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So many ways to earn money nowadays, especially on the Internet. One of the ways is via YouTube – uploading videos and earning money from it. But is there more to it than just uploading videos? In today’s podcast, Nate Woodbury is going to talk about running your YouTube like a business.
Hey it’s Scott Christopher here once again with the fabulous Nate, “Be the hero”, Nate Woodbury. And we’re going to ask Nate today. Specifically now, “How to run a YouTube channel… YouTube videos like a business?” Not just willy-nilly putting videos on. But business focus look at him he’s got his game face on. Stay here, you’re going to want to hear this. -I love this topic. Okay. So, this is actually what I get asked to speak on at YouTube conferences. Even at a podcast conference because I know how to run YouTube like a business. Many YouTubers start out running YouTube like a hobby. They make videos because it’s fun. -Right. -But then over time, they actually started to build a following and maybe they they get some monetization from YouTube ads, they make money. And like, “Oh, this is a business.” So now, they’re a business owner. And they might even get us to speaks… Another a public speaker. They kind of just start wearing all these hats but they don’t know how to run a business. They haven’t even had any training or thought of themselves as an entrepreneur before. And so, a lot of times I get asked to come in and teach them how to run YouTube like a business. So I’m going to share all the secrets. There’s 3 main strategies that I’m going to share with you, that you’re going to be blown away by. And that if you apply, will totally transform the way that you run YouTube. -Let me let me say this before we get into these 3 strategies. Because you might be watching this and you go, “Well, here’s a guy who’s telling me all about how to do YouTube. And this video has 47 views or 110 views or 5 views.” What you have to understand is that Nate doing these videos is not the business. He’s talking about this is simply a model of what he does for other people. I mean, you know, when you run YouTube businesses, it’s… There’s other people out there that he’s doing this for. -Some of the videos you expect to you’re… -In order to make money, you’ve got to make get millions of views. And we’ve got some of those videos. But other videos like this one. All I need is one person to see it and recognize who I am and the services that offer and hire me and it pays me six figures. -And I suspect that’s part of really the whole idea of making it a business rather than just a self-perpetuating Adsense machine. You know? I mean, where you just have them bajillion viewers and you’re making… Alright, so three keys. -So if if you want this audience to have a little bit of credibility, I’ve got a channel that in the last 16 months, went from making zero dollars to making over $200,000 per month.
So, that’s just one channel. I’ve got a channel that in a similar timeframe, is making six figures annually in advertising revenues. Many other channels that are making, you know, four and five figures of ad revenue. And we’ve got channels outside of those that I mentioned that are that are just lead generation machines bringing lots of leads for their for their businesses. And I currently managed 10 daily YouTube channels which if you know the work that goes into making YouTube channels, you have to know how to run it like a business. -It is 100% a business. Alright. -We’ll get into the 3 points. -Yeah. -Point number one is outsourcing. If you’ve seen any of my videos before I talk a lot about outsourcing specifically to the Philippines. Now, I’m going to cover all three points in this video and I want to make it valuable but I I don’t want it to drag on too long. So… -Sure. -…outsourcing into the Philippines, there’s reasons for using the Philippines but will not talk about that specific. We’ll talk about why you need to hire an editor. Will just use that as an example. -Okay. -If you’re running a YouTube channel and you’re wearing all the hats, you’re the talent you’re the one on camera, you’re coming up with all the ideas, the story or whatever, the content but you’re also filming. You’re also the editor and it takes a lot of time. Editing is one of the things that most of my YouTube friends have the hardest time letting go of because that they… -It’s their vision. -It’s part of their creation. -That’s who they are, right. -But but my argument is that they can put all their creativity into the filming. To really capturing the best shots and creating that story. And then they can hire an editor to do the editing. This video that you’re watching right now is being edited or has been edited by the time you watch it by my team in the Philippines. I don’t do anything. I mean, we do hundreds and hundreds of episodes every month and they do all the editing for that. I’m doing the filming. And I’m currently hiring somebody. By the way, if you are looking to apprentice me or whatnot I’m looking for somebody to help me with the filming. That’s a sign. -He’s getting busy. That’s the thing. Yeah, you got around it like a business. You need employees. -Okay, so we’re talking about outsourcing. Even if you hired somebody that could only do 90% as good of a job of you as editing. Meaning, there’s still some tweaks and stuff. They just freed up 90% of your time. So you have 90% of this time back. So, you have your life back and then you just go in and you can tweak it whatever you want to polish it. So, that’s that’s the first strategy I could talk a lot more about but… -And he has in some other videos. -I’m just going to give you a reference here. You can see some of my other videos. But if you want to see where I find people in the Philippines, because there’s a whole website. It’s kind of like a jobs.com for people in the Philippines that want to work for Americans. And you can go peruse their resumes and search for them and hire them directly. It’s called virtualassistanttool.com. So, I’ll just let you check that off that’s something that you’re interested in. Okay. This next one, this is also a very big one. Keyword research before filming. Now, SEO has been preached and preached and preached. Even before YouTube for many, many years. We’ve just… SEO keyword research. It’s got to be long tail or this or that. And we’re sick of it, right? Okay. -Well some of us. -I’m sick of it. -You worked in it for a lot. -I did. -Yeah. -But here’s the reality. Even the SEO experts that everyone’s doing it backwards on YouTube. It is… Everyone is doing it backwards on YouTube. They make a video and then they optimize the video and do keyword research and put in the right keyword tags. That is such the wrong backwards way. You’ve heard me talk about the right way to do it. So you kind of understand my clients kind of key into this. But when I say everybody, everybody that doesn’t know me, does it wrong. Okay, here’s the right way to do keyword research. You do keyword research first and let that research determine your video topics that you’re going to film on.
