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this has ever happened to YouTube is when YouTube actually introduced the YouTube Partner program way back when it's like 2006 2007 and ultimately it created this Creator economy that we're enjoying today and I know that a lot of you here on YouTube are really trying to figure out YouTube to monetize or to bring those cpms RPMs up so you can actually make a decent amount of money to really support content creation because this is a business and ultimately this is what this uh interview is going to be about of this live stream of really understanding

the Dynamics of YouTube Understanding the data understanding the audience and then really honing in on your content strategy because the content strategy I can tell you is the biggest thing of understanding who's watching your content how to engage them in a way that you're able to really impact the world now my guest that I have coming on as a student of mine and ultimately he started a brand new YouTube channel and within days he got monetized in days and this isn't his first channel and so I thought you know what this would be great to

have him on we can actually have a conversation about YouTube about data about people but more importantly about the small little things that might just connect the dots for you to help you be more successful and so for me I really do uh I'm really excited to have my students on for especially uh Alex how you doing Alex I'm good my friend how are you I'm doing fantastic um actually it's been a great day so far and I can't wait for our conversation today because I think it's going to help so many different people on

YouTube uh because you've been around the block a few times haven't you uh I've I've been I was uh I've been on YouTube since 05 and before Google bought it yeah and I I have the I think I have if I'm not mistaken the first making of or behind the scenes video because of any movie ever put on YouTube and I might just might have the first movie trailer I have yet to find an older one so there you go I mean here you're the first and then and then you gave up on YouTube and

ran away right because who would have thought this crazy little thing would have been a thing uh you know it made no sense the quality was horrible in o5 you remember no hold on hold on hold on no let's let's just let's just take it for what it is Alex this is really important okay it was the first video sharing website that you could actually hit the play button and play and not wait for like 45 minutes before it was able to buffer right yeah but uh but yes the quality was was not to the

standards of film quality but you can watch videos you can embed videos I mean that that's what was exciting for me but uh at the end of the day I mean you're a filmmaker I get it it wasn't to the Quality you know and so and so you abandoned YouTube and and um you know because like why why did you upload your first videos uh was it just like testing it out was it like oh this is really cool what was going on I think I I think it was for me at the time Myspace

was killing it so um I was just trying to find places to put my content up which was for a short film that I made at that time yeah and it just kind of just put I needed places to put it up and I saw this YouTube thing I'm like oh this is nice uh let me put it up here and then I think I embedded it in my flash website yeah at the time uh and I think I used it for that one because there was no real way to upload video in a comfortable

way with the file that was in the compressions we're all off right but I think that's why I did it but I didn't think that it was gonna you know I think our I think the first movie trailer ended up getting around 20 000 views or something like that but but back then it was that's amazing I mean there's hardly any people on YouTube at the time but yeah I I was I was ecstatic uh when I found YouTube because um I saw two things uh that just put me in awe one was the hit

the play button and it'd start uh the second one was webmaster tools because it's like oh my gosh you can actually embed these on websites oh my God I'm all in man I was I was waiting for this and I never went away I know that you just had a little little time off there so yeah but let's uh let's kind of dive in so you got you're an early adopter and then you ran away when was the next time you actually came back like what was that when I launched my my first podcast uh

in 2015 I uh I had I started the audio podcast I was focused on audio because video was still difficult to record Zoom wasn't around yet Skype was still the internet connection wasn't as great um at least and it was just not a thing people were doing people weren't recording conversations like this and putting it out on YouTube it just wasn't a thing yet so I recorded audio and then there was a little button that said oh upload to Youtube I was like oh okay let's open up a YouTube channel in the software it was

saying upload to Youtube yeah in my in my audio hosting platform there was a button that goes hey you want us to automatically upload it I'm like well sure why not why not so I I uploaded the audio versions of all my podcasts it was just audio and I kind of forgot about it yeah and then slowly but surely people started listening on YouTube and I started looking at it I was like wait a minute there's people people there people are listening people you know so I just started to take it a little bit more

seriously until I finally I think about a year year or two later I started recording video for the first time here's what I find funny with that number one you're a filmmaker what was the podcast about Alex what the freak it just wasn't big look I was a big I was a big follower of uh of Pat Flynn back in the day yeah Pat helped me out a lot when I was starting out and he didn't do it so I was like well that's not doing it I'm not doing it and I just it was

that kind of place I was such a newbie in the space of online you know online businesses have been around a lot but this new situation I was creating so yeah okay so um so you you basically noticed oh we can upload to Youtube let's go ahead and do it like let's there might be an audience there or it's just easy to do it from there um and then in the moment you're like wait let's you know people are starting to watch listen to this I guess and and and you know why not just you

know these these interviews with Skype so let's go ahead and and start recording these um and what's the channel name I think a lot of people I don't think I put it in the description I do apologize that we'll we'll add it um after the fact but but go ahead and put yeah it's called indie film Hustle the indie film hustle podcast and it's got about 80 000 subscribers and it's one of the leading podcasts in the filmmaking and screenwriting space that's great that's great and uh and you've you've put out uh quite a few

like hundreds of of episodes right yeah between well that channel I think has about 1600 to 2000 videos in general wow uh but I think that as far as episodes are concerned it's about I'm closing in on 700 on just the indie film hustle podcast and then I have a screenwriting podcast which is closing in on 300. yeah no I love that I love that okay so fast forward because this is like 2015 right yeah that's right yeah 2015. let's fast forward to when you actually had an idea for another YouTube channel let's let's kind

of I guess it was a website first but I think uh let's kind of talk about that because I think this is where a lot of uh content creators start but they sometimes don't know where to go because you had an audio podcast you're starting to build this audience over here and then you're kind of gravitated over here let's let's talk about that so yeah in in 2021 I I was I had a friend of mine tell me maybe you should open up a spiritual kind of personal growth podcast and I'm like what are you

insane why like I have no street cred I'm not a yogi I'm not a Buddha but they said you should open it up and I'm like all right fine I'll open it up and she's like you need to do it in three weeks I go you want me to launch an entire company wait wait wait who's this who's who's telling you in three weeks it's a a dear friend of mine for many many years who's guided me through many many parts of life okay so like you got three weeks to get this done Alex the

reason why was Easter was coming up and she's like oh God I could launch it on Easter and I'm like get it okay sure and I guess that's impossible and she's like it is for most people but not for you you could do it I'm like all right and I did website audio podcast got it yeah got guests logo you everything built a YouTube channel the whole thing but when I started this Channel and it's called Next Level sold when I started this Channel or the show I really already knew based on the last six

years of work on indie film hustle that I was going to launch the video and focus on video right because YouTube as a podcast Hub is the largest podcast Hub in the world much bigger than Apple most people yeah and most people don't even know that I mean it's crazy it's huge but the big thing I found is that the algorithm and I knew this at a basic level the algorithm will find you listeners on YouTube apple and Spotify will not they will recommend maybe a show but they won't go per episode and go for

topical category or video bucket as we know so when I decide when I decided to open up this new world I was like I'm going all in on YouTube and I just started pumping out content and I started doing one a week and then a couple then it started eventually turned to three or four new episodes a week and I grinded pretty much for about a year about a so from Easter to Christmas I had maybe 800 subscribers so there wasn't a lot of traction yet but there was a couple of videos that took off

enough that I already hit the monetization for hours but I couldn't get the subscriber base up right so then I started to go all in in January by February I already got monetized on my first channel and then kept grinding in July of that year which is 2022 just July of last year I had one video take off yeah and uh that one took off to about a hundred thousand hundred and twenty thousand which I was getting a thousand to two thousand yeah let's let's talk let's talk about that moment because I think that um

this is something that a lot of YouTubers look at is okay been grinding for a while we're just kind of putting along and then all of a sudden one video just takes off um and so what was going through your mind on that and then two what did you do to um really strategize of of you know your content strategy based on based on that that traffic so what happened when that video went off I was in Canada on vacation with my family and I had covet so I was dying dying and I just kept

looking at my phone and I'm like babe I think there's a video that's taken off sorry she had to strategize I was just in awe of it so when I got back home I looked at I was like wait a minute this is a it was a near-death experience uh episode where I had I interviewed this lady who had a near-death experience I'm like oh so near-death experiences of what my audience wants let me go after more news so then I automatically wait first off you're near death because of covid a near-death experience it looks

like okay I think all the all the um stars in heaven was aligning right there dear death there you go uh first video bucket officially which was near-death experiences so then I started trying to interview more near-death experiences and then July happened but I I didn't have enough near-death experiences to take advantage of that first hit right which is something you said to me the very first time we did our consultation and I was like okay so let me build this up then uh about uh July August could we pause just for one second um

so a lot of people are saying that your audio is popping on that um let's just make sure that you're on the you're on the right uh Source do you know how to check what audio source that you're on I don't know which one it is give me one second well um well that'll do it every time yeah let's uh let's see if we can get that Molly thanks for doing that so that uh oh yeah I think that's a little bit better talk hello one two three one two three yep there we go look

at that Molly see what you did there we go I I I yeah and I can hear you now I apologize I'm not used to uh this platform I used to zoom so I am a professional I've only done um so thank you for that sorry about that guys no no it's okay I should have caught it earlier but I I have this little see this little thing right here that's it I don't like the big headphones because I saw it like the headphones like when people shave their head it's like indented I'm like I'm

