The YouTube Advice Nobody Should Follow Anymore transcript

If your channel is not seeing any growth, >> [music] >> this is probably why. There's a lot of YouTube advice out there and some of it actively hurts a lot of small channels. So, if you're an education channel or a personal brand, these are some things that are probably outdated and might be hurting your channel starting with the one box rule. Now, here's the thing with YouTube. Everything is not always the same for everybody, right?

So, things that work on some channels don't work on other channels, but a lot of people here you got to niche down, you got to find this like perfect niche. And let me tell you, that can work. Like, you can just talk about frying pans and make a full-time income. However, a lot of the problem isn't that you're not like niched enough, you're not just like talking about just one little itty-bitty thing. A lot of the channels that are blowing up right now are a person, like a kind of like more of a personal brand that are talking about a few different things.

So, it depends on what your strategy is. If you're trying to just get high-ticket [music] clients for your specific thing, then yeah, just talk about one subject for one person and be like super clear with what you're about. But, if you're trying to build more of a personal brand, you have a few topics you want to talk about, you want to, you know, not just talk about literally the exact same thing for the next 5 years, then it's important to have multiple buckets.

We usually have like three different [music] content pillars that we try to stick to so that they're all targeting the same person, but they're on different subjects underneath it so [music] that you can be a well-rounded channel. And so, just being hyper hyper targeted can work, again, but probably for like 90% of creators, it's not actually the play. It's being a person and talking about the few interests that you're in and then letting kind of the algorithm guide you a little bit with that.

The next one is your first video. We'll keep this one quick, but if you haven't posted a video yet and you're taking 6 months up with this perfect first video, you're probably screwing up. Also, don't do like an intro about your channel on the first one. Like, generally I like to do some type of authority hacking a little bit, which even if you have a channel, this can still work for you, but like do something like, you know, I quit my job 3 years ago to become a carpenter.

Here's three things that I learned. It gives you social proof, you quit your job, the curiosity loop of things that you learned, and plus you get to tell your personal story. So, it's a way to introduce yourself without having a terrible video. Don't just chase the trends. This can be a strategy again for some people, but if your goal is to make a long-term channel and you're just chasing, you know, Bitcoin and then AI and then Trump or whatever is getting views, you know, it's very hard game to play.

So I really like instead of chasing trends to [music] build a relationship with my audience so that they will show up regardless of what I'm talking about to some extent. Like that's how on the main channel I did a life update and it got over 75,000 views and that is just because I have built depth with my audience. That's not something like only subscribers going to watch that. But if I was just always chasing trends and not taking those down videos to build that relationship, you know, you may get 10,000 people who show up for that even with the same size channel and I know other channels that are like that because they're always chasing trend videos and outliers where people come for the trend, they don't come for you.

And it can also be a lot harder to make money that way. >> [clears throat] >> Next up is the $2,000 mistake. A lot of people think that they need perfect gear, perfect camera, perfect lighting, perfect whatever. Yes, I do have a $1,500 light right now. If I didn't have this, I'd sit next to a window. It's just really cloudy right now. I usually use [music] like natural lighting for probably 80% of my videos even though I do have this light.

You don't need all the perfect gear. You need to start and make interesting stuff that actually helps people with good packaging. Next up is a unsustainable pace. You're going to see YouTube advice saying post every day to post once a month. Ultimately, it's up to you. I like the weekly schedule cuz that keeps me accountable. It's pretty sustainable. Like I kind of do the whole I can film a video, edit, do everything start to finish in under 5 hours a week even if I do it all myself.

I now have editors so it's, you know, 1 to 2 hours per week per video. But even if you're doing it yourself and you follow like our frameworks, it should be under 5 hours a week, 1 hour a day, 5 days a week to come up with an idea to post and stay consistent weekly. And I think that's a good cadence for a lot of people especially if you still have a job. And so just because your bigger creators that you see are posting a lot or posting a little doesn't mean that's what you should do.

You should find a cadence that works for you. Some people who can just talk, they post every day and they do great. Some people, like me, I can only post once a week roughly per channel before I like get burned out with ideas. Other people put way more effort into their videos and they post once a month and they do great with that. Like they can all work. You need to find what's right for you and not just blindly listen to what somebody tells you.

Next up is SEO before audience. You are making videos for people, right? A lot of us maybe overthink. We're trying to keyword stuff. You're trying to ask AI what the perfect title and thumbnail is or what's the score with the vidIQ score on this. You're making it for people, okay? So, always remember that when you're making this, the algorithm doesn't like you, people don't like you. Why don't they like you? Okay? That's more hurtful to say it that way.

