Today we are talking about one of my favorite recent topics: growing a YouTube channel.
I’ve been looking for additional traffic channels, especially organic ones, and YouTube is something I’m going to talk a lot more about here on the podcast. I think everybody should be doing a YouTube channel.
I invited my good buddy, Pat Flynn, from Smart Passive Income, to join me here to share the number one secret to growing a successful YouTube channel.
In addition to his Pat Flynn YouTube channel, where he has 344,000 subscribers and talks about online business, Pat has created a Pokemon YouTube channel called Deep Pocket Monster.
He launched it in early 2021, and in 12 short months he had 100,000 subscribers. He currently has 144,000 subscribers, and in the past 30 days he’s done about $8,000 in ad revenue from this channel which, again, is just over a year old.
Pat’s going to break it all down for you in today’s episode. He’s going to be sharing exactly what it takes to have a successful YouTube channel, how to grow it quickly, and he’s going to unpack the number one thing you need to think about in order to be successful on YouTube.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The fastest way to grow your YouTube channel
- The truth about clickbait
- How to get YouTube to support your channel
- Pat’s tips for keeping your viewers engaged
- How to use YouTube’s algorithm to your advantage
- The ideal length for your videos
- Two things every video needs before it’s recorded
Links & Resources:
- TubeBuddy
- vidIQ
- ThumbsUp.tv
- Jay Alto
- The Art of Online Business website
- DM me on Instagram
- Visit my YouTube channel
- The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
- Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
- The Art of Online Business Podcast website
- Check out my Accelerator coaching program
Pat Flynn’s Links:
- Smart Passive Income
- Follow Pat on Twitter
- Pat is on Instagram
- Check out Pat’s YouTube channel
- Deep Pocket Monster on YouTube
Got A Question You Want Answered On the Podcast?
Ask your questions or let me know if there is a topic or guest you’d like to hear from in the comments below or click here to visit my contact page and submit your question there for a chance to be featured on one of my upcoming Q&A episodes.
Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!
Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:
9 Ideas for Monetizing Your YouTube Channel
How to Grow Your YouTube Channel with Paid Ads (and Get More Customers), with Tom Breeze
[00:00:00] Rick:
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Accelerator is about thinking differently and bigger about your business, about your team, your funnels, your ads, your vision, et cetera, so you can create more profit and have more impact with less hustle.
Accelerator is application only. Again, this is rolling, ongoing open enrollment. If you want to learn more and apply, just go to RickMulready.com/Accelerator.
[00:01:31] Pat:
Here’s the secret to YouTube. YouTube will absolutely support you. They will share your video with your target audience for you for free if you help them first. By helping YouTube you’re keeping people on the platform longer.
There are two ways to do that. You get people to click on your video, and you get them to watch a video longer.
[00:02:24] Rick:
Hey, what’s up. My friends, Rick here, and today we are talking about one of my favorite recent topics. I see recent over the past year or so, and that is growing a YouTube channel because.
So many of us, right? Especially in the past year and a half, I’ve been looking for an additional traffic channels, especially organic, right.
With, with how messy ads have been for the past year and a half. And YouTube is something that I think I’m going, gonna be talking a lot more about YouTube here on the podcast. But in addition to podcasting, I think that everybody. Should be doing a YouTube channel as long as right. Of course your audience watches videos on YouTube, which is a whole lot of people.
Right? And so I invited my good buddy, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income to join me here, to share the number one secret to YouTube success in growing a successful YouTube. A lot of you might not know, but Pat has, in addition to his, PatFlynn a YouTube channel where he has like 344,000 subscribers, where he talks about online business and so forth.
Pat has created a Pokemon YouTube channel. It’s called deep pocket mom. He launched it in early 20, 21. And in 12 short months he had a hundred thousand subscribers on this channel. And at the time we recorded this interview, he has 137,000 subscribers. And in the past 30 days, He’s done about $8,000 in ad revenue from this channel, which is just over a year old.
And so Pat’s going to break it all down for you. He’s going to be sharing with you exactly what it takes to have a successful YouTube channel, how to grow it quickly and really unpeeling or an unpacking unpeeling unpacking the number one thing that you need to be thinking about in order to have success.
On YouTube. So without further ado, let’s dive into it with Pat Flynn. So Pat, I’m a little bit worried about this conversation that it’s going to be super awkward, that we’re not going to have any chemistry or anything like that.
[00:04:39] Pat:
None, no, no chemistry. We, we don’t hang out every Friday and have coffee together. We aren’t friends, our families don’t know each other. We were just complete strangers. So this is gonna be, this is gonna be terrible.
[00:04:50] Rick:
We don’t live a mile down the road from each other in the same neighborhood.
[00:04:54] Pat:
Ah, dude, I’m
[00:04:54] Rick:
You don’t pass by my house every morning.
[00:04:56] Pat:
I do to on the way to school. Yes.
[00:04:59] Rick:
Yeah.
[00:04:59] Pat:
And I look and I’m like that guy, he just lives right there.
[00:05:04] Rick:
Can’t believe I’m going to be on his
[00:05:05] Pat:
We’re on the same street again.
[00:05:08] Rick:
Thanks for coming back, man. We’re going, gonna be talking about something that we’ve never talked about here on the.
Well, w what you haven’t talked about here on the show, and that is YouTube and you and I have been talking about a lot for my channel, and you’ve been giving me just amazing tips and insights and stuff like that you have.
And what I want to talk about specifically is your new study of a new cause. It’s what, 15, 14 months old. Now, your posts,
[00:05:38] Pat:
Fairly new, but it’s been around for over a year. Yeah.
[00:05:41] Rick:
So. First of all, what’s the Pokemon channel name?
[00:05:45] Pat:
Deep pocket monster, which is really funny. There’s like two meanings to that, right? It’s like deep pockets cause in the Pokemon world. So first of all, people are like, wait, wait, wait, did he say Pokemon like
[00:05:55] Rick:
Well, yeah, that’s my like why Pokemon? Because you’re, you’re best known for smart passive income SP.
[00:06:01] Pat:
Yeah, it’s just so interesting. You know, during the pandemic had a lot of time to myself, like many other people did, and my kids got into Pokemon a little bit. They started collecting some of the cards and the figurines and whatnot. And then I started to get involved with that and get interested in it too.
