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⏰ Timecodes ⏰
0:00 How to Get 4000 Hours of Watch Time
2:13 Tip One
8:00 Tip Two
16:29 Tip Three
25:43 Tip Four
33:29 Tip Five
41:27 Best Software for Creating Good Thumbnails (Free and Paid)
44:16 Should You Use YouTube Shorts to Grow?
48:20 Can I Make a Bilingual Channel? Should it Be Two Channels?
55:04 Is it Ok to Copy the Competition?
1:00:39 How to Stay Motivated When Growing Your YouTube Channel
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About:
In this video, Rob Wilson from vidIQ share practical tips on how to 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time on YouTube.
Disclaimer: Please see the link for our disclaimer policy for all of our videos on the Think Media and Think Marketing YouTube channels. https://www.seancannell.com/youtube-disclaimer
=================== text video ====================
one of the biggest opportunities
on youtube is the fact that you can
monetize
your content through the adsense program
of course to do that
you’ve got to get your first 1000
subscribers and your first 4
000 hours of watch time which is of
course
easier said than done so stick with me
because
in this deep dive training i have rob
wilson from vidiq who’s going to be
sharing five strategies a bunch of case
studies and nuances
for actually how to get your first 4
000 hours of watch time and so i’m super
fired up smash
like if you’re ready for today and i’m
gonna welcome rob
to the stream rob how’s it going hello
everybody it’s sean first of all thank
you
very very much for inviting me on to the
think
media stage i mean we’re all uh
sort of youtube educators and there are
a few people i look up to
in this industry but you are certainly
one of them not only your inspiration to
all of your community
uh but myself and many others included
so i just want to say what a wonderful
job you do for his ireland yeah hello
everybody hello
i’m gonna call you all think media
rights i don’t know if that’s the
official title of the community but
i thought it had quite a nice ring to it
we’re coming in like a meteorite
about to crash down with some serious
strategies
but uh i’m fired up i’m going to hand it
over to you you’ve got uh five
points and throughout it we’ll also take
some questions and so uh let’s dive in
take it away
yeah absolutely so hello everybody um
what i want to talk to you today about
are
many of the i guess concepts and
strategies
that can be used by all creators but i
think these are really key
as you’re starting your youtube journey
and you’re thinking about that first
real important goal which is you know
when you start your channel
you want to start earning some revenue
and returning your your investment and
let’s be honest about this 1 000
subscribers and 4 000 hours of watch
time
is a a lofty target for a lot of
creators
and just thinking about that goal can be
pretty daunting
and that can almost sometimes lead to uh
creative paralysis so the first thing i
want to encourage everybody to do
and this is somewhat of a a personal
opinion here and uh
i’m more than welcome to sort of discuss
this in the chat and we’ve shown in a
few minutes but i personally think that
when you start your youtube journey
and you just want to get stuck in there
and start to make content
i think that there’s a certain element
of quantity
leading to quality and sean if you can
just bring up my i
slide down i’m gonna describe this in
somewhat of a unique fashion because i’m
gonna do this
by the medium of juggling
now let me just explain about 15 years
ago
i decided i wanted to juggle and
i knew that when i was going to learn
how to juggle that
no matter how many books i read and how
many videos i watched
when i first threw those balls up in the
air i was going to drop them
and i was going to drop them many many
times and that went
on and on because juggling has a really
steep learning curve
your hands your eyes your brain you just
can’t figure it out all at once and it
takes time for that coordination to come
together
and i think it must have taken about
three or four hours of
total frustration getting nowhere and
then all of a sudden
it started to click and i was able to
catch the balls more often
and i was be more successful with it to
the point now where
i can not juggle for months
but because i have that innate muscle
memory it comes back to me and i can i
can do it very easily
and i say you know
in a metaphorical sense when it comes to
youtube
you’ve just got to start throwing the
balls up in the air and and get practice
and
sean whenever i watch one of your think
media videos you know that two-second
intro
that you that’s mentioned is you’ve just
gotta press
record and so when i think about the
whole
youtube process there are many things
that you just
gotta do when you first jump into your
youtube journey
i think that includes you just gotta
make mistakes and lots of them you will
find out in their very
first video that
if you’re miles away from your
microphone it sounds
awful so remember on the second video
to place a microphone as close to your
voice you know that’s one mistake that
you’re gonna learn
and pick up on very quickly learn the
process
it’s not just about pressing record
you’ve got to learn how to
plan content think up of ideas you’ve
got to
learn how to record five hours worth of
worth of footage and then edit out 50
of it because it was total rubbish
you’ve also
got to think about how when you make
content and the more content you make
you give youtu youtube lots and lots of
data
and then you can start to make data
driven decisions because ultimately
what youtube’s data actually is as a
manifestation
of your audience and how they are
reacting to your content
and the more you do this the more
repetition of content creation
the more muscle memory you learn so that
when you think about how to set up your
recording studio on how you’re editing
something
it comes to you instinctively and you’re
more efficient and you’re quicker
and you’re better at making all of all
of this content
and so that’s why i believe today’s
quantity leads to tomorrow’s
quality and i think also a lot of
creators
are always worried about if they make a
mistake on
on their channel that youtube’s going to
punish them and i’m here to tell you
that your youtube channel is not
made of glass if you make one mistake
it’s not going to shatter
into a million pieces all over the floor
and you have to start
all over again i mean sean i know um i
think
right now you’re doing a challenge of
getting to 1 000 subscribers and
you’re encouraging people to make a you
know as many videos as possible in that
30-day period
as opposed to just making that one
perfect video which
you don’t know whether or not it’s going
to work with your audience
100 and i love this tip because i think
what can happen is we can fall into the
comparison trap
and we are watching so much youtube
content in fact
shout me out think media in the comments
like who are some of the creators you
watch
and let me know if you ever fall into
that trap of comparison like oh
they’re just like a better communicator
they’re such a great editor they have a
better camera
and wow how did they get so good on
camera but what ends up happening is
when my friend john says
we compare our beginning to other
people’s middle
absolutely and they’ve clocked rob like
they might have clocked on a thousand
hours 5 000 hours
