YouTube Shorts VS Longs (My new strategy for growth)

today's topic is a hot one if you want to grow your YouTube channel you're trying to get views maybe you're trying to get your first 1,000 subscribers really what should your YouTube short strategy be and what are the pros and cons of YouTube shorts versus long videos on YouTube we're going to unpack this in depth so uh buckle your seat belt and let's dive into the video you got to just press record hey what's up Sean canel here your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and today's question comes from Wes and he says what's

the best short and long form split strategy for channels that are under 1K thanks so much for the question so this video is going to be broken down into a few parts you can check out the chapters we're going to talk about the pros and cons of each format so let's start off with YouTube shorts and we'll start with the pros one they are quick and easy to produce the cool thing about YouTube shorts is they can be produced just on your smartphone and edited you know you add text music and everything right in the

YouTube app right also the potential for viral success bottom line shorts can get you more views now those views could argue be vanity in some cases just meaning wow I got a lot of views but what happened I mean did you make money did it really make an impact but nevertheless potential for viral success and exposure they're also great for beginners so if you're thinking about which format to do you know you might dream of making long form but once you get into like what I'm doing here like I got a lens on my a7c

uh 2 I've got a tripod I was figuring it out all the settings and we've got an ND filter to get this you know dialed in and make sure the exposure is right I don't even think it is it's too bright let's actually ND filter this down a little bit you know it's long form and then the editing that goes into this and all of that so if you're just starting out shorts are a great way to start out because of just getting your content creation muscles developed and built out now another Pro you yoube

shorts is high engagement shorts are designed for quick consumption and so the Chance by engagement I mean someone finishing the video is a lot more likely in a video that's less than 60 seconds than a video like this that's like a master class the other cool thing about YouTube shorts is there kind of like a sample at the shopping mall at the Cinnabon there's a nice lady there she's got some Cinnabon samples and a lot of people you can't it's irresistible like you got to grab that and you know that's delicious and then you go

in and you buy a pack of the four buns or you go for the full size like it's a sample but a lot of people might watch the sample and engage with it but they might move on but then some people might stick around the other Pro of YouTube shorts is they're easy to repurpose for vertical videos on multiple platforms if you've already created the vertical video I post them everywhere Instagram Twitter X I mean Elon I apologize Facebook LinkedIn Tik Tok one asset one vertical video now another Pro is shorts could be complimentary to

long form video meaning on YouTube there is that related video thing you can connect nobody clicks it but you can do it and so while shorts could be like the sample of your long form video the question is not a lot of people are going into the Cinnabon a lot of people taking the sample not a lot of people going in now I know people have different experiences in fact I'm curious where you stand on the shorts versus long form debate what the experience for you has been and then one other Pro is many brands

are seeking sponsorships with vertical content creators and typically a vertical content creator is multiplatform so if you're making great vertical videos one of the best ways to monetize is going to be brand deals and sponsorships because they pretty much stripped everything else clickable links and all that stuff we'll cover that but if that's your strategy then Yeehaw giddy up let's go YouTube shorts that reminds me of one of our students Ryan Johnson who does an intermittent fasting Channel and the thing that popped off for him was YouTube shorts and brand deals has been one of

the things that he's been able to do to monetize and he's been able to build up like a $12,000 a month business doing a lot of different things as far as monetization streams but again nevertheless YouTube shorts was legit for him and he does long form as well but shorts was the main thing so shorts can work for sure but there are some warnings there are some cons so let's cover those so some of the downsides of YouTube shorts is less in-depth content you are limited by the 60 seconds and that's the idea it could

be a teaser and you certainly could deliver a certain level of value but there's no way we could get as nuanced as we're getting in this video shorts viewers often differ from long viewers in my opinion they're not as good but they're they're different for example shorts viewers have shorter attention spans which is not helpful I mean in a long form video which is much more lucrative in terms of AD Revenue the short attention span's not not good so which kind of viewers or subscribers do you want you know long form viewers have a tolerance