And then I, of course always go deep with a lot of. work with anything, right? If I’m going to learn how to run a marathon, well, Hey, I’m going to learn from somebody who’s done it. And then I ended up running a triathlon, or in this case I learn about Pokemon cards and not just because it’s a fun little show and a boy game from back in the day that became this major hit.
And by the way, Pokemon is the number one media franchise in the world, which is crazy. There is a whole nother side. There’s multiple sides to it. There are people who invest in these cards and they make money by buying and selling these things. there are people who collect, what’s called trophy cards, these really old cards that they’re very rare and they’re worth millions of dollars.
And then there’s a side of Pokemon where, people open pack. And they try to collect the entire set, but they do this wall on camera while live, on YouTube. and so I got really interested in all the different facets of what was going on in this world. And I think that’s really important to do.
I, I, first of all, I wasn’t approaching this as like a, Ooh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna turn this into a business and make money from it. It was just, I was enjoying the hobby and I just started noticing all these different parts of it. Right. There’s like a bucket over here and a bucket over there. And I also started noticing that there were a lot of.
And there are a lot of things that me as an entrepreneur, like many of us, once you learn this language of business and entrepreneurship, you see things that like normal people don’t. And I started to notice that there were a lot of opportunities and there were a lot of people falling short on things.
There were creators, many creators. Who’ve been doing this for over a decade now who just, I could understand that they didn’t quite. YouTube in the way that I got YouTube based on my entrepreneurial channel with PatFlynn on, on YouTube. And I just started noticing that there, wow, somebody has to come in here and start doing something that’s different.
And I saw that opportunity and I did make a decision one day because there was a fork in the road. Do I just like continue to enjoy this hobby on the side and not really worry about it and just kind of have fun. Do I become a creator in this space and actually see if I can make a dent here and by make a dent, meaning can I build an audience?
Can I help people? Can I impact this community in some way? And so I obviously chose the latter route and I started the channel in the beginning of 2020. there was this huge surge at the end of 2020 in the collectible space. A lot of people thought it was going to go away because of the pandemic, but it actually went the opposite way because a lot of people were looking for nostalgia and looking for things to do, and also had some money to spend on that kind of stuff.
And a lot of stimulus checks went to collectibles and things like that. So there was this huge boom and I came along with it, but unlike most people, I created a channel to go with it. And I started that in the beginning of 2021 in January, we are recording this as of March of 2020. The channel just past 300 or an a 137,000 subscribers.
We had our number one most profitable month last year, as far as ad revenue. So in the last 28 days, it has earned $8,785 in ad revenue from YouTube. In addition to that, we are about to cross 1000 paying members on YouTube, on YouTube. Similar to Patrion, you can sort of support the creators there. And I have, about a thousand people paying $2 and 99 cents a month.
What do they get access to? They get access to special emojis that they can use on live streams. They get access to a special discord that I created for this community. They also get access to member only streams or, you know, special giveaways and things like that. And about a thousand people. When I think about a thousand people, I’m like, wow, Kevin, Kelly’s a thousand true fans here I am in a brand new space that I knew nothing about.
Now with a thousand people paying me monthly and it’s just kind of, kind of insane. And on top of that, because the brand is growing so big. I mean, our videos get 75 to a hundred thousand views within a month, on average and a lot of brands in this space now see me coming in and seeing this connection I have with the audience and the numbers, and they want to sponsor these videos and I’m charging anywhere between five and $6,000 per video.
And it just blows my mind it, and I tell us other people in there, like I hate you, first of all, is often what I get. but also like congrats. but, but I understand that cause it’s just like people, especially other Pokemon YouTubers, who’ve been doing this for awhile. I’ve actually gotten a little bit of hate from them because I’ve come on.
And they’re like, who’s this guy, Pat Flynn. He like, didn’t even know about Pokemon while back he didn’t, he’s not a poker tutor like we are, and we understand the history and he doesn’t. First of all, I don’t pretend to be an expert.
[00:10:48] Rick:
Can you just say polka tuber.
[00:10:50] Pat:
Poker tuber. Yeah. That’s what we call ourselves like Pokemon utuber polka, tuber.
The accent on the E is really important and also be poked tuber. And we don’t want to just poke people. We were Pokemon YouTubers, anyway, but here’s what I tell them. I say. Yes, it looks like this became an overnight success, but I’ve been on YouTube since 2009. I just so happened to create this channel in year 11, right.
Or, or your 12, and all that failure, all that knowledge that I picked up from my other channel and in the investments into courses, investments into relationships in the Pokemon space, just to learn from the best I’ve now applied in this space where nobody was doing any of those things. and it’s working, it’s working really.
And I actually got invited to a Pokemon event and to actually come on stage, I’m now doing like stage things in the Pokemon space. And it’s just like, wow, the, everything I talked about, my book, super fans I’m implementing. It was all based on stuff that I did on the Pat Flynn stuff. But now it’s just, now that I know what I’m doing, it’s sped up.
And I think, and I’m hoping that this provides inspiration to a lot of people because community and building fans is really where business should be going. I started from scratch in a brand new space last year, and we’re already here and it’s, it just takes, it just takes a little bit of time and focus, but also an understanding of, well, what is community really?
And how can you show up?
[00:12:16] Rick:
So I want to break this down because so many people are sitting there, like, all right, how do I do something like this? If I don’t have the kind of background that you do in building, you know, your brand over the years, and you have, what are you at now on, on the Pat Flynn YouTube channel, like
[00:12:36] Pat:
344 K subscribers over 12, 13 years.
[00:12:41] Rick:
So that’s a perfect example. Number one, like literally like a month ago, not even a month ago, you were at like 333,000, because I remember meeting you for coffee a couple weeks ago. And I was like, oh, I saw your subscribers. And you were at 3 33. The point being is that the more that you’re doing it, the more consistent you are, it’s a snowball effect.
The growth becomes that much more quicker, that much more quick. So.