not doing that man I'll I'll do this right here um anyway so so in July the the that show uh popped uh that episode popped and then it kind of raised the bass line so I had like maybe 1500 to 2 000 subscribers it jumped to maybe about three thousand four thousand subscribers within us with a short period of time and then it just kind of the Baseline changed and I was looking at it I was like I kept I just kept grinding kept putting out you know four episodes a week just kept pushing it

and then October 11th for no reason an episode that I had with the channel took off and then a near-death experience took off yeah it was just every episode after that just started to go and we went from 75 000 views in October to 1.1 million well let's talk about that because that was about the time that um we start to work a little bit closer together and um there was a little bit Yeah there's there's some interesting things happening um I I want to I just want to just help people understand the importance of

what we're seeing here uh because I can't tell you how many people that I get on a console like you that you came on and you had something happening and we were able to at least create a hypothetical hypothetical analysis of why it was popping off and and then you're able to respond on it and so you're able to go from from uh July ish and start posting content more consistently and then you had other experiences that your the interviews itself and and then lo and behold there's an audience for it right and and that's

where uh you're able to elevate over to a million uh views in a month and that probably been the first time that you ever hit a million views on YouTube right ever yeah well that's why I reached out to you because I said I said to my wife I'm like I think I gotta take this seriously now I need some help because I I see what's happening but I don't know why it's happening or how I can put gas on this fire or how I can reach more people with the content and help more people

I I didn't know what to do so that's why I found you well that's that's where that's where I I hope this interview can Inspire so many people is at the end of the day you've got to be hyper aware of what the audience is looking for and I know that when you and I jumped on a one-hour consult and then when you became my student uh you know my my channel Jumpstart program um you got hyper aware of the audience and you started to see oh my goodness there's all this stuff that was done

way back when that you didn't apply like if you would have applied this like you're just like missed opportunities but but the big thing was I don't think it was a missed opportunity I think it was just more you're now ready to be hypersensitive of what the value proposition for your content is and then also you know to be consistent with that and I want to just show a graph real quick because I think it's very relevant um you know for for everyone uh let's just put us up right here there we go um this

is just in uh from the first of the year in 201 uh 23 so from January 1st to June you had 34 million video views and what's been great about it is the momentum keeps on getting bigger right and and that momentum literally is is the key um and this is one thing that I always teach my students is like when when you have the engine rolling it it's time to really start putting into uh uh the gas and the gas tank right let's just really start revving this up because once it starts perpetuating um

that's when you actually have more exposure so I'm going to just sit this way for everyone just so that we um we have Clarity but I don't give a hill of beans about subscribers all I care about is active viewers and what an active viewer is when they discover your content they like it they see another piece of your content and they click on and watch it that's when they become an active viewer and that's when the average view per viewer goes up and ultimately you're able to start really really getting the watch time minutes

and then two I don't really care for views as much I care about the watch time hours and if we can get that to increase then it it just it it makes you more money it brings up your RPMs it brings up your cpms and then ultimately I think collectively it it helps YouTube realize oh you're an authority in a specific space and also when you put out a piece of content it will will um you know have a lot more active viewers uh that that that they can put that piece of content in front

of uh and and that first uh initial 24 hours you know they're able to see that a little bit more prominently on on the YouTube uh home page and so my my question for you is um when when you started to see this when you started to see oh my gosh this is working and it was about you know I'd say march-ish you know it started to start to start climb up um like what what was going through your mind well I mean when it started in October it just every month it was just growing

and growing and growing so I just I just started to have to take this thing seriously I was like holy cow what what's going on so I just kept trying to I kept trying to figure things out myself I'm like well why is this video going and why didn't this video go and I was just starting to really understand content strategy which is not something I really kind of thought of but in a very subconscious way it wasn't a very conscious thing once I started training with you I really started to become hypersensitive of what

the audience wanted and once I figured out what the audience want I gave the audience what they want well I think I think it was more you're still passionate about it right I think yeah you're passionate about it so it's not diverting your passion just to only do what the audience wants but no I'm not doing shopping videos yeah yeah exactly yeah I'm not doing I'm not gonna do a shopping video or or tear apart an engine because my audience wants it I'm not you're passionate about this the audience cares about this that Ben Passover

you know in the Venn diagram he had that crossover that's where it would be really engaging it's fulfilling for you because as you elevate more people's stories more people are reaching out to you and and you know are wanting to be a part of it and it's starting to impact them and I think the the the biggest thing ever is um and I this is what I love about YouTube is when you get some momentum then then you get really passionate like holy cow this is like great let's let's make this a lot better and

what you did was oh let me I'm gonna do Daryl's mentoring program for 12 weeks and I'm going to learn as much as I can about the audience and then I'm gonna I'm gonna scale it from there um and and uh ultimately you started to apply and that's where what I love about this is is is key you know just seeing that that consistent growth and then two there was a couple things that was happening at the first of the year which is YouTube actually uh has a designated area for podcasts now and and they

really wanted to go after a multi format creators and giving them the ability to do it and ultimately that led to a lot of opportunity for for new eyeballs because YouTube's making it a priority as well and so what what are some of the learnings that you that you got um during that time like let's just kind of break it down I think the first one you mentioned was uh really analyzing what the audience or the viewer really cares about and then being more consistent with that uh what are some of the other things that

just kind of was on the top of your mind as you're going through this this phase of momentum the power of the thumbnail which I underestimated dramatically uh in my in all of my YouTube aspects and the power of the title those two things have been and I'm still honing I'm still changing I mean we were I was literally just changing old thumbnails before we got on this call because I was like up that one I know more now let me go back and repackage this or re you know reposition this so people can see

the content because once they get into the content they love it it's just you have to get them to see it and get them interested to see it so those are the biggest two biggest things that I was really concerned about and then the other thing is like you start seeing these numbers and you you can't kind of wrap your head around 10 million people watching or eight 10 million views a month is it's such an obscene number in my head and we've been doing that consistently and growing every month I can't even imagine what

like Mr Beast deals with wrapping his head around his number if if he got 10 million I he'd be like this is the worst he'd be depressed it's depressed no I have other YouTubers I have other if he didn't get it he got it in a day he's like oh that was the worst ever you know like what did we do wrong yeah but I I think the biggest thing would be um let's let's dial this in so you got a little bit more sensitive hey I have this great content no one's actually listening to

it at the depth that they are because my titles are not in line within you know interacting attracting the Curiosity factor or my thumbnails are disjointed or they're not from there like I I can tell you that um most creators say oh I already got my title thumbnail and you you know me a lot because you were you know we're still I'm still mentoring you in different ways like is it ever good like at the end of the day listen I I have I have I have still to this day I just like literally today

I released an episode and I was like this is going to be a banger thumbnail like it's gonna and I and I pop it out and like an hour in because I can tell now I can kind of feel the waves and I look at it I'm like son of a god shot you know it's below it's that dreaded gray arrows pointing down yeah and I'm like it's a great conversation I gotta change so I went in changed it to a new thumbnail changed the title it's now in the green and now it's popping back

up that but but I think that's the whole thing is um now that you're you understand kind of the momentum and what your bass lines are I mean I I teach a lot about bass lines yeah uh because you got to know where you're at and I think a lot of people just look at the The View counter and are not looking at well where where are those views coming in from like what device are they actually watching it on what you know get it get a little bit more granular on it uh but ultimately

um they're making either rash decisions or they're delayed decisions which I think can hurt you too it's like hey if momentum is coming on quickly and you notice oh it's an underperformer after an hour or two hours or three hours maybe we should address this yeah and that's the thing if you do it three days later it's done that that it's gone like YouTube was not even gonna give that a chance anymore you've lost that up no it was to a certain extent to a certain extent to a certain extent I I I've had videos

pop off like two years after the fact but oh no no I do too I do I do too but the initial thing that we're looking at and we'll we'll get clarity on this right but it's like the active viewers is like I said the most important thing that we're actually looking at and to get their eyeballs in front of them the first place that YouTube puts that title and thumbnail is in front of your active viewers yeah viewers and so you miss that opportunity um you know to to really get that so um look

it it's it's like I I get excited about this because it it shares I mean these these um channels and and what you're doing and your willingness to share with others uh can really encourage them um what would you say like your thought process uh before you know going through the you know my mentoring or whatever or just seeing how important thumbnails are and now uh your thumbnail title the importance of it like if you were to to grade it like what was it prior like did you feel like it was important uh versus now

oh before I thought it was yeah it's important sure you kind of need to get a good thumbnail now I I grade it as it's the number one thing that you need to you know have ready for people to to be able to click on your content because this is with the assumption that the content that you're creating is doing its job so we can get someone to walk in the door but if if the party ain't right they ain't gonna stay so I I I already know that the content I'm creating is good and

the numbers show it so I know that that I have not a concern about so my concern is then turns to the thumbnail is the first thing that people look at then the title secondly but the content has to be solid if not this is all for not yeah yeah you're wasting time but I I think the the way that I like to say it if they never click they never watch if they never watch they can't watch again you know or they can't watch deeper and so um it's it's interesting and I think um