for long form content if you're even watching this video it tells me that you're of a a serious nature I mean it honestly does it actually tells me that like you're more serious you're more ambitious you're more you're more maybe introspective intellectual not that all shorts viewers are like not intellectual but like you want some serious meat on the bones like you're trying to make this a career like you're trying to really get into stuff so the the viewers differ and so consider that I mean lower monetization potential YouTube shorts has gone up in terms

of RPM we've seen 4 cents N9 cents on think media think media podcast sometimes higher these days I've seen 17 cents and 24 cents that's going to be per a th000 views now on the th media podcast Channel our Channel wide RPM is like $10 sometimes higher I think and so that's crazy more I don't know that's 50x more can somebody crunch the math between 25 cents per th000 views and $10 per th000 views what is that in the comments like that's more potential algorithm dependence you really have a Reliance on the algorithm for Discovery

with shorts which could be a bad thing if YouTube shorts are popping off and you're getting in the shorts feed and like we Yeehaw things are great usually if you're doing shorts you're like bro we need millions of views like millions and millions and millions we had a short pop off on think media podcast 9.1 million views probably at the time of recording this and it's earned us $1,700 which is sick that's some real money but I had to get n million views you know like that's so you have to be like in the millions

to even be playing the game and usually search based shorts don't get millions of views punchline search-based content and usually long form content especially in education can really benefit and it's it's less algorithm dependent it's more the intent of the viewer searching on Google searching other places finding your content and finding it for weeks months and years to come so just something to consider they also have a shorter lifespan kind of ties into that whereas long form videos can be much more Evergreen so shorts may not continue to pop off and long form very much

could have a longer lifespan and then shorts this is a big one shorts have limited call to action options especially since YouTube stripped the ability to have click able links in your description and in your PIN comment description kind of doesn't even matter cuz it's so hard to get to in YouTube shorts but even your PIN comment so from a practical I want to do this full-time I want to do this you know make a living doing this if you're not just getting those millions of views and not getting the brand deals and sponsorships or

the like you get so many views that the ad Revenue makes sense then you can't really do affiliate marketing and you can't really give call to actions and not only that you kind of shouldn't give call to actions that's not the nature of the shorts feed and then converting those viewers into long form consumers can be challenging the overall consensus seems to be is people are just not moving over right it's two different audiences and the people that subscribed for shorts want to watch more shorts and the people that subscribe for long form don't necessarily

cross over now there's also a few things to consider the technical diffic differences between YouTube shorts and long form for example um I uh threw this question out to our community and one person said a pro for long form is being able to change the thumbnails even later not only have custom thumbnails but change them later and the con for YouTube shorts is you're not able to change the thumbnail after posting you can't even upload custom thumbnails one but two the way they are discovered so how the shorts feed works the shorts feed is where

the magic is happening and where the action is happening but when you're knowing the technical differences you know there's no time codes in chapters you can't even really scroll right you're forced to you're held hostage by the short you can't like scroll through it it Loops there's different things that are happening long form could have time codes and chapters you can skip around in this video to different parts now let's talk about the pros and the cons of long form videos on YouTube and number one is higher monetization not just because the RPMs are whatever

X 50x higher than how much you'll get paid for ads on YouTube shorts not only that though you can have multiple ad placements in long form videoos so you have pre-roll and post Roll But mid-roll as well and if it's a longer video higher RPMs and the higher chance of multiple ads playing from a economic standpoint the winner is pretty clear now also stronger audience connection when you have longer content like we're able to really connect here it feels like if you're still watching this video and it's broken into parts and like this master class

like we're really connecting the thing that's with shorts is super interesting in my EXP experience is I like them by the way I enjoy watching them but I've almost never clicked subscribe to a channel I never even know where the content's coming from I'm just kind of being entertained I'm just getting you know what's being shown to me the depth of connection sometimes I just get the tip I get the information I get the entertainment but then I move on whereas on long form content the connection is super deep on on X I did a

