Episode 227: How to Build a YouTube Channel

Show Highlights

Rob Cairns sits down with one of his mentors, Paul Tobey and talks about how to build a YouTube channel.

Show Highlights:

1. Paul’s compelling story on how he became a digital marketer.
2. Why the Youtube channel experience?
3. Why you should find a framework and not reinvent the wheel.
4. Tips on what not to do on a Youtube channel.
5. Metrics to look at.

Show Notes

Hey everybody, Rob Cairns here

Today I’m here.

With a gentleman who I consider a mentor who’s taught me a lot in this business and actually the first time I’ve ever had a father and son on this podcast.

And this is the father.

Mr Paul Toby, how are you today, Paul?

Doing great Rob, how are you?

I’m doing good.

It’s a pleasure to have you.

You know we’ve shared.

We shared a lot over the years and I’m I’m glad to have you on.

So before we get to today’s topic, what I wanted to do was tell your story about how you got in the marketing, ’cause I think it’s one of the most compelling stories I’ve ever heard.

If you could, please share.

How much time do I?

Have well as much as you want.

The reason why I ask is because there is a lot of detail to this story that sometimes I like to tell, but depending on the amount of time we have, so let me be as brief as possible.

I think the when you talk about compelling, I think the the word you might be looking for is unusual.

How does one find themselves?

In business, at any point in their life from where I started, which is the most unlikely place to start, which is as an artist, I was a.

Jazz recording artist and I know when people hear that they probably go.

Yeah, yeah, you know jazz or whatever, but you know, I was fairly successful at it.

Interestingly enough, right from university I made my living as a professional player.

I didn’t teach on this side.

I didn’t flip burgers.

I didn’t have side gigs.

I didn’t wait on tables.

I was just a professional musician.

And I made my living as that and then.

Eventually, a touring artist.

For like 20 years.

And in that time I had made and recorded and released 8 albums.

A couple of which, which was under the major label Arcadia out of the US.

And then.

A bunch of for.

A bunch of reasons. By the time I hit 39 years of age.

I was obviously fairly established, still really just and I don’t.

I think people need to make the distinction between pop artist and jazz musician.

I mean, you’re never going to be a household name.

You probably couldn’t.

I I don’t know how much you know about jazz Rob, but you probably couldn’t name me like 5 current jazz artists.

Unless you can.

No I can.

I can name a couple and one of them being the late Leonard Cohen.

Right off the top of my head.

Yeah, so, and that’s you know that’s like pseudo jazz, right?

If you went to most people and you said, well, do you know who Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Chick Corea, Miles Davis, and you know whoever are?

What would what would their response be for most of those? It’s like they have no idea, right? So it’s not like pop music where you can name 100 pop artists without really thinking about it, so it’s a much smaller industry. But even in that I I did fairly well I.

Toured and and made albums and I was basically a recording artist which was for me and my wife Nancy.

A lot of fun and she she was my agent.

She was my manager at one point and the reason why that happened is ’cause she had a gig and I had a night gig.

So that didn’t really work, so I’m like OK.

You have to quit that job.

She goes well, what am I gonna do?

And I’m like, well, you can start booking gigs so she did that and she was really good at it.

Like really good.

And she would charge me 15%.

Right?

OK, well that’s not good I I don’t want to pay anybody it so I’ll just marry her, right?

And and then, of course, it costs me 50%. So whatever I mean.

I’m not sure.

That was the best decision. But anyway, we’re married and we’ve been married now for 26 years, going on 27 years. So really good, and we’ve always worked together.

So by the time I hit 39.

Couple of things happened one.

I got tendonitis, which is like this.

In my wrists and arms, which was quite painful to play and I had to seek a lot of medical attention for that ’cause I was basically over playing like it’s playing every day like 3-4 hours, 5 hours, 6 hours a day.

And then I also got tinnitus which is a very loud, very obnoxious high pitched whine in my head that I woke up with on January the 6th.

22,000 and two, so right after 911.

And 911 played a part in it too, simply because the record label was very close. Proximity to that location.

And the whole recording career just kind.

Of fell apart.

I lost a lot of interest.

I had, you know, became quite depressed, but you know it was a good thing because.

It allowed me to at midlife, you know, everybody goes through midlife crisis.

I always said to myself, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this expression said I’d love to have a midlife crisis, but only if I.

Can afford it. Oh yeah.

And I couldn’t, because if you’re not playing and you’re not performing as a musician, you’re not getting paid.

So and I didn’t play or perform for a long time like a couple of years because of tendonitis and and tinnitus, ’cause it was very depressing.

And I still have tinnitus.

I’ve helped actually 10s of thousands of people worldwide with tinnitus.

I have very popular YouTube videos that people search out for treatment for tonight as things like that.

So I’m trying to.

I’m trying to be very helpful to others in that regard.

But as I’m going through that transition period, I also have to think about, well, if I do want to have a midlife crisis, I have no money to be able to do that, and even more so, I have no money to really look after my wife and young son who you’ve met.

Who I think?

Many people would agree Adrian is just the epitome of success for somebody at such a young age.

Yeah, he’s amazing young fella.

He isn’t.

He’s amazing, like, totally amazing because he grew up in the transition period for me.

So as I’m now trying to figure out well, what am I going to do with the rest of my life if I’m not going to play music?

And I didn’t have an answer for that and things got really bad at one point.

It’s like so bad I I thought about.

Well, maybe I’ll go get a job.

But the problem with that is you probably in your company Rob don’t need a piano player.

I do not.

And most companies I don’t think need one.

In fact, probably none, unless you’re a record label.

So therefore my job prospects were like 0.

I I still remember the day I sat down trying to put a resume together and I just kind of tore it up.

After 5 minutes they said this isn’t going to work right?

So bad, just not higher up.

So then I went OK.

Well, if I if I can’t play music.

Or my prospects in music are not that great.

And if I can’t get a job, how am I going to look after my family?

And as men you know, we kind of have that.

Perspective that says.

You know we’re hunters and we want to put food on the table.

And most people if if they go hunting for six months, they’re going to at least bring back a deer or two.

I wasn’t even bringing back squirrels.

I was.

I was bringing back the shells of the nuts the squirrels ate and left behind so that things were not going well.

So I.

Didn’t know what to do so I signed up.

I actually got a I applied to Canada Council for the arts.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that funding organization, but they’re a.

They’re an organization that runs arm’s length from the government and they basically give out money to artists for projects that are unlikely.

To make money.

You know art basically yes.

So I applied to this program for one specific purpose to get enough money together to go walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

And the Camino de Santiago is very well known for centuries as being that place on Earth that you go to, and you spend a month and a half walking in order to reflect on your life.

Maybe heal from things, maybe have time to think.

About what the future may hold, and as you’re walking this journey, you have plenty of time for all of those things.

The only thing you have to really do is stay healthy, which is not an easy thing.

To do and find food.

Which is also not an easy thing to do in some places, so especially when you don’t have a lot of money.

Anyway, are you with me still?

Yeah, I’m just listening.

Right?

It’s funny every time I hear this story I I just get more entranced with it.

So just keep going.

One of the things that.

There’s a couple of things I learned on that journey, so my my.

My grant was really about to write symphonies, so I had to make music based on that journey and it was really interesting because I got to play with local musicians along the way.

We set up little concerts here and there.

I got to play with like.

Royal Conservatory people and and just you know, we just sought out artists and musicians along the way that we could interview and talk with and perform.

With and I ended up giving several concerts in bars and things like that which were very well attended and none of it was publicized.

It’s just I just became this sort of Canadian strange.

Dude who was walking the Camino de Santiago, who was also a musician and people would kind of seek me out after like a month, you know and I.

And it just kept happening and all these conversations and everything.

And we did a lot of filming ’cause I took a videographer with me as part of the grant process.

And in the end I had written 20 compositions, 12 of which I completely wrote and arranged for complete orchestra and they actually ended up performing that with a full orchestra.

At a concert in Ontario that I sold like 1100 tickets to so it actually did really well good.

But as I’m walking this journey, I’m kind of thinking about well.

Music has never proven itself to be a good financial choice.

It it may be for some people, but it’s really hard to get to that point where you can absolutely become.

I guess the word I’m looking for is not necessarily rich, but.

You know wealthy, you’re familiar with like there.

I think there’s a difference between rich and wealthy.

Wealthy is is when you have enough money to do the things that you want to do without worrying about where the money is coming from, and you have basically more choice does that.

Make sense it does very much so.

You know I had that in my head and as I’m walking the journey I said, well, what am I going to do to make that happen?

And I realized a couple of things.

As I’m walking.

Number one I got lost like 7 times on this route ’cause it wasn’t very well marked at that time.

It’s much better marked today, but I all.