that's like a standard uh answer like oh you want more views dual focus in on your your title thumbnails because that's that first step to get them in but then it's the content itself and I think you nailed the content in the sense of what the value proposition and what I love and I'll I'll show you this graph one more time just because I I think it's really important you're able to see that that YouTube found your audience and when we really break it down this is my favorite one um because it really puts it

in perspective of how much you've grown month over month so this is like May of 2021 to May of 2023 like I don't even think it registers there Alex I I just don't don't think it registers at all but yeah in the last uh 28 well the month of May you had almost 10 million uh views and now this month it's even higher it's like you're you're basically um you know um you're basically getting that momentum now the I think the key is this is I think a lot of people say oh yeah title thumbnails

that's what it said where it's at but I gotta say your average retention like what the people retaining on your videos is extremely high like like most people um you know with some podcasts it's like five minutes seven minutes ten minutes is what the average is like yours is nuts and like like they're listening to the like they're listening to the whole thing and and maybe not like 100 retention but sure you have the big bulk of it that's getting um you know massively going through your content uh could you just talk about why that

is and and how you position your content because I think you adjusted a couple key things from my point of view um of seeing you pre-working with me post working with me is now you're more intentional on on the video idea um the video interview and you're more intentional on the title thumbnail but more importantly you're more intentional on setting the stage and your content strategy but could you walk people through this because I think this is really important um because I think a lot of people don't process this I think they just they go

and react instead of be proactive well I mean the goal of the show is to help people around the world that's why I do what I do you know everything else is great but my point of starting the show was to to help people find you know find peace help with their traumas help them answer questions that they might have about about life after death the world the universe why we're here you know quantum physics the whole Gambit you know it's like this giant mosh of stuff that I try to cover on my show and

I think that people are resonating with it because they're connecting with the subject matter in the way I present that subject matter is a little bit different than others do like everybody has their flavor people are really kind of attached the way I do it and I'm really authentic and truly curious about this I'm not doing this for numbers and that's a big mistake that a lot of YouTubers make they do it only for the numbers they do it only for a paycheck and that only goes so far I am or authentically trying to find

out these answers for many times myself but the audience gets to listen in on it and that's an authenticity that I've had since the beginning of my podcasting career and I think that's one of the reasons why people are doing that yeah and I think it's you found your passion and and you launched and you had um a lot of learning that was going on what what you like what you didn't like you had a lot under your belt so that you've already had other channels or whatever and you had a lot under your belt

but it would be more oh now I understand the Rhythm and the flow now I understand oh they like this or that um but was it more because it where this is a podcast was you more considering YouTube um or was it just oh that I want to make the best podcast ever because I think sometimes um when when people are doing podcasts they're thinking oh it's just the podcast I really don't care about the metrics of YouTube absolutely the opposite my foot May 100 focus at the beginning of the show was YouTube I understood

enough at that point to know that I'm not going to get traction on Apple and Spotify because it's just not built to their system is not built to to suggest content in the way that YouTube does to to potential listeners or viewers so I literally was getting maybe a thousand or two thousand views uh on YouTube on an episode and I'd get 10 on my audio yep and I and it slowly as everything started to grow YouTube was the leader and then people just started finding me on YouTube Excuse me on on the audio versions

on Apple and Spotify because they're like I love this show on YouTube I want to listen to it while I'm going to work or when I'm doing my run or when I'm working out or when I'm on a journey or whatever and they just started to subscribe and now my uh it's exploded on my audio podcast but YouTube is what's driving that there is nothing else driving that and the big word of mouth well yeah I think it's it's more now YouTube's getting in front of more eyeballs um and and they they want to consume

deeper right um and that's at the end of the day sometimes it's all about consumption uh you mentioned hey do you know what people want to do it on the drive well they can do it on the drive if they do with their phone but sometimes it's just easier to do it through Spotify or whatever right and so um I wanna I wanna go in a little bit to this um specific graph because I think this right here is um something that we look at very in depth and and I I gotta give props to

YouTube uh in the sense that they're making the Analytics tool just so powerful like there's no other there's no other platform that gives you this much depth they try to give you debt that they don't necessarily um give you what I think is important uh but I I wanna I wanna go through this um and and most people get really excited about search and when you're looking at suggested videos is 43.9 of your of your um of your views in the last uh I guess this is of this year and then and then also browse

features 37.3 percent of this year um could you could you kind of explain to them what's going on with this and the importance of YouTube knowing who your audience is and then how how YouTube is using it to recommend to others sure so YouTube at this point knows what I do as a channel so well that every time I release an episode it knows the audience to go find it in so right now on average when I release an episode we're going to get low end 50 000 views high end within the first few days

uh to 100 to 200 to even 300 sometimes in the first week and then it'll just continue to find it but it knows the audience so well because of that that is the suggest aspect of that that that that analytic and then the browse to is the front page where it's sending it out to my active viewers constantly so it just knows it understands my Channel at a very deep level so it's now just automatically finding it and it's it's hilarious because when I don't hit the correct the correct vibration if you will or the

correct video bucket meaning the content in my content strategy it dies on the vine it dies so bad and so quick it's like just and I just think oh why did I do that so it's it happens all the time so I'm very sensitive to that now and and sometimes and sometimes I go in like I'm gonna try to try to jam it in I want this audience to listen to this episode and sometimes they just won't do it and then sometimes I do a brand new episode brand new bucket which was uh ancient civilizations

and lost histories with spirituality and that one exploded to that was the top one you saw the 3.9 million and that's less than two months ago so and growing and still going and still maintaining and still getting found it is astronomical what that's going on but those are those two metrics yeah no I I love it um because there's like when you really start to figure it out and really understand the engine that you YouTube spill and and then two you know how momentum works when you know you have active years that are consuming certain

type of content and as you're releasing the similar content it has the opportunity ability to start suggesting the content um and and then two this other graph right here a lot of people don't really understand this and I wanna I wanna just Deep dive into this but videos that are growing your audience oh um most most creators are like low or moderate right you have very high and then you have high and then you have some moderate ones right what I'm saying on this is um converting your audience from a new viewer to a loyal

viewer is is by far one of the the most difficult things as a content creator um and I just want everyone to know that that if you really focus in on making the best video for a new viewer like if you you really gear in and say hey if this if they're listening to this uh or watching this uh podcast for the first time how do we make the best experience for a new viewer coming on and then how do we help them go deeper right and I always I always like to process that and

you've done a great job at being consistent because the the the biggest thing about uh podcast is if it's like throwing spaghetti against the wall you never know what you're gonna get you never know what sticks but if if it's predictable I'm like oh you know Alex just uploaded that's great and I know hey it's gonna probably be like an hour 40 Minute Podcast hour hour and a half yeah and I'm ready for it right and that's where they'll actually get excited about it that they'll actually do I mean sometimes your average is like you

know sometimes over an hour uh is your average view duration sometimes even higher it's just like that's insane that's nuts but they know that you're gonna consistently bring them in the things that they're passionate about and you're going to ask questions in a way that gets them to be more thought provoking and then ultimately it leads to uh converting that person into a loyal loyal uh viewer and that's all we're trying to do like at the end of the day we want new viewers to become active viewers active years to become like loyal you know

and so really really love that um aspect of it now this is where I wanted to to to dive in a little bit is um as you're getting loyalty and and new new videos are being released and people are like consuming it in a way that they've never done before um it all comes back down to knowing your audience and then expanding and this is where you and I had a conversation you're like hey Daryl what do I do because like here we got this engine going do I make more content what do I do

you know and I want to have that discussion because this is where this is where I believe your standard YouTubers will always just go and do the things that they do and they'll make some mistakes and and then uh and then you took took an approach where you're like oh okay um I need to know what to do next because it's working and do I just put more gas on the fire what do I do um and and they need to start processing it and I think this is where a lot of content creators make

a mistake because um they they tend to either be satisfied with what they're doing or they try to meddle with what is working so let's let's kind of like let's have this definitely a conversation here because I think a lot of YouTubers once they start having success um they start to think differently and I I want to go through our conversation for sure so they over I think that and I've done this you overthink what's happening and maybe ego gets involved as well and you feel like you can do anything and you can just start

like you're you it just gets a little out of you you lose yourself in in the amount of of energy that's being shown to you or sent to you so for us uh I went to you I go Daryl I I mean this channel is now taking off I'm doing this this and this what what can I do to get to more eyeballs to get this content to more people to help more people out there what can I do and you said in a very subtle voice you didn't scream I you did not yell or

scream I'm just putting that out there right now you did not yell or scream you were very adamant and passionate about this you were very passionate about this next thing you told me and you're like do you have a do you have a Clips Channel and I said no I'm thinking about doing it and then you got more passionate and you said you need to start one right away and to my credit within three weeks let's stop when I get passionate I clap like you will get another Channel yeah you did you did there was

the Clapping involved when that happened and I was just like okay and I like just like I started at three weeks it took me three weeks to launch an entire show I could do a Clips channel in three weeks and I did yeah so let's let's talk about why Eclipse Channel first um and and what's the strategy behind it I think we need to kind of explain that and then two um I want to talk about what you did in those three weeks to launch it because I think a lot of people that are launching