So, for example, if I’m going to make a video every topic that we’re filming on today, even this video… -Yeah. -…had keyword research done ahead of time. So, let me… Although no one’s in my head real quick. So, if you had… If you came to me and said, “Hey Nate, I want to make a video about my remedy for a sore throat.” So, if we were just to choose, we might call this amazing sore throat remedy”, okay? But I’ve done keyword research on this. And I found a phrase that was really long, really specific and it had hundreds of searches each month. Nine words long. How to get rid of strep throat without out antibiotics. It’s a lot more specific. And in filming that video, we would, we would narrow our message down to that you know, exact topic. -Makes sense. So, people that are watching it are going to be people that really, it’s…. You’re connecting… -Yes -…with the right people even more. So, the video is going to perform better because they’re going to watch it long anyway. You’re going to rank day one for that video instead of never ranking at all. Because it’s… Anyway, that’s what you’ve got to do. That strategy number 2 is do keyword research before filming. I do want to share a story. Because this just happened last week. It’s a client that I’ve been working with for a year. And she… I filmed 20 videos in a day with my clients which that’s kind of a spoiler alert for something that I’m going to talk about in a minute. She sent me over. We do keyword research in advance. We have for the last year. We give her all these titles to choose from. And she sent me over a list of 20 titles. And I look at this list. And I’m just like, “These are not going to work.” One of the titles, I liked. One of the titles was specific was searchable. But the other 19, when we were planning on starting filming, I said, “You know what? I’m committed to the success of this channel. We’ve got to pick 19 new titles.” So okay, I said, “For title number 2, what were you going for? What content are you going to cover?” And then I dug and I… “Okay, this is what we’re going to title the video. Tweak your content a little bit to match this title. Okay, let’s move on what’s number 3?” We had we spent 2 hours. Oh, but I know that that two hours was so well spent. Because by the end of it, we had videos matching titles, we did the keyword research ahead of time that I know that those videos are going to perform better. It’s like when you put a video on Facebook, it might get some attraction by your friends and stuff that watch it and the immediate you know, day or two? -Yeah. -But after a couple weeks that’s never seen again? If we would have filmed her original 20 videos, that’s what it what happened. It… They would have been seen by her… -Right. -…tribe and then they would have disappeared and never been seen again. I ensured that her videos are going to be seen when you’re from now, 4 years from now. They’re going to continue to perform better better and better over time. And have a chance of getting you know, huge spikes like we see in a lot of videos. So, you’ve got to do keyword research before filming. If not, it’s… Your wasting your time man. Okay. So, point number 3. I spoiled it. It was film 20 episodes at a time. So, you’re running a business. I work with entrepreneurs. People that are really busy. They have, they… They’re not just hobbyists that have been making videos or have time to make videos. But they have busy schedules, they run companies, they have teams, they put on events, they serve. They have families. And so when I tell them, “We’re going to do 20 episodes a month.” They’re just… They’re thinking, “We’re going to meet together and film every day.” You know, 20. So, we plan out. We do the keyword research ahead of time and then you know, we like… I have… We’re filming 20 episodes today. -That’s what we’re doing. And I’ve got… We’re on… This is episode 11. And under number 11, this morning, I went through and I bullet pointed all of these points. And I just prepared. So now, when we hit record, we film it. So, we filmed 20 episodes at a time. That’s how I’m able to currently… I’m running… I’m producing and filming and my team’s doing all the editing for 10 daily YouTube channels. That means 10 days of each month I’m filming 20 plus episodes. Last week I had a day where I filmed 36 episodes in one day. -That’s why… -That’s efficiency. -That’s why you need to hire another videographer. -I do need another videographer. I mean, I do have room for more clients. But… -You want to get your life back. I’m a lazy guy. -Is it running a bait? But when you say run it like a business, that’s one way you can do it. When you have your team in the Philippines. But even here locally, you can start to outsource. You know, you can start to hire someone else who do does some of those things. Because you do have little kids and life. -So, I enjoy vlogging. And recently on my channel, you’ve seen some more vlogging style episodes. But majority of those… They’re actually filmed in batches. We rented a waterfront cabin up in Island Park Idaho. Oh, that’s my paradise. That was the best vacation ever. Okay. During that leap… -But he digresses. -During that week, I did film 22 episodes. I filmed 22 episodes while on vacation. Some of them were kind of like product demonstrations. I had this cooking stove that I tried out. And we had this inflatable island we put it on the reservoir. But other ones I did