So hurt myself, I broke my ankle on this journey and I ended up laying up three days in Burgos icing it.

I couldn’t afford to see a doctor, so I just kind of bandaged it up.

And kept walking and it’s caused me a lot of problems later in life ’cause of course it healed incorrectly.

And it got into my hip.

And anyway, that’s a whole other story.

But so I got lost like 7 times.

I got hurt twice once broken and the other one was.

Really like really bad blisters where I had to lay up a couple of days anyway.

So I realized when I eventually made it to Santiago and then further on to the coast, a place called Finisterre, which in French means end of the earth ’cause it’s the furthest point West in Europe that you can walk or get to before the new world was discovered.

So that’s an interesting thing.

It’s like if you go to the edge of Spain.

There’s this little fishing village called Finisterre end of the Earth.

And I reached there and then I reflected on what had happened over the last month, and 1/2 as I’m walking this journey. And I realized that I was deeply committed to reaching that destination. And I think for many people there’s a difference between commitment and deep, deeply committed.

I would agree.

So that means that no matter how many times you get lost, ’cause we can get lost in life many times metaphorically.

And also.

Getting hurt and we get not necessarily hurt physically, although that can happen depending on what you do and how you do it.

But we can definitely get hurt emotionally along the journey.

And for most of us, because we’re not deeply committed, we end up turning back now.

Miss Lee

It’s interesting if you look at the number of pilgrims that start out in Roncesvalles or Saint Jean Pierre, Paul van France, and they walked through the Pyrenees.

Mountains and they walk all the way across Spain and they get to Santiago and then finish there. Only 20% of the people that set out to do that actually reach it for all of the reasons that I’ve just described.

So that means that somehow I learned the concept of deeply committed, right?

I’m deeply I’m going to figure out I’m going to pick a destination.

And no matter how long it takes, no, no matter how many times I get hurt, no matter how many times people are going to stand in my way, no matter how many times I’m going to get lost.

And I you know, there will be many choices along this journey.

Path A or path B.

I’ll figure out how to reach that destination so when I got back to Canada it took me a couple of months.

But I figured out what it is I wanted and that’s kind of number one was number one for me.

It’s like what do I want and and so I I said instead of a specific destination ’cause I’ve already done a lot of traveling with the music business we’ve been in like 17 different countries and.

So that was I wasn’t looking for a physical destination, but what I was looking for was what is it that I could buy or would want to have in my life that most of my family are actually none of my family extended family forefathers, cousins, sisters, brothers.

What is it that?

Could represent my arrival to wealth.

Without being, you know, truly over the top, but what what could I do that would prove to myself that I’ve gone further than most of my or all of my extended family?

Does that make sense?

It sure does.

And So what I did was I found a picture of that.

What I thought was the perfect.

Destination and I put it on my mirror.

You know how people have like a?

Dream board, yeah.

I didn’t have a dream board ’cause dream boards have too many things on them.

My thing is, if I can get one thing and I put all my energy and focus on that one thing, that’s that’s the goal of this particular destination.

Then whatever comes along the way might be extra or whatever comes after that.

We’ll pick a new destination.

Does that make sense?

So I put it on my mirror and I looked at it every single day.

Where I where I brush my teeth where I I just basically taped it to the mirror?

And I couldn’t miss it.

It’s there.

It’s every day.

This is a representation of.

This So what I did was I started a seminar business.

Now I know that sounds really strange.

It’s like why would people come to my seminars.

If I don’t know anything about having success in life.

But I kind of did.

I had a lot of success that a lot of people would want in the music industry I had received.

Blades and awards.

And I had a press kit like 10 inches thick.

I’d made albums I had had a recording contract.

I’d toured, I’d been to many places I’d.

But you know the financial side of it.

I kind of kept that hidden from most.

People you know.

It’s like OK.

I’m not the richest guy you’ve ever met, but there are some things that I’ve learned how to do that can help you achieve some of the things you want to achieve, and one of those things was I started taking courses.

In right after Santiago de Compostela. In fact, in in the next year I took like a course that I paid $3500 for.

And that that course was basically how to give seminars.

I I went and took a course.

On how to give court.

Which was the best investment I’d ever made?

Yeah, it was a five day course.

I came back from that.

Course within.

Two years.

I was doing on average 25,000.

Dollars a month.

Which may not sound like a lot to some people, but for somebody who’s completely flat, broke to go to $25,000. A month is kind of like I’ve gone and died and gone to financial heaven.

You know what I mean and it’s consistent like it’s coming in every month, sometimes more.

I still remember the day when I sold.

I think it was in the maybe the end of the first two years. Somewhere in there I did $78,000 in one day.

From off the stage sales and I got really good at it.

And then I went back for more training.

And when I went back for more training.

It’s like the second level of this.

Uh, training.

I would ask everybody that’s at this, you know.

Second level is like, well, how are your seminars going?

And I ended up teaching.

In my breaks at night, people would invite me to dinner.

It’s like, well, how, how did you get to this point after like two years and I’m like I just followed their rules.

And what I realized was and, and so I’d ask people I said, well, why are you here?

For the second one?

If you didn’t, if your courses aren’t working if if your seminar business isn’t working, why are you here for the second level?

And the answer I would get was, well, I I really thought I needed all the information 1st and my response to that was well one.

Will that be?

Yes, when will you have all the information?

And the answer is pretty much never.

So dive in get wet, get messy, get hurt, get get met.

You know, just dive in and see what happens.

And as you make mistakes.

Personally, my philosophy became hey, it’s only a mistake.

Rob, if you make.

It twice I agree.

You learn from you, learn from things that go wrong.

So yeah.

Yeah, exactly so.

And during this time I’m running an online business because people would go online and register for the seminars and they pay online and I learned a lot of search engine optimization strategies.

I learned a lot of.

You know just ways to fill seminar rooms online, so it was a combination of digital marketing.

Which back then we called an Internet marketing and I it was basically born about the same time Google was born, right 1997?

So a little bit after that, as Google’s coming into its own, and Internet marketing became a thing.

I sort of became like the poster child in Canada for.

Marketing online and so I started giving Internet marketing courses which then became the most popular courses that I had and eventually I had to stop them and I think there’s a really good reason for that.

It’s because it just became too complicated.

When I first started Internet marketing, it was very easy to rank keyword phrases based on a very specific.

Then what happened was as information became available from anywhere.

The competition became much, much harder and so the algo had to change and new strategies had to come in.

And what happened was, even though I’ve kept pace, it was impossible to teach others in a few.

Days how to do that?

Yeah, it’s it’s changed greatly in the last, even the last three or four years.

If I had a dollar for every time a role changed on Facebook or Google or somewhere else, would both be rich people today, I think.

I agree, and I think the most challenging part of all of that is is that most people aren’t technical.

Yeah, so there’s a.

There’s a highly.

Technical element to putting a website together, ranking that website and it’s not just websites, it’s social social media algorithms.

I mean basically how to hack Facebook or YouTube and this.

Is you know we’re.

Going to talk about YouTube in a minute, but.

I basically kept pace with that and the the way that I kept pace was I formed relationships with people like Ryan Deiss in the United States and I was like Ryan Deiss, his counterpart here in Canada.

Did I ever tell you that Ryan Deiss wanted me to start digital marketer Canada?

Canada, you did actually?

I think you shared that with me in your office one day.

He wanted he wanted quite a bit of money for me to do that, and I thought, you know what I’m doing well without.

You I don’t need.

To give you like 7 digits to start a digital marketing company in Canada.

I already have one.

You know what I mean?

And I didn’t.

I didn’t really need to spend the money so it never.

It never happened, but we had that.

Round of discussions, but you know I I would stay friends with these guys and I could name like 100 guys that I’d learned from and then I’d paid courses from and whatever and I just kind of kept pace with it.

And then eventually what happened was instead of doing, uh, teaching people digital marketing, we created a digital marketing company and I think that’s kind of around when when you came into my life.

Yes, we we had started the company somewhere in there.

Yeah I do.

Yeah I did and it’s funny when you talk about Ryan because there’s two books that you tell have touted all over the place that I count with clients I reread one is Ryan Dicis book.

And the other is a book called the Inside Advantage.

Robert Bloom yeah and.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, I love that stuff actually with my clients now and I still hold a portfolio of clients for digital marketing.

And I.

A lot of the new clients I’ll take them through that inside advantage process.

That’s really about well, who’s my target audience?

What do they actually want?

What do we do that’s different in the marketplace?

And how do we create a series of imaginative events in order to make our company stand out amongst the competition?

That’s basically the.

The general synopsis of that entire book.

And I’ve.

And so I I typically charge people a consulting fee to run those courses.

So I I think in order to cap off the story here.