new channels uh can learn from what you've done um and and even though that it was an adjacent Channel um it still had a different value proposition so yeah absolutely so originally I started doing I think about 15 to 20 minute clips and then you suggested to do shorter Clips maybe five to ten minutes tops because that way it appetizes them to go and watch a full episode as opposed to giving them a full 20 minute clip which is a meal in itself you want to give them a little snack back for them to then

it dive into the full conversation so I made that adjustment pretty quickly with my content strategy I was as I was doing it and I was able to go into my interviews and grab out three or four clips per interview of the best of it the most exciting parts of it and when you're creating thumbnails and titles for an entire episode it's tough because you're trying to Encompass an entire conversation in that but these are so much easier because it's literally the question or the topic of the five minutes that you create so it's a

lot easier and faster for me to create thumbnails and and titles for that but that was the strategy of trying to just take the best of of everything and then enough to get them excited to continue to hey if you want to watch and every episode every video at the very end says you want to watch the full episode click here if you want to watch a full episode click here and have links and everything so it's all it's all driven that whole second Channel's only purpose is to it for people to enjoy it and

get value out of it but if they want to go deeper it's to focus all the energy onto the mother channel so it's just to drive traffic there as well yeah well I I look at it this way and most people didn't know this but I did um but like like the most viewed YouTube channels uh from watch time perspective and then also from from views itself uh before Joe Rogan left YouTube to go to Spotify uh number five uh the most uh consumed channel was Joe Rogan JRE experience right and then uh number seven

was Jerry clips and so it's like you know Clips was just taking those moments that you didn't have to watch three hours to enjoy and then and then two it's a different value proposition and the reason why I wanted you Alex specifically not to do 20 minute videos is because these are just quick dips of fulfilling on that that Sensational story or that moment that would pull people deeper into I wanted to say oh that was really interesting I want to go deeper into the podcast and and and go from there or um they're like

oh I didn't catch that episode of the podcast I need to go get it right or oh my gosh who is this guy I I really like this story and I love the stuff where is this podcast thing and so they start looking and it's like creating that that process of of taking a new audience uh from my point of view and and engaging them deeper or it's uh doing another form of video that they might say oh I don't have time to do an hour and a half video or a podcast but I do

have for five minutes seven minutes you know ten minutes whatever that is and then it goes into oh that was really interesting I'm gonna go and find that episode and then hit save when I have time to to go uh engage with it uh but one of the one of the things that I teach more my Advanced students is about clusters this was a very controversial subject that I introduced about seven years ago on the stage of vidsummit and um one of the things that um made it controversial was just average YouTube employees didn't know

what the heck that was um the the people doing the algorithm did is like hey when when you go to YouTube and YouTube has you know millions and millions and millions of unique uh home pages every day well how they do that is through a viewing pattern um like if I like certain types of videos then certain types of videos are going to show up like like you could create that and then two when you go in and let's let's go ahead and I'll show you they they now add that data uh which is really

good right but you can see channels that you know channels that watches your audience these are channels that uh your audience actually watches and you can see what videos they actually watch so you know I was talking about this seven years ago and now they have the data to support it but ultimately there's crossover viewership that happens and what we're trying to do is reach more people because there's a lot of people that wouldn't actually engage an hour and a half video on YouTube they're like that's too much of a commitment but they will do

a five minute six minute segment and and ultimately that engine will uh you know start recommending uh to the podcast and then from the podcast we'll start recommending to that short form and it can be this suggestion engine that is going back and forth and so I I want to go through your launch strategy because I think a lot of people can actually um um learn from this so the first one was why a separate Channel and why did you you know not do it on your your main Channel so the reason I didn't do

it on my main channel is I was told by you sir not to mix durations on your channel I done a couple of short 20 to 20 to 30 minute Clips on because I was doing it I did probably about 10 or 15 of them and they did fairly well but then when I started working with you you're just like that's the fastest way to destroy a channel is to mix a 10 minute video strategy with an hour and a half long video strategy because your audience is the value proposition is to so different that

you're gonna you're gonna destroy your channel for the suggestion machine for YouTube's algorithm for the audience they need to understand what you are so that was the first reason I I decided to go into Eclipse Channel and then as far as a launch strategy is concerned I I just put it together started to I I was gonna do I lied to myself and said I was only going to do three or four a week um and then I was like well I'll just do it daily and I just started to start doing daily videos on

that channel and we launched it and the only marketing we done because it's another thing that you've taught us is don't Market outside of YouTube try to Market within YouTube if at all possible because you want to stay in that ecosystem because those those audience that that viewer is more engaged than a viewer on a Facebook post or on an Instagram post or something like that or on a Reddit post for the most part that's what that's why the way I took it so I was like okay so the only marketing I'm gonna do with

this channel is I'm going to put it in the community tab in my YouTube channel let's stop there for a second because most people would do a big shout out and say yo go check this out this new channel this is what I'm doing blah blah blah blah and and yet you put it in one of the most uh I I guess it's an appropriate place for it like the community tab because like who goes to the community tab like like seriously well you know what so this is something I've been doing since the beginning

of the next level Soul channel is I had been using the community tab really to start to talk to my audience and start showing them video content and also driving traffic back to my main website so they could go deeper into the next level Soul world but also watch more content and I built up a community there to the point where I average a lot of views now let's let's take it but let's take it from the perspective so most people come to YouTube to watch videos right right not to read a community post but

if you're taking uh collectively your biggest video um and and what is it like five million or something like that or even higher whatever it is 3.9 um and you take your most engaged Community post what's your most engaged Community post I think the most engaged the most likes I've gotten on one Community post is I think 1.8 uh like a thousand eight hundred likes yeah so that's a lot it's a lot for a community post but what I'm saying is it's a certain segment of an audience because I can guarantee you it has to

be your most core audience that loves all your stuff because they're they're engaging with a community post like I I'm very curious right now on like let's let's do this in chat right now um who has engaged with the community post this week just put it in there um I guess I just need to know this because at the end of the day I just I don't think I've ever done it like I just like I'll I'll post it but why am I going to go engage with the community posts I'm here for for YouTube

right but uh but it does it works no but but what I'm getting though is um you know it's about the hardcore audience right I think it's just like knowing the people that want to connect with you deeper and I think subject matter means a lot too because I think these are personal stories that that have a personal connection and they're looking to reach out and I think if you're active in the community post that can do that as well but for me I can guarantee you that that's the last thing I want to do

on YouTube is to feel like I'm like on Facebook like I hate Facebook so do you uh I agree with you I hate Facebook as well do you do you want to hear something else that's going to blow your mind oh let's hear it I actually get more subscribers from the community post than I do for my shorts we'll look at you have a pretty decent I do a 2 -show day we put out two shorts a day and we get decent you know decent for what what we do yeah I do four or five

a day my friend and it's still killing I don't know why so so you basically said hey got this new channel Community post and no I didn't even do that no I didn't do it I didn't even do a shout out I just posted it going hey here's a here's a video here's I did not even mention that I had a new shout out to my community all I did was put the link to I started off with four episodes so we had something you said start off with three or four episodes three or four

yeah I launched the four episodes and those four episodes I released every hour for the first day from like nine o'clock 10 11 12. yep and that's all I did and then the next day I released another one did the same thing well let's let's talk about that because uh getting traffic to it is one thing right and and then two the reason why releasing multiple episodes is so that people can uh watch something and if they like it they can watch another video in another video another video and then that that creates an active

viewer right out of the gate so instead of having a new viewer on one video you have an active viewer you know this probably watched two or three uh videos um you know which is a big deal for YouTube because then YouTube goes oh I know who this audience is let's go out and get in front of more people right I think we've barely hit 30 days at this point uh and the thing that was fascinating because I've never seen a a channel grow at this pace from the very beginning or a virgin Channel if

you will so I've been watching it every day I'm checking analytics I'm just seeing what the algorithm is doing how it's who's watching it where it's coming from all this information that I've learned with you that I'm kind of diving into deeply and you know I only have I think right now we've we're closing in on 5000 of subscribers in the first 30 days or so but there were some videos that jumped up to 50 000. I have I think one video is 50 another one's at 38 or something like that so that's not my

community that's suggestion yes like that that uh yeah I was looking at the data beforehand and it was like you're you're getting a new audience because when you go in to see um you know content that they're consuming um and and that suggestion it was not even your other podcast it's like literally like it's not even remotely in the same category but it's bringing a new audience in and ultimately getting it to be aware of hey here's a podcast that's going on uh oh I love these stories and ultimately it's going to grow your other

content as well because if we've done it right if we've done it right in the sense of the clip going into the main the main podcast I think it's a slam dunk uh you know you're gonna just create your brand in a unique way because uh you know you take an hour and a half segment you know you might have four or five videos that are clip clip worthy where it's just really really good um and then you're able to put it on the new new channel um but my question for you and this is

a really really important question is how do you choose what Clips work like how do you like because like right out of the gate it seemed like you were just picking the winners here like how did you how did you make the decision which Clips to do and then um how did you translate it into the title thumbnail so all the titles and thumbnails are still done by me because I can't let anybody else do that right now until I have a team or something like that that will be able to do it in-house but

right now I still change it so much that it's still me uh but my team and I have been doing this content for so long that they understand and they show me the clips and I go yay or nay and it's they understand they have an understanding of the clip and they understand like guys find the best stuff the most kind of Click not clickable stuff but the stuff that's really going to bring people in to the content and that's what they do and we started off with like five or six seven Clips per episode

