Small YouTubers are making this ONE Mistake transcript

Turn off. This one mistake is killing your YouTube channel. And [music] that mistake is you. In many different ways, but I'm going to touch on one main way that you, yourself, are sabotaging your own success on YouTube and what to [music] do instead to actually start growing. This is proven stuff, it's not just guessing, and I'm going to show you some examples. I've worked with hundreds of creators, and the one mistake that I see most of them make is being selfish with their content.

In fact, when I was scripting this video, I almost made that same mistake cuz it's very easy to fall into. It's doing things that you want to do. It's being different and creative and thinking that you are special instead of working with the algorithm, it is working against the algorithm. This is what stops you from making money, stops you from gaining new subscribers, and it's because you don't want to copy people. Don't get me wrong, I don't want you to copy people.

There's like a different way to do it, but a lot of times just because you think something is a good idea doesn't mean that it necessarily is. So, let me show you an example. This is one of my students, Lisa, and I was on a call with her last week where she was asking why her videos were not getting success. She had one video that kind of did way better than average, but the other ones around it weren't doing great. So, when I looked at her channels, I I know that her thumbnails have gotten a lot better just from the little bit we've been working together, but I asked her where she came up with the ideas for the titles and thumbnails for her most recent videos.

And she said that she just thought they were interesting. And that is part of the trap. Just because you think something's interesting, you think something has a cool title format, doesn't mean that it'll translate to YouTube. The cost of self-doubt is not very clear. If we research that, there wouldn't be a lot of other people who have made that same thing. There's not a lot of search volume for it, so it's just going to be very hard for a small channel to show up next to anything else.

When there's nothing else to show up to, there's no search volume for it, there's no keywords for it, so it can just be slightly difficult. And then I looked back at a video idea that I had told a lot of my students to try, which is the I'm begging you to format. And that is her best video that she's had in like months. And that is because it is a proven format on YouTube. It's something called niche bending. I think that's what it's called.

And that is taking a proven format from another space and moving it into your own space. I talked about this a little bit last week. So, if you want a full video on that, you can check that out. So, before I walk you through exactly what to do instead of this, I want to show you two other examples in two other niches because I think like actually seeing things makes it a lot easier to understand them. First of all, this was on my main channel.

We had this really cool idea of doing this waterfall system that you probably seen on Instagram. It's like, you make one piece of content, you chop it up into all the little sections, and then you post it everywhere, and you make Seems like a good idea at the time, okay? So, we made this video called the three paths to becoming a millionaire that nobody teaches. I we thought it was a cool idea. Turns out, nobody's searching for that.

There's no good keywords in it. Nobody else has made a video similar, and it didn't do well. Now, like when you have an original idea, it doesn't mean that it can't do well. It doesn't mean that you can be the one person who makes that breakthrough, but your odds are way, way, way, way, way lower. And that's why if you look at my more previous stuff on this channel, the views are consistently much higher except for a few misses, which is going to happen, but the views are consistently higher because almost everything either has a keyword in it, it is a proven format like a listicle or a story or whatever.

I have different buckets that I use on my channel, but everything is researched and has a very high chance of success. And then you're still going to have some that fail. Generally, my rule of thumb is, and this applies to everything, but I actually heard this about startup companies, but it'll literally applies everything, is that you're going to have 10 videos that you post. If you post one video week, that's like, you know, 2 and 1/2 months, whatever it is, of posting.

Five of those are probably going to be five out of 10, six out of 10, seven out of 10, 10 out of 10. They're going to underperform. You're going to have about three of them that are going to do pretty good. They're going to do a little bit. And then you're going to have two that get you all the subscribers, make you all the money, grow your channel, or whatever. And so, when you kind of expect that, it's okay if some underperform, but you really want to continue to chase those overperformers cuz that one video can do more than like a year of underperforming videos that are original like just trying to do your own thing.

So, now everything is pretty proven from the words on screen to the styles, to the colors, to the text font. Everything about these are pretty proven either from other people or from myself because one of the best ways to find more proven ideas is not only to look at other people around you, but to find what has worked for you in the past. A very good example of this is 22 things no longer worth your money. This is one that I made three months ago.

I recommended to a couple of my students that they make it, and it was a one out of 10 for them within like a couple days because they were early on the niche. It's at 800,000 views now, and then I made a follow-up to that called 12 more things that are no longer worth your money. That was a huge outlier as well. Literally just repeating the same video with different points. Looking at my past and seeing what is the one out of 10, how can I re-hit those people?

How can I retarget those people? That's how you like almost guarantee yourself success. This video wasn't actually great. It I literally didn't have an intro on it. I cut the intro, and I just started at the bottom. But because I was retargeting people who had just watched my content like a month ago, it was able to just succeed right away. And so, you're either going to be looking for content that is proven to work in other people in your space and then seeing how you can adapt that to your own, or you're looking at your past content, looking for outliers, and the outliers can either be like the full-on video that I copied, or it can be keywords that I copied.

When I have frugal living in the title, I know it's going to do well. When I have minimalism in the title, I know it's going to do well. On this channel here, when I have the word normal people in the title, I know it's going to do well. On my third channel, when I have the word sweat tent or sauna box in the title, I know it's going to do well because I have certain keywords that I can always go back to to guarantee myself a one out of 10, to guarantee myself a really good video because I'm looking at my past audience and I'm working with the algorithm instead of trying to shove them other things.

If we just look at a small channel here, when I do what is proven on this channel, for me that's sauna box, it's what this channel's been carried by. Even with the 1,000 subscribers, I can get 86,000 views on a video. When I try to force in something else just cuz I wanted a free cold plunge, there's no search volume for this brand. Had very little chance of success, to be honest, but I got a free cold plunge, so cool.

Then it's not going to do well because that's something selfishly I wanted. The algorithm didn't tell me, the audience didn't tell me. I just made it up that I wanted to make something about this product, and nobody cared. Nobody watched. That's how I went from 60,000 views to 500 views to 80,000 views to 500 views because I was being selfish with my content. I was doing stuff that I wanted to do cuz I wanted the product.

I was doing stuff that I wanted to do even though there was no search volume. On this channel even, if we go back at the beginning, I had stuff that I was like waiting for something in the car, and I was like, "Let me just make some ideas up that I thought sounded good." I failed at YouTube because of this. I was like, "Oh, that's cool, and I'll just shoot this thing on my phone." And it's just something I wanted. My audience did not want it.

And it's because there's no proven keywords, no proven topics. It was just stuff that I was going through. It served nobody really. It was just things that I was thinking about. And like it's fine to make those, but just expect them to kind of do poorly. And maybe, you know, two out of 10 of the the research ones are going to do great. Maybe one out of 30 of these random ones that are just selfishly what you want to do will do great, and that can happen.

It just really lowers your odds. If you want to learn how to make better titles and thumbnails, I made a free mini course down below. It's five days of really breaking a lot of this stuff even in more detail than I just showed you. Or we're going to be opening up our next cohort of the 5-hour YouTuber in a couple months. And I'm actually filming this video live in front of my cohort, but I also explain everything that I've learned from the past seven years on YouTube inside of there.

So, if you're interested in that, you can also join the waitlist. Don't be selfish.