post and my friend Roberto Blake described it this way he talked about shorts broad reach versus Longs deep relationship and I think that sums it up well that definitely stronger audience connection happens with long form content another one is builds Authority and so we this is kind of like deep connection but if you've got videos out there on long form um it shows people you know your stuff like you can really unpack it how many layers deep can you go on a topic and so if you want to build a strong personal brand again you

might give out samples of your personal brand on shorts and some people go a little bit deeper and is like oh my goodness this girl really knows what she's talking about this dude is smart he knows what he's talking about and so um a lot of times you don't remember who posted the short that personal brand isn't built in the same way or that Authority isn't built in the same way but once you get a rich experience in a long form video with the Creator there's a lot more depth now in engaged long form subscribers

are more profitable I don't just mean you make more money in ads actually the quality of the subscriber that watches long form is more profitable the CMO of HubSpot said YouTube subscribers are the most valuable subscribers on the internet I believe he's talking about long form YouTube subscribers compare that to Tik Tok compare that to Vertical videos on other platforms none of these platforms have figured out how to monetize vertical really well they haven't figured out how to get the RPMs up because it's just very hard to do the the CEO of Instagram said like

honestly even these crater funds make us lose money like we haven't cracked the code on vertical video yet long form is really where it is long form a lot of times attracts people who want educational content they're perhaps more of more serious in nature they perhaps have better purchasing power like for example people who use LinkedIn have higher incomes and higher net worth Than People overall on other social media platforms it's probably obvious because literally LinkedIn is a professional Network so while YouTube really incompasses the entire world all ages all backgrounds all different types of

people including professionals bottom line is certain types of educational content is going to attract people who want to do business you know who maybe want to buy your products and services who are looking for depth and not just if you will broad appeal and another Pro for long form is yes you can do brand deals on vertical but you're going to probably get more lucrative higher ticket brand deals on long form so it's it's maybe how many brand deals do you want to do how much per upload if it's a vertical video or a YouTube

short that's sponsored versus an integration in a YouTube video just something to consider but let's talk a little bit about the cons of long form long form content often times requires higher production time and more effort as well as more complex planning and execution shorts are simple and fast and high quality long form is not as fast another con of long form content is that it can have higher production costs now we're living in a world where of course you can film horizontally on your phone and perhaps accessorize it for just a few dollars but

depending on your vision for your long form content whether that's a video podcast that can start getting kind of pricey multiple cameras multiple angles good you know podcast microphones I have one here that perfectly just is on an arm that could come into the camera also lower engagement rates now this isn't necessarily a bad thing sometimes when I upload a video like this that's however long it it might be 45 minutes long or 30 minutes long and the average percentage viewed is you know only 20 or 30% but the average view duration is still 14

minutes 18 minutes 22 minutes on some of my long form videos so compare that how many 7 Seconds of you're a little short with the trending music compared to someone hanging out with me for 18 minutes even if technically the engagement rate or like the percentage views a little bit lower so just a couple things to be considering and it's true one of the cons of long form is sometimes slower growth shorts can be like sugar like it's oh wow wow look at all those views look at how fast I'm growing look at how many

subscribers I'm getting it's like a sugar high but it wears off and what are you left with where shorts is like going to the gym and eating healthy you're like I'm not getting results very fast but slow and steady you're building something strong you're building a solid brand you're building a loyal audience You're Building deeper connections and also a competitive landscape I think both have probably leveled out but since shorts are relatively new as in only a couple years old and Longs are since the beginning ultimately there's a lot of competition really in both but

ultimately the best choice CH between shorts and Longs depends on your content on your audience or target audience and your goals what is your ultimate goal with YouTube what are you trying to achieve far too many people fall into the Trap of chasing views like if views is the number one metric you're solving for you might have the wrong metric but by the way it's about self-awareness because is it about impact is it about money is it about quality subscribers or subscribers period is it about as many views as possible as quick as possible or