You reached 344,000 subscribers over what’d you say nine years,
[00:13:12] Pat:
12 years, right? It, it took eight years to get to a hundred thousand subs on that channel
[00:13:18] Rick:
And you did you’re at 137,000 on deep pocket monster in 14 months.
[00:13:26] Pat:
Yes. It took 11 months.
[00:13:27] Rick:
Thousand.
[00:13:28] Pat:
And 28 days to get to a hundred thousand. So it’s, again, I, again, pulling all the things that I learned from the other channel and implementing it here is really what worked. And so what did work? number one, like you said, the most important thing is just continuously publish videos.
It doesn’t mean publish videos every day. In fact, publishing a video every day.
Potentially can work against you because you’re not giving enough time for your latest video to show up on people’s home feeds. You’re already covering it up with a new video. And so I really don’t agree with the Daily Content posting on YouTube.
We’re posting twice a week and on the PatFlynn channel just once a week, but staying consistent is important for a few reasons. Number one, it helps you just understand how to better create videos more efficiently because the more you do something just the better you get at it. If you just publish one video a month, you only have.
12 times a year to get better at something. But if you’re publishing, you know, two times a week, you have 104 times that, to, to get better, next it also will give you more data and data is what we’re using to grow the data on YouTube. That. From anything from the number of impressions to the click-through rates, you know, how many people saw the video on their home feed, but then how many people clicked that informs you?
Well, if it’s low, you need to change your title and the thumbnail because the title and thumbnail is literally the most important part, of the thing of, of, of being on YouTube in many cases, even more important than the video itself. it we’ll talk more about that later because that is definitely really important.
It also informs what topics or what videos seem to really hit the mark for people. Who YouTube is showing your video to thus giving you insight that you need to create more videos like that. it also gives you insight into retention of your videos, right? You actually see a chart after a few days on your videos of people’s attention spans in those videos.
You know, they start with a hundred percent people in a hundred percent watching, but at the end, is it 30% of people are still left 10%. 80% that informs again, decisions that you make for your future videos. And again, the more that you create these videos, the better it gets. I interviewed a bunch of YouTubers for my own podcast.
One of them being MKBHD or Marcus brown Lee, who’s the top reviewer of tack and apple and all things tech on YouTube. It’s got like 15 million subscribers now. And when I interviewed him, he was not even at eight yet. and he’s doubled it since. And that was only a couple of years ago. like you said, it just compounds with growth over time.
But he said something very interesting because I asked him to tell his origin story and what it was like when he first started his channel, his first 100 videos were for less than a hundred subscribers. And he couldn’t stop talking about how important getting through those like messy first a hundred videos were, and that’s where most people give up and fails.
They create maybe five videos and they don’t take off and they just go, well, I guess it’s not for me. And they move on to the next thing. So if you’re are going to do YouTube, it is something that you do have to commit to like with anything, but especially on YouTube to get to that point, it’s very, very unusual to see sort of like a one hit wonder on YouTube it’s people who.
Work their way toward that success, because not only are there more videos potentially get out there and spread and go viral, but they’ve just gotten better with every single video in and can understand what’s working and what’s not.
[00:16:43] Rick:
When you say it gets better with each video, what is like, I know. Yeah. What does that exactly mean? I know it’s going to be different for different scenarios, but kind of like, what does that mean in general?
[00:16:55] Pat:
Yeah. And again, let’s go back to data. A better video on the front end would be a title and thumbnail that gets a click. You have to be somewhat click baity in order to get a person’s attention, because when a person goes on through their phone or on a desktop, it’s not just your video, that’s popping up.
It’s you versus like 15 other videos and the thumbnails released. Before they watch any second of your video, it’s a title and thumbnail. Now up here, a lot of people will push back and say, oh my gosh, clickbait, really Pat, like he used to come to the dark side of the internet already, but the truth is in order to provide value, you have to get attention and you have to get that click the whole job of the title and thumbnails to get a click where people get it wrong is when they throw up a title and thumbnail just to get a click, but then they don’t.
That’s the problem. The bait and switch is not okay. Or the click bait that leads to a waste of time is not okay. You have a, a, there was a channel called Veritasium who did a video on this and he actually renamed it. He called it legit. Where it’s like legit, it’s baiting people. You’re being honest about that so that you can teach them the thing that is of importance or because you need to entertain them or whatever it is that your videos do.
So on the front end, getting better means higher click-through rate. And every time I publish a video within the first hour, no, it, within the first 30 minutes, I’m looking at the click through rate of the videos, thumbnail, and title. If it’s under average, we literally changed the title of the. And we just try to work our way to a point, because that’s the thing, that’s the thing that’s broken.
If it’s not performing up front, it’s the title thumbnail, that’s it, it’s simple. But typically what we do is we build maybe three to five, sometimes even up to 10 different thumbnails that we feel would do well. We pick our one that we hypothesized would do the best. We’d throw that up there. If it underperforms, we switch it out.
We already have that available. We’re not scrambling to design a new one because we already have those. And. it’s that important? Right? I went to vid summit a few years back to learn about YouTube. This was before the Pokemon channel, and I saw a presentation by, Mr. Beast himself, Jimmy, who has the fastest growing YouTube channel right now, and is many people knew who Mr.
Beast is. And the whole presentation we were all there to learn. How do we do things like you, Jimmy? The whole presentation was all about thumbnails. It was an hour and a half president. All about thumbnails. It was nothing about storytelling, which is important. It’s, it’s nothing about the hook of the video, which is definitely important, all thumbnails, so that hopefully gets across how important the title and thumbnail is.
And it has to be quick. It has to be simple. You want to do, what’s called the split second test. If you show it to somebody for a split second, does it actually invoke enough curiosity for people to click through? if not, then maybe it’s not good enough yet because that’s all they’re going to see is a split second.
Too many items on there. There’s a guy named Jay who teaches thumbnails on Twitter really well. He shows a lot of examples. He says that you want to have no more than like three elements on there and you have to keep it very simple. if you complicate things or you add too much. Especially when you look at it at a smaller thumbnail size, it’s just going to be a blur and it’s just going to re it’s just pointless.
So that’s getting better on the front end title thumbnail, and always keeping track of the percentage of that and trying to get that as high as possible. moving on, you want to have as far as better videos, a better hook. So keeping people’s attention longer, right at the start, a big mistake that a lot of people on YouTube, especially as entrepreneurs who are trying to teach, right?