Through the last 20 years I’ve spent my.

Most of it about 10 years of it in the training business.

Then I still kept the training going and I built that live stream studio in Toronto, which with COVID nobody was in for.

You know, like a year, two years, right?

During COVID and we kind of finally gave up the offices in in August, which is a good thing.

’cause I’m kind of heading into semi retirement.

Keeping a small portfolio of clients, I have some.

You know, remote workers that that do some of the heavy lifting that I just don’t want to do know how to do but just don’t want to do.

And then what I’m doing now and what I started during COVID was OK.

I have a little bit of extra time ’cause I’m not training ’cause ’cause you know, live courses are not doing well because.

Of the COVID restrictions.

And I can’t travel.

So I started.

A YouTube channel.

Which is amazing.

As a as a retirement sort of semi retirement retirement project and I thought OK.

I’ll learn how to do that.

I’ll pay money.

Well, actually, that’s a funny story and how I actually learn how to do it.

It’s it’s a guy by the name of Nate Woodbury, ’cause I I never started anything without knowledge from somebody who’s done it.

Does that make sense?

It’s like everybody does the trial and error method.

Personally, I think that’s like the worst method there ever is for learning.

You think?

There’s something to be said for making mistakes and not making them twice, but again.

If somebody gives.

You a formula and they’ve proven that that formula works.

That’s the best place to start.

And so Nate Woodbury had a formula and I came across it because somebody had gifted me one of his seminars.

And I watched it. Somebody somebody gifts you a $2500 seminar? You’re going?

To watch it.

You know, and it’s like, well, I didn’t have to pay for it, so that’s.

Cool, I did a favor for somebody and they just out of the blue gifted in my wife and I and Nancy we we sat down and we watched and we went.

You know what that?

Makes a lot.

Of sense like things you’ve never heard of before, like what is the actual YouTube algorithm?

How do you start a YouTube channel and actually make it work?

So what we did was we followed those rules exactly like to the letter right?

We followed exactly what he said to do, but we did it for two channels.

We did one for music which I think.

Was you know, great, because I can now help jazz musicians all over the world.

Maybe make a little bit more money.

Maybe get a record contract, maybe be better musicians.

You know the whole concept of that.

But I also started one for the the company, right?

I started one for.

This is.

Things like inside advantage and digital marketing and make videos on that.

That one bombed.

And I’ll tell you, and I’ll tell you why, and this is a mistake that a lot of Youtubers make.

And the other one was brand new, which was the Jazz mental channel and it’s doing gangbusters.

Well, gangbusters like you know.

For jazz, it’s doing well, like it’s very.

Join really.

It’s a well.

It’s a small audience, right?

It’s not, it’s not a general audience like.

Most people couldn’t name one jazz musician, let alone one they know that’s how small that audience is, because it’s it’s.

It’s it’s me helping.

Actual musicians at a specific level intermediate to advanced to expert get better at their craft, that’s that’s.

Not a lot of people.

You know what I mean?

It’s yeah.

The largest jazz pianist group on Planet Earth is on Facebook, and it has 25,000 members. Most of those are amateurs.

So it’s not a big group.

So getting to where it is.

It has been a bit of a surprise, but it’s interesting that the business channel, which I thought those videos were actually better because that’s what I had spent the last 20 years doing, was helping businesses make more money.

And obviously that’s a much bigger audience.

It did terrible, it did horrible like it took.

Six months for us to realize it wasn’t working at all.

Even though we followed the exact same formula for both channels exactly the same.

Then, so you’re probably.

Wondering well, why did one work and why didn’t the.

Other one work I haven’t.

Yeah, and and what I would say is on the business channel.

The videos are really polished and really well done.

I’ve seen most of them and they’re and they were well done.

They were.

They were professional, is a good word.

To put it.

The lighting was good, which is something a lot of people don’t pay attention to when they’re doing YouTube.

The audio was good, which is something people pay less attention to when they’re doing YouTube.

They were just well laid out.

Well, I had great equipment because I had bought all that equipment for the live stream studio which was kind of doing nothing.

So I had the equipment and I just started in with the the advice from Nate Woodbury and I started building both of those channels at the same time.

It’s interesting that the one worked and the other one fell flat.

So I’ll I’ll tell you why, as.

As if you want.

To get into that, I do.

Want to get into?

So that that’s my story, I’m I’m sticking to it.

Do you have any questions about that?

Is there anything that I should elaborate on or?

It’s just, you know you were saying I was being quiet and and I’ve heard you tell this story, probably five or six times over the years.

I’ve probably shared this story with other people over the years in conversation and said no.

I have a.

Trainer I used to go do that.

Has a compelling story and this is it and you would never think.

And the more and more it’s interesting that I talked to people in the digital marketing game or in the web game is where they’ve come from, and there’s a lot of people who had never got into marketing and never gotten web.

If if you had asked me Paul before we when we met.

Would I have ever gotten in the marketing?

I would have told you no way.

It’s not an easy business because people are giving you money to grow their businesses and if their businesses do not see measurable results, then they’re going to kick you to the curb pretty quickly and they’re going to tell others that they’ve.

Kicked you to the curb, Yep.

It’s a hard.

Business to be.

So it’s not something that you just, you just start up.

A marketing agency.

You’ve got to know what you’re doing.

It’s highly highly competitive.

There is a lot of money in it, but only if you’re at.

The top of your game.

Yeah, and the other thing I would say is it’s a business where everything changes and keeps changing in.

It’s really nice to do that.

And do the algorithms due to web standards due to even things like accessibility.

Now things are changing on a on a regular basis and it makes it hard.

Which I think is the interesting thing.

When you talk about well, how does one hack the YouTube algorithm?

Because most of us as businesses or solo printers as I call them, and any startups, the whole goal is right.

Get your name out there, get found and.

Get into the hands of people, something that could help them, and then eventually you’ll make money from those.

Well, how do you actually build that audience?

And that was really the reason why I started the YouTube channel.

Based on the advice from Nate Woodbury.

It’s like.

It seems to be based on those.

Video those training videos that we watched.

It seemed to be a pretty much bulletproof algorithm.

To building a much, much larger view audience than you’d ever get from a website, because honestly, SEO.

Is tough these days really tough and super competitive and honestly the traffic that you generate from a top three listing is not what it used to be.

Oh, it’s.

At all.

Because people attentions are fractured right, they’ve got they’re spending a lot of time on Facebook.

They’re spending a lot of time on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and all these other places, and they’re doing less and less search.

So the the.

View audience for search on Google has gone way down.

Yeah, and it’s super super competitive ’cause everybody wants that premier listing right?

If if this is what we do as a company, right?

We’re a licensed insolvency trustee. We want if when somebody searches for that, we want to be #1

And I actually get paid a lot of money to help a company do that, and I’m constantly learning about.

And and I keep telling them I’m like, you know, it’s like we’re spending a lot of money here.

We’re spending a lot of time, we’re doing good.

But in order to keep recapturing that number, one or #2 listing, we have to stay on top of it, because we lose it.

You just can’t remain complacent about.

It’s not like you reach number one and it.

Just stays.

There, funnily enough, that particular company I had them number one for bankruptcy trustee Toronto, which is the exact keyword phrase they wanted.

Write it when anybody searches for bankruptcy.

Trustee in Toronto.

That’s what you need to be found for six months later.

We’re still number one.

And the company they came to me and they said we need to change it.

We can’t.

We can’t be found for this anymore because it’s against the trustee rules.

We have to be licensed insolvency trustee and I was like, well you should have told me that from like day one now you want me to shift gears and go add it all over again and they’re like yeah we have to.

So it’s not just the algo that’s changing, the competitors are changing and the companies are changing, and so I looked at the traffic that that Nate Woodbury was saying you can generate with obviously energy and time.

But it’s a very different view audience.

Like if you think about somebody coming to a faceless website where they’re reading and they’re consuming maybe a picture or maybe a video.

They’re seeing you on YouTube. They’re watching you for hours.

Do you know?

What I mean that’s a very different relationship.

You’re you’re now their personal mentor.

I’ve got people reaching out to me on YouTube every single day to thank me for this video to talk about what I should do next to just basically help.

And they’re very good about it.

Partly I’ve trained them to do that because I say in my videos.

Hey, if you have any suggestions or you have any questions about what I’ve just done or you want to dive into it deeper, hey, just put it in the comments below.

I’ll get back to you, so I have this never ending stream of ideas coming from that audience.

You know you don’t get that from a website.

Nobody makes a comment.

On a blog post anymore, when was the last time you made a comment on somebody’s blog?

I don’t even have comments turned on on my bot because.

’cause well, I’m not talking about yours, I’m talking when was the last time you made a comment on my blog on somebody’s blog.