and I said guys let's just do three tops maybe four per episode because we have nearly 300 episodes so and and I'm putting out four new ones every week this is an endless as an endless amount of content essentially yeah no I love it I love it and um what did you think I mean um getting monetized in nine days and seeing the momentum of it but I expected I expected at least I was gonna say conservatively two to three months is what I was expecting it to do because from my experience launching a new

channel takes time it takes time to find the audience but this combination of using the community it was all Community it was all of my community tab uh that drove all of the subscribers so once my audience started to find out my entire audience has a note doesn't know about this yet but as they continue to discover it they just jump on it and and it when I looked I was like I turned to my wife I said I think I think we got the numbers to get monetized like what's going on and then like

on day I think it was like day eight or day nine because we did it on day nine but I think day eight we had that video that took off or it was a couple days after that that took off I was like well we would have been monetized in another day or so anyway because that one took off the 40 000 views yeah and everyone's watching the retention on those videos are insane we're talking yeah let's talk about this because like um I know I was I was bashing a little bit on the community

tab but that was that was the strategy that we talked about prior um and and I I want everyone to to know this um and and I'm going to ask you a specific question would you have pushed it on somebody else's Community tab like if you if you went out there and says I got 10 YouTubers and and uh from different different audiences um and you know a little bit of this they might do yoga or whatever would you have encouraged them to push one of your videos on on their Channel I would I think

that would have been a good strategy because I've actually done that for other YouTubers so other YouTubers in this space have interviewed me and then I automatically go hey guys uh I'll just post it in my community post and it's by far their biggest interview on their Channel me and I know I'm not that famous or that big or anything but my community wants to see these interviews with me so all of a sudden the 30 40 000 views and all the other views that they have are like eight thousand that they're like Jesus what

did you do so I'm like I'm cook the power of the community tab Daryl yeah here's but here's the thing and I want to just let I'm glad that you didn't do it though just to let you know yeah tell me yeah I would have asked because it's like if if it's channels that your audience already watches it's in your cluster then absolutely like abso frequently if it's not if it's some random channel that has no relevance and they do Minecraft yoga videos no like like it's not even not even worth it um and the

reason why is because we don't want to confuse YouTube who our viewer is we want to be able to say no this is our viewer and this is the type of content they like because as soon as that hits YouTube can go and find it through recommendation because like you would not be getting 50 million or 50 000 views in a video of it going out to suggested not only than on your other channel but out suggesting you know in the land of YouTube if if you would have uh confused who that audience is for

that video yeah without question now would you uh so let me ask you this Daryl with this Clips Channel what would you suggest to to do we continue to do one a day uh how long before the before YouTube actually understands because it still hasn't figured it out you told me like wait till YouTube figures this channel out yeah yeah what do you think come on man he just barely started this thing I'm just asking about 10 million you want 10 million views like tomorrow no I'm just curious I'm just let me just kind of

explain let me kind of explain so um as you're well aware YouTube deals in Baseline and traffic because so if you can consistently put out content uh whether it's weekly whether it's three times a week whether it is uh daily is getting that active viewership up so it's like that those new viewers converting to active viewers if you can get that up um I actually have a channel that I'm working really closely with right now it started in March and I mean it wasn't even impressive it was just like the content was good but the

audience didn't didn't hit in uh did hit in like at the numbers that that uh we were wanting uh but the content was good you know and and then two the retention was good so it was just like it just didn't hit just right well just a couple weeks ago uh we had a video pop off and what guess what magically happened when one video pops off then YouTube has all this whole Library since May or since March that is able to start posting content too and um to that other viewer and guess what they

were watching that too and like today like this is this I'm still kind of blown away by this but today I mean man it's like eight eight million video views in the last 48 hours you know it's just like it's like freaking it's like hyperdrive right now and like like what's crazy from it is YouTube actually understands our audience and then two one of the things that I look at and you're really uh well aware of this is that um real-time viewership numbers you know we have one video right now that's getting like a hundred

and five thousand views every 60 minutes it's just like freaking insane I'm in fact it's just it is it's just insane but I think at the end of the day it's just like if you can really understand um the the audience and the value proposition what you are and more importantly what you're not um and and then really being consistent then then YouTube will say okay let's give it out to a little bit broader audience or let's get it out in front of these eyeballs and then that's where that Baseline occurs and so if you're

like looking at your own stats I mean this did exactly what we want I mean look at you had July you see that little teeny little thing that popped off that was that one video yeah you have it right there and then it came back down and come from here and then it just started to compound right like YouTube figured who you you are and it took a little bit of time and so on um on this new clips Channel I'd say give it 90 days of being consistent where when you release a video you

have uh five thousand six thousand people engage with it right and and then really look closely at your audience tab where it has new viewer that's the blue uh graph and the returning viewer which is the purple graph and see if we can get that purple above the blue and and then if we can do that consistently and then the blue as you release a new video just kind of Pops off and brings in a new audience um and just see if you could do that for 90 days because like at the end of the

day if that's starting to increase in the 90 days um you will have a video pop off like right now you have one that got 50 000 views well the difference would be is did it just do it on home page did it do it for just that 48 hours and and will it consistently do that or is it getting recommended through suggestion which that video was getting suggested right and and so could we consistently have it be suggested not on new videos that are popping off but but on older content Evergreen content that people

are engaging with and that's where that can get interesting if that makes sense yeah it does and and let me ask you this though and I think how I I really want to kind of dig into this because I think one of the reasons why my channels both are doing well is because of the massive amount of content that I've put out where there is this massive Library where YouTube could eventually suggest yeah would you agree but no I don't necessarily agree completely with it because because it's like uh let me um add this real

quick because um the data suggests that you have an active audience when when you're looking at this is just a 2023 your numbers for if I was just to do it in the last 28 days it would actually be higher and skew higher but I didn't take that screenshot but uh 37.3 percent of the people that are clicking on the home page okay um and and you have 43.9 for suggested videos if that was like 60 suggested videos which now if you actually bring in the home page versus suggested in the last 28 days it

would be even smaller for suggested videos um I would say that you're correct like because um I call it the WWE effect uh WWE uploads 82 videos a freaking day uh like when I heard about that I was like okay that's how many 83 like 83 videos 83 videos a day they don't care about browsers because they have so much they have so much it's all about building up the library because it's the suggested views where they get it and they'll get millions and millions of views um you know uh every every you know minute

an hour or whatever um just because just because of the the amount of Library they have out there and it's just it's a suggestion engine and so in your case yes it helps to have a bigger Library however that being said a lot of your library wasn't really done right and you're going back and fixing it right and you're starting to see an increase because it was done right right and so you're starting to see that a little bit but ultimately um you're still having a high amount of viewership coming from homepage which is was

what we want we we the the mix of the mix of your traffic sources is basically a little flipped it like I usually like browse feature above suggested but for your type of content for for uh um podcasts I actually like suggested above browse feature uh because it's it's a it's a longer commitment like because when you release a video they might say oh there's an hour and a half I can't watch it right now but I'll come back to it and instead of someone saying oh he just released this new video it's only 12

minutes I can watch it right now I got 12 minutes you know what I'm saying and so that's that's a big that's a big deal so and I and I want to just real quickly dig into something that because there's something that you taught me when we first started I think our first our session is you looked at my thumbnails and you saw I'd done one I think it was one of my shorts on the show on on the channel and you're like I like that thumbnail a hell of a lot better than what you're

doing so I'm like all right and then I spent the next two weeks and I redid my entire back catalog of 200 and something videos which took me two weeks of just rebuilding every single thumbnail and that jumped my my viewership automatically and then now I've been some so strategic that I'll go back retweak a thumbnail and a title and then it'll take about a week or two and then all of a sudden it was just literally hockey stick from something from two years ago or a year and a half ago I love it it's

crazy it's it's I just I just love YouTube I just I can't tell you how much I love YouTube it's like it you know at the end of the day it's like it's so fun for me to navigate this world and then realize that hey you can spot winners and there's just what if you just tweak it a little bit you know what's what's gonna happen and I I just I just love it so all right so let's uh let's kind of dig into some questions you could just stick around for some questions absolutely and

and I do appreciate everyone that's coming on live I'm going to try to be a little bit more consistent leading up to vidsummit because uh ultimately we got vid Summit coming up um and you want to stick around because uh vid summit we're gonna be giving away a couple tickets today uh vids in Dallas Texas this year is October 3rd through the 5th and ultimately we uh just love uh vid Summit here's my partners uh Mr Beast and Sean durris with space station what I love about vidsummit is we get people that are crushing it

right now sharing the strategies this is Hope scope one of my students she was teaching about uh viewer avatars and honestly it was one of the best presentations I've ever seen it was just like off the charts it was like so good and I really loved her presentation about Avatar training and then we have wenji was talking about how to leverage your brand and do it outside of YouTube and she was talking about how she was able to uh you know raise a 150 million dollars for a company project that she was doing using YouTube

and then ultimately having Colin Samir hitting a million subscribers I mean it's so great and then two this is uh one of the my favorite things that happened at vidsummit uh 2022 is this 17 year old girl was coming she put put all the money that she had in the bank just to go to La and and now she's going to be one of the Keynotes there because she got over a million subscribers since October and close to 700 million video views uh so we we have fun there um engaging we had a twenty thousand