Like Jimmy and all, all bunch of other people. Seemingly easier for them because they’re entertainment channels. Like he’s going to bury himself in a coffin underneath the ground for 48 hours. And that’s, I mean, you’re hooked already just from the title and thumbnail, but you see the coffin and you’re like, oh my gosh, she’s actually doing this.
You’re stuck in that video now. But for us educators, I mean, maybe I can put myself in a coffin and that might capture people’s attention, but I think that’d be weird and it doesn’t really add value to the story. but the big problem that a lot of people make on YouTube is they go, Hey everybody, welcome back to the.
Here, you’re going to get it, this, this and this. And in this video today, I want to talk about this and you’re 30 seconds in already, and you have not delivered on the promise of the title and thumbnail yet. You’ve not hooked people in. You’ve just talked about yourself and your channel. No, you got to earn that, that can come and should come mid video, or even after video.
But the sooner you can get into the listicle, the sooner that you can get into the tutorial, the sooner that you can get into the point of the video that people are there. The more likely they are going to stick all the way through. And here’s the secret to YouTube. YouTube will absolutely support you.
They will share your video with your target audience for you for free, if you help them first. And by helping YouTube, you’re keeping people on the platform longer. So there’s two ways to do that. You get people that click on your video and you get them to watch your video longer. Right. And so if you can do that YouTube.
Yo, Rick just created this awesome video that people seem to be sticking around for. Cool. Let’s send it to more people who can also now stick around on the platform because ultimately YouTube is in it for advertising dollars and the more that you can help them get people to stay on the platform, the more they will reward you for that.
So a good hook in the beginning to get people to watch through and then very important. If it’s just a talking head video the whole time, while there’s many chances for people to leave, you want to include, and this is the power of video. You wanna include Pattern interrupts. This is what we podcasters don’t necessarily have access to.
There are Pattern interrupts in the audio format like stingers with audio or changing up the story, or, you know, the art of storytelling is really important because you can have Pattern interrupts that reset people and get people to stick around or stay at the edge of their seat for an audio. But on video it’s much easier, but if you’re not using those things, your video feels flat.
[00:22:47] Rick:
Yeah.
[00:22:48] Pat:
If you are doing a video and I’ll go through my process of how to do this. Cause you can do this in layers, but in your videos, having text pop on the screen and every once in a while, or the camera zooms in and then zooms out or there’s B roll, which is like other video that lends itself to the story that is shown on the screen while you are talking that’s B roll, right?
Like a voiceover is happening while that video is playing. And it’s, it’s not, you don’t have to make it a Hollywood production, but just a little bit of movement here and there to emphasize and amplify that story or the teaching that you do. Goes a very, very long way. And then afterwards checking the video to see, you know, the retention rate.
And again, looking at afterwards, the retention chart did 60% of people who started the video get to the end. That’s a really good actually, if it’s under 50 there’s work to do 50 is about average. but if you can get more than half of the people to stick around and watch through all the way to the end, that again is another signal for YouTube to just amplify.
To other people. And the reason why you don’t want to start your video with, Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. My name is this, this, and this is because YouTube is actually not about subscribers anymore. Yes. We talk about subscribers. Yes. It’s a way to, to, to gauge like the size of the channel, but most people who view YouTube videos are not watching videos of channels.
They are subscribed to, if you have a YouTube channel and you go into your. 99% of the time, you will find that most of your views come from people who are not subscribed. In fact, I heard through the grapevine that maybe they would want to get rid of subscriber count because that actually doesn’t matter.
I think people would riot if that were the case. The point being, it’s not about the subscribers, it’s about the views. If you get the views going the way you want them to, the subscribers will come, but the views come from oftentimes YouTube sending out your video to other people that based on view history, based on what they know about what you’ve clicked on in Google.
Cause remember YouTube is owned by Google. So they have an understanding of these people of you, which is kind of. But this is why when you go on the homepage of YouTube, you’re seeing videos that are very relevant to you because they have that algorithm. And so if you create a good video relevant to a particular audience type, they will send it out for you.
And imagine a person clicks on that because it’s a good title and thumbnail. And then you start the video with welcome back to the channel. A majority of your people are already out or they feel disconnected. You get into the meat of the content, as soon as you can you hook them to the end, if, if, if you can in some way, and then you’ve got them in, then that’s what lends itself to that exponential growth.
[00:25:19] Rick:
Now there’s so much. I want to unpack there. One, one number that you just mentioned. Can I go back to you? You said, I believe you said 50% staying until the end is about average.
[00:25:30] Pat:
I mean, that’s good. Actually. That’s, it’s it’s average. And, but, but that’s, that’s actually doing really, really good. I would say the average is likely, probably lower. if you can get 50 or more, you’re doing really good.
[00:25:44] Rick:
So what is the return? Cause the retention rate is a stat. I mean, you’ve mentioned that several times the retention rate is something that the YouTube algorithm really looks at as far as getting people, you know, as far as it’s showing more. Is that what we’re talking about here? If you’re. Forgetting if your retention rate is, is it looking at percentage?
Is it looking at, you know, number of
[00:26:08] Pat:
Both. It’s looking at average view duration. So AVD average view duration. So the length of the time that people are watching. So if you have like a 10 minute video and people are watching half of it, that’s five minutes. That’s the same as like a five minute video watched a hundred percent of the time, right?
That’s like one factor, but it’s the same amount of time. But per video, the average percentage viewed is also very important to per video. And so if you can get a person to stick around closer to the end, it’s again, another signal out of many that YouTube uses to di to know whether or not to share this video with other people for you.
That’s the beauty of this when you nail this, I mean, it’s. Thousands hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of organic viewers out there coming to you. It’s, it’s just an amazing landscape once you figure it out. And again, it takes time to get there. But one thing that I’ve noticed, another mistake, we talked about the front end and sort of like welcoming people back and all this stuff that kind of is lazy before you get to the meat of the content.