10 000 hours of mess-ups mistakes
you know practicing sometimes the
channel they’ve started today
is their third youtube channel you know
absolutely and
and we’re yeah we’re comparing thinking
the fact we’ve only been doing this for
like 100 hours
uh or not even that we’re literally just
starting that we should be getting the
same results and so you’re absolutely
right that quantity and that repetition
is super powerful especially
um just getting to that first 1 000
subscribers and 4
000 watch hours absolutely and
so i i think this is that that’s almost
like a general recommendation wherever
you are but it’s
so crucial when you’re wanting to start
to
meet those first milestones as you’re
working to a thousand subscribers and
four thousand hours
uh let’s move into a little more of a
strategic
mindset now as opposed to uh you know
work ethic
and that sort of thing identifying
opportunities
uh can sometimes be the biggest struggle
for
a uh creator because they’re just not
sure what type of content
to create and again i want to give you a
a bit of a theoretical case study here
but i
was blown away by the results i found
after just a few minutes of research
i’ve got back into building lego uh i am
of a particular age now
uh where maybe um lego wasn’t part of my
life but
now with a disposable income uh and uh
lots of time on my hands uh i can now
start to build
uh some really interesting pieces of
lego uh whenever i go on vacation
i buy a big lego set and i build it so i
built the millennium falcon
and there’s also the avengers
helicarrier here
and then this last one which i built a
couple of weeks ago
was the space shuttle discovery and the
hubble
telescope and this has some sentimental
value to me because i was actually at
cape canaveral when i saw that shuttle
launch
i think back it was back in 1990 um
and i just loved building that it
brought back some memories and so
i love building lego and you know if i
was
a lego builder and i wanted to create a
youtube channel
i mean obviously when you’re starting to
do your research you will find that lego
is already a huge topic
on youtube and so we have channels here
of
hundreds of thousands of subscribers
building
huge sets and you know how are you going
to compete
with these creators well hopefully if
you’re passionate about
building lego you’ll start to
learn so many things about the lego
universe
and just as i was doing a bit of
research yesterday i came across
this fascinating app called brickit
and what this apparently does is through
ai you can just scan a collection of
lego bricks
and then it will suggest something for
you to create you know from your spare
bits and pieces i thought it was really
fascinating i know i want to know more
about this and obviously
if you want to know more about something
where do you naturally go
and that is to youtube so i did a search
for
brickit the app and the results here
were absolutely astonishing
we have lots of vid iq tools here and
we’re seeing the keyword score down in
the bottom right hand corner which is
showing us the search volume which is
average but competition is low
and that is really shown in the results
because one of the telltale signs of
where there is
incredible search opportunity is when
first of all there are small channels
ranking at this top of the search terms
as we can see here
you know a channel at the very top of
the search terms here
with 760 subscribers as a video
with 25 000 views and it was published
only three weeks ago that to me suggests
there is an
incredible opportunity in this niche
of talking about an app that’s going to
help you build lego
and if i wanted to do some further i
guess research on this to try and
understand the
the language you know or the the common
tongue
of the briquette app then again through
vid iq we have the enable inline
keywords tool you turn it on and then
bang
pretty much all of the keyword research
here has been done for you
through video tags i could click on one
of these go into the keyword research
and not only do you have all of the
words
that people are using within this
keyword topic
but you’ve also got the language that
you may want to use now
i just want to add as well that there is
a lot of talk here about how valuable
video tags
are these days and youtube is telling us
that they’re
they’re not very important and i would
personally
agree with that to a certain extent but
what i will say
is that just to have all of these
different keywords and phrases
can be so crucial in building the
foundations of your
content be it the language that you use
in your videos you know how you the
words that you speak
in the titles in the descriptions in the
thumbnails even the text
in the videos because we’re seeing
youtube use more and more technology
to help viewers find the right content
and i don’t know if you’ve heard about
this sean recently there is a new tool
that’s just been released by
youtube called automatic chapters
whereby
it will automatically try and segment
different parts of a youtube video based
on its content
so you know that youtube is using lots
of ai
all over the place to help viewers find
content and so
you as a creator should really
understand you know your keyword
universe
yeah i i have heard about that and to me
rob what that shows is the importance of
structure
the importance of starting with the end
in mind
we always say research before you press
record and that’s why we love vid iq
because the creator who understands the
viewer best
wins understands the language they’re
using what they’re looking for
and especially if like for example
maybe understanding the questions people
are asking about briquette
the different angles and things they
want to learn you might structure a
video
that has you know five tips in it and
then the time stamps the chapters to
your point
are clearly understood because of
understanding the tags understanding the
topics understanding
what it is people want to learn about
that including that in your content
and then the result on the other side is
the growth
is the views is viewer satisfaction
which youtube
has told us that’s what that they’re
looking for the signal viewer
satisfaction being
average view duration people people’s
attention hanging on the video
so i actually love tags the way they’re
happening in our culture and even among
some of our peers
some people are throwing the baby out
with the bathwater and i know we’re on
the same page
their people go to extremes and of
course it’s like just tags alone are not
going to be the magic
code to rank a bad video however some
people are annoying them so much there’s
massive opportunity for the think media
community to lean in to the smart way of
using tags so i get excited
about of course topic research
and i still think they’re a big deal
because they provide
insights that will influence your
content
i think if if you do you the the keyword
research right
it should be a case of literally i’ve
got all of these keywords in a list or
or somewhere i’m going to just copy them
and then place them in my video tags and
then
you know remove the ones i don’t need
add the ones i need and it
holistically it should be like a two or
three minute job
uh as part of your upload process
uh and i i wanted to investigate this
channel a little bit further the the one
that was ranking
number one for the briquette app and uh
if we look here you know
their value proposition or one of their
