Download Now!
So you want to earn money using YouTube but you’re not sure how to get it viral? In this episode, Nate Woodbury and Valerie Morris will talk about some things to remember when making videos and how to get YouTube to notice your videos so they get the view count that you wanted.
Welcome back. So you’ve got an amazing idea for a video and you want to know how to make it go viral. We’re going to talk about that. My best videos got over 5 million views. I’m going to tell you exactly how I did that. I’m here at Valerie Morris. We’re talking about having a video go viral. I know you’ve got some questions about that and I think you’re gonna be surprised by my answers. So, first of all, where did this question come from? What… What’s your your intent behind going viral? -That’s the golden question, right? Everyone wants to know if I’m going to put all this effort into making a video, what’s going to make me get the best exposure and and do it perform the best. How do I make a video go viral? But people ask me that all the time in terms of social media. And I want to ask you in terms of YouTube, what makes a YouTube video go viral. What… What is… -So surprising answer. Yeah, the surprising answer is videos cannot go viral on YouTube. -Really? -Yeah. Now, I’ll explain and I do know how to help you… The first part of what you said is to get a lot of views and get a lot of exposure. -Sure. -The reason I’m saying a video can’t go viral on YouTube is YouTube is not a social platform. Right? -You can’t… You can’t share a video with your friend on YouTube. Right? If I wanted to share a video with you have to share a link to text or to face… Or I have to email it to you. And so, when it when a YouTube video goes viral, it’s not actually going viral on the YouTube platform. It’s being featured on somebody else’s website or as… That makes sense? -Yeah. -So, how then does a video get a huge spike on YouTube? It’s actually because YouTube is promoting your video. -Oh, okay. -The closest thing to viral on YouTube is called trending. -Okay. -I’ve actually never had a video go trending. I have some friends that have. King Of Random, Grant Thompson. He’s had videos in the trending column. And so, if a video seems to be popular, YouTube will promote it. And then the most, most popular videos that are trending, those are kind of viral but YouTube is behind it. YouTube’s algorithm will choose which ones go viral. And I’ll just clarify the difference. When something goes viral say on Facebook, I can share something that’s hilarious. I talk about the cute kitten videos deserving likes cute kittens. There’s something that’s just hilarious. Maybe, I don’t know why these ones are so fun but somebody will get in an accident or they’ll slip and fall. And people just love to watch this. So, they’ll share it. Or you know. Well then that person watches in they share. And so that’s really what we mean by viral. Like a virus spreads from person to person to person. -Yes. -You just can’t do that on YouTube. But I love YouTube so much because YouTube actually does a whole lot of promotion. The way that YouTube makes their money is through advertisers paying YouTube. And all I have to do is make a video that goes well with good advertisements. So, I want ad revenue. I want the ads turned on even if these videos are for my business. And I think “Well, I don’t want competitors put in front of my videos.” Well, here’s the thing: If ad shows up before your video and that ad performs well, YouTube will promote your video more and put that ad next to it because it’ll make YouTube money. Now, the cool thing is is YouTube pays half that ad revenue to me or to you. They pay out half that ad revenue, 55%. -Wow. -And what’s even bigger, way bigger than that. So, while YouTube is promoting that video so it can make ad revenue, I’m generating tons of leads. And I’ll just I’ll just give you an example to show how big of an impact that is. My… In the intro, I mentioned a video that’s got over 5 million views. Now that… That video has literally made me about $150,000 on ad revenue. -Wow. -Okay. A derivative that means YouTube’s made about that same amount as well. But that video has brought in my client Kris leads and it’s bright… It’s made him millions of dollars and that’s the amount of time. -Wow. -Many millions of dollars just from that one video because YouTube has promoted it. So, how does he make money from that video? -A good question. -Beside ads maybe? -Yeah. So, in that case, I’m actually a partner on that channel and I get the ad revenue so that’s why I say I got that. But he sells products teaching people how to invest in real estate. So all of his videos are educational. They’re not commercials. But at the very end of the video, he’ll then say, “Hey, if you found value in this video, you probably would like my book. I want to give you my book for free. Click on the link below.” When they click on that link, that’s on clickfunnels. Have you heard… -Yeah. -Okay. So.. -Great. -So, there’s a sales funnel built in there and people can buy a thousand-dollar course. There’s an upsell, there’s a down sell. And he has a phone team that will call those leads and make follow-ups as well. And so that’s… He’s bringing about over $600,000 a month right now. -Wow. -That’s amazing. -Yeah. Just from organic YouTube leads. -So, is there a sweet spot timewise to get those spikes? Do you want to have those happen right away? Can those happen later on? How does that happen? -And in all my experience, we have spikes all the time. They’re mostly unpredictable. -Really? -The… I’ll tell you about the ones that I know how to predict. Okay? So, if… If you’re going daily on YouTube and for me that’s 5 episodes or more per week. -Okay. -If you’re going daily after 4 months, you can expect a spike. -Okay. -I can’t control it but from my experience, I’ve seen that over and over again. And I’ll tell you a story. Last Christmas with one of my clients. We were approaching that four-month mark. And they asked me, “Okay, are we supposed to be having a spike now? You said about the 4 month mark.” I’m getting nervous because like… Because I don’t control it. -Sure. -But I said, “You know what? It’s Christmastime. Views right now we’re kind of dipping. I noticed that all across YouTube. Let’s wait till after the holidays and and we’ll see we should get a spike.” Well, it was like 2 days after I believe Christmas was on a weekend. And by the Tuesday or Wednesday of that next week they had their first spike. So, for some reason, there’s something in the algorithm