I probably tweeted about anime to comment on.

Honestly, I you know yeah yeah.

Not a lot, right?

And and The thing is, videos changed a long way and live streaming change.

Still a long way.

So I’ll share with you and I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with you.

I used to be very heavily involved in the BMX community in Toronto, and we used to do a show.

An international BMX show down at the exhibition grounds every.

And I was involved via my association with Toronto police and some community stuff I did.

And in those days this was live streaming and its infancy.

We used to take a Mac Book Pro and a High def web camera and set it up on the top of a 10 foot ramp and stream off that.

If you can believe that.

And even back then.

There would be certain people that would go live and when they did, you just watched the YouTube video spike.

And that was because and and to be honest compared to what we do now.

Though I stream, video quality was terrible.

I’ll, I’ll tell you that now.

And I remember 1 show.

Well it in the yeah go.

Ahead I remember 1 show there was a.

There’s a Canadian auditorial gentleman by name with Drew Bezanson and he was in the Better Living Center.

He took his bike.

And he grabbed the overhang in the arena and dropped down off the overhang so he probably dropped down to 25 feet above the crowd.

And I can tell you to this day the YouTube videos on that, even though the quality wasn’t very good, are through the roof.

It’s just unreal.

Yeah, and you know the challenge.

Obviously with You Tube is the entertainment will do much better than anything else.

If it’s entertaining, funny, make them laugh.

Make them think, make them cry.

You’ll do well if it’s obviously has a good entertainment value.

The trick is.

Because I’ll talk a little bit about You Tube revenue.

If you want to.

The trick is not to get a million views.

The trick is how do you create revenue?

Based on a YouTube channel.

And so it’s really not about.

YouTube partner program, which is people advertise you.

They advertise on your videos, right?

You know the the ones that people always skip through and I’ll talk a little bit about that.

If you want to, but I do, revenue is not a lot even.

That even at a million.

Views, yeah, like you’re only you’re you’re talking it’s if you.

If you have a video that gets a million views like say in a year.

The revenue on that is somewhere between 800 and a.

1000 bucks so it’s not.

You know you’re not talking about.

It’s not a lot.

You’re not going to get rich off that.

You know what I mean.

And and very few videos actually get to that point, unless you’re obviously a Major League rock star or a.

Sports, you know, if you have star power, that’s a different thing, but most regular people do not.

Have that right.

Yeah, so it’s about.

It’s not about making things go viral.

It’s really about building an audience and that’s what we had set.

So true.

That’s what we had set out to do.

It’s like how do we build an audience that has an interest in the things that we’re doing an audience of which five?

Maybe 10% would be willing to give us some money at some point to help them even further versus a bunch of free videos.

That was kind of the the methodology and that’s why I went to Nate Woodbury or gotten a Woodbury course.

Why it was perfect because it was really all about being a thought leader.

It’s really all about.

How do you build a new audience based on the fact that you’re a leader in a specific industry and so we started as a leader in digital marketing and we started as a leader in the music industry in jazz specifically.

Did the have tests?

I started those two channels at the same time.

I have to ask the question, is the reason the business page did not work as well because it wasn’t as entertaining and it was down to Earth business tips?

OK, so why didn’t it work?

Can you share?

So it kind of ties in with how the YouTube algo works, so one of the main criteria that YouTube uses to tell whether your video is any good or not.

Because if You Tube knows if the video is being watched right.

That means that they can earn more ad revenue based on something that is more popular than other things in the same category.

So if you have a video that is, say 10 minutes long and people start that video and they only watch 30 seconds of it, YouTube will tank that video.

OK, OK part of the other algorithm is is this.

Is that if you have subscribers and this is where we went wrong?

You have subscribers on your channel and they don’t watch your videos.

And this is part of what people do on YouTube in order to increase subscribers, they go on and they pay for subscribers we didn’t pay for subscribers for the training business pros channel. All we did was keep the ones we had.

So we started out with 340 subscribers.

Already on the training business pros channel that we had built over like an 8 year period like we hadn’t really.

Hadn’t really done much.

Spend time at it.

It would come to a seminar.

I would give them.

You know, go.

To the YouTube channel.

Subscribe and you’ll get the other.

Pre recorded sessions of this course that we don’t have time to do live right the bonus content, so that’s kind of how we use the channel.

The problem is is that when we went to start the the really revised channel based on the information from Nate Woodbury.

We should have started a new channel and deleted the 320 subscribers or 340 subscribers because after six months we had 341 subscribers.

So if you have a YouTube channel.

That you’ve had for five years, and you have even as little as 100 subscribers.

And you want to now start a new YouTube channel and you want to build on that YouTube channel.

Don’t keep going with the old one.

Delete it or you can keep it and start a brand new one like you.

You can keep the old channel if you want to just start a new one, give it a different name.

Give it a different brand and start using the algorithm.

As I had learned it from Nate, it’s like here’s what you need to do.

Here’s the time commitment.

It’s going to take here as long how long you need to be in it for.

And here’s the the minutiae of all of the algorithmic things that you need to understand in order to get your videos played.

So the short version that go ahead.

That is.

That is such an interesting philosophy, because most people would say why do I want to let 1000 subscribers go? Why do I want to let 500 go?

Exactly, you have to let them go, because if you paid for them, that’s never going to work.

Right, because now you’ve got subscribers to make your channel look more impressive.

They’re not watching your videos, so if your own subscribers don’t watch your videos, that’s like that’s like You Tube kindergarten.

YouTube basically says you’ve got subscribers or not watching your videos. Why would anybody else?

Want to watch them?

That’s right.

So it doesn’t, so it doesn’t promote your videos and Google does.

Sorry You Tube does promote your videos and I’ll tell you how in a minute.

So then that’s really the whole point. It’s like where does all the traffic come from? Does it come from search? Actually, not really. It comes from what we call browse and YouTube.

Certainly some of it comes from search, and there’s also suggested videos, so like the majority of your traffic actually doesn’t come from search and it doesn’t come from your own subscribers because most people have subscribers that are not engaged and you go to you go to increase that and you’ve got subscribers over the last 10 years that aren’t watching videos.

That’s right.

They’re certainly not going to watch.

The new ones, either because.

Google is not even telling them.

That’s right.

Sorry, You Tube not even telling, so I mixed the two up ’cause you know Google owns YouTube whatever and and and by the way my videos for search show up in Google search as well.

So that’s interesting, right?

It’s like it’s not even a web page that.

Shows up in in Google search, it’s YouTube videos, Yep.

So that’s an interesting thing. So what we have to do now if we want to go back and start a new business channel, all I have to do and I have at least 100 videos that I did ’cause the channel fell flat. But I I can repurpose those hundred videos no problem, I just need to download them.

Maybe rebrand them?

But most of them are good, so I just started a new channel, but I haven’t got around to it yet.

’cause the other channel is working well and I’m I’m really doing my best to keep.

Up with the demand of work for that so.

Yeah, ’cause it it?

Is a lot of work and most people don’t realize that being a content producer’s not a case of taking a quick video and slapping it up and saying I’m done right.

Well, it was so much easier for the business channel to like I could make a I could make a.

10 to 12 minute video, which is really the benchmark based on the algo.

It’s like you make a 10 to 12 minute.

I could make that video and get it off to the editor within 15 minutes from from the from the content creation standpoint to understanding what the content hooks were to actually filming the video and getting it off to the.

To the to the.

Editor that I had trained on how to edit.

Doing all that was like 1520 minutes.

For the Jazz channel I have to make.

Sheet music I have to do recordings I have to, you know, give them a lesson.

Where it’s very mathematical, you have to use sheet music.

I use a light pen to to kind of, you know, describe to them how chords are put together or how skills are put together.

It’s very technical and so the time commitment for a jazz channel video for a 10 to 12 minute video. I’m into it for like 2-3 hours.

So I much prefer the business one.

But again, it fell flat for the very reason that I had subscribers that were not.

Engaged and that’s and the two to three hours.

You’re into it for is not including what your editors into it for.

It’s not including any other productions time and costs.

So my editor was not available Friday and Monday.

He went away.

Yeah, I had to edit Fridays video and I had to edit Mondays video.

Each one of those took me.

Two hours, yeah, so you’re 5 hours.

Because I’m because I’m handing over.

Six clips to the editor.

I’ve got the audio from the piano mikes.

I’ve got the audio from my vocal Mike.

I’ve got three different cameras and an overhead camera, and actually recording, so sometimes six or seven different clips that all have to be put together in order to make 110 to 12 minute video.

Yeah, so there’s a lot of editing in there, right?

Choosing which camera angle, choosing the audio and making sure the audio is denoised?

You know there’s a whole bunch of things that you have to do in order to make a professional video.

