678: Crushing YouTube: How to Build 100,000 Subscribers and Diversify Your Website Revenue with Joseph Hogue

Speaker 1 0:00 Marketer of the day. Episode 678 crushing YouTube, how to build 100,000 subscribers and diversify your website revenue with Joseph Hogue.

Robert Plank 0:15 Welcome back to the podcast. We have Joseph Hogue, who is a YouTube and a search engine optimization expert back on the podcast. He has been here before, at marketer of the day.com/ 302, and he explained his writing schedule. I thought it was really cool. Or he said, at this time of day, I write at this time of day, I do blog commenting at that time of day, I do research. And I think that might be very helpful if you are interested in focused effort, if you know that time is limited, not just your lifetime, but time during the day. We all have a million things going on, so why not be deliberate about your focus? Why not set that schedule ahead of time? That is marketer of the day.com, forward, slash, 302, and Joseph is here to focus on YouTube. Think about it. How many people do you know that have a mobile phone? Well, pretty much everybody. I was thinking the other day about how we used to have a computer room in the house, and maybe you did too, but those days are long gone. It maybe you have an office or a study, but most people these days are checking the internet on their phones. They're on the go, they're at work, they're hanging out on the couch, everyone's on their phones, and with 5g coming up, people will be watching videos more and more on their phones, and that's why it's so important for you to not just be words on a page, you need to be on YouTube. And Joseph is going to share with us how he grew his channel from 22 subscribers to 100,000 subscribers, and he gets 4000 to 5000 views per video. So if you want more attention, if you want to ride the coattails on YouTube, and you don't want to get left behind, then sit up, get some notes and pay very close attention. We are here with Joseph Hogue, YouTube expert,

Joseph Hogue 2:11 Hey, Robert, thanks for having me on again. The first time I was on your show, we talked a lot about some of those traditional ideas of marketing and blogging and getting your product out in front of people. And one of the things that I've learned over five plus years blogging and a few years of YouTube and and other, you know, other online businesses, is that the tragic fact is, is, it is not enough to have a great product out there. You've got to have that product and the distribution, you know, it's, it's, you can create the best online course, you can create the best ebook or or product, or what have you out there. And if you can't get it in front of the right people of the right time, if you can't create those, those marketing funnels to to put it in front of people, it's not going to sell. You're not going to make a dime. So really, what I wanted to focus on this time is talking about kind of the evolution of internet video and and really evolving your business with YouTube and and using that as not only a distribution source, but even an asset in itself. Okay, so, so we all know that. You know, YouTube started, started right around 2004 started 2006 with the at the Google acquisition, and it's just blown up. Video is where it's at, you know. And like I said, as a as a traditional blogger, I was reluctant to get into video myself. I actually started my YouTube channel in 2015 but only as a way to to host video summaries of my blog post. So I would, I would do a short, two to four minute video summary of a blog post. I would host that on my YouTube channel and then just embed it into the blog post, trying to get just a little bit extra time on page for the blog and and some of those other Google signals. And, you know, never really saw much from it. At the end of to 2017 I think I had all of about 22 subscribers. But I didn't care, because, you know, I wasn't really developing YouTube as it's as an asset in itself. It helped incrementally with the blogs, and that's really what I wanted to use it for. But then I started getting serious about YouTube. I saw just a huge surge of traffic coming from YouTube into the blogs. And after researching it, after investigating where that traffic was come from, coming from, I found that some other youtubers had mentioned some of my articles in their videos, and we're just driving massive amounts of traffic to my blogs from there. So I started thinking, you know, maybe this, this video thing, and this YouTube thing is actually, actually you got something to it. So I started developing the that YouTube channel as an asset in itself, as a distribution platform for my products, for my blogs. And the results have just been amazing. I am continuously amazed at, you know, how many people come. From YouTube to the blogs, and how much I make on YouTube itself, through that, not only the products, but through YouTube ads and organically there, I've since grown from December 2017 from that 22 subscribers to over 100,000 subscribers. Less than two years later, I'm on track to hit about 125,000 subscribers this year, and consistently hit about four to 5000 of views per for every video that I, that I launch on the on the channel with some upwards of 706 100,000 views. So it's an amazing distribution source, and I think that one that a lot of a lot of small business owners are still neglecting, unfortunately, and I understand there's, there's a lot of there's a lot of hesitancy. Still, for video, it does take longer to produce. It still takes more resources, but it is something you just cannot ignore. Okay, because the internet is evolving into video, and that's only going to get more more obvious, and it's only going to that growth is only going to become faster as we move into 5g Okay, about 55% of of you know online searches or online uses. Usage is through mobile right