It's much easier to say that you're shadow banned and the algorithm hates you. But ultimately, if you made good videos that changed people's lives and they were crying afterwards or went and changed their lives afterwards, they would show up to every video you've ever made. They will tell their friends and family about you and you like your channel will have success, right? If your videos aren't doing that, they're worthless to people, if they don't care about them, maybe you're not good yet, maybe you just haven't made enough videos, maybe you haven't figured out how to story tell yet, maybe your packaging's terrible and nobody's even clicking on them because that you're not building enough curiosity.

Like assume it's your fault. Don't try to SEO your way and like convince the algorithm. If you make really high quality stuff, people will come. And sometimes the high quality stuff's very simple. It doesn't mean you're like putting a bunch of effort in. It just means you're good for your space, right? And then so if you're in the education niche or building a personal brand, this is exactly what I teach in the 5-hour YouTuber.

There is a link down below to the wait list. Literally everything about how to do all of this in extreme [music] detail that has been proven to work on three different channels personally and, you know, hundreds of channels of my students. [music] This stuff works. You're optimizing for humans, not for an algorithm. Next up is studio or nothing. Your background doesn't super matter. When I started on my first channel, this was my background.

Like that's not great, but I made videos regardless. You can see like the ceiling tiles are falling down in the background. The curtains are like red cuz that's just like literally all I had and I just made videos regardless. have been very easy there to just give up and not make anything cuz the house was or apartment was so terrible, but I just like sat in front of a window so that I could have natural lighting and shot a video.

If you're waiting till you have this perfect background and you're building the set, like you're always procrastinating the most important thing, which is shooting videos. So, the background's cool, but also you can just be like a normal person and have your normal house as the background and that can be your vibe, too. Like a studio can work, but just being a real [music] person can work. Going outside can work. Next one is platform dependency.

If you only post on YouTube and you don't have your followers on any other platforms, Instagram, emails are I would say the most important one, then you're probably hurting your channel. So, if you're just focusing on being a YouTuber, you're probably not going to make that much money. Focusing on actually owning your audience, building a relationship with them, getting them to a place like email where you can communicate with them even if the algorithm shifts or they stop, you know, watching your style of content, you can still talk to those people and have a chance to make money if you have their email.

Focusing on metrics, metrics don't super matter, especially like subscribers, likes, views, none of that super matters, honestly. I know as creators, we like to look at that. It's validating. However, if your goal is to leave your day job, which is totally doable through this. For instance, one of my students went from zero to like 10k plus a month inside of a year by focusing on money, not by getting a bunch of views.

Her channel like barely has 20k subs, I think. And another guy who's getting ready to leave his job, again, is focusing on the money aspect over just chasing viral videos because when you just focus on views, you just focus on subscribers, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make money and that's what I think most of us actually want from YouTube. We want to be able to leave our day job, have freedom, be able to create things that we're passionate about, help a lot of people and the main way you can do all that is by making money and focusing on like out of how many views I get, how much money am I making?

Do I even have a way to make money? Do I have affiliates? [music] Do I have a course? Do I have whatever? And if not, then you're always going to be chasing metrics that don't reward you at all. All right. Next up we have padding your videos. You've probably seen people telling you to make longer videos, right? Make a 20-minute video. The 10-minute videos are dead. All that type stuff. But, what people end up doing is they take 10 minutes worth of content and they turn it into a 20-minute video that's half fluff.

Their retention sucks. The algorithm kicks them out. Like, you need to optimize for people. If you have a 6-minute [music] story, tell a 6-minute story. If you have a 10-minute story, tell a 10-minute story. If you have a half an hour story, tell a half an hour story. I've had videos do well at all of those lengths and it's because I never pad my videos. I take as much information or story or whatever and I compact it into the shortest possible thing.

Whenever like, "Oh, I need to add two more minutes to this." I'm always asking, "What can I cut out so that what is left is the person when they're done watching my video, they're like, I learned something, I was entertained, I feel more motivated, or whatever." And it's never like, "Man, I wish you would just get to the point of this stupid thing." Like, "What is he talking about?" Just never have that. All right, next up is the shorts trap.

You're going to see a lot of people telling you to make shorts. Again, I have worked with hundreds of creators. I can't think of anybody who I have seen that shorts, when they're in the few hundred to a few thousand subscriber range, has helped their channel. Almost everybody, it has hurt their channel, okay? So, real quick analysis of this. You're going to post a short, it's going to get 1,000 views. You're going to post a long-form video, it's going to get 50 views.