is it about Healthy Growth so I think getting clear on your ultimate goal with YouTube is a big deal second question what content format fits your channel theme or your channel Niche best there's certain types of content that works really well in shorts and just can't really be expanded or isn't as desired in long form and also vice versa Deep dive WordPress or Excel tutorials might you might get a little tip in shorts but if I'm going to sit down and like really learn how to use Excel that's going to be you know for long

form so ask yourself if you had all the money in the world and all the skills in the world which format would actually be superior based on your channel strategy another question is what is your personality playing to your strengths it's not just about analyzing what's best when you get align with your strengths that is when the magic happens for some people they just get vertical video like it works for them that's their Vibe some people are maybe a little bit more long- winded it's hard for me to land the plane we've been taxiing to

the gate for quite a while now we we've been circling the tower But ultimately what fits your personality another question what fits your schedule and so back to shorts being a great content format for beginners learning how to create content maybe it's less about the answer for you is just I don't have a lot of time I want to get in the game and I want to be making progress towards my goals there's no excuses grab your phone and start posting shorts the point is to like get into the routine to develop the content muscle

memory that's the purpose that's what you're trying to do and you might not have us the schedule to develop longer form videos what is most realistic today for you right now in this season what can you sustain what is realistic and I think that all of us as content creators are dreamers we dream of the studio we'll have one day the gear that we would love to have the kind of content we would love to have and a lot of times we live in the gap between where we are today and what it is we

want to do eventually to close that Gap just ask yourself what's most realistic and get started with that and you can level up as you go because the sooner you start posting and the sooner you get new skills and the sooner you start to monetize is the sooner you can reinvest and the sooner you can buy back your time and the sooner that you can go part-time at work and then level up your content a little bit start with what you have now it's not about your resources it's about your resourcefulness and be realistic for

today and do your best because the decisions and choices and actions you take today are the key to unlocking the life and the online business and the YouTube channel that you want tomorrow and then another question to ask is should you actually do both if you have the resources to do it is it strategically smart to do it for your Niche and for your channel I was talking to Scott from rafiti Uncle Raph and he was talking about like if you have a video podcast shorts are a no-brainer like in that particular context there's the

answer for you you're already doing long form video it's a very proven tried and tested format and a lot of times if the YouTube shorts that you're posting what you don't want is your YouTube shorts to be radically different than your main Channel content but if your main Channel content is 30 minute or 60 Minute interviews and conversations with people and the shorts are clips of that then they just logically connect for some people their shorts are just so different than their other types of content and that can cause a problem because not only is

it kind of two different audiences in terms of their consumption preference some people like to consume shorts some people like to consume long form it's different in even expectation I don't always do a good job at this especially because I film podcast on the road I film podcast here at this setup when I'm at the Vegas Studio I film at Anderson Studios like and so there isn't necessarily the same visual branding think about that if you've got the same look and visual branding and it can have that alignment then people can easily transition in a

better way from your shorts to your long form in some cases it's very strategic to do both and you might have the bandwidth and then in other cases just picking one might be the best decision for you well we've reached part three of the video and I've got five final tips to kind of wrap things up but these are probably some of the most important strategic insights so um here they are number one your goal should be to eventually use both shorts and Longs you know we had Dave Ramsey speak at our conference in Las

Vegas it's called grow with video live if you actually want to get on the wait list for the next one I'll link info in the description about it but here's what he said he said you should be platform agnostic now it's kind of weird to say for someone like me because like I'm on YouTube and I love YouTube and I wrote the book YouTube secrets with my friend Benji second edition's out like we're pretty into YouTube but even saying that like I'm posting content on every platform that I can about how awesome YouTube is because

of rank videos Evergreen content all that kind of stuff I also want to reach people that are serious and that maybe want to join our products or programs or coaching so I'm willing to go anywhere to to meet them anybody that's interested in YouTube I'm will to go find them so when he says be platform agnostic I think at some point you might want to be content format agnostic what does that mean it means that if I want to get my message out if I want to help people serve people reach people I'd love to