Now I’m glad I do those things because the feedback that I get from my channel people is like wow, that you really put a lot of effort into these things.

It shows you know that kind.

And you have to make good product if you don’t make good videos, stay away from YouTube.

Yeah, like if your plan is to like stand in front of a cell.

Phone and ramble on for 10 minutes.

That’s not how YouTube works at all.

You might get lucky and get a YouTube short that works once in a while.

But if you’re not, if you don’t have good lighting, good sound.

That’s number.

Sound is number one.

You don’t have that.

And you’re not willing to actually go to the mat to make watchable, viewable, entertaining or edutaining content.

Then stay away from YouTube ’cause it’s never going to work.

You don’t make good.

Videos on YouTube.

You’re you’re cooked?

From the gecko and good sound is easier to do today than it was to do.

Like five years ago.

I mean.

There’s a lot.

Easier, but still still not easy if you don’t have a good lav mic, yeah, or a good microphone then it’s not going to work you you can’t put sound into a cell phone and expect to get.

Oh I, I agree.

Away with it.

That’s that’s much better suited for a tik T.O.K or an Instagram than You Tube any day and.

We can, yeah.

So I I’d really like to share the actual things that I learned from Nate Woodbury.

It’s only.

Five of them sure go ahead, is it?

OK, if I do that, please do.

I mean, I don’t know if that’s like you have to tell me it’s your podcast.

What are people interested in?

This is just what I mean since this is how I started the channel and how it grew to the to the point and I’ll I’ll talk about where it is now based on a little less than a year ago.

Now I’d like you to share what you learned, what you did better, and then share the whole monetization strategy around the channel.

OK.

So let’s talk about where the channel is now versus a year ago.

So about 11 months ago we started the channel.

Both of the channels we gave up on the TV pros channel after six months ’cause he just wasn’t doing anything wasn’t keeping pace.

The first three to four months is basically very not very little.

Very little traffic, very little subscribers, very little of anything, even though the quality of the videos and as you do them you’re learning.

You’re learning, they’re getting better and better, but even over that three month.

Period, nothing is really happening OK.

What is happening is that Google, for whatever traffic you are getting, YouTube is paying attention. It’s paying attention to how, how much you know videos are being clicked on, how much they’re actually being watched out of a 10 minute video. If you get at least a 50% view rate, you’re doing really, really well, OK?

So right now, after like initially nothing, right now we’re growing at 16% watch time per month.

And that show that’s six, so 16% watch time means that this month versus last month we grew by 16%. Now we also noticed that month over month that number increases.

So the month before it might have been 15% the month before that, it might have been 14%. We’re noticing a steady increase.

In watch time OK?

Which is growth?

Which is growth, right? Right now we’re getting 11% more subscribers than we received the month before.

So 60% more watch time, 11% more subscribers and 3% more views. So you’ll always get more views than anything else.

But what you’re really after is the subscribers.

You’re really after subscribers, and you really want them to watch your videos, because if you can, you can nab a subscriber, and that’s not an easy thing to do.

Right, imagine how many how to do this?

How to do that?

Videos you’ve watched, where you’ve never liked the video and you’ve never subscribed.

It’s a very small audience.

Means many of them.

Exactly, it’s it’s not a lot of people.

So the goal, but that is the ultimate goal, right?

Get get somebody interested enough that they want to.

Come back for more.

So we’re growing subscribers at 11% per month, so after a year and in the beginning we were growing at .001% per month.

You get the idea like it it.

Kind of increases month over month.

Kind of like doubling a little bit, but not not quite that much.

So right now we’re just about to hit 1600 subscribers. We have 15192 and that was from zero eleven months ago.

Now I know most people are thinking wow, that’s not a lot and it’s not.

It isn’t really, except when you consider the fact that they’re all musicians, every single one of them are musicians.

These are people that are on the channel and they want what I know how to do.

And they want advice and tutorials and masterclasses on how to how to get to my level as a musician.

OK, they want to be recording artists.

They want a tour or they want to get paid gate for gigs.

They just want to get better. OK, so it’s a very very defined audience, so after a year 15192 I can tell you Rob.

I’m very happy with that.

Yeah, it’s a very niche down market too, it’s.

Just very niche. Yeah super niche OK but think about this 16% watched 11% subscribers month over month. That means that next month I’ll have 11%.

Right?

More that’s right minimum.

Could be 13%, right?

So that’s good.

So the algo that we started out with was basically this.

It’s essentially 5 things.

The first one is you have to post five videos a week if you want it to grow this quickly.

You’ve got to get content out there and you have to be willing to do 5 videos a week for at least a year.

Consistency matters in content production, and most people forget about it.

Exactly if you’re if you’re posting randomly.

Once a month, once every two months, it’s not going.

To work not at all, no.

So number one be consistent.

I would say minimum two per week.

If you can do it, but five is better so we just followed Nate Woodbury and we did 5.

Even though it was a lot of work, actually we were doing 10 Y because we had two channels.

So it was a lot of work right?

10 videos.

A week, yeah.

The second thing is that when you post those videos, if people watch them, those videos have to have certain things in them in order for people to watch more so.

You know, let me give you an example of what I mean. If if people don’t watch at least half of the video, YouTube says this is not a good video. So if you’re making a 10 minute.

Video so.

And they’re only watching like 30 seconds of it. Like I said earlier, that’s not good. YouTube goes while you’ve posted a video that no one likes.

We’re not going to promote that.

Why would we do that?

We can’t make revenue off of video that doesn’t work.

So what you have to do is you.

Have to learn.

What what are called content hooks?

And I talked about that a little bit.

Basically what that means is if I’m starting a video and I do something like this.

So today we’re going to learn.

How to make crepes with five ingredients.

OK, those ingredients are eggs, milk, water, salt.

OK, let’s start making our crepes, yeah?

Why is that bad?

Let’s start making.

Doesn’t really hook you into doing the dumb.

Watching further, you’ve given them the five.

Items inside modal.

Yeah, I didn’t, I gave.

Him the five things in the 1st 10 seconds.

It’s like OK now I know how to make crepes.

Why did I need?

So if you go on your videos and you say oh today, we’re going to talk about how to hack the Google search algorithm and you say, well, it’s really about titles.

To watch this.

URL description H1 tags blah blah blah and you go through all of that in like a minute and.

Then you start to show them how to do it.

They’re gone by the time you start to.

Show them how to do it, yeah?

So you basically say things like today we are going to learn how to make crepes with five ingredients that everyone has in their kitchen.

You can do it in 5 minutes or less. Stick around to the end of the video because I have one little trick to show you that’s going to make people go crazy over your crepes, and they’re absolutely, 100%.

Gluten free, how do we do it?

Stick around, yeah.

See the difference?

Big difference.

So I had to learn how.

To do that, because what that does is that increases watch time because people stick around for the answers.

The how to information right?

So the more how.

To it.

Is and the more you can get, the more you can hold them in their seats.

To wait for the best information which comes near the middle to the end of the video.

It’s the better watch time you’ll get.

And the interesting thing about the the YouTube algo is or the partner program that you can’t even start begin to make ad revenue until you have 4000 watch hours.

In a single.

12 month period.

So let’s say you start your YouTube channel and you don’t. You don’t get 4000 watch hours in a year. You can’t make money off that Channel.

And if if if You Tube not making money and you’re not making money, why, uh, why would YouTube continue to promote you?

They would.

So that’s really the goal, right?

Increase the amount of time people watch your videos.

Just as a an example of watch time.

Exactly sure.

Where that information is in one second.

So right now, in the last since March.

With that 8000, so in less than a year, we’ve had 8000 watch hours.

Wow, so we’ve done really well so and we have to keep that. If we lose 4th out if we go below 4000, we use our partner status and you have to have 1000 subscribers so we’ve reached that in and surpassed that, so that’s good.

OK, so that’s number 2 #3 is you have to have a good clickthrough rate. So if if somebody searches say for jazz versus Blues, which is our number one video right? What’s the difference between jazz and Blues?

I have a video that’s extremely popular if if they don’t click on my video each time it shows in search, I lose that what we call clickthrough rate.

It’s based on, well, how many times does it show up in search versus how many times people clicks your video versus other people.

So you have to have a high click through rate and the goal there is to make a thumbnail.

That is attractive and curious and gets people to click on it so the whole concept of marketing really plays into that.

That thumbnail.

Does that make?

Sense, yeah, it sure does.

Yep, clickthrough rates actually matter and people don’t understand that.

Yeah, so you have to.

A good thumbnail.

#4 is you need to.

Let me think here.

10 minutes.

Videos need to be 10 to 12 minutes.

Did I say that one?

Yes she did.

Yeah no.

No, I didn’t. I said you need 55 a week. Yeah they need to be 10 to 12 minutes on average, so that’s #4.