That’s a mistake people make on the front end on the retention graph. A mistake people make on the backend is clearly letting people know that the video is over. It’s still continuing to. Right. And we see this all the time. It’s, even, even like giving a warning that you’re almost at the end, which signals to the person psychologically watching that.
Okay. I got to find a new video so I can keep this going and they might even leave already, but many times when we’re doing, especially a list post, and finally, to finish off this video, number five, we basically let people know, Hey guys, the video is ending, so get ready or, or leave as soon as I’m done what you want to do.
And what’s been working well on our. On both the Pokemon channel and the PatFlynn channel is literally make it. So it’s like almost a surprise ending. I mean, you don’t want to cut people off or leave any value out, but you want to end almost abruptly because that increases the overall viewing percentage, but also gets a person to go, oh, okay.
I want more. And then your end screens pop up or the next up next video shows up and they’re already getting ready to click on that. Oh, I want to leave and I’m out and I’m going to find something else or something better. So that’s just another tip for the end. But yeah, retention and view duration are both very important and there’s a big debate as far as like, well, what’s better, longer watch time and shorter view duration or shorter watch time, but longer view duration.
Again, I don’t know the exact formula and the algorithm is changing all the time, but just create great videos that people want to watch all the way through. I mean, that’s all you have to do. And then everything else kind of takes care of it.
[00:28:37] Rick:
Well, I, with along those lines, I’m going to ask you a question that I know people listening right now. Want to know, I know how you’re going to answer it, but because you and I talked about this a lot, because I’ve wanted to know this question. How long is there a certain length of video that YouTube likes to see for like a best practice?
[00:28:54] Pat:
Yeah. I mean the best practice really in this might sound like a cop-out answer. And this is probably what you were alluding to. the video should be as long as it needs to be to deliver the value it should deliver. Right.
[00:29:05] Rick:
That’s the worst answer ever.
[00:29:07] Pat:
It is, cause it doesn’t really tell you the exact number and everybody wants an exact number.
But it’s the truth, right? Like if you had the best tip in the world to use a particular product or something, and you’re like, okay, well I gotta make it 10 minutes in length for whatever reason, but it only takes a minute to share that video is going to be so boring because you’ve stretched things out.
It’s not going to be valuable. And guess what? Nobody’s going to share it. YouTube is not going to share it. It it’s just nine minutes of fluff versus a really good short video that yes, doesn’t have as much watch time, but does the job and gets people watching to the end. I mean, you will get rewarded for that.
Right? On the other hand, there’s many, a longer form types of podcast or of, of, of YouTube videos. Some of which are podcasts that are like over an hour long, where it’s our workshop or an hour training. And even though they might only get a total view percentage of 20%. Well, 20% of an hour is much longer than like a three minute video and you will get some reward for that for people who.
That YouTube sees would potentially enjoy that content. And in the traffic graph, you can actually see when YouTube does this, they’ll send you a whole bunch of traffic or impressions, and then it’ll either pull back and it’s like, it’s almost as if like YouTube is like, okay, we’re going to try it with this group of people, Rick, we’re going to see how it goes up.
And then it didn’t really perform well there. So we’re going to slow it down for a little bit. It will slow it down for a little bit. And then a few days goes by and you see another spike. Cause they’re trying a different demographic or different group or something changed. I got along a little bit by changing the title and the thumbnail, or, doing those kinds of things to hopefully get, you know, the new group of people who see it to have a higher click through rate or watch longer, or what have you.
That being said, If you were to hold a gun to my head and say, Pat, I, I need to know how many minutes of video should be like, what’s optimal. I would say eight to 12 minutes. this is based on, people’s attention spans. And obviously there’s a lot of factors to it as far as the flavor of your video and the hook and all that stuff and what it’s about.
But the reason why eight minutes is important is because eight minutes is for a video creator on YouTube. The point at which you can include now, mid mid-roll advertising. Through AdSense in your video. So a lot of people do get to eight minutes so that they can add a little ad in the middle of the video in the middle ads always perform the best it seems.
And, and, and, you know, I was a little worried about that actually for the first four to five years of my Pathway and YouTube channel, I turned the ads off because I was like, no, I don’t want to, I don’t want to mess with a person’s experience watching my videos. And I think it’s like invasive. I think it’s interrupting.
You know, was selling my courses and selling other things on top of that. And then I don’t know if this is true or not, but when I turn ads on my videos started to get higher views. I don’t know if it’s because YouTube is like, oh, you’re going to get ads now. Okay. We’ll send it to more people for you.
There’s a little, there’s a little like of a myth of that. I don’t know if that’s true in YouTube denies it, but I mean, it makes sense. Right. But I’ve heard zero complaints from ads on my YouTube channel because everybody sees ads everywhere now. And. My sales have gone up, not in direct correlation to that, or, or causation, but, I have not seen a negative impact.
I’ve only seen additional dollars come in, and. That’s really cool. So it’s cool. Cause it’s not it, YouTube is not my main business. The money from that does support myself and the business, obviously. but it is a nice for sure. Nice thing to have, as well, because there’s a lot of companies spending a lot of dollars on getting in front of the right audiences.
And what’s really interesting about the dichotomy of the two channels is if you want to talk numbers as far as like CPMs or not CPMs because that’s cost, but, RPM is revenue per. per Millie or per thousand viewers on the Pokemon channel, because it’s more entertainment based. It’s like $7 for every thousand people who watch a video it’s about $7 or so an ad revenue on the business channel.
It’s $35. It’s like five times more, which is just insane, but I have way more views on my Pokemon channel.
[00:33:10] Rick:
Yeah.
[00:33:11] Pat:
And it’s interesting, like I have the benefit much like MKBHD of in this Pokemon space, right? It’s like there’s new sets coming out all the time. People want to see what the cards are. There’s inherent, built in mystery into a pack of cards you what’s inside.
We need to wait till the end of the video to see what’s inside. And that’s got me thinking, what can I do on my business channel that has the same kind of feel, same kind of mystery, same kind of, well, what’s the outcome, right? So I’m already thinking of ideas to bring that. That’s already baked into the Pokemon stuff into the Pat flinching.
Also an example would be something like not a mystery box, but it might be like I purchased something that claims it does something. And from a of business perspective, I might even be able to teach in the sales page or like all that, but then I have to receive it and then use it and see if it actually does what it says it’s going to do.