dollar Uno tournament and this lady won 20 grand it's so awesome uh but you gotta you gotta check it out um and and that's something that I'm really excited about this and so stick around we'll be giving a couple tickets away and uh and also we're gonna be answering your questions and who knows we might give a few other things away does that sound good sounds like all right so let's do the super chats first um here we go have one coming in from Hudson vintage question so what is the best way to use video

growing your audience metrics so what's the best metric for that uh is there a short answer or I have a shopping channel LOL okay what would you say Alex we'll let you go first on this one what is the best connection do you look for to Growing your channel uh I honestly I think it's the suggestion for me I I when I see um that's what I'm staring at and waiting for on my Clips Channel I'm like I'm looking I'm looking like it still brows it's still search it still browse it still search but oh

there's no there's and I've seen it it started off at zero and now it's at like four to seven percent and then it's like a couple went up to 12 percent like I just that once you get that the algorithm is now suggesting you and that's the key it's bigger than anything else on YouTube according to Yoda here yeah so I like the Yoda in the background I will I will take that wise Master Yoda uh for me um it's it's about who's watching the video where they're watching it from okay um so the traffic

source so exactly what what Alex was saying so it's like if the traffic's coming from search who are the people watching from search if it's coming from suggestion uh who is watching from suggestion but I will say that there's no one metric I look at because I think if you look at one metric it's very very bad and then two the one out of ten ten out of 10 metric I I think is absurd um because a lot of people put their mental health into that chart and I think that's horrible there's other metrics to

look at is like who's watching it where they're watching um you know how how often do they click um and that's that click-through rate how long they stay on a video and then how many videos did they actually watch after that one that's kind of the metrics that I look at is like I want the viewer's journey through my YouTube channel and so we we go way in depth on that so thanks for the Super Chat really do appreciate that um always helps out so okay uh fat tested travel Jason I love your channel name

okay if you're purposely building out long tail content should you utilize curiosity in the tunnel versus focus on Search terms what would you say Alex oh absolutely curiosity and and that thumbnail is so much more powerful than searches and and again I've been taught Again by Master Yoda here that the people who search could be more transactional could be you don't really know where they're coming from you don't know if they just want one minute or if they want an hour whereas a suggestion and having people click or looking have a better retention to my

understanding yeah so one of my favorite things is uh I have uh several businesses that um that started out right really search heavy one is a tow truck driver um so I'm partners with a tow truck driver um and uh you know the the Curiosity factor is is key because like once you get away from search is just a minor portion of All Views like over 75 of All Views that happen every day on YouTube comes when YouTube's recommending that video to others and that's what we're trying to to get and I can tell you

it needs to create a pattern of curiosity for people not for search engines I think if you're trying to cater to the search engines then you're going to lose now I'm not saying that that humans don't um connect with keywords that would be relevant in search engines but also relevant into a title but how you package it I I think is is definitely key on that okay um moving on to the next Super Chat which is Jordan hey Daryl I was wondering how many spots are left for vidsummit this year I'm saving up for my

ticket for me and my dad all right so Jordan this is what we're gonna do um this is what we're gonna do okay I want you to send me a DM on Twitter and I will give a ticket to your dad you just gotta buy your ticket okay so you don't need to save up for your dad all you got to do is save up for uh for you and I'll uh comp your Data Ticket does that sound good but he only gets his ticket when you actually buy yours okay that sound good look at

it 6.99 for that ticket it's not bad I'll buy that all day sir yeah yeah love it love it all right okay so there we go Twitter Twitter is the correct answer okay next one is uh hey ask Alice how much better uh growing on YouTube is his indie film distribution so how much better growing on YouTube is than indie film distribution yeah uh a lot better um tremendously better uh India I mean this is a this is a filmmaker obviously and he knows that I've been very heavy in independent film distribution for many years

and warning about people who steal money and all that kind of stuff in that in that industry and uh YouTube is the only and I if if they bring me on if they bring me on the stage at AFM this year this is what I'm gonna say YouTube's entire business model is built around helping and CR and supporting creators that's right that is from the very beginning they understood that Hollywood's approach has been to screw the artists since the days of chaplain we're in the middle of a rider strike right now because they're fighting for

more so that's the two big differences so to answer your question yes YouTube is better it's not perfect nothing is perfect but at least they focus on helping the Creator and you have a way to make money and to support yourself and your art and it can be ridiculous money too like let's just be clear like they're not gonna say oh you're making so much money we're gonna take a bigger cut they're not it's just set it's standard um and I I love it I love it so this is great so thanks for the Super

Chat uh so the next one is do you uh use yourself in the thumbnail or just a product if you do product reviews want to master this piece what would you do I I I that's a very it's all dependent if you are the star and you want to become the star then I would put myself in the thumbnail uh which has does work sometimes with reviews if you are the YouTuber but if I think if you want to make it a more personal YouTube channel you would put yourself into it if you're just putting

just you know Channel product reviews by itself it becomes more transactional I don't know what do you think today yeah no I just think it what is the value proposition of your content what is the value proposition of your uh channel uh some of my best channels that I consume as a viewer uh are S8 driven channels like they give really in-depth essays I love them I love that type of content if I saw their picture I don't even know what they look like sometimes you know I'm saying I well I do now because they've

spoken at midsummit or whatever but um I you know at the end of the day it's just like it that's not what's pulling me in what's pulling me in is the Curiosity of what I'm going to learn or what the essay is going to be about and so for me um that that's that's it but it's the style of content and then two uh what the value proposition for the viewer is so if it's you reviewing products um and if you want it to be more about you versus the product it is about your personality

and what you're discovering through the product then I would say definitely have you in the thumbnail along with the product so yep great great question and let's go to the next one uh hey Daryl found you and your book via Myron golden a week ago I love Myron Myron's like one of the most amazing guys ever I love him love him to death great student uh what What's better Clips split test uh the same content with ABC thumbnail titles or ABC content so I'll answer this one um because I can tell it's marketing nerd and

I like marketing nerds um so the way I look at it is I I would rather never have an uh ABC Title I want to know what my freaking title is like I I want I want that literally done before I even pick up the camera before I do any pre-production that's the what is the title idea then the thumbnail should support it now I might have four or five variations of thumbnails that could work and I want them ready to go so that if something is not hitting the metrics that I want I can

switch out that thumbnail uh rarely rarely do I ever switch out a title and the reason why is because the thumbnail usually grabs your attention and then if it's uh in line with your uh thumbnail itself your your title I'm sorry your thumbnail is in line with your title um then uh ultimately they're going to get that click and so I use really just do that rarely rarely rarely do I ever do anything outside of that so in fact like I've been here I've been doing this so long I can pretty much say okay this

is going to work and then um you know at the end of the day um it doesn't and I just switch out the thumbnail and it pops off so okay next one is oh thanks uh see you at fhl and hopefully event Summit yeah you got to come to vid Summit it's going to be in Dallas for sure uh really excited about that and uh big thanks to Firehouse heavyweights uh for the Super Chat uh with no question and you might have asked a question but you didn't hit it in there but we'll see if

we can get oh yep here he has here it is I want to launch my channel I think I heard you say earlier launch with multiple videos at once is that correct what do I say Alex launch with at least three or four videos so they have something to watch if they like the first one yeah so for me it depends on um you know your your viewer I would at least do two two videos uh uh if you have traffic that would have that that same viewer that you're engaging with kind of like what

Alex had um I would probably have three or four um so you can really really go in depth um my friend Matt Pat um says five so like like you you want multiple pieces of content but I think the biggest thing is if they discover you if they can go deeper that's great and you know getting two or three videos would be uh would be wise I've launched a lot of channels over my career and I would say the minimum I've done was three uh when I launched the channel so there you go okay here

we go I have a couple of channels between 50 Subs to 300K Subs when making a new channel and a new Niche should I advertise it uh to my other ones or will it confuse YouTube about who my audience is what would you say Alex I would not uh like you just said do not do not I never once have told my filmmaking and screenwriting audiences anything about the spiritual stuff that I do and the mindset stuff that I do and vice versa it's not on YouTube on the podcast I eventually crossed over a little

bit when it was appropriate where it made sense where I had like a screenwriter talking about spirituality and then that made sense to do but other than that I wouldn't especially yeah there's no way there's no way that you could ever convince me to do that like at all it's like um I've done this too and trust me I've done all these channels without recommending and it's just like if I can get YouTube to pick something up um if I know hey this is a banger title this is a banger thumbnail and it's Banger content

it's like YouTube's gonna pick it up it might it might be immediately it might take a couple days it might take a couple weeks but realistically when you know what good content is from the title and thumbnail the packaging of it and you know how to bring people into the story you can have amazing growth um and I I do believe it and like I was just saying earlier I have a channel that I've been helping on uh very consistently since March um it it's it's you'll have a hundred thousand subscribers uh probably tomorrow if

not Monday um and and we just passed 8 million uh it was like seven seven million views last 48 hours but it'll be eight you know after today but it will be at a million subscribers probably at the rate that we're going uh probably before Vince so it might be a great case to hit Summit who knows so all righty um okay so let's do the next uh question here Joshua's Journey I'm having a real problem getting traction with my travel Vlogs could you do a channel review real quick uh maybe SEO thumbnails or my