that is kind of predictable at that 4-month mark. I don’t know which video it will be but YouTube will just pick one and they’ll just pair it with an ad and start promoting it. And what that does for the channel is pretty amazing. It… I mean let’s say you’re averaging a hundred views per day on your channel. -Yeah. -And then a video spikes, you’re getting thousands of views in a day. Even when the spike settles down, you come back at a much higher average. We call it a new baseline. You might be averaging now 500 views per day just because of that baseline. And obviously through that spike, you brought in a lot more subscribers. So, in that in the case of that specific channel, when I started with them, they had already built 3,000 subscribers on their channel. So over the years, they had grown up to 3,000. And then in the first 4-months, we added 1 more thousand. So, we went from 3,000 to 4,000. It’s good. But I’d say not very exciting. -Yeah. -It’s been 4 months since then. So when we’re filming this video, it’s right at the early part of May. So we’ve had January, February, March and April. We’re now up to 13,000 subscribers. -Wow. -Yeah. -Do you think there’s some piece of Google as realizing… Google/YouTube is realizing, “Hey, if they’re willing to do this for 4 months consistently, they must be serious about this.” Do you think there’s some piece of that? -That’s… That’s my assumption as to why that works. They love consistency. When you look at the YouTube algorithm, when you log into the YouTube analytics, the things that you see first kind of tell me what what YouTube likes and is looking for. YouTube really likes watch time. And so… And then they like consistency I’ve just noticed that from experience. And so, by going daily with videos that are good like they retain people’s attention, that’s really the 2 ingredients that I found that will get that. Because I have… I have seen channels where they have gone daily like that and they have shown the consistency but when you look at you know, how long are people watching it, they’ve got an average watch time of like 15% or 20% and they didn’t get a spike. And that’s that’s kind of the differentiator of the what I’ve seen. But if you’re if you’re seeing like at least a 45% retention rate on your videos, I’ve seen a spike every single time. -Wow. That’s amazing. So, are there any other tips that you can give outside of the 4-month mark that really can help you spike and well on YouTube. -Yeah. So, this is really cool. You… You have to build up a track record first. So typically, that first 4 months are laying that foundation. And then when you have your first spike, look back at what video or videos is YouTube now promoting. And when I say promoting, they put your videos as suggested videos or they put you on the home screen or something like that. And you can it will show you exactly what user coming from. So, if a video is getting way more views, YouTube is suggesting our video. What I recommend doing is create another version of that same video. Make it a little bit longer. Make it better. I mean, if originally you put 20 minutes into the thought and the filming of this video, you know, put an hour, a couple hours into creating another one that’s, “Okay, how can I make this even better? More engaging. Make it a little bit longer? How can I design a better thumbnail?” I’ll show you a story of how I did that so the video that I showed that’s got 5 million views. We created it intentionally. Which is so exciting. Like, I wanted this to happen and now it’s worked. So, we had I’ll just tell you that the name of the video. It’s How To Invest In Your 20’s. -Okay. -We had a version of that video that was about 5 or 6 minutes long and it had been performing pretty well. So, I told Kris, “Alright, we’re going to redo this video. Same topic. You can tell, share the same story. But I want you to do some additional things. I want you to show your car.” And he was real hesitant because he has a BMW i8. The wing doors come up and everything. He was real hesitant back then. This is a year ago. And I said, “Just pull your car up. Have the door open and all I’ll follow you. And that’s how we’ll start the video.” So, he was sharing the same story but we just put a lot more time. I followed him with the glidecam. So, it’s real steady going into his house. And instead of just standing in one. The original video he was sitting on his pool table had like red felt. And it looked cool. But this time, I filmed him walking and he went to the kitchen he got a drink of water. And then he went down to the pool table and then we went over… We just… We ended up making it a 20-minute episode. We weren’t planning on being that long. But because he was inviting people into his home, kind of felt really personal, it kept people engaged the whole time. So, we launched this video like, “Okay, here’s a topic that we know does well on our channel. YouTube likes it.” And the first 3 weeks, it didn’t perform well. It didn’t spike yet. But like, “Yeah, this is a good video. YouTube likes it. Good job.” But then… Then it took off. -Really. -And from on June first, we had 80,000 subscribers on the channel. By a week into July, we’re up to 160,000. -Wow. -So, in 5 weeks we doubled the size of our channel. And that that one video is the the one that’s really driven the channel. The most we’ve created other ones that have done well and spiked but and that one’s our best. -That’s amazing. What a fun story. -So, the moral of the story is look back at videos that have performed well and recreate them. Now, you can use this. We call that the sequel technique. You can use that sequel technique on other channels. It’s not always a guaranteed success but if you find another channel that has a similar audience and you can then think… You know, kind of study, “Why did this video perform so well?” I’m going to try and create my own version that’s maybe a little bit longer, more compelling thumbnail, better engaging content and you can… I mean, that’s something that you can do. Obviously, YouTube likes the video on that other channel. And you can see if you can get the same results on your channel. We’ve had some successes. Mostly failures. I’ll just admit. I’d probably say 75% of the videos that we create with that strategy just get normal results. -Okay. -But.. But I’d say 25% of them do get the the spikes with it. -Wow. Very cool. -So, can a video go viral on YouTube, no. But kind of get millions of views? Yes. And hopefully this video is helpful. Be sure to subscribe. I’ll see you tomorrow.