how-to videos but I actually was out on a canoe and out on a paddle board. And did some episodes. -People would argue that you’re working while you’re on vacation. -I was just filming that because I outsource, outsource all my editing. All I did was the filming part. So sure, I was working. -And dads to do that anyway. -But that vacation was so relaxing. -Yeah. -Like we… Earlier in the in the summer, we went to Disneyland for four solid days. And I thought about vlogging but for that I’m like, “You know what?” I do not want to carry my camera. And I don’t want to vlog at Disneyland. I just did not want to want to do that. We went near Island Park. It’s near Yellowstone National Park. I vlogged around all the geysers and stuff. And it was… It was… -Well, I the other thing too when you’re doing it that way, the whole thing is a business trip. -Yeah we wrote off. -Seriously. I mean, everything you’re doing is a business trip. So, if you plan it that way and you make it that way, you go, “Look, we’re going to have kind of a working vacation. But it’s going to be so much fun. And we’re going to be able to write it off. But don’t worry. Daddy next time we go on vacation just for 3 or 4 days to Disneyland, I’m only going to take family photos. I’m going to enjoy the rides.” Because I find myself just the same thing where…-This is real. -You know, everything’s a story and it’s like I got to put it other way. -This summer, we have three vacations. We did Disneyland for four days. Then we did we did a several days down at Arches National Park and goblin Valley and Moab. -Right. -And then we did the cabin up an island partner for a week that we actually extended for two more days because this is so fun. Okay, two of those trips I wrote off. I wrote off the rental of the cabin. I did not write off the food. But I wrote off the rental of the cabin because I made some videos that were relevant to that. I wrote off the hotel down in Moab. Because I’ve vlogged about goblin Valley, I’ve logged about slickrock bike trail, I’ve logged about the hotel that we stayed at, I’ve logged about Arches National park. And one other one that I can’t… Oh, a restaurant that we went to. And so, I wrote off several things for that. But the Disneyland trip, I didn’t do anything business-related. If I would have, I could have written off the mileage that we drove. You know? But anyway. -So in terms of treating this like a business, that might not have made the list of tips. But it ought to. And that is treat it like a business. I mean, when you go off and you do these types of trips where you’re filming and shooting, think about the efforts that you’re making, the editing that you’re doing. As part of your own business. Whether you’re incorporated. Well, you’ll probably ought to be at some juncture. You know, make a little S-Corp or whatever it is. But for tax purposes, you’re thinking about what you’re doing. I mean that’s a business. That’s not just a self-employed guy. -I’ve got one more tip. And it’s kind of me sharing a weakness. So, I’m like being a little bit vulnerable here. This is hopefully it’s valuable. So, I have 10. As I mentioned, I have ten daily YouTube channels. Oh, I thought you’re going to say 10 children. Well, you are… -Just 3 children. Okay, I have been really good at helping my clients have the discipline to film 20 episodes in a day. Therefore you know, if we do five videos a week that’s four weeks worth of content rather than one day. But… And I’ve been doing this for several years. For four years, I’ve been filming in batches like that with my clients. But with myself, I really struggled. -Yeah. But I found a solution. My struggle is that when I would plan out topics because there was no one holding me accountable. I would only film a few videos at a time. I wouldn’t, I just couldn’t do daily.
So, now I’ve got an accountability person here named Scott Christopher who’s filming these videos with me. Because we had today scheduled, I had to plan our topics. I’ve got to do it. -Another person is depending on it. Yeah. -So, anyway. I sure that is like fine… Know what you’re your reality is. If if you’ve got to hire me to ensure that you filmed 20 videos, I’m obviously open to game for that. I have a specific type of client that I work with. I like working with influencers. I like working with people that really have a message that the masses need to hear. And that they know that if we run a campaign for a year that you’re going to you know, how to convert traffic into seven figures. If that’s you, then let’s talk. But find your discipline. Like find a way that you can realistically discipline yourself and then film 20 episodes in a day. You know, outsource and what was my other my middle tip. Do keyword research before filming. You’ll be a lot happier because you’re actually running YouTube like a business. You’ll be a lot more successful and you’ll have your life back. -That was really… That was something. You were amazing in this video. -Thank you. I’ll pay you after. -Yes. -So what do you think that viewers should be? -Wow. I mean, I’m telling you, if you like this at all, if it made any sense to you and it should have. You should subscribe or ring the little bell there. Little icon bell. You know, make sure that you get messages. What is it? A notification that a new video is ready? -Yeah. You know, email will come from YouTube. -Bing-bang-boom. -Alright, we’ll see you tomorrow.