Now. There’s a reason to stick around to the end, or maybe I go on TikTok and I look at some of the passive income strategies they’re using there and telling people, and there’s millions of views on those videos. Well, let me put them to the test. We’ll watch it. We’ll react to it. I’ll offer some comments and we’ll actually go and do this.
Now you have to watch the video all the way through, because the thing is either gonna work or not versus top five tips for podcasting, very specific. You have to be interested in podcasting to watch it. So it’s less general, but you got to have some good video and good pacing in order to keep a person to go from one to five versus just inherent built in mystery of what’s coming at the end.
So it’s just really interesting to see those two things play with.
[00:34:44] Rick:
So let’s, let’s talk about that a little bit. And I want to circle back to the thumbnail title. Coming up here because you, you have sort of a counter-intuitive approach to that, which I think is really, really interesting that you and I have talked a lot about when it comes to topics. This another thing that you and I have talked a lot about, because my question is as far as creating or coming up with topics to create video around, do we want to, and especially when we’re early on, we’re just kind of starting out.
Do we want to focus on. Search-based we don’t, we want to search for like, or create content that’s like rank that we could rank for, or, and is it a case of creating content that we’re speaking to our directly to our audience that we want to serve, but yet is probably not, you know, rank quote unquote, worthy
[00:35:38] Pat:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, cause a, a, a video titled, I test quote unquote re. TikTok passive income strategies. Like nobody’s looking up TikTok, passive income strategies. Nobody’s looking really that up, but that’s more of a video that plays on the fact that when that shows up on your homepage or up next on the video, you’ve previously watched, hopefully it invokes curiosity.
And you want to click it even though you didn’t know that you wanted it, versus a search based sort of inquiry, like best live streaming software for Mac or, cheapest, best quality microphone for podcasts.
[00:36:14] Rick:
Yep.
[00:36:15] Pat:
Right. Those are two different kinds of videos and it serves two different kinds of audiences.
Now that’s not to say those audiences could overlap, but I would say that if you are starting a YouTube. pick one strategy to start out with, and then you can experiment with the other later. it could be searched based specifically on what, you know, people are typing in and yes, you can use keyword research tools to do this.
There are some YouTube keyword specific tools as well through tools like tube buddy, or even vid IQ, or if you don’t have access to those, you can use Google keyword research planner, on Google ad words and use that as well as sort of a basis. and there’s many other tools actually that can help you too, but creating a video for.
You got to understand that people are typing that into YouTube and they’re looking for information. So how should the video then be structured to support that what should be on the title and the thumbnail to support that? If people are looking up best microphone under a hundred or under a hundred dollars, then a great thumbnail should include a microphone and maybe.
Like a dollar value, $79 or something. And with the word best on it or something versus TikTok, passive income strategies, it might be a thumbnail of me with my head down, cause this just doesn’t work or it’s disgusting or a thumbs down or something like that. That. Potential outcomes of this test. I’m about to do a very different, but I would choose one to start with and then go create videos in that way for maybe three months or so, just to kind of get a baseline and then you can experiment from there, but you do want to have that baseline and be consistent and just kind of commit to that.
But when it comes to the topics, whether it’s more browser suggested base, which is like the passive income TikTok style one, or search base, like the microphone, or best as streaming software for Mac, my approach for this is you want to start with not filming the video. First. You want to start with a title and thumbnail first, like nail the title and thumbnail, then go and create that.
And this is especially important if you’re doing non-search based things. Cause I think it’s a little bit easier on search. If you like, you know, you’re going to be reviewing this product. Okay. I can imagine what a thumbnail and title is going to be, and you can create that after, but in the other way, which is where most of the viewership is coming from.
I mean, that’s the, that’s the trouble with search base. There’s a limited number of people searching for this every day with suggested and browse traffic. For those other topics. There’s millions of people who could potentially be interested in watching. Even though they don’t know, they might be interested in watching that.
And that’s the big difference between search and the other way, but the way that we do it now is so much better because you get better results. I used to film a video because it was just a topic I was interested in or knew about, knew a lot about. And then I would force the title and thumbnail on top of it.
And it was always very hard. And unfortunately, even though it’s a great video, if the title and thumbnail isn’t great, then nobody’s going to see it. So now I’m starting with the most important. Title and thumbnail I’ll often create three to five, sometimes even up to 10 different types of thumbnails and title combos.
I just brainstorm with post-it notes and I draw sketches and all this kind of stuff. I think it’s Mr. Beast. He does like up to 40 or 50 thumbnails per video because it’s that important, right. So I’m not saying it to do that many, but creating different versions so you can go. Okay. What do people. What can people see here?
What does this convey might even share it with a few people. There’s even some tools. I think it’s called thumbs up TV or something. I can’t remember the name of the tool, but you can take the thumbnail that you design. You can design it, on your, on your own. Using Canva there’s even templates there. Or you can hire somebody that’s even agencies that can do this for you.
You can pull inspiration from other videos that you might see out there that have a good title and thumbnail combination. You can bring that element into your own. if you, if you’d like, but there’s a tool out there, thumbs up TV or whatever it is, where you can actually upload your thumbnail, even before the video is ready to see what it looks like compared, or like inside the dashboard of YouTube and on a mobile device.
So you can just see this is, does this look good? Is it read? Is the title truncated or whatnot? That way you’ve nailed that part first. And then you create that video. And oftentimes what happens is when with this thumbnail first approach is we tweak the thumbnail to a point where it’s finally. And it’s actually a different video than I originally thought I was going to create.
Right? Like the thumbnail entitled guide the video, because that would be an interesting video versus the other way around, which is like, okay, well now I have to force this title and thumbnail. And it’s just like, well, I guess this is interesting as it can be. Why not film a video that is already backed by a really interesting title and thumbnail, and then go from there.
My next video that I’m doing on the Pokemon channel is related to a scam that involves Walmart and, millions of dollars. Right? So the thumbnails are gonna be really interesting cause I can have the Walmart logo, but I can have like a big word that says scam on it. And even just, if I just had those two things, it would be interesting because people would want to know what’s a scam in this thing that’s going on at Walmart.