value propositions is they’re an adult
fan of lego
brilliant uh this video has 26 000 views
you know i’d be thinking right now for
this creator i need to make a series
about this this app because
you know coming into the the the holiday
season
and you know people are going to be
buying and buying lego and all sorts of
things
if this app explodes imagine if you had
a series of videos five to ten videos
and when people search on youtube
you just dominate the search terms and
you that could become your own
you know lego niche so to speak in in
terms of
uh where you are the um the ambassador
the authority
uh on youtube for lego
so that would be an example of
identifying opportunities
within uh your video topic
next i want you all to play a little
game here
uh and this is going to help us research
the
competition so i’m going to show you
two thumbnails and i just want you to
very quickly tell me in the chat do you
prefer the
left thumbnail or the right thumbnail so
is everybody
ready okay here are the two thumbnails
and that’s it that’s all you get that’s
the amount of time the potential viewer
is going to pay attention to a thumbnail
so with that the thumbnail needs to
pack a big punch you don’t almost need
to reach out and slap you in the face
and tell you hey this is this is the
general idea of this thumbnail
are you going to click on it now fingers
crossed
i hope that most of you said the left
thumbnail
because that’s one of my thumbnails and
the one on the right is just one that i
picked up
from youtube that was published very
recently and
hopefully there are maybe
subconscious reasons why you picked that
and
what i want to try and encourage you to
start doing is asking the question
why did i pick this thumbnail
over that thumbnail because when you
start to answer
the questions of why you can convert
those
answers into your own content
i just want to give you another example
of this um here’s
a uh search for 1 000 subscribers
and uh hey sean it looks like you think
media is doing very well in this space
and they
are dominating it so to speak and so my
question would be
here is if i was going to do a video
about 1000 subscribers
research the competition and try to
understand why why
uh are all of these thumbnails using the
word 1000
i think it’s because it’s to try and
identify the tiger audience
as quickly as possible why are all of
the videos
10 minutes or more because i think
viewers want to
you know get into the meat of the
content why is one thumbnail red
rather than blue maybe it’s because it
stands out why is there a face on all of
these thumbnails
so all of these questions you should be
asking
as i guess a viewer trying to convert
those ideas into
content creation and so
with this information this is something
that you can do with another
really cool uh vid iq tool let’s say
i’ve just made a video about 1 000
subscribers you know how to get it
and this particular video is about how
to get a thousand subscribers with a
single video
in a single week i don’t know how this
is going to look
on youtube right now because it’s not
been published
and i don’t know how that title and this
thumbnail is gonna compare
versus my competition but one of the
tools that we have here at vidiq is
called the
thumbnail preview tool which is on the
right hand side here
on the video editor page so
let’s say i want to rank for how to get
1000 subscribers
i’m going to click this button and what
it’s going to do
even though the video hasn’t yet been
published is insert
my thumbnail and title into the search
results and say hey this is how your
video
would compare against the competition so
i don’t know sean if you want to
um run the risk of comparing comparing
one of your thumbnails against mine but
you know does mine stand out do you
think it has has potential i i think it
looks
doesn’t look too bad but you know you’re
the viewer what’s your opinion
well i think there’s some really smart
things happening here i think um
different is better than better so using
this vid iq tool
you know matt’s videos number one it’s
red
predominantly and then i’m rank three
here and it’s blue
and so also your green pops because at
least it’s distinct and all
all three thumbnails are really quite
good because they just come through with
a solid
punch of of color it’d be interesting to
talk because there’s so much psychology
and science around
color and what uh it might draw
different people’s eyes and even
different genders and perspectives
um but uh your your energy
is is greater than our energy and um
i i i mean i think all three are are
pretty good
um amazing it’s an incredible thumbnail
and i love this vid iq tool because
seeing researching the competition
what’s ranking
and then throwing your thumbnail up
there you might go okay cool maybe the
thumbnail is good
but you could change the hue um of the
the green and that green could become
yellow or that green code become blue
and maybe you’re going to make some
tweaks to your thumbnail because you’re
like i really want to pop out and be
different on that feed um
compared to all the other thumbnails so
i don’t just get lost in the sea of
sameness
you’re exactly right i think when i use
this tool before
um when i was making this video i think
i had a red background and i just
thought
it’s maybe a little too samey uh let’s
let’s try something radical and new and
i did that and uh
yeah i think in the end i think this
video did about a hundred thousand views
not quite a one million you have there
congratulations on another
uh mega star video but you know i think
this video
did okay and this tool just allows you
to get that
you know step ahead to to try and
evaluate your contents before it’s
published and
there are multiple ways you can use this
tool you can even use it to compare
how the video would look on the home
page i mean this would be against a
a random collection of videos and now i
think oh look i’m comparing against this
live stream right now sean
oh wow wow that’s pretty cool but i i
think it does a
a fairly decent job so researching the
competition
and then uh applying what you’ve made
versus your competition
can be really really powerful
super powerful so we’re going through
five tips if you’re just joining smash
the like button
and super grateful to be partnering with
rob at vidiq today
um if you haven’t gotten uh vid iq
installed yet
you i mean if you don’t have the free
version installed on on your computer
like what are you even thinking
like it’s a tool that of course we’ve
been using for almost a decade now
um and you can check everything out at
vidiq.com forward slash think and links
in the description down below but if you
also want to grab a trial
of one of the paid plans you can use
that link
on screen right now and some of these
more powered up features can really make
a big difference
especially in getting an edge over the
competition
researching the competition identifying
opportunities and so check out vidiq.com
forward slash
think the uh recap of the tips
so far because we got five tips number
one
quantity leads to quality and so
just be posting videos done is better
than perfect right punch fear in the
face and start your first videos are
going to be your worst videos
but over time doing the reps you build
up those
skills the second tip was identify
opportunities and the third tip was
research the competition
specifically look at the other
