with super limited focus even like it's super raw content like they'll just share screen recording of them illustrating and like writing on a pad that's like 27 minutes long very like bad quality but it's about something very very specific very very niche and those convert incredibly well as opposed to something that's just very broad, very going for views.

So, that's like a a big change that has happened that if you want to make money on YouTube, you actually want to stop chasing views. Chasing views won't actually make you money. It won't build a sustainable business. It will work temporarily. You have to put a lot of work into videos that get a crazy amount of views for the most part. Um, but it won't really make you a ton of money. Um, I've had videos with a million views that while they do make me maybe a couple thousand dollars in AdSense, I've had videos with uh, you know, I had one video on my review channel, which is isn't also a great way to make money.

Um, that within the first video, brand new channel, made 2,300 bucks uh, in like two weeks in just affiliate uh, income. And now, you know, that channel's made $25,000 with 15 videos and 500 subscribers just in affiliate income. And if I had my own product, um it would have been way more than that. I have sold almost $200,000 in products in that video uh on that channel. So, if that was my own product, I could have had a channel with 500 subscribers that got $200,000 in revenue coming in.

I only got to keep 10% of that cuz I'm an idiot. Um, but that was before I kind of realized this advantage of you don't have to have a big channel. You have to be very very targeted on who you are going after and have something to sell them. So, how do you have um something to solve them? Like what how do you make money, right? Well, it comes down to finding a pain point that you have a unique way of solving and then charging people to solve their problem for them.

Pretty much it comes down to us being servants to serving people. And the more we can serve to a bigger problem for people, the more money that we can make. And that's why I like the the slightly higher ticket approach. Like if you're selling something that's $50, it's going to be really hard to make six figures a year to make a full-time income. But if you have something that is $1,000, $3,000, it's going to be relatively easy because you need a much smaller size.

But the thing is, if you're making something that is, you know, that expensive, you have to make sure you're really really delivering incredible value that you're making it so crazy for someone to not buy your thing because they clicked on the video. They they were searching something up about their specific problem and then they clicked on your video to try to solve that problem. you gave them useful information and then you say, you know, hey, if you really want to take this to the next level, I found every single painoint.

I spent three years finding every single painoint and I'll give you the easy button. Um, that it's kind of like you're finding uh like you're giving away the solution to everything for free in your videos for whatever specific problem you know how to solve, but then you are charging for the easy button. Like I can tell you everything about how to make a funnel or how to uh you know make a good YouTube like how to do whatever.

But if you want to just copy my funnels, then you can buy, you know, streamline. I'm not trying to promote stuff here, but I have software where you can literally just copy my funnels that work for me. Change the text and now you have your own. Or you can build it from scratch. I can tell you how to build it from scratch. It's going to take a long time. Um, or you can charge to just copy something that's been proven to work that's had millions of dollars go through these funnels that I got.

Um, and you know, you can do something like that. And the same thing is true with whatever you're selling. If you have a course on productivity and you're like, "Hey, I spent four years like wasting my life until I discovered these productivity systems and now I guarantee that I can fix your problem or you get your money back and you know, I can save you 5 hours a day. Hey, I can do whatever. It'd be crazy for somebody not to do that.

Um, if you can actually deliver on your promise. So, if you have a promise like that, if you have some type of skill, even if it's incredibly niche, you don't need a large channel to do that. And I think that's something that's really changed is there are so many small channels that can make money right now. And they can make money with raw, authentic, real content. It doesn't take a lot of production value. It doesn't take a lot of work.

Uh, well, it still does take work. you have to have good ideas and stuff like that, but it doesn't take as much uh like like manual work. You don't have to have uh three cameras set up. You don't have to have amazing editing skills. You can just go for a walk and talk about what you're interested in. You can sit down on a couch and talk about what you're interested in and you can find other people doing the same thing.

And that's what I love about the the community aspect of YouTube and the algorithm, the Tik Tok algorithm that they kind of changed. Um it became really popular on Tik Tok and now it came on YouTube. It's the interest driven graft where um people will get served a video like this even if they've never seen the channel just because YouTube knows they're interested in videos like this. So even as a very small channel, you can show up against some of the biggest names in the industry just because of the interest driven graph just because YouTube is serving people what they want, not who they follow.

I can have, you know, uh, over half a million subscribers and my video doesn't get shown to that many people really. It gets shown to the people who are interested in the content that I make. So subscribers have kind of become more and more worthless and the idea of the video has become more and more powerful. And this gives everybody, even small creators, an amazing opportunity that has never really been had before to um, you know, hopefully um, this gave you some value.

If you do want a little bit more value, I have a free miniourse of, you know, how to get started on YouTube. Um, there's a link down below. You can also check out this video over here, which u help you make more money on YouTube, which is uh kind of the kind of the goal, right? All right. Bye.