People are buying fake cards on Walmart, by the way, and then are unable to get refunds, which is happening. So. I’m trying to provide some education and value there. I could simply just, title it. don’t buy cards from Walmart, but I want to play into that story. I want to have people be very curious and I wanna, hook people in and rope them into, you know, getting really passionate about this as, as I am.
So. Title thumbnail first, start with that. And then film that.
[00:41:48] Rick:
I’m trying to think about my next question on that because you and I talked about that for months now, I still have my, I still have a hard time to be honest, like wrapping my head around.
Why can’t, if we have an idea for a video and we think it’s good and we record the video. And then come up with different ideas that we think are good in terms of a title and thumbnail,
[00:42:12] Pat:
It’s not to say they can’t work.
[00:42:14] Rick:
Right?
[00:42:15] Pat:
You’re not doing yourself a favor by potentially having it not work.
[00:42:21] Rick:
Sure.
[00:42:21] Pat:
If you start with the title and thumbnail, I mean, you could start with the topic as well. Like what might be another V like, let’s do this right now. Let’s just workshop it together. What’s what’s an upcoming video idea topics sort of general that you’re thinking about, creating.
[00:42:34] Rick:
Yeah. and this is one that you and I talked about week and a half ago about creating an evergreen funnel or something like that.
Like, super boring, but how to create a high converting evergreen webinar funnel.
[00:42:48] Pat:
Right. So you could film that video and just share how you create your video funnel and then go in and try to finagle some sort of title thumbnail combination. But here’s what happens when you think of the title and thumbnail first, it also informs, even though it’s about the same topic, it informs how you start that.
Informs the notes throughout it and how you end it. So let’s say that the video now that we know it’s about evergreen, it’s evergreen sales funnel, right. we could go, okay. we could title it, you know, the best evergreen sales funnel. Okay. Well then I, you know, sure. Maybe, what else? Like let’s just come up with a whole bunch of other ideas, right.
And you could go as far as, This evergreen funnel converts ridiculously well, or the conversion on This evergreen funnel is ridiculous. and.then the thumbnail is you with like a, board behind you kind of pointing to an arrow of like a like some sort of, you know, sequence of things that are happening that I want to know about now, because I want it, you’re teaching me this stuff and A person who sees that is now going to be curious about this ridiculous thing that you have going on.
So that’s, that’s an idea and I would sketch that up and see what that looks like Maybe even take like a, like a generic picture of my iPhone, of what that might look like and how my might look with my hand behind, or, or here, I might look up other videos that look very similar on YouTube or another or another channels and see if I can maybe structure my thumbnails in the same way.
Or let’s try another one. Maybe you have used this funnel before, and it has like a F a 40 plus percent a percentage conversion rate. Well, what happens if we put numbers in there? So, maybe the thumbnail includes a 43% conversions on there, you know, and that supports the title that says, you know, The simplest most profitable evergreen funnel you could have in your business, or the only funnel you’ll ever need to sell your courses or to, you know, whatever, again, brainstorming, put them together. see what they’re like with the different title, thumbnail combos. You can move things around and it’s like, yo, that’s sick. Right?
[00:45:07] Rick:
So the light bulb just literally went off for me as we’re talking as we’re on video right now, recording this, like, just like you giving that example. It makes sense for me now.
[00:45:17] Pat:
And do you see how that, do you see how that informs, like, now how you’re going to film this Because now if you if you’re like, this is the best funnel or the only funnel you’ll ever need, you can show it in comparison to other funnels, for example, or you can show how it can be used for all things that a person.
Or now it informs you actually showing That number upfront, right? you start the video with, I want to show you this funnel actually, here’s my computer right here. Look at this. This has a 45% conversion rate. We had 4,000 people go through this.
So that means from this last campaign I did, I earned this much. that is crazy. This is the only funnel I’m ever going to use from this point forward. And I want to show you exactly how this works So you can use it in your business too. Let me break it down.
[00:46:02] Rick:
So there’s that? That’s the hook.
[00:46:03] Pat:
The hook. Yeah.
[00:46:06] Rick:
The, by the way, I don’t know if you remember this or not, but the title that we came up that you came up with as we’re doing this exact exercise was exposing my million dollar webinar
[00:46:16] Pat:
Oh, there you go. That’s even better. I remember that idea when we were sitting at lunch,
[00:46:20] Rick:
Yeah.
[00:46:20] Pat:
But now that see that word exposing itself. I mean that just has some juice to it. Right.
[00:46:26] Rick:
Yeah. And.
[00:46:27] Pat:
Bit click baity, like I said earlier in the beginning, like you have to capture people’s attention and compare that to, how to create an evergreen funnel.
[00:46:37] Rick:
Wow. I would press the button on my road castor. What that, what that sound, but I don’t have it marked right now, so it could be a clapping. It could be clapping hands.
[00:46:47] Pat:
Slow clap.
[00:46:49] Rick:
Kind of the, one of the things that you said there, because people are always looking for inspiration, myself included, as far as thumbnails, you said, go to somebody else’s or go to other channels that might have similar content to what you’re creating sort by most popular videos
[00:47:07] Pat:
Hmm.
[00:47:07] Rick:
And look at the thumbnails that they’re using and you’re not copying them. You’re just using them as inspiration.
[00:47:14] Pat:
Correct. and, and the approach isn’t like, Ooh, let me create the same thumbnail. And I’m just gonna replace my face, which I’ve seen before. And that’s not good either, even though there’s no like ownership of thumbnails or no trademarks or anything, it’s just, it doesn’t look good, especially if you’re in the same niche, but I’ve borrowed from a lot of other spaces, other niches, things that then work on the Pokemon channel and.
Sorting through most popular videos is great because you can go, why is this video so popular on this channel? It might be like a crocheting channel. I don’t know whatever it is. You’ll learn as you go and explore these things. It’s like, it’s really cool. It’s similar to entrepreneurship when we’re entrepreneurs, we now understand how marketing works.
And so when we’re being marketed to. We know what’s going on. We have this like insider knowledge, the same thing happens on a more, you know, specific level of YouTube. When you see and understand this language and you are getting fed videos, or you see popular videos, you can begin to understand why that’s happening and then incorporate that into your own stuff too.