thumbnails that are ranking the other
videos that are performing well and
think about
how you can maybe come with an
alternative cover
a different style of thumbnail because
different
is better than better but uh rob what is
tip number four
sean i love the way you’re able to just
condense
my ramblings into like 10 seconds of
knowledge bombs it’s perfect thank you
very much
there was just a a couple more things i
wanted to add about the research in the
competition
just to reinforce what i mentioned
earlier you know if you ask yourself
why you know why is this video
performing better why am i watching it
five minutes through
why did i click on this you know because
the thumbnail is so good
the answers become your next one
in improving your own content i mean a
recent example of this for me was um
i have filmed my videos for so long in
automatic
on on my camera and i just got to a
point where i was seeing other creators
and thinking
why do my videos not look that good why
is the colour science not quite
right on my content and so i just
decided to to say okay
it’s probably because i’m using
automatic so i went into manual
and you know it took me a couple of
hours to work out a decent look
and now i think hopefully i look a
little better you know it’s not
there’s not as much light splashing onto
the background and my skin tones look a
lot better
and then some very simple tips that i
always
uh suggest to new creators in terms of
thumbnails especially you know to win
that
click however long you’re spending on
your thumbnails
right now spend twice as long and
however complicated they currently are
you know with
faces colors objects make them
half as complicated because those are
the common mistakes
of new creators that they don’t spend
too
enough time on their thumbnails and they
try and fit
everything into a thumbnail and explain
the entire video
and it gets lost in translation so on to
the next tip here sean
what we’re looking at here is uh
building
momentum through content consistency
and what i mean by that is once you’ve
won the click
and you have people watching your
content you know we class these
as new viewers but the real key
to any youtube channel to start growing
is to convert those new viewers into
return viewers now i don’t know if any
of you’ve seen
on my uh on the vid iq channel but i
am running a personal crusade against
the concept of subscribers right now i’m
starting to think that
beyond the point that they’re important
to reaching milestones
including subscribe including
monetization absolutely
a subscription represents a single
moment in time
when somebody pressed a red button and
it leaves a permanent mark
on your channel but the real strength
of a channel is when those people
irrespective of whether they subscribed
or not
return to your content and
i wanna actually go into the youtube
studio here for a phenomenal tool
that youtube um released uh i’d say
about six months ago
now and it’s new viewers versus return
viewers
so hopefully as you’re pushing out
content all of the time
you’re getting new viewers but the worry
is
if you lack consistency or you’re just
making videos that you want to make
those viewers are not going to return
and so you’re just going to churn
through viewers without building any
momentum
so how i’m going to explain this uh
analytic is as follows the purple line
return
represents return viewers so those are
people who’ve watched your content once
and have returned to your content and
that starts to build loyalty again
irrespective of whether they’ve
subscribed i always call these you know
my active subscribers
and so the purple line here is running
about
average you know we released a video
here there was a little spike as you
would
expect you know as you publish videos
you won’t view his return
but look at what happened here huge
spike
why did that happen people who’ve
watched my content have returned for
this particular video
what was it and ironically enough it was
a video about
reaching 1 000 subscribers okay
really interesting i made a mental note
of that we’ll move on and make some more
content
you know that purple line is is dipping
a little bit
you know how am i gonna bring those
viewers back
and we see another spike um would you
believe it it’s that video we talked
about a little earlier
how to get 1 000 subscribers so now is
the light bulb going off in my head
my audience reacts really well to
content i make
about that goal of reaching a thousand
subscribers
and then at the end here another huge
jump and we have
another video about being under a
thousand subscribers
and this is how to get there so when we
talk about
building consistency and getting new
viewers to convert into return viewers
that’s the important thing i know we
have
approaching a million subscribers but
these are the viewers who are actually
watching our content on a regular basis
and i need to continue to help them
with their content uh and another
aspect of this is people start to worry
about alienating their existing audience
in terms of i’ve already made a video
about this topic
i’m i don’t want to make it again
because that’s gonna frustrate my
current
audience just remember that when you’re
making content for a target audience
you’re probably only connecting with
three four five percent of that
potential audience
when there is a huge untapped target
audience
that you haven’t yet reached uh i mean
sean you you you play a fine line
between youtube education but also
uh camera and tech reason i’m just i’m
curious to know like
how you decide what the balance is there
to make sure that you
you’re keeping your subscribers and your
return viewers happy but also bringing
in
a new audience yeah 100 and so um
first of all that was a serious money
tip look at the
spikes uh look at the spikes of return
viewers because that’s an indication
that
uh you’re going deeper regardless if
they’re subscribers or not so i
you had me over here studying uh some of
our themes
and um i mean the biggest thing for us
rob is we’re really doing
two big strategies one we
our focus on our niche here on think
media is everything is through the lens
of youtube
so we recognize when we um
review a niche video editing software or
niche camera inevitably
it’s going to miss a lot of people
because if you’re not a sony person
you’re probably never going to watch a
sony video if you already use final cut
10
you don’t care about the imovie or
premiere videos we’re doing but because
of being a resource and a library
for all that different kinds of
education we’re committed to
building up that library in the long
tail of these videos performing well in
the algorithm
aware that there’s a level of a dilution
of audience because
one of the things we teach is never
upload a video your subscribers didn’t
subscribe for
but like at the same time we know the
rule and we violate it
intentionally because uh we’re covering
lots of different video editing
softwares or whatever but the big theme
is that it’s through youtube and what uh
lately we’ve been thinking
meaning it’s cameras if you want to
create youtube content video editing
software if you want to create youtube
content tips
for how to get more views on your
youtube content and
we are uploading five a week right now
and we talk about this at the think
media team now
we want at least two of those videos to
apply
to a wide audience it can’t be a niche
software