video just sucks I don't know uh Joshua sorry I don't do Channel reviews on uh the the this uh specific thing I do appreciate the super chat but let me let me kind of talk about holistically what's wrong with travel Vlogs um and and I've been in the world for a very long time and I've been able to see a lot of content um there's a lot of popularity around uh vlogging and travel Vlogs and it's more reactionary like hey I'm going to this place and we're gonna go discover this or whatever and sometimes those

are the most boring videos ever in the history of all mankind um what makes it unique what what's the cool thing to do so like for me if if um if I'm traveling let's just say to Iceland right um and or Greenland or whatever like what are the the things that's going to really pull it in right it's just like you know is there like can I spend the night in an igloo right okay that's interesting that's it's travel but it's also interesting because who spends a night in the igloo and they they also have

like this um you know all uh uh it's all ice hotels that would be interesting that's an interesting video I think there's a lot a lot of components like you know spinning you know uh 48 hours in a in a in an ice hotel that's interesting so I think it's just more really looking for the idea and I think sometimes it's like hey just go on a journey with me around the world is fine um and the reason why some don't get the traction that they do is because most people want a personality into it

that's where Vlogs are really good but it takes so much to get invested with you uh to see you travel or on the Vlog but once they are they they're sucked into the ecosystem it's really good it just it takes a while to grow and the only way you can grow is around the idea of the video so that's that's what I'll I'll stick to there we go um let me do this next one cools I'm curious about the place of gaming uh will be at the summit so that I would assume vidsummit uh I

want to go to develop my younger teen audience I'm trying to my best to save but it's a lot yes uh vid Summit is a lot um one of my favorite speakers of all time is coming to vidsummit they were able to launch uh two channels and in about five months get over three million subscribers and their average video length is 30 minutes and what's even better than that they don't even edit it wow they just record it put it up and uh so uh Nico and cash is coming both of them and uh they're

Minecraft youtubers that are on fire and so we have a lot of um uh of opportunity now if you think you're gonna come for fans this is not the conference for you uh there's no fans it's all about collaboration it's about creators helping creators if you want to learn from some of the top gamers in the world which they're going to be there then you'll want to go to midsummit and learn how to engage audiences and so on so super excited about that keep on keep on keeping on um and hopefully we'll see you there

okay moving on to the next one the crypto Channel I just finished the 38 Creator Challenge and it will be a live changing for my channel thank you Daryl if you guys don't if you're not aware uh in the description I actually do a free training for 30 days to help you improve your YouTube channel you can go ahead and click on that and it's free you know and uh it's it's actually really good my goal is to to help you see success by just analyzing a few things and taking action so um that it

works really well so okay moving on foreign we got Firehouse heavyweights again last one uh can I have reactions and educational content in one channel or should it be two separate channels good good Alex I don't know I say no on that man if it's going to be either educational you're mixing up the audiences I mean unless you're doing reactions on educational videos maybe but other than that I would not I would separate them it's it's tough um so in in my book um Firehouse heavyweights I don't know if you have my book right here

yeah no I'm gonna give it to him for free good well I guess he paid a super chat but anyway um I need you to reach out to me on Twitter I'll send you a signed copy but the thing for me is there's an example in there of Legal Eagles and they did hey this is like educational um and and also reactions so if you're reacting and giving education in it like legal eagle it might work however that being said it really depends on your viewing Avatar like who your viewer is um and ultimately um

you definitely want to give a lot of thought and and process into that because if it if it's something they're like hey what is this I was coming for Education this is like completely over out in left field I'd probably do it on another Channel but once again come to Twitter and put your name in there and I'll I'll uh send you a free book so very good all right next one okay here we go just started uh starting a channel goal is to help animal rescuers promote animals and planning on using Biz uh at

Big Paw RR do I need to incorporate myself and a personal Channel as well combined with other recommendations okay so I'll kind of speak to this one um I I love people that are really passionate come on YouTube and where your passions about you know animals and rescue what I would do if I was in that situation is this um I would try to start a non-profit um the reason why I do a non-profit is because there is a subset of channels on YouTube that is a non-profit and then two people can donate to your

non-profit uh for you to do videos and to rescue people and to show the process and so on so forth that could be really interesting um I um I I was helping Mr Beast uh when he started Beast philanthropies um and he had a big heart had a lot of opportunity to do it his goal was hey if the channel brings in Revenue it could just be more money to give and that's that's what he was able to do there and believe it or not his two channel um uh strategists and and the people that

execute on his ideas are coming to vidsummit and is talking about how to take philanthropy viral and really get more people uh you know in in that regard so for me I would do the non-profit route out and it just because it's non-profit doesn't mean you can't make money um it just you know I I can get a tax write-off if I can contribute plus YouTube can really um help in in different ways um that being said if you don't want to take the non-profit route I would definitely incorporate or have some type of business

I always like to have arm's length for me personally um and and you know there's just a lot of tax advantages for that but I'm not a tax accountant or an attorney go go uh consult with your attorney so all right moving on to the next one hey Daryl I have 13 videos and five over 50k one with 225k but I only have uh 1700 Subs after two years what should I focus on to get more subs also what's happening with your finger I I guess this finger yeah a genius I I uh I got

a new house and it has these really big fridges and and freezer and I went to go grab the yes it's closing you know just to open it up and I usually grab it like my old freezer well the weight of that didn't didn't like it and it smashed it so yes this is what it looks like so you can take the screenshot on that one all right um I'll let you ask that one Alex yeah I this is I think this from from my experience is that if you had those kind of videos pop

off and your whole channel was not growing it's because you probably don't have the content strategy of the video bucket set up properly to take advantage of that like I didn't in July when that one video popped off I didn't have enough other content for the the algorithm to start suggesting where in October when it popped off then we were Off to the Races because I built this nice video got you know all these video buckets that could cross pollinate and that's where the explosive growth was so you just not you're maybe doing just one-offs

and not building a good video bucket strategy yeah and I would say I agree with Alex 100 um just because that's what I would say but I I think I learned from you sir this is not coming for me I've learned from Daryl but that I sound like I know what I'm doing I'm just parody what they're no no you're learning that's called learning here okay so so here's the thing here's the thing um whenever I see um videos that have views I look for a couple indicators one is what is the average retention of

those videos and then number two how many comments do you have and if you have minimal comments then it was the value proposition is I got a quick laugh or here's some engagement or whatever but I didn't it wasn't elevated enough for me to engage deeper now it doesn't you're not going to get more views because you have more engagements but it means somebody took the time to actually engage in comments now I don't know if these views are on videos that are shorts um under a minute you know vertical format on the shorts feed

like if it was those numbers it could even be well maybe it's just a forced view um and and it wasn't really they're not consuming it to the end or it could have been hey greater videos but they're two years old or four years old I I don't know that so if these are numbers like if You released a video video and you got 50 000 views in seven days and if you are getting hundreds of of comments if not thousands of comments on the 50k I would be surprised why you don't have uh subscribers

because like people would found value enough so I kind of analyzed that what I would look at is look at content creators that have similar type of content and see what their average try to figure out what their average engagement rate is and see if where you're at so if you're way under there's something on uh going on differently there maybe you need to engage with them deeper into the content where it's like hey you know comment on this or hey put in the comments here about this or should I do this I don't know

put it in the comments you know that's what I do all right okay we got a couple more to go and then I'm going to be doing a giveaway uh in fact let's do a giveaway before we do the next one so um I I think this is the best way to do it let me pull up a screen here because this is what we do on YouTube is we pull up screens I don't know if you know that um but let me um share a screen and then hopefully I don't know if I could

do this okay here it is okay there we go hey there we go um this this next one we're gonna do a uh vid Summit giveaway if you want to earn a ticket or win a ticket to vidsummit um all you need to use is the hashtag vidsummit um go ahead and do that now um that and you'll only need to put it in once uh it doesn't need to be capitalized or anything like this but just go ahead and do it we got two entries so far uh we're gonna I'm gonna answer some questions

and we're going to jump back and do this here in a second but let me pull up this uh question here um how you doing on time Alex are you okay I'm good I'm good okay okay great all right so why that's going uh DePaul my six-year-old daughter has a YouTube channel and it helps me with thumbnail Creations for it do you think she's old enough to attend vidsummit to learn more um look um I when I was six years old I was curious um but this is what we're gonna do I don't know if

it's something would be the right place for her but it's definitely the right place for you um if you're trying to support her help her in that regard um you know definitely take time to learn uh of you know the the the mechanics of YouTube uh specifically and so um what we're gonna do is if you reach out to me I'm going to get you a book uh I would have your daughter start reading this or there's the audiobook on Audible uh that you can do as well have her start listening to it um it

might be a little bit over her head but I I think um if she really has a desire to learn I've had you know six seven-year-olds that have consumed it and started to apply it to YouTube which is really crazy for me to even think about that but reach out to me on Twitter just uh just go to derral Eves on Twitter uh just DM me there I have my DM open so okay all right let's do a couple more and then we'll uh do that um oh uh tool Wrangler received your signed book you