now and and that's growing. And when people have you know, split second capabilities on their mobile through that 5g and real time capabilities that that use of video is only going to explode more. I've seen sponsors go that way. I've seen traffic go that way, and it's really something that's every small business unit user needs to be using in their business. So what I want to do is I want to talk about three things that I've learned about being successful on YouTube, about growing YouTube, not only as an asset in as its as an asset in itself, but also to, you know, to launch new products, to to promote product, your existing products, and to really grow your business. So, so you know, using using YouTube as an asset and in itself and leveraging it with your existing business. And one of the first things I want to say is, is that, and you're going to get tired of people saying this, if you you spend any time trying to learn how to be successful on YouTube, maybe get tired of people saying that consistency is one of the keys that you need to be going after. But it is true, and it is, I think, one of those low hanging fruits and and simple truths that you can that you can be successful. You got to think of YouTube as, in some ways, as a traditional media outlet. Okay, YouTube wants to be an alternative to TV. It wants producers, and YouTube creators and producers in that traditional media sense, it wants producers that are going to be creating content on a weekly basis, same time every day, same time each week, and bringing people on to YouTube. Okay? It wants producers that are creating must see Thursday every single week. Okay? So, so you're not only creating, creating content for your own community and bringing people onto YouTube for that, but you're creating a, really, a an environment where people will come to YouTube in anticipation of your shows every week, and then they're sticking around for that. Must see Thursday kind of idea, right? You know, must see Thursday wasn't just friends coming on every Thursday, it was every show after that, and the fact that NBC could count on people coming for friends, but staying for all those other shows. And that meant, obviously, you know, billions in ad revenue. So what you want to do is you want to pick, you know, at least one day a week, one time during that that day that you're going to be uploading or posting a video to go live or to go online every single week, okay? And it can start out as one day a week. I will tell you that every time I've ramped up my posting schedule from one day to two days now to three days a week, then I have seen a huge, huge boost in growth, okay? Because just like any other content machine, whether it's blogging, whether it's, you know, other e commerce websites, YouTube, podcasting, you know this, the more content you get out, the quality content, then obviously the more chances you're going to have to reach people through search, through suggested videos and that kind of thing. So start out with at least one a week, same time, every day, every week, you know, every day, and the same time on that day, and you will build a following for that. The second thing I really learned about YouTube is that you really need to emphasize community and and brand around yourself as a as a person. Okay, lot to unpack here, a lot a lot of things to to read into that but, but you really need to be emphasizing within your videos that this is your channel. Is a community, okay, it's a it's a group of people built around some shared belief. Beliefs and commonalities that are coming together in these videos. Okay? It's not just about you. It is. It is about the larger sense and what your community wants to achieve. Okay? Because what happens with a YouTube is that YouTube pushes your new videos out to a section of your community. Right? For every time you put out a new video, it'll push those videos out to to some of your community, some of your subscribers. And you need them to you need that smaller section to start clicking on those, to give those positive signals back to YouTube. So YouTube says, Okay, well, you know, this is popular with the the community. Let's test it out with non subscribers. And so it'll push that video out to some non subscribers and see how it does there, right? So if you the stronger your community is, and the stronger your branding is around yourself as a personality, then the more likely those subscribers are going to be to come back to your videos really, whether they're involved or invested in the topic itself, right? So within on my channel, I like to cover things like debt, making money, investing three related topics, but not necessarily three topics that are going to interest these same people all the time, right? So if I didn't build my channel around myself as a personality, around that idea of a community, well, then a lot of those subscribers that are there for maybe investing videos, they're not going to click through on the making many money videos or the beating debt videos, and that's going to be a real problem, because they're not going to click through and they're not going to send those positive signals to YouTube. So you really need to emphasize that sense of community, that sense of shared beliefs and and a shared purpose, and start branding around yourself as a person, okay? We see this really the opposite of this in a lot of the the corporate channels. So the channels built around a company that really have a hard time branding around around a particular person, or a particular person that runs the channel and that it appears in the videos, or that sense of a community, right? People just don't buy into that, that branding idea. And so a lot of times we'll see those, those those channels, suffer on YouTube because they don't have that sense of community. They don't have that sense of brand personality for the