it needs to just say could this video
apply to everybody and typically that’s
the more
when i do the tax update on youtube i
mean everyone wants information like
that or
when it is broader strategy videos
potentially even like this one
it’s kind of like youtube tips in
general and so we’ve got the two videos
we’re trying to
have applied to the widest audience
possible and then the other three
might be very niche search based content
because we’re covering a feature of
software the best lenses for a
particular camera
and so you know just like all of us
we’re just trying to figure it out i
mean there’s there’s so many different
it’s so important to understand how
youtube works and study the data
um and we’re always trying to pivot and
adapt our strategy but that’s a tension
that we manage
it’s not really something black or white
there’s some things are black and white
it’s like a gray area for us it’s more
of a tension to be managed
rather than a problem to be solved uh
here at think media
yeah and it goes back to the point of
like your youtube channel is not made of
glass
you know as long as you know that the
foundations
of your channel and you know um what’s
going to bring in your return
viewers on a regular basis well hey that
allows you to experiment 20
of the time a lot of channels reach
a a point of success through
experimentation
and then they’re terrified to do it
again because the they’re afraid of
losing what they won
whereas if they experiment a little bit
more you know they could
see even more success so i love that
idea of i think that you
use a word of tension there just finding
the right balance pulling
uh one way or another but not being
afraid to do it
so that was uh building momentum through
content consistency
and the final uh one that i wanted to
talk about
uh which i’m sure many uh
youtube educators have talked about it
it’s managing your youtube goals
because let’s be real about this
you know 1 000 subscribers is a
a ru it’s a whole you know you go into a
music gig
and that’s a whole full of people 4 000
hours of watch time i think if my maths
are still right on this is
240 000 minutes or a single person
watching your videos for 166 days
or something along that lines and so i
think that
if you make this your first goal then
when you’re
two months into your youtube journey and
you have 80 subscribers
and 400 hours of watch time you’re gonna
be
a little demotivated and you’re gonna
think wow
there’s such a long slog to go here
because you all you’re thinking about
is that target as opposed to the
successes you’ve already had and the
audience you’ve already built up and
you know the skills that you’ve learned
for your content
so i want to try and break this down a
little bit um i’ve used i’ve used the
my calculator in here and hopefully
these numbers are right i think i did
double check them so over the course of
a year because let’s say the target
might be to monetize your channel in a
year or less because you need
4 000 hours over 12 months that actually
accounts to
2.7 subscribers per day or
19.2 subscribers per week or 83
subscribers
per month and you know to begin with you
might not be hitting
those targets you might be getting one
subscriber a day or you know
half a subscriber a day but hopefully as
you build that momentum
of content consistency you’ll start to
have five subscribers six subscribers a
day so
you’ll easily catch yourself up and then
the really interesting one
is watch time so i’ve tried to break it
down
into something that’s digestible here
to reach four thousand hours of watch
time over the course of a year
that’s 10 hours 57 minutes of watch time
per day which still sounds like a
monumental task
but if you put it into the world of
youtube
that could be 200 views per day
which sounds a lot more digestible and
of those 200 views
it’s each viewer watching your content
for 3 minutes
17 seconds or you know if you’ve got 300
views per day
you know that would reduce the audience
view duration and i think when you start
to look at it in terms of
the small goals and reaching those
targets then it feels a lot more
manageable
but we have so many um comments on our
channel about
you know i i’ve i’ve tried all of the
things that you you’ve suggested and
it still hasn’t worked you know and you
look at their channel and there’s still
so many things that they could
improve and they just need to have
patience
and apply the the strategies and tactics
that both you sean and i and everyone
else
are encouraging at all times so it’s
yeah
it’s that classic one manage your
youtube goals but i’m
you know i’d be fascinated to know if
anybody’s seen the numbers uh
divided in such a weird and wonderful
way
no it’s really powerful for you to break
it down like that um because
kind of what gets measured gets improved
and it makes things
practical when we really see those
numerical goals
um if we’re trying to get out of debt we
need to know how far in debt we are
uh then we need to know what’s coming in
and how much we can potentially
save and commit towards that debt and
maybe it’s only a little a month
but little by little a little can become
a lot how do you eat an elephant
one bite at a time how do you get your
first 1 000 subscribers one subscriber
at a time
and i like to encourage people that
you’re also always
one video away from like changing your
life and your youtube channel
indeed yeah a lot of times it happens
out of the grind
of the quantity and learning and
sharpening your skills but sometimes you
don’t know which
which video was gonna pop off or blow up
and
especially sometimes if it’s a longer
video maybe you do
a live stream or a longer video about a
trending topic
um and maybe it gets a little bit higher
average view duration and watch time
minutes
uh one video can get to 4 000 hours i
mean
it’s that’s challenging but we see that
happen when a video breaks out maybe
over a couple months if it keeps being
viewed if it ranks in search if
it’s being suggested by the youtube
algorithm and so i love that she made
that
practical um and i’d love to hear uh hey
if you’re getting value out of this
video
smash the like button uh b are you
looking at your clock
in the back end of your youtube channel
how many watch time hours do you have so
far
and where are you on your journey to
getting 4 000 so that you become
eligible for monetization um
i’m sure you have some tips and i want
to answer a question that came in from
super chat and if you’ve got a question
throw four question marks before and
after we’ll be able to take a couple
but rob anything else on uh this point
about managing your youtube goals
i would say that
your first goals well your goal should
always be something
that are attainable in
you know roughly a month so let’s say
for example you start your youtube
channel
i would say that it it’s realistic to
reach you know 25 subscribers in that
first month
if you make 10 or 15 videos
and from the watch time hours
perspective
you may be looking at 50 hours of watch
time and although that’s not
you don’t think you’re gonna reach your
targets um
in the next year you know you’re
building momentum you know once you hit
25
then you’re thinking about 50
subscribers then 100 subscribers then
250 subscribers
and it’s so small incremental steps
that if you continuous continually hit
you know it’s like that little
adrenaline rush yeah
i’ve got to that one you know that now