You're going to say, "Okay, well, it posts >> [music] >> these ones do 20 times better. I'm going to do a lot more shorts." Problem is, you start getting subscribers from those shorts. None of them go to your long-form cuz they're just there for mindless entertainment. They're like worthless. They're just there brain rotting themselves, right? And so, maybe you get a few that cross over, but not that many. Now, your long-forms get stuck in this trap because it pushes out to your recent subscribers, but they're all short subscribers.

Nobody watches your videos and until you stop posting shorts and only do long-form for a while and then you build up that long-form audience, then you get to this point where you're big enough that you can now have the ability to post shorts. Or, if your shorts are like clips exactly from your videos, but even then, I've seen very few people have success. Most of the people who have seen have success, like for instance, JC, he only posts long-form on this channel where he went from zero to 70,000 I think inside of a year.

He was at 4,000 when he took the 5-hour YouTuber, now he's at 70. And the reason for that is because he only does long-form. He actually left a channel that has half a million subscribers because they were all short subscribers and that's kind of worthless. So, if you're posting shorts and your goal is to make money and grow a long form channel, stop posting shorts. I'm also doing a test. If you want to drop a like on this video, feel free to do that.

That would actually really be cool. I'm trying to see if asking for likes versus asking for subscribers, you can subscribe too, but it helps your video do better. But generally, I've seen a pattern of when I ask about halfway through the video of drop a like or subscribe or whatever, my videos tend to do better than when I don't have any CTA. Now, on another channel that I have, it doesn't make any difference, so I think it's channel specific.

But if we can get this to like 1,000 likes and see if that makes this video take off. I think that would be cool. Then we can also and I'll report back to you in the future. Consuming content. I'm not going to lie, consuming too much. So, this is something that I see a lot of small creators do. They watch channels, even like this one. This one I try to make sure that it's all value packed, but there's a lot of times where you might get stuck watching five different people telling you how to grow on YouTube.

You're trying five different tips at once. You're consuming an hour a day of YouTube growth advice and you're creating for half an hour a day. It should always be flipped. Watch two videos a week. Watch one thing, implement it per week. [music] Whether it's me or somebody else, just follow one person's advice, take their course, skip the learning process. Obviously, I believe that mine is by far the best out of anybody's for less price.

But if you feel better with somebody else, pick somebody's and just follow a proven method versus trying to listen to five people at the same time, not really getting all the pieces, trying a bunch of things. You're one person saying do shorts, one person's saying not. You're kind of like mixing around. You're I don't know. Like it's just better to just follow some somebody's proven advice and just skip the process. [music] Don't just consume constantly.

Most likely, you've consumed enough right now. You just need to create and learn by creating, not by consuming. Next up is the drunk grandma test. I literally forgot where I heard this from, but you want to make videos for a drunk grandma, right? So, the title of this one, what is this one? 20 Like it's pieces of YouTube advice that don't work anymore. Like it couldn't really be more clear what this video's about, I hope.

And the thumbnail should be pretty clear as well. And when you're making a video, you want it to be like that where it's like, "Oh, that video is about seven money-saving [music] tips that saved him $100,000." Like, I understand what the video is about. And a lot of times we overthink things, we try to be creative, play on words, all this type of stuff. And then you've spent an entire week making this video. [music] You understand what it's about.

And then somebody who's not your mom, who's not your cousin, who's not your roommate, who's not your friend, they don't understand what your video is about, okay? Even if your mom says it's great, don't listen to her. [music] Okay? Just ignore your mom. Stop sending her your videos. In fact, try to block her if you can. That might be >> [music] >> more bad advice. Anyways, you want people to see your title and thumbnail and then know what your video is about within a blink.

Like a caveman, a drunk grandma, a 5-year-old. If they cannot understand what your video is about by the title and thumbnail, you made it too complex and you need to shorten it, you need to condense it, you need to say it a different way. It needs to be [music] extremely clear what your video is about because when people are scrolling, they have like they're just hardly even seeing it and if they don't understand it, they're not going to click on it.

So, if you're like, "The hypertension quantifier, how I reprogrammed my frontal cortex through striping." Like, I've seen people do videos like that where it's like those are all terms that make sense to them, nobody's going to click on that video. If you're like, "I used science to [music] fix my brain fog." Okay, now I know what the video is about, you know? It might be the same thing, but because [music] you made it as simple as humanly possible, now people are going to understand and they're more likely to click on the video.

That's what I got. We're going to be opening up the doors for the 5-Hour YouTuber relatively soon, pretty soon. So, if you're interested, there's a waitlist down below. As right now, we have 80 spots and over 3,000 people on the waitlist. So, we always launch to waitlist first. So, if you're interested, make sure you're on there. You also get like exclusive bonuses that we just add on for waitlist people that nobody else get on YouTube.

So, again, if you're interested, check it out. Thanks for watching this video. I'll see you next week.