said thank you very much see I actually like when I give a giveaway it actually gives away look at that all right all right here we go next one um okay so here we go best way to post more videos when my DIY projects take really long time to finish uh between my family my nine to five and YouTube it feels like mission impossible so what what advice Alex would you would you give this uh um EJ Tech and DIY um so they want really more of it so they what's the so what's the question

best way to post more videos when do you wear it listen I I always like posting more videos on you're not you're asking the wrong guy but but yeah and then you know yes between okay online what's going on so all right so look look when I started my podcast in 2015 it was a side hustle I was still working I still owned a post house and I was doing color grading on movies and things like that and finishing films and directing stuff as well and I just kind of started doing it little by little

on the side figure out a system for yourself and then just take any extra time that you have after you go to bed like Arnold Arnold Schwarzenegger said it best is like you know sleep less uh and you know just do it faster sleep fast sleep faster faster I like that okay so here's here's the thing um I've been around the block a few times I've said that a couple times on there but it's like less is more sometimes if you can do one video a month uh that's great and and I know that you

want to post more videos but maybe it's like posting the right type of videos um these projects take time like I'm telling you um you know some some some projects takes a lot of time you might need to be doing five projects at once um you know but yet when that video comes out it's the right title right thumbnail right hook it's the right type of content and what I challenge you to do is this and this it like if you take this challenge if you accept this challenge it's going to give you a better

process but there's a YouTuber I actually respect a lot and he only posts eight times a year and he fluxes that he only posts eight times a year and his name's Mark Rober and Mark's a great friend and he has systematically created content in a unique way what I would do is take the extra time instead of posting more videos take the extra time that you need to and start looking at every one of his videos and really line them up and listen to the sound design the music that he uses in the segments and

see if he can find patterns of how he sets up the story because he's like an amazing Storyteller he does a really great job he's a really good educator but believe it or not a lot of these are DIY projects now his his whole mechanism and then you can go into crunchlab's YouTube channel as well which are DIY projects but they're in a in a fun way right but ultimately at the end of the day I want you to start analyzing why did he use that thumbnail why does he use this title why did you

know what does he do in the first five seconds what does he do the first 10 seconds you know really start breaking that down and I'd rather have you do that to get a little bit more context on what you should do to improve your videos because like at the end of the day it's about improving your videos not increasing your videos so a video production okay okay next one right here um will there just be a video replay option for Vince cement the new location hoping to go this year but for now replays are

more manageable yeah um we do have uh replays we do them every year it's our 10th year that we're doing at vidsummit um I realized that the the price um is outside of some of your pockets that's why we do the replays for right now that's all we're doing is replace um we might have an option of other other things but right now uh we got to sell a lot of tickets because it's new venue in fact it's really big um like like it's yeah it's this is big so let's let's go ahead and give

away that ticket right now and um really excited about this um let me go ahead and let's do this ready drum roll there we go give a ticket to vidsummit this is a ticket for vid Summit the only thing is if you already have a ticket uh you can't share here we go uh is it D Zedge diesel diesels with a j all right dude you are the winner uh here's the only caveat is reach out to me on Twitter tell me that you win if you already have a ticket you actually get an additional

ticket that you can bring someone uh we're not doing any refunds on that so we're just trying to get as many people as we possibly can there it's a lot bigger than you we have like it's gonna be the most amazing uh vid summer ever in fact let me just show you real quick since we're on the screen uh the vidsummit new website um it's October 3rd through the 5th in Dallas Texas and uh we got some pretty amazing uh speaker lineup we're just getting ready to share uh the schedule here this next week we

got Mr Beast we got Michelle Carr I wish I'm really excited we almost had her last year but we got her and her team we got Zach King coming back um he was like dude am I invited again can I get on stage he really loved midsummit uh we got myself and also Ginny Jenny uh literally came to vid Summit with her last dollar in her bank account and um and her Channel just popped off she's been a student that I've been mentoring she won that at vidsummit and ultimately she's going to teach us about

YouTube but we got uh Mindy McKnight Preston plays uh we got Hayden Hiller Smith it has this amazing um oh our Link's not working for speakers it's really weird let's see if we can go here um but yeah we got some really good editors like EB Chang uh we got Dan mace and Darren with Beast philanthropy uh Jordan matters of course uh which is uh great I don't know what's going on uh we got some amazing female presenters Kathy Yoder uh really has really crushed it in the um air fryer space but it's more with

uh having your own products and really getting them on list she has a lot of great stuff and uh you know Renee Ritchie and and so on it's just it's just one of those amazing amazing uh conferences I'd really really encourage you if you haven't been to vidsummit this is the year I'm telling you this is the year so it's gonna be great okay two more questions and we're going to call it a live stream okay Steph Flores uh do short subscribers have a negative effect on long form retention uh let me know if you

have any extra vid Summit tickets for a broke college girly okay all right Steph I'll give you a ticket I'll give you a ticket all you got to do is reach out to me on Twitter okay reach out to me on Twitter uh DM me we'll we'll go ahead because you're broke but um you're such a pushover I can't help it I can't help it I I don't want it to be a bro Fest like it hurt me last year when they says it's just bro Fest I'm like no I want more more females there

it's just like it's like prom sometimes you invite them but they don't come you know right right so Steph I'll see you there okay but to answer your question kind of um and I'll say kind of it just depends on what your value proposition sometimes people do shorts that don't have the same type of strategy for long they don't understand what their guardrail's on uh but believe it or not it can work in a positive way if you have a lot of momentum on shorts and people are looking to go deeper with you on long

form as long as the same value proposition that they're having in those shorts so that's that's what I would say on that for sure and then um the last thing is from Corey Corey does all our ad buying for vidsummit he's one of the most amazing ad buyers on the freaking planet uh he's one of the smartest guys I've ever met Corey thank you so much man and oh by the way after the Fourth of July I'll be contacting you so we can start turning on the ads for midsummit you gotta do that there we

go love it love it thanks for that 49 that will go towards someone somewhere there we go okay really do love it okay so Alex um let's go ahead and uh kind of finish up here sure um what's your last advice uh for the people that are on for the last you know hour 40. um you know some of them are struggling some of them have been plateaued like what's some advice that you give uh to them uh to really help them just see YouTube a little bit differently what would that be I think that

the biggest thing with new people coming onto YouTube or even old hats like you and me they've been on since 05 is that consistency and to be patient and analyze the data analyze the data analyze the data because one more time analyze the data thank you uh because you know when you start a channel you know most most YouTubers including myself you you just kind of throw things up and hope that the YouTube gods do something for you that's essentially what most YouTubers when they come on because they don't understand the data they don't understand

yeah the algorithm they don't understand any of that stuff I didn't so when you start to analyze the data and be patient like I said I was on I launched my channel my main Channel 20 uh April 21st uh April 2021 and then really didn't get monetized for a year and I wasn't really taking it too seriously because again I didn't see a lot of momentum so I just kind of just kind of like did a little little something something but when I started seeing a little momentum I just started going and then it was

another from January until July until some real actions started to happen and then October so all that time I was grinding putting out content and just just be patient analyze the data adjust move learn but it will take time but learn analyze the data learn who your audience is and what they want from you yeah I love it and I've said this several times over the the years it's like don't worry about the algorithm don't worry about it don't worry about Bots or the YouTube gods or whatever like like don't worry about that because all

the Bots do is respond to the algorithms that control the boss and then what controls the algorithm is the AI the AI is all it is is caring about who's watching the video and what they do next that's what they care about like if you're bringing good value to people that they see it and they click on it and they engage with it and they go deeper that's all we're trying to do and at the end of the day they they see that and they take oh there's so many people like this this uh type

of video and they would like this other video based on some behavior that we saw and they're going to suggest and if it has a really good title thumbnail that engages a person then they'll click on it and when they click on it they watch it when they like man that's so good and they're thinking oh this is so funny I got to send it to four people or oh it's so inspired I got to send this to four people they they see that and it's that engagement and so I would definitely definitely definitely say

the data isn't confusing when you look at it through the eyes of the viewer who is the viewer um who's watching those videos and I don't care about demographics I'm here to tell you demographics is a sham what you care about is what what what their life's like the psychographics what do they find valuable I think demographics is how we communicate to them you cause how you communicate to a boomer is the complete opposite of how you can communicate to the Gen alpha or a gen Zer you know or a millennial or uh you know

Gen X like us or Gen X yeah so for the whole thing is the the reality is there is some movement there is some uh things that you need to do when they engage and one of the things that I I love doing is going through comments comments is is key of understanding the psychological breakdown of your viewer and so please please please do the the the videos that you're saying I'm gonna bring so much value in for a viewer that that they're going to engage and want to share and like what is that shareable

moments that like that's the big thing for me and if you don't care if you're like no Daryl I'm just a Creator I create for myself well they don't expect more than one View because you're not making it for anybody you're just making it for yourself uh I'm really great artists they realize I gotta entertain I gotta Inspire I gotta educate great Educators they want to be able to have people walk away and say oh my gosh that was so amazing I want to be able to do it I can't tell you how many times

I I find a video and I have to share it I have to as a person have to share it that's what great content is so please for the love of everything that's holy spend time on figuring out who you're making content for and have the guardrails on to really help you uh make consistent content that connects guys thank you so much and we're going to see you on the next one thanks Alex appreciate it thank you so much Joe for everything you do brother I appreciate you all right bye now