i’m getting three subscribers a day i’m
on course
but i’m not going to stop there i’m not
i’m not going to sit on these analytics
i’m going to review them i’m going to
continue to research my content
and then pump out even better content
because as you say um
sean in terms of i call this putting
depositing
and time effort and content into the
youtube bank
sometimes you just don’t know when that
dividend is going to pay out
but when it does you know when youtube
finally recognizes your content
um it’ll it will pay you back in a big
day
a big way i’ve seen uh quite a few
creators say you know my
click-through rate is at 15 and i’m
getting 60
audience retention you know i thought
that was really good and my answer to is
it is it is be patient youtube is gonna
eventually figure out exactly who your
audience is
and then as you as you say sean one
video sometimes can be
can be the one even if sometimes you
don’t realize it you know you could
publish it and three months later
there it goes it suddenly hits the
search algorithm of the discovery engine
so powerful um in a second we’re going
to talk about some of your questions
we’re going to talk about
best software for thumbnails and youtube
shorts that question came in i’m curious
rob’s take um but if you’re just joining
the stream smash the like button
um and uh super pumped to be partnering
on this deep dive training make sure to
go back and watch it if you didn’t catch
the beginning
with rob from vid iq and right now you
can get
a free month of any paid plan on vid iq
with the link in the description down
below or you can just go to vidiq.com
forward slash
think making data driven decision
decisions and having the best possible
tools is a great way to get an edge um
in a 2021
youtube landscape but rob i’m curious
when it comes to thumbnails how do you
create
your thumbnails and what are some of the
softwares you recommend this super chat
thank you
greggy for bringing that in about canva
which is a great web-based
software but what do uh how do you like
creating thumbnails
so i use photoshop
i actually have to give a lot of credit
here to uh jeremy vest
who um who helped me mentored me a
little bit in making thumbnails he
has lots of um really uh
helpful uh tips and suggestions as i was
building out mine
um i think canva is a an excellent
uh way of um making thumbnails and
i i think one of the best ways to
think about your thumbnail content is to
establish
a template of some kind because what you
want is
consistency through your thumbnails um
which means that you know when somebody
sometimes you’ll get to the point where
a viewer doesn’t necessarily
care about what the content is they just
know it’s from think media
or vid iq and they’ll watch it
regardless and so if you have uh
instinctive association through the
style of your thumbnails
and that can really uh help with
creation
and i mean if i was just gonna rattle
off you know a few
thumbnail tips in in this sense if
you’re gonna have a face on
screen make it uh as animated as
possible
and you know make sure you see the
whites of a person’s eyes
in terms of colors try and limit it to
three dominant colors or less
because once you have more colours on
screen
it turns into a very complex chaotic
thumbnail
when it’s reduced down to postage stamp
size
and then in terms of elements i think of
maybe having
no more than three or four elements and
that could be
a a youtuber face
an object of some kind whatever it is
you’re maybe talking about in a video
some text and then a background a
dominant background color and those are
your three or four elements
you might have it in from thumbnails um
i think camber
canva has some free options so that’s
certainly a good one uh and i think also
um is another one which uh is a
good starting point i i hear that’s
almost like the the photo the online
photoshop
free version uh of thumbnail creation
what have
you got any suggestions sean um no i
mean you really hit him
i do think we we lean towards canva
because it’s easy to use web base and
the free version is powerful
um and then photoshop is what we use
here at think media
um but rob i’m curious this is the topic
we’re talking about
is how to get those first 4 000 watch
time hours
i’m curious your take on youtube shorts
right now and if you would recommend
channels that want to grow uh be
experimenting
with youtube shorts or using that as
their way of growing their channel and
it’s gonna take a little longer to get
the watch time hours but if you get
high views at 60 seconds or less on some
content
um it’s going to add to your bottom line
what what’s your uh hot take on
shorts rob okay so we first have to
address
uh youtube shorts monetization and
the fact that if a video is watched
through the youtube shorts player
then any watch time from that video will
not
count towards monetization so i have to
be very clear about that
also um the
monetization mechanism for youtube shots
is going to be completely different so
when we’re talking
about the youtube partner program you
know getting to 1 000 subscribers 4
thousand hours of watch time
even if you are on a youtube partner
program and you make youtube shorts
you won’t earn any ad revenue from
youtube shorts
um youtube are going down a different
path where it’s going to be invite only
to some of the um i guess the more
successful creators
now hopefully in the long run you know a
year to 18 months down the line
then there may be
more accessible monetization
programs like a youtube shorts partner
program
but what i will say is that i have seen
some channels that make youtube shorts
successfully transition into making
um either short form landscape content
so it’s still like
40 seconds long or a minute and a half
but it is eligible for monetization
all move from shorts content to
long-form content uh an example i can
think of off the top of my head is a
channel called block facts
and they started making 27 second
minecraft shorts about every block in
the game
and they got billions of views millions
of subscribers
and earned less than five figures from
all of this because they weren’t getting
any
monetizable views but now they’ve got an
audience
they’ve successfully transitioned that
audience to long-form content which is
ten minutes long
and they’re still getting millions and
millions of views because they’ve got a
very loyal community
and now they’ve really been able to
monetize it so yeah sure uh sean in
terms of
shorts sean’s that’s a say that fast 10
times um
it’s a very tricky dynamic right now
although
youtube shorts exists on the the youtube
platform
in terms of how a creator is going to
monetize that
it’s a very different prospect and
proposition and we have to realize still
that youtube shorts is technically in
beta and from where it was this time
last year
in that it didn’t exist i think it’s
incredible now
that we’ve got to a point where i think
i i saw this
statistic yesterday that there are now
15 billion
short views on a daily basis which i
find incredible i mean
three months ago it was six and a half
billion so there’s still opportunity for
expansion
we just don’t know where the
monetization aspect of this
is going to be in the long term but
youtube is going to figure out a way
they always figure out a way to make
this
financially viable for the creator
yeah that’s a great point and i like the
big takeaway for me is that if you do
lean into them
shorts could lead to initial exposure it