reach them with shorts I'd love to reach them with Longs I'd love to reach him on a podcast I'd love to reach him with videos your bandwidth today might not allow you to do all of that in fact that's a good warning in the book we actually talk about in the social media chapter we talk about the three seasons we talk about the side Hustle season we talk about the solo pure season and then the scale season very different side hustle you probably shouldn't be doing too much you might want to really narrow your focus

and say focus on just long form in the solopreneur season now you're Allin but it's just you like you're full-time but it's still kind of crazy and you still should be careful with how divided your energy is in the scale season that's where think media is this company is about 20 W2s or 25 working here contractors and some other people so that's how I'm able to be like a lot of places it's how we're able to do a lot of things is depending on the season that you're in but the bottom line is eventually you

should absolutely do both number two the video podcast strategy I think something to consider I touched on it you know previously but if you're doing a video podcast then doing the long form podcast and doing Clips which would still be horizontal videos that are over a minute but just a clip from the podcast and then shorts from the podcast make a lot of sense like this is kind of a proven topic we can actually I'll link to a playlist we have if you're thinking about starting a video podcast you want help with that and you

want to go deeper on that one then you should definitely do both and in and of itself I think it's it's one of my favorite content formats favorite strategies and it lends itself to all of the above um number three native content is always best versus repurposed content shorts and Longs conversations interesting what what some people do is they'll make a video with five tips and they're like so here's what I'm going to do I'm going to make my video with five tips even on like cooking or something and then I'm going to make each

tip a short and it's like okay like you might get some more views on that but what's always much more effective is making an individual short again I know I just said like you should clip your video podcast but like that's different because that moment in of itself is like a complete thing and people may maybe don't want to eat the whole Cinnabon they just want to eat the sample they don't want to watch the three hour video podcast how long can these video podcasts get they just want to watch you know the highlights whereas

I think some people are kind of like forcing these shorts out and like using the related video Fe feature and it's it's kind of like maybe a waste of energy whereas a crafted short by native it means you designed it with shorts in mind it means means maybe you even shot it on a phone edited it on the YouTube shorts app or cap cut and really thought about it as opposed to just using AI to repurpose it or something and you're just doing a volume thing of like lower quality I'm for those tools but something

to think about that if you really want shorts to work well then create shorts strategically to be shorts and if you want longs to work well you know do the same number four one high quality high value long form video per week if you said Sean if you were going to do YouTube from scratch and it's a side hustle for you and you're trying to juggle family and work and kids or whatever what would your approach be I wouldn't be wasting time on social media yet I probably wouldn't even be thinking about YouTube shorts I

would post one high quality High effort long form video per week I wouldn't even be obsessed with the per week the reason why is when you put out a truly good YouTube video good title good packaging we call it the perfect video recipe topic title thumbnail good content you've done your research the video has the opportunity to have a long shelf life to rank in search to continue to be suggested by YouTube it's just such a higher leveraged activity that if I'm in the side Hustle season and even the solopreneur season and even the scale

season you got to be obsessed with continuing to put out high quality High effort long form videos as many as you can do but often times I think we put out too much low effort lowquality content that's the strategy I would be after you said you under a th000 subscribers the person who asked this question that turned into this video I would just be like overly obsessed with one highquality High effort video per week before I even worry about other stuff and then once I have that dialed I would double down on it again and

to expand on that tip number five is these would be my priorities I would focus first on high value long form video then the next thing I would do is stay on YouTube and not get distracted by social media so I would start doing strategic repurposing on YouTube meaning perhaps you're cutting some stuff out of your long form videos on YouTube just continue to compound the momentum on platform and then my third priority would be off platform strategic repurposing of your YouTube content onto other platforms but there's just something powerful about the about Focus you

know Focus stands for follow one course until successful focus and so to compound momentum you don't want to be a shotgun especially at the start you want to be a laser you want to cut through the noise you want to break through on YouTube you want to get discovered you want to build momentum those would be my priorities and if you actually want to get even more geeky than this and super tactical then click or tap the screen to check out my video on how to 5x your views with a short strategy that you've probably

never heard before hit like if you got value out of this one my name is Sean canell your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and we'll talk soon