So why?

Why 10 to 12 minutes?

Some people think that’s a lot, and some people think that’s not nearly enough.

So for example, you’re doing podcasts.

We couldn’t get much accomplished in 10.

Minutes, would you?

Agree, I would agree in a in a podcasts T optimum is different, but I know like on a YouTube video if I have to watch a video that’s 50 minutes, I just say.

Really exactly, and that’s why pod posting podcasts and a lot of people do that.

They post podcasts on their YouTube channel and they wonder why their you Champ Channel is not growing and the answer is people aren’t watching at least half of it.

They’re skipping through it.

They’re getting bored.

They don’t like your story.

They don’t like this.

They don’t like that.

It’s not a how to video, right?

This what we’re doing right now is partly how to, but only in the context of this particular section, right?

We started off with the story and people go well, I don’t.

I don’t care what a jazzer

Has to say you get.

The idea I do, yes, sorry I.

Don’t mean to harm your channel or anything, but.

It’s OK.

So number #4 is average 10 to 12 minutes because it’s enough time for Google to place a couple of ads in your video to make more revenue.

OK, plus it increases the amount of watch time if you only have one minute videos, you’re never going to get there.

You have to have significant content in order for people to watch it in order to increase the watch hours.

And then finally.

The last one is never post anything randomly.

It’s like if.

You throw up a web page and you didn’t do any keyword research and you don’t know what that page should rank for.

It’s going to get.

Random results, so just like you do keyword research for.

YouTube you should be doing keyword for Google. You should be doing keyword research.

For YouTube, no question I’m.

Following the rules of title description, I mean and there’s a whole bunch of rules to follow.

I use bid IQ for that, so it’s a.

It’s a really good tool.

We started out with two buddy and we found that bid IQ is much more accurate and much better in terms of creative results.

So typically we’ll post a video based on search.

We within a few minutes of that video being posted.

We’re ranking one, two or three, so that’s really helping us with the.

Amount of views on that video, not necessarily watch time, but does this decimal?

It definitely helps with the.

Amount of views?

I really.

Yeah, that’s basically.

What I learned.

From Nate and you just kind of follow that.

I really don’t like the the.

We talk about, you know, preparing your posts or preparing your YouTube posts.

I really don’t like in marketing the approach where we just kind of throw up a dartboard and just take shots and where it lands it lands.

I think you really need to.

Prepare UM what you’re posting and why, and I think a lot of it’s consistency too.

Like you, we talked about you doing 5 videos a week.

That’s a lot of work, but it’s consistency, UM?

You know, in the podcast world we we a lot of us strive for three podcasts week, but it’s still consistency.

Same day, same time range, same.

So your viewers know on Friday at 12:00 o’clock Paul is going to drop a video.

And that is really important, I think.

It is unfortunately because of the amount of work that is and the schedule of myself and the video editor.

And sometimes, sometimes when he sends it back, I still have to edit it because he’s not a musician, he can’t hear everything that needs.

To be cut out.

So for example, if I play a phrase twice, the first time it has a mistake in it.

And the reason why I play it twice ’cause I want it to be perfect the second time around, he doesn’t know enough about that.

In order to cut out the 1st right, yeah.

So even when it comes back to me, I’m still spending time adding it before I can post it.

So, but because of all of that, we can’t really post consistently at the same time daily.

Initially we tried to meet the deadline of 2:00 o’clock every day, but we just found that that was impossible thing to do.

So now I’m posting sometimes on Saturdays because he didn’t get the video back to me until 6:30 on Friday evening, or we’re posting we have to wait till Tuesday.

I didn’t post a video yesterday ’cause you know he wasn’t.

He didn’t get.

The video to me in time so we didn’t and Nancy still has to do the whole.

Because Nancy does the whole bit IQ thing.

I just.

Don’t have time for that.

Yeah, yeah.

It’s a big process.

Interestingly enough, the go ahead.

It’s a bit of a process.

It’s oh God, it’s when I think about sometimes.

I get really.

Not depressed, I get anxious.

Because I know that I have to make a video and I don’t even have a subject or I don’t like they they’re giving me subjects all the time based on comments and things like that, and they’re telling me what they want.

But what they want is sometimes too top heavy in order for me to do that in a few hours.

There’s just too much work involved, so they.

I’ll say well, can you talk about how BG Adair plays?

You know these chord voicings in fly me to the moon and they’ll point me to the video and I’ll look at it and I’ll go.

Oh my God, it’s going to take me at least a couple of hours to lift that right.

I have to listen to everything she’s playing.

I have to discern the chord voicings.

I have to figure out the soloing, whatever.

And then I haven’t even started making the video yet.

You know, I’m just I’m just lifting the tune and putting in and and committing it to sheet music.

It’s interesting, let’s talk about the monetization strategy and you sort of alluded to it before Paul so.

Once you get the videos up there, how does YouTube monetize it and how do you monetize it?

So if you’re gonna get in and you’re gonna make a YouTube channel and I would suggest that anybody who runs a business.

Who wants to make?

Who wants to increase their audience?

This is your number one traffic source, so that’s the reason to do it right.

It’s it’s way more traffic, way more view time, way more personal time than anyone will ever get from your website.

It’s like podcasting, right?

If you if you do a podcast and they listen to that podcast that person.

Getting the impression that you’re well connected that you know your stuff, that you’re asking intelligent questions.

You know all of that stuff that you do.

That’s happening with You Tube, but not necessarily happening with your website so, but if you’re looking to increase the amount of view time and the number of people who view it’s it’s 10 times the amount that you’ll ever get on.

A website or I?

Maybe a little bit more effort initially, but it pays off in the long term, right?

So that’s the reason to do it.

So the revenue model is based on your attracting subscribers so they can watch free content in order to get to paid content or in order to get to consulting.

Right?

They can only learn so much in a 10 minute video, but they like you, they trust you, they’ve learned something from you.

They’ve applied your knowledge and now they want more.

That’s the whole model for making money on you.

If you’re going into YouTube thinking, you’re going to make money based on ad revenue, you better start thinking in the neighborhood of just to make a salary like a regular salary.

You’re going to have to have.

Uhm, let’s let’s round some numbers off here.

OK, so in a year I’ve made $133.

And that’s based on over 100,000 views, so 125,000 views.

And that’s not even his salary.

That salary 100 thirty $133 based on the amount of time it doesn’t even pay for half an hour of my time.

Based on what I make in my business, yeah, does that make sense and I’m spending hours and hours and hours week after week after week making content so it’s not based on that.

So let’s say you made, let’s say you did a million views.

That means.

You’re only increasing that number 10 times, that’s 1300.

Dollars a year.

And that’s a million views.

So if you have 10 million views, now you’re at.

Uh, $13,000 a year.

You get the idea. That’s 10 million views and you’re at $13,000 a year.

Yeah I do.

So forget it.

You know what I mean?

Like that’s not.

You’re never going to make a living unless you’re very, very popular and you find a niche that gets 10s of millions of views.

Are you ever going to make enough money to sustain any reasonable lifestyle?

Because You Tube?

You know how you go to a video and it plays and.

You go skip here.

Yep, there’s no money in that for you.

So any videos that are skipped?

Are not paid out, so there’s two algorithms for paying out on ad revenue.

One, they have to watch the entire video.

OK, so and a lot of those videos are like 30 seconds long. Who’s going to sit through a 32nd video when you just ask a question about how do I get my website back?

Online yeah, who’s going to sit through a 32nd video right there? A 30 second ad nobody is going to do that, right?

So you don’t get paid for that.

If they skip through it and the second the second ad revenue.

Is so the first one is they watch the whole thing.

The second one is that they click on the ad.

Right?

Yeah, that’s how.

You get paid, it’s always.

Yeah click on eBay.

So that’s a fraction.

Right, that’s a fraction you’re you’re getting paid a fraction of the amount of view time that people are on your channel, OK?

So it’s not a good business model.

So the real good business model is to use YouTube to draw traffic to the other things you’re doing.

It’s a it’s a better traffic generator than Google.

Much better.

I’ve never seen anything like it actually.

Well, I can look at my channel so the amount of watch hours.

On my channel over the last year.

Is about four.

The YouTube channel is 8000 wow.

That’s like dramatic, yeah?

Think about that.

And then the the actual visitors to my website.

And you know, people can get to your website all kinds of ways.

Uh my business website.

Is about.

800 to 1000 a month it used to be a lot more, but again it’s gotten a lot more competitive, so it’s about 1000 a month. That’s 12,000 the YouTube channel new YouTube channels 125,000.

So it’s a much better traffic generator.

If you’re willing to do.

The work yeah and Nikki is in any marketing.