could lead to some awareness some growth
some subscribers
and if you can transition that into if
that same audience would want to watch
some longer form
kind of traditional youtube videos then
that might be a way of getting noticed
right now um question for you from dr
omar
and uh i’m gonna take it two places
can i make a bilingual channel about
medicine in english and
arabic or keep a channel for each
language so
should he do two channels should the
channel be bilingual
and then my question for you is does
keyword research and
uh tools like vid iq is it relevant for
multiple languages what are some of your
tips so i’ll answer a second question
first uh
as long as people are searching for the
content on youtube
irrespective of the language vid iq will
be able to provide you
with search results and data and that
type of thing
now in terms of a bilingual audience
think of it from the viewers point of
view or my point of view
if i watch a video in english
and then the next video is in a language
i don’t understand
that’s going to alienate me as a viewer
and then i don’t know when you’re going
to be publishing the next
video that i can understand so i
personally would recommend having
a separate channel for different
languages
and we actually have experience of this
because
not only do i speak english but i also
speak
spanish and russian because we have a
spanish and russian vidiq channel now
the truth of it is we
actually have a team called unilingo do
a fantastic job
they bring in um professional voice over
artists and they dub me
in those different languages and we’ve
grown a spanish channel now to 160 000
subscribers
in itself which is incredible the
russian channel i think is about 25 000
subscribers
because they really appreciate that
we’ve gone to the efforts
of fully translating our content and
we’re not just talking about
the voice dubbing uh we actually go into
the screens and change the language to
their native language
wherever we can so i would highly
recommend
segmenting your channels into different
languages
i think mr beast has just done this as
well i think he’s just launched a
spanish channel
where again i’ve done done the dubbing i
have though
uh i i’m not sure if this is going to be
rolled out fully but i’m sure i saw
uh a couple of weeks ago on one of mr
beast’s videos that there was the option
to actually
change the um
the the language track you could change
it from english to spanish
but i don’t know if youtube are going to
be rolling it out and i think that also
has complications in terms of
you know translating your tags titles
and descriptions which you can do but
oh man that sounds really messy uh sean
i mean if i was to ask you the question
if you were going to start a
if you’re going to start dubbing your
language into another doubling your
content into another language would you
start with a new channel do you think or
would you try and merge it into the
existing think media empire 100 i would
um start a different channel because
again to the
principle of um never upload a video
your subscribers
didn’t subscribe for if i clicked
subscribe
because i expect the videos to be in
english and then some spanish videos
start coming at me
i’m not ready for that and chances are
you would you know alienate your
audience or just miss your audience and
really mess with your click-through rate
and um people be skipping
over every other video or whatnot and so
yeah i think um
starting a second channel and i think
one thing that’s important to talk about
that as well rob i mean you mentioned mr
beast doing it
we’re talking mr beast and we’re talking
about a
multi-multi-million dollar business with
a huge team
uh editor’s infrastructure um
and you know some here a couple
questions came in about
um should i you know i’ve got two
channels like should i start a second
channel or
these are the two channels i’m working
on and i like to caution about trying to
do multiple channels
because it’s hard enough at the start
because it’s hard enough
to do one channel well and so when you
start to
divide your focus you lessen your impact
but it’s kind of like a quote from
michael jordan that says be a laser
don’t be a flashlight
so i think when you’re starting really
focus and
someday you might want to expand into
another language or
you bring in enough revenue to have
somebody help you do that because if
you’re already trying to be the solo
creator that’s getting all of one type
of content out
man if you start trying to do multiple
channels um
again it’s going to dilute the focus on
each
and i think focus is power folks
i want you to give me a thumbs up in a
chat if you think sean cannell
could should release a book this uh
holiday season called
uh my favorite quotes because every time
i watch one of your videos sean’s you
just come out with some
amazing quote that just makes so much
sense
i’m not gonna forget that one now yeah
be a lazer not a flashlight love
it well uh rob i’m super fired up listen
if you’re just joining the stream hit
the like button
and uh today’s training was all about
how to get your first 4 000
watch time hours there’s five tips
quality leads to quantity
identify opportunities research the
competition build momentum through cons
content consistency and manage
your youtube goals you’re going to want
to watch the whole training to make sure
that you can see all the nuances and
details that were
shared within that and
we have time codes and chapters that you
can find your way around the video so
check those out in the description and
also
check out vid iq um it’s one of our
favorite tools uh today we’re partnered
with vid iq but
um years ago when i was before think
media had
nolan and omar and heather taurus and
tony areola and
before it was a team and before we were
doing five videos to seven videos a week
i was like how everybody starts on
youtube shooting videos in my bedroom
shoot doing the shooting doing the
editing doing the content creation doing
the topic research doing the video
optimization doing the video seo
and i’ve been using vid iq for years and
years and years so it’s super cool that
rob is here and that we’re collaborating
today
and i’m excited to be doing a lot more
stuff with vid iq um
in the future and so you’ll see him back
on the channel as well
but we have one or two more questions
and specifically
uh this one kind of goes into the
training rob the cello online says when
studying the competition
how do you narrow down what videos you
might also make
when the competitors videos are equally
popular
hmm
so let me i’m just trying to
fully understand this how do you narrow
down the videos you might also make when
the compensators are equally
popular should you make the same videos
that uh they make are you trying to make
a spin-off
of them um one you when you go
and see the top five to ten ranked
videos
um or videos being suggested to you how
do you
how do you synthesize that information
to come up with which idea you’re going
to make
next that’s my interpretation of the
question
yeah i i was just i was worried that you
know
we were going back to the concept of um
you know you’re comparing yourself too
much
to uh a competitor and they’re they’re
much further on in their journey in
terms of you know i’m looking at all of
these channels with
50 000 subscribers plus and you know i’m
here with a thousand
500 subscribers thinking how can i
compete with them