channel. So very important, it's actually one of the biggest things that I talk about in my book, crushing YouTube, really documenting my journey, growing my YouTube channel and and you know how you can start on YouTube and to really build that into, you know, into an asset and a distribution platform. Then third thing I want to talk about is really kind of a traditional blogging or small business idea, but, but so relevant for YouTube as well, and that's diversification of revenue, right? Diversification of different income sources, and, you know, different different ways of making money, because, like we see in so many small businesses, like we've seen on online businesses, is that no one income sources is usually enough to to really make enough money to, you know, to to grow your businesses as well as it could be. So the idea is finding different income sources, different products and different services, even to combine together and and really create something, create an income that's larger than than any one particular piece. A lot of especially on YouTube, a lot of YouTube creators who are were kicked off the the monetization last year when they when YouTube changed its policy for for ads, a lot of people that had been making money on ads were kicked off until they could reach that 1000 subscribers, or the the 4000 watch hours and and it really woke a lot of people up to the fact that you Can't just be relying on ads for your YouTube income. So a lot of small business owners are going to know this. You're going to know that you can't just have one product or one service that you rely on. You've got to, you've got to really branch out into some of these other ideas. So with on within YouTube, for those, for the people that maybe don't have a service or a product by themselves or within their small business, yet, then you're looking at things like, Okay, so first your your added income is, is one thing, but you're also looking at things like sponsorships. You're looking at things like affiliate income, and then eventually growing into your own products, you know, right? So creating your own ebooks, creating your own self published books, your own courses and other things that you can sell through this distribution platform that is YouTube. I've actually got a some research that I did on YouTube ad income that found that the average AD, the ad rate, or the the average cost per click that YouTube creators collected. So this is just the Creator portion of that is less than four tenths of a percent, actually. So so definitely not something you can rely on. And then I talk about some of these other ad sources. So So sponsorships, affiliates, your own products. How to, how to not only sell them on YouTube. But how to use your YouTube as a distribution platform to kind of boost other parts of your business, boost your website and and really leverage the two together. So, you know, that's that's just three quick things that I've learned about being successful on YouTube, how to use it as its own asset and leverage it with your existing business, with your existing websites. The importance, really, I think, of evolving into Internet video, because I think it's so important. I think so many people are neglecting it, but it's not going to be long before you, before you can't neglect it any any longer. Okay, so, so start using YouTube. Start using it just once a week. Build up that consistency, build up that community, and emphasize that community around your channel, and start diversifying your revenue into other income sources. I want to thank you again for allowing me to come on the podcast one more time and and really talk about this, because I think it's so important for small business owners, and I think it's really going to mean a big difference for for a lot of for a lot of people out there.

Robert Plank 16:03 Thank you so much, Joseph. Now I hope that that training helped you out. If you are struggling with building your YouTube channel, if you're looking for more tips and tricks on how to do it faster, or if you say I'm not yet in YouTube, I need to be. I hope that that motivated you a little bit, and we'll give a link to Joseph's YouTube channel in the show notes. But in the meantime, if you're just driving or listening or walking, maybe pull out your phone, open up the YouTube app and subscribe to Joseph. And I find that helps. Sometimes I just, even though I might not have time to watch any person's videos, I might just subscribe to them that way they get on my radar and I can see what it is they're doing. I can look at their subjects, titles, thumbnails again, even if they're not in the same industry as me, I can get some ideas, and maybe some thing will rub off, and it will motivate me to crank out some more videos, go to YouTube and subscribe to Joseph. That is J, O, S, E, P, H, that's his first name, and his last name is H, O, G, U, e, that way you can subscribe to his channel and discover more about how you can grow YouTube as an asset, not just from ad revenue, but affiliate links, product placements, launching new products and to get some results, because he mentioned there that you need to be consistent. Put out new content every week at the same time, and that's easier to do if you know what the output will be. If you know that you'll get X number of likes, views, subscribers, money, you'll be more motivated to go and produce consistently and get consistent results. If you're interested in Joe's website, go to my work from home, money.com but the best place to watch him right now is to go on YouTube and search for Joseph Hogue, subscribe and see what he has coming out. So thanks Joseph for inspiring and educating us. We'll see you next time want to listen to more fantastic marketers of the day, subscribe to us at marketer of the day.com/itunes, and browse past episodes at marketer of the day.com you.