Whether it’s growing a YouTube trend or anything else is actually to do that work because a lot of people.

They like to take shortcuts and they don’t like to put the effort in.

Yeah, I mean you you can’t.

I I would say I just give you a five part formula.

If you skip one of those, you’re you’re, you’re cooked.

Yeah, if you say well, I can’t make 10 minute videos you shouldn’t be using YouTube.

Because, let’s say, let’s say you want to generate a lot of traffic and you get into the whole concept of YouTube shorts, I don’t know.

If you know what a shortage but saving less.

I do.

I was gonna go.

I mean.

There you’re you’re ahead of me.

Yeah, you don’t. You know there’s no ad revenue for those, plus it doesn’t count towards watch hours. So if you think you’re going to build subscribers and watch hours based on 32nd videos, that’s not going to happen.

So, and we know that it’s a great traffic generator, like my YouTube shorts get 506 hundred views, but they only last a day.

And then they’re done.

Because that’s how shorts work, shorts don’t show up when you do search, they show up when you.

They’re basically like suggested videos.

OK, on your cell phone and by the way, that’s an interesting part. Fit for us. 54% of our traffic is mobile.

That’s interesting, so when we’re talking mobile, we’re talking a cell phone or a tablet, right?

I would, I would say that’s not.

No, that doesn’t include tablets.

Yeah, I would say that’s not outta range though, especially with the younger generation.

I kind of look at people like my son like your son.

I bet they.

And they’re both in the same age range.

I bet they consume a lot of content on their phone.

So that really doesn’t surprise me.

Yeah, it’s not it it.

Wasn’t surprising for us either, except that it’s really hard to get a piano lesson looking at a.

Cell phone yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like we’re talking?

About very specific.

Voicing strategies and soloing strategies and we’re getting very technical and you have to be able to see the music and you have to be able to see the keyboard like how?

Do you learn if you can’t see those things?

No, I agree.

So anyway.

Hopefully at some point when they become a subscriber, they’re switching to computer because it’s much easier to see that way, so.

Anyway, so in terms of revenue, here’s our current model.

We’re still toying around with it a bit.

The first model we had was let’s build a list, because that’s really.

I’ve always been a big proponent.

Of building a mailing list because if you have a mailing list and of course we’re using Groundhog, you know, big surprise, no none.

Right?

I I’m a proponent of building.

A list I’ve a list of 8000 people.

So I yeah, that’s.

It’s fantastic.

I mean, that’s that’s really good because you know why?

Build a mailing list ’cause the answer is if you have something to promote, go to the list first.

Right, you’ve got an event, or you’ve got a special promotion or you want to give him a deal you want to do Black Friday.

Best place to do it is people who are already subscribed.

So build a mailing list so the first model we had was get them to the website jazz mental com.

And give them something for free.

So what I’ll do is I’ll talk about the sheet music and I’ll show them the music that I’ve lifted in the video just to give one example.

Like I lifted this solo from so and so.

Oscar Peterson.

Go to the channel.

It’s absolutely free.

All you need to do is give an email address and it’s yours.

So I give them the link in the video.

In the beginning I couldn’t give them the link in the video because Google doesn’t or sorry YouTube doesn’t allow you to put links in videos you can link to other videos, but you can’t put a link to your website unless you’re a partner.

Then doing that.

Right, so in the beginning I could only put it in the description below.

So I’d say hey below this video in the description is a link to.

The sheet music go.

Click it now I can just put the link right in the video, ’cause I’m a partner now, right? ’cause I’ve had you know, 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours.

Yeah, so the the plan is get him to the website, give him a piece of sheet music, whatever. Give an email address, build the mailing list. I’ve built it up to 600, which is actually pretty good. That’s like half half of the.

Or not, not quite half of the number of subscribers that I have on YouTube, but I can always get more and I know how that works.

The other model is I have.

The free music and then I have paid music.

That’s the stuff that I’ve really worked hard at or it’s original or whatever.

It’s copyrighted.

And I I charge them for it, anywhere from $5.95 up to $20 base depending on what it is. And I do get people buying that.

Good so right now the plan is and we’ve talked about this a lot because we know what people respond to.

So the plan right now is to go.

To what we?

Call monthly subscription, not membership.

Membership is a very different thing.

I’ve run membership sites before and they’re very hard to maintain and people pay for them and they don’t use them.

So in this particular case, we’re thinking subscription model, where you’ve got good, better best where the better is.

They’re paying a monthly fee, say 9 bucks, and they can download up to five things a month.

Plus get a master class that makes sense.

Yep, and the key is up to five things a month so you don’t get somebody joining.

They download your whole library in one month and then they cancel.

Exactly, so you have to have something that limits the amount of downloads like easy digital downloads, and I think even woo commerce will do that.

And we’re kind of researching the best tool for that right now, because right now we’re just selling 1 offs and it’s working.

And the other thing is is in the good, better best model.

The best one will be.

You have to think about something that’s at least $29.00 a month, right? What would people be willing to do for 29 bucks?

Yeah, what would they want to pick?

What would they pay that money for?

And the.

Answer is probably access.

So you kind of have to limit your access that you give away because they feel that if they can get access without paying, they won’t pay.

That’s right.

Right, so it’s really about personalized access, and so the goal would be in that to run a very private master class with, you know, maybe 20 people or whatever it is.

And give them more than they would get in the in the good plan, which is going to be the most popular, the the the sorry, the better plan.

The good plan would be you know 5 bucks a month.

Or two pieces of sheet music or something like that, right?

We haven’t really figured out the numbers on that, so, so that’s the plan.

The other thing that I realized in all of this is that I’ve learned how to make really good quality videos from a performance standpoint, so I got some really good recording mikes I use, uh?

A an actual grand piano.

Which is a A a German handmade grand piano.

Oh wow.

And and it’s built by the Evoque family which actually taught Steinway how to make pianos.

So it’s it’s a, you know, very reputable company.

They only made 100 pianos inner it’s it’s very valuable. We just had it appraised the other day. I won’t even tell you what it costs.

And it’s got ivory keys, so it’s a really good instrument and I keep it well tuned ’cause I know how to tune pianos.

I I just learned that in my life ’cause it just got so expensive to get a piano.

Tuner in every month it.

It doesn’t.

It doesn’t work right so.

Uhm, so I make really good quality recordings with a couple of different cameras.

Side view.

Top view whatever and I started posting them in the jazz pianist group on Facebook and what I realized is the average sort of reaction rate and everybody knows what reactions are.

But not just reactions, but the comments and the shares.

The shares is one of the most important things, because if they’re sharing it with their audience, they think it’s good.

You know what I mean?

And so I started posting them a few months ago and I realized that while most people are getting maybe 10 reactions.

If that and maybe one comment or any comments or and no shares, and I’m getting 600.

With like 90 comments and 15 shares or 20 shares, I’m doing well.

You know what?

I mean, so I posted like five or six of those, and then every single one of them was like minimum 200.

You are.

Some of them are six. You know, some of them were 500. Whatever. I posted one a couple days ago, it’s at 400.

I went to the.

I actually went to the uh.

The channel admin, the guy who started the channel is named Michael Beck.

And I said, hey, you know, my name is Paul to be I just reached.

Out ID and and.

I reached out to him and I said.

You know, Michael, I think people on this channel could really benefit from a weekly podcast where we’re giving them a lesson and we’re interviewing some professionals or whatever.

And I have the connections to be able to do those things.

Would it be OK if I started up a weekly podcast?

And I really expected him.

First of all, not to answer that, ’cause it’s a very.

Big group, it’s like.

Yeah, 45,000 members or whatever it is like, I can take a look and see anyway so you know it’s.

Like I don’t.

I don’t know.

My son calls it seal clubbing.

You want seal clubbing is?

No, I don’t.

I haven’t heard that truth.

It’s it’s a term that gamers use when they go on somebody elses gaming group and they just basically take over like there’s nothing that equipment they’re like.

You know they can win games or whatever, like nobody’s business, and they just start posting everybody goes Oh my God, you’re amazing. It’s called seal clubbing. You’re just basically like taking over, right?

So my son calls it sealclubbing.

Jazz pianist and I started just posting videos I didn’t even know what the term was. It has 49,000 members.

And I and So what I did is I just took a shortcut, right? It’s like if I had to build 49,000 members on my own channel, that’s an impossible task. You get the idea, like.

It’s obviously this has been a group.

It sure yeah, managing a big group if I had do it on my own, that’s impossible, no question.

Yeah, yes he has moderators the whole 9 yards has group admins, group experts, blah blah blah.

You get the idea right and I just went.

Just as some guy that started posting those videos a few months ago and I just went to him and I said, hey listen, I think people could benefit from a weekly podcast.

What do you think?