yeah i so i look at it from this point
of view in terms of
whenever you’re looking at somebody
else’s
content and you see they have success
even if you try and uh replicate their
content
as a creator you’re going to be adding
your own
um interpretation your own style your
own voice
i’m going to be open and honest uh right
now
i sometimes use think media as an idea
generator you know i’ll watch some of
their videos and i think
oh i really like the way the the title
list and the thumb
and the thumbnail there and i like the
content you know what i’m going to do
i’m going to make a similar piece of
content but i’m going to add my own
voice to it you know i’m going to
use the the the the humor that i
sometimes add to my videos and i’m going
to
make sure that i incorporate the vid iq
tools into this
so that i’m not necessarily trying to
steal
vid um think media’s thunder but i’m
adding to the conversation
of the topic and you know it’s up to the
viewer at that point to decide whether
they choose
you know a or b or they choose both
in their um in their in watching their
their content so i i would say
don’t be afraid to look at um
other channels and what they the content
that they’re making and
i’ve also called this sometimes passive
collaboration you know you know a
collective community is making content
based on what’s trending
and what the discussions are but always
think about
how you’re going to make it unique
to your audience and unique to the
to to youtube as a whole and i again i
think that’s that’s developed through
you know just putting in the hard yards
putting in the miles and developing your
own voice
and your own style i hope i’ve
interpreted the question uh somewhere
correctly there
yeah i hope you’ve uh yeah your own
voice your own style and as a resource
that i would recommend um there’s a
really
great documentary a second version is
coming out called everything is a remix
um it’s pretty old now um and that’s why
i think
version two is um coming out soon
from uh kirby ferguson and i it’s it’s
been one of the most inspiring
um uh videos uh
documentaries i’ve seen it’s a
two-parter it came out in 2010
but it sort of was just this idea that
uh they even talk about
like a quentin tarantino movie like kill
bill and they showed
frame by frame how he had scenes with
the exact same composite
shot composition the exact same kind of
inspiration
to old kung fu films and old western
films
of course he synthesized all of these
older uh inspirations from his favorite
directors or from his favorite
music producers producing scores and
made something new
but the idea of everything is a remix is
that you’re
again you’re not plagiarizing but you’re
synthesizing
all these different ideas um into your
own
original piece of content your unique
take your unique angle to
it and someone said you’re adding to the
conversation and uh there’s a lot of
power
to do that but anyways definitely you
can google that everything is a remix
it’s a fun watch
um finally as as we land the plane i
just want to thank silky feather for the
super chat as well
and i looked at your channel and i would
say um with the
around under 300 subscribers you have i
would um build on the channel that you
already have
now that you have a clear idea i think
definitely apply some of the thumbnail
advice that was in this video
um and uh start start plowing forward
like you’re not so far in building a
subscriber audience that you’d be taking
too much of a right turn
it looks like your videos have been kind
of random and you’ve certainly got some
views
get focused make that commitment and
then start posting those videos i’d keep
them on the same channel
um and uh smash like if you got video
today rob
the final word i want to hear from you
is just this idea
of man youtube is a marathon and not a
sprint
and in marathons we get tired
and sometimes tired eyes don’t see a
bright future
can you just speak as a creator yourself
as
accomplished in so many different areas
just a little bit of encouragement to
those on the journey
to get those four thousand watch hours
that maybe maybe some are just
at the beginning of the journey and
you’re probably like i mean you posted
seven videos man you got some work ahead
of you but
some of us have maybe posted 50 videos
maybe we’re over a hundred
we feel like we aren’t getting the
results yet can you just synthesize some
ideas
um for uh persevering on this journey
to monetization into 4 000 watch time
hours
sure sean but just let me just write
that down first um tired eyes don’t lead
to a bright
future perfectly
um i would i would argue that uh youtube
is not a sprint it’s not a marathon
it’s an ultra marathon and
i would always say two things i always
start with is
first of all you’ve got to understand
whether you
enjoy making youtube content enjoy being
a
video creator because if you are
successful at it
you’re going to be making a lot of
videos over a long
period of time and it
to to use a quote from uh morpheus
uh from the matrix um franchise
there’s a difference between knowing a
path and walking their path
and again that’s why i encourage uh you
to
just get stuck in and start making
videos to understand whether you’re
gonna
enjoy making it uh 12 years and 2
000 videos down the line because i think
that’s where i currently am
in my journey i think
setting expectations to begin with in
terms of
investing as much
time and um i guess motivation into
yourself
to understand that the skills of making
content
and to then understand what an audience
wants to watch from you
can be really beneficial there’s going
to be plenty of time
to start building an audience but i
think
you have to make sure that you’re
you’re happy in yourself as a content
creator first
then when you start to build momentum
and i think again this is really
important
recognize that momentum and capitalize
on it
don’t make one video and then
go in a completely different path and
then go in a completely different path
and ignore what youtube is telling you
about the successes on your channel
because
by the time you’ve created 25 50 videos
you know some people even encourage
making 100 bad videos
you will have data to work with you will
have patterns
you know there may be 90
terrible videos that you’ve made but 10
of those videos
have performed better than you would
expect and those are your
i guess touch points those are your um i
guess
the the uh excited eyes of a bright
future
and that’s what you really want to be
focusing down on saying right how can i
leverage
this successful content and make
all of the content going forward and do
similar things
and i think i’ll stop there because i’m
going to end up just rambling on
as much as i can i hope that was uh uh
inspiring
i’ve sean always as always just sum this
up in five seconds what i’ve just said
rob no i appreciate you and thank you so
much for breaking that down and for the
uh
training today think media i hope you
got value out
of uh this training if you’re just
joining check out
the replay right here on the channel
smash like um and
uh there’s another video that rob
created with some specific tips for
getting the first a thousand
subscribers and so you can click or tap
the screen to watch that one right now
check out show notes and links in the
description down below for all the
resources we talked about
and in the meantime keep crushing it
keep smashing it and uh we will
talk soon peace