So you go into other channels, see what’s popular and try to make some understanding of that and, and experiment. and then over time, you’re going to find a groove and it takes some time. It took us about eight months on the Pokemon channel to get into a real groove where we were understand. Who our audience was, what they enjoyed about our content specifically.
Like a lot of the other Pokemon YouTube offers open packs and that’s all they do. And they talk about dollar dollar value and all that stuff. And so I’ve actually purposefully stepped away from doing that. Although I did do that. I started asking people, what do you like about our videos? Or they like that?
There’s something different. They like the sciencey ones that actually teach, but in an entertaining way, they like when I’m able to, you know, inspire and motivate. So I’m telling more story and I’m doing that kind of stuff, which nobody else was doing and was only through a creating and being consistent first and building a little bit of an audience and then be going into that audience who for whatever reason was attracted to, to the videos and asking them, why are you attracted to the videos?
Leaning into those things more.
[00:49:11] Rick:
Taking their feedback. Yeah. So. All this is just, so what I love about as we start to wrap this up is like, what I love about YouTube is, and even podcasting for years and years, I’ve been podcasting for seven and a half years. Now it is, I mean, I’ve recorded my first, at the time recording. That is hopefully by the time this comes out, I have more videos, but I’ve recorded my first YouTube video and you and I have joked.
It’s like, it literally took me like 44. Tris 44 takes to like even get through the hook. Like it was painful. However, on try like number 27 and I’m not exaggerating here. Like literally took, it took me that many times I started to, I started to understand it and I became hooked in a way. No pun intended of this is something completely different.
It’s a completely different skillset and everything that you’ve outlined here today, you know, as a podcast, There’s similarities there, but it’s very, like, we’ve been talking now, 46 minutes right now. Like I was doing the hook on the YouTube video and I would look down and I was like, oh, I’m 41 seconds into it.
This is way too long. So there’s, there’s such a, there’s such a cool skill set that you really need to have. And also what allows you to build. From getting to the point, Quaker becoming a better speaker, but then there’s this whole other, like we’ve been talking about here today, storytelling and looking at the data and, you know, being willing to test and being willing to commit to something, because this is the long game is such a, I don’t know for me is such a fun, like I’m calling it a project because I’m starting, I’m starting it because it’s something I’ve wanted to do for years.
And it is. My number one goal for 2022 with it is consistency. I have no subscriber views or anything like that. Goals. Like I want consistency
[00:51:16] Pat:
Yeah,
[00:51:17] Rick:
And it just a fun project.
[00:51:19] Pat:
It’s super fun and very rewarding. And if you treat it as. Gamification sort of element, then it becomes a fun even while creating, like you said. but there are things that I’m learning in this YouTube space that I’m pulling into my other parts of business, right. It’s allowed me to make my podcast more direct and more hooky and more something that people actually are more entertained by.
It definitely helps with just stage presence as well. and even in conversations, I think that there is so much that you can pull from this and you just have to, like you said, you have to kind of commit. And learn as you go. I mean, it’s, you try to make your first video. Perfect. It’s not it’s, it’s going to be a tough track.
Okay. And I’m saying that directly to you, Rick?
[00:52:00] Rick:
I was just going to say, you’re speaking to me. because the perfectionist and, you know, I think it’s pretty good this first
[00:52:10] Pat:
I think.
[00:52:10] Rick:
But who knows? Like people might hate it. I mean,
[00:52:14] Pat:
Nobody like who, who goes to YouTube and it’s like, I’m going to watch videos so I can hate these videos. I mean, they’ll click off, but nobody’s, you can’t even dislike anymore. I mean, you don’t even see the counter at least, but dude just, there’s so much good to be had on YouTube. I hope you all enjoyed this and, and hopefully are inspired by it too.
And you know, it is a commitment. It is something that you can’t just. Do you on the side, but that being said, it doesn’t also have to be full-time. I mean, the Pokemon thing takes me, you know, I, I do a day and a half to two days of work a week on it. I’m also going live too, which is another element that we didn’t even get to.
But, you know, I can host a live stream and opening packs and giving them away and having a little fun. And yesterday I did one with 1300 people watching simultaneously.
Yeah. It’s just, it’s just bonkers and it’s just so cool. Cause like families are watching with their kids and they’re like, Playing along.
And it’s just, it’s just really cool. There’s, there’s, there’s huge things to be had on YouTube and in, you know, although TikTok coming into play and TikTok is sort of outpaced YouTube as far as like total, minutes and watch. I mean, it’s a different platform and I think YouTube is great, especially for as podcasters who understand long form content, but can hopefully add the visual elements on top of it to make it even better.
[00:53:26] Rick:
And it’s the long game you’re putting in the. Now, because I’m going to search engine in the world, people are searching on this stuff. It’s meant to live on the deep pocket. Monster is the name of the YouTube channel, if even like, so I go to Pat’s videos just to watch kind of like how he’s doing exactly what we’ve, what we’ve just talked about.
I am not a Pokemon person. I know he can do that’s it it’s about all right. That’s Pokemon.
[00:53:56] Pat:
That’s one of the 890 some odd Pokemon that are out there. Yes.
[00:54:00] Rick:
Thanks for clarifying that. yeah, I know nothing about it, but I go because I’m like, wow, how are you doing that? Or I look at how you get the hook or how you cut every number of, you know, few seconds and stuff like that. How do you keep people engaged? So regardless of whether you’re into Pokemon or not go check out Pat’s channel deep pocket monster, also check out PatFlynn on, YouTube Smart Passive Income podcast.
Where else do you want people to connect?
[00:54:26] Pat:
You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at PatFlynn PatFlynn on YouTube and of course, deep pocket monster, deep pocket monster, because, you know, I am investing a lot of money into this space. but also, deep because we go deep into the hobby, right. And pocket monster is actually what Pookie Mon is.
Short for so deep pocket monster.
[00:54:48] Rick:
We learned something.
[00:54:50] Pat:
Thank you for having me, Rick. I appreciate it. Super fun.
[00:54:52] Rick:
Thanks, dude. Appreciate it, brother.
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