And he goes go ahead.

I mean, obviously he he watched the videos I I didn’t give him links.

I said I I posted a few videos here.

Maybe you’ve seen them.

Maybe you haven’t.

Would it be OK if I you know reached out to the group and see if they would be OK with a weekly podcast?

So then rather than just go and do it, I actually put a post on and I said, OK, I’d like to start a weekly podcast.

Oh, but only.

If you think that’s a good idea.

It’s like you know who am I like.

I don’t know anything right.

What do I know about this group I?

It’s like if if you want it.

I’m willing to do it and I’ll get guests on.

It’ll be at the same time every week.

We don’t know when that’s going to be, you know, what do you think?

And I posted one of my one of my recent recordings and I said the first podcast is going to be on this recording.

Tell me what it is you like and don’t like about it and what you’d like to actually learn from this.

Because that would give me the content for the first podcast, right?

You tell me what you want.

You tell me what level you’re at, and I’ll.

I’ll help you.

I like that idea.

It’s a good idea.

And the post got like I don’t know my my son looked at it this morning.

We had breakfast once a week every week at.

At the same restaurant or we actually would change the restaurant last week, but it doesn’t matter.

My son and I get together once a week for breakfast and I showed it to him and he says, Oh my God, this this thing went a little viral and I’m like.

Yeah, all I did was I reached out to them and I said what do you want?

You know if we were to do a weekly podcast, first of all, do you think that’s a good idea?

And second of all?

Do you think you know what do you actually want to learn?

And I got lots of feedback.

And so in conjunction.

And it’s a little bit tricky here too, because now I’m not only a seal clubber, but I’m like, literally like running the only podcast the group has ever known, and I’ve been sanctioned to do that.

I have to kind of stay away from marketing.

You get the idea, so it’s going to be a little bit tricky.

It’s like how do I piggyback on this 50,000 person audience without looking like I’m trying to make money from it? Get the idea?

I do yes, so so that’s I’ve got those two things going on.

It’s really I can tell you it’s really fun and I know it sounds like.

You know, I’m I’m talking a lot about it, but that’s because I’m interested in it.

It’s like I’m getting back into music.

I’m building an audience.

People actually like the music they like to learn from me.

It’s it’s showing really good signs of life.

My goal is my ultimate goal is 20 grand a month.

Passive income, right?

Well, it’s not really passive ’cause I’m still working at it, but if I can get to 20 grand a month, I’ll be super super happy.

That would be really.

Right?

Right, right now we’re like right now we’re like 200.

So it’s but but again, you know, the audience really didn’t start to grow until a few months ago.

Right now it’s just kind of the YouTube algo is kicked in.

It’s starting to increase month over month, month over month, numbers of subscribers, whatever.

Now I’ve got the the Jazz pianist group that I’m going to start up really soon ’cause I’ve just been gathering information.

I think it’ll work.

I really do.

It’s a really cool idea, and when is the podcast starting Poe?

Probably, and so when I moved into the house in Niagara-on-the-lake.

The reason one of the reasons why we?

Well two reasons we bought it.

One it has this beautiful like sliding giant picture windows in the back like I don’t have a back wall.

It’s all windows looking out, looking, looking out onto a forest, and a bunch of deer that come every.

I can pictures.

Day, like, literally like every day.

So this is just a beautiful you know backdrop to the to my life.

So that was the first reason.

The second reason is it had a nanny suite on the main floor.

And we don’t need that.

So we decided to turn it into a music studio.

So we’re building it right now so I have to I’m.

I’m thinking about lighting and sound and building everything into the walls and I just got the floors in yesterday and then the piano is going in there.

I don’t think I can wait ’cause it kind of got a strike while the iron is hot, so I think I have to start the podcast while it’s still in the other room.

In in the in the living room where the dining room’s gonna go.

But uh, so I have to.

I kind of have to weigh the pros and cons of when to start based on that, but I think I have to start before so it’s.

Probably going to be not next week, but the week after so I’m going to ask one more question in the group.

Just to kind of gather a bit more information, and then I’ll probably launch the week after.

Next I take it you’re going to do this as a video.

Podcast you’re going to do audio only.

Yeah no it has to be video right?

’cause it’s it’s a master class.

You know I don’t know if you know what a master classes.

I do.

OK, so for music it’s it’s very different because you you know you’re showing people specific.

Voicing soloing techniques.

You know you’re basically relating everything to the piano.

Or to sheet music.

So it has to be video.

You can’t just, you can’t do what we’re doing here because you’d need.

You need a visual representation of what that actually is. Yeah, you can’t just say to people, so here’s how to play a C7 sharp 9 chord and you don’t show them which fingers go where on the piano like it, just it wouldn’t work.

Yeah they need to.

They need to visually see it, but we all know when you go live that adds a whole new set of complications and.

Yeah, especially sound because zoom.

Or Facebook, those things were not designed for live podcasts for music, so the sound from vocal audio is not that hard to do.

As soon as you add an acoustic instrument like a grand piano, that adds an extreme level of complexity that I have worked on.

For the last two years.

Literally worked on that, so I run.

If you wanna know how I do it, I do briefly.

Right?

I have to have first of all you have to start off with really good recording mikes so I use Rd recording mikes maps to that Rd.

Roadruck farting mikes are awesome yeah?

I run them through a USB audio interface.

It converts that to digital signal, which then goes into a.

A program called a Reaper, which is a digital audio workstation.

From there I send the sound into OBS studio, which then grabs that sound, adds video to it.

And you have to have an overhead Cam front view Cam so people can see me.

So that was a little bit to work out.

And then I have to get that into the streaming channel depending on what type of software they’re using.

So you’re, you’re basically casting the obce signal to zoom, or to stream yard or whatever, and each one of them has their own sort of audio settings.

The biggest challenge in that is that the actual live.

Sound is a half a second delay.

So I cannot be listening to myself playing.

While listening to the channel.

So that’s the biggest challenge with the whole thing.

It’s impossible to listen to the live signal and play at the same time because it’s I’m playing a note or a series of notes, and those notes aren’t being heard until half a second later, so I can’t listen.

To the stream because of delays, yeah.

And that that just causes a whole level of complexity.

So what I have to do is I have to play.

OK.

Any backing tracks or any click tracks or anything from a from a separate computer?

Put them through the original headset pre pre workstation.

Right, so I have to grab a signal from the audio interface before it gets processed.

Yeah, yeah.

And each one of them, Reaper and Obes, both add delay.

To the sound.

So it was.

It was quite complicated.

Yeah it is.

It is audio production, especially with live.

Music is always an issue.

I mean, I’ve listened to over the years some of the best audio guys and they say it’s always a concern, always an issue and it’s hard to get it right.

It really is.

Played at Christmas concert.

Not this past year, but the year before it was my first live.

Concert and it was very well attended. We had like 300 people.

The the sound was suspect big time, like I wasn’t even like I.

I told people I’d give them the recording I I wouldn’t release.

The recording was so bad it was just and people didn’t complain, they just thought it was awesome, but.

OK.

I couldn’t listen to it, so I’m not posting anything I’m not proud of.

So then over the next several months leading up to the Christmas concert this past year, Christmas of 2021.

I had really worked on that a lot, and then when I played this Christmas concert, the feedback was was extraordinary.

Just people just thought it was amazing.

So I’ve kind of figured out.

That whole audio thing, which again just I was not prepared for that, so it’s very different than recording recording is in real time and everything but but podcasting or live streaming that hold delay process and the actual way that you know audio is processed.

It still doesn’t sound great through zoom, but it’s much better than what most.

People would do.

I hope that works out really well for you.

It sounds like a a great venture for the community, so they’re kind of wrap up.

Paul, what would be the number one tip you would give somebody if they wanted to start the YouTube channel today?

Make great video content?

Yep, not good.

Make great content.

I love that.

You’re not going to make great content.

You’re going to put out stuff that you’re not proud of.

Then don’t do it, because if you try to build a channel based on average content, nobody is going to watch it.

It’s so true and.

And the second thing I would probably add to that is once you start making great content, make consistent content.

To me, consistency and content creation is kind of everything.

Yeah, I, I think I would agree with that, definitely.

Yeah, thanks for joining.

You got it.

You got it.

Don’t don’t give.

Up, yeah, that that’s true too.

I mean, if we all gave up, you and I would be nowhere doing any of this stuff at this point in time.

I’d probably be dead.

Me too.

I’d be with you.

Thanks for joining me today, Paul.

If anybody wants to reach out to you, how is the best way these days?

I’ll just go to.

YouTube and search for Paul Tobey. You can also search for Jazzmentl Channel either on Google or on YouTube.

And https://trainingbusinesspros.com/

Thanks Paul.

Have an amazing day.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

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