Strategies for Selling Online Courses

hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses we're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from Top performers in the online course industry my name is John answorth and today's guest is Justin Brown now Justin is a Netflix featured producer and video marketing specialist helping entrepreneurs Leverage The Power of online video to build and scale their businesses together with his brother Mike they've grown their YouTube channel to over 1.6 million subscribers and built a seven figure automation driven business off the back of it Justin now teaches their proven systems for creating impactful videos building targeted audiences and scaling revenue streams at Primal video.com and today we're going to be talking about proven SEO YouTube tactics and dive into how you can boost your Channel's visibility increase your views and grow your subscriber base now before we dive into today's episode I want to share something incredibly valuable with you if you're looking to boost your course Revenue you need to check out our 7-Day road map to increase your Revenue it's the same system that we've used to help countless clients achieve predictable Revenue without making sales calls running paid ads or competing on price you're going to learn how to increase your course Revenue by 30% how to identify and fix the missing parts of your current funnels and how to optimize your funnels for maximum performance so if you're ready to take your Revenue to the next level go to datadriven marketing. c/ roadmap and download it Justin welcome to the show thank you very much for having me back on nice so YouTube SEO is constantly evolving what are any strategies that remained consistent in organic SEO on your YouTube channel so if we look at what YouTube needs whether you've got an SEO Focus or not YouTube needs to understand your content so we need to to pass whatever information we can to YouTube so that understands what our content is about so that it can push it out to the right people so that's the first thing we need get our content shown we then need to get our content clicked on world's best video doesn't get clicked on no one sees it so the thumbnail strategy super important part of that and then the third piece is we need to keep people watching so the SEO really falls into the first part uh as in what does the search engine what does YouTube need to uh to understand our content what can we do to get that leg up uh to be ahead of most other people are just uploading and hoping fingers crossed that uh our content is going to show up um we we can we can jump past all of that by getting some insight as to what people actually want what are they searching for um and then what do they actually want inside of those pieces of content um that's really what we're looking at in terms of that so we need to get our content shown on the platform we need to get it clicked on and then we need to keep people watching that's really in a nutshell what YouTube is looking at with that first one with the getting it seen why Focus because you focus mostly on like a search based approach right rather than Discovery based and Discovery based is like 90% of YouTube so why why do you focus on the search based side it really is the lwh hanging fruit but there's extra steps in there that where a lot of people are like you know what if it's all good for Mr Beast and he doesn't have to he doesn't worry about key words then why should I but if we look at that and we break that down for a lot of those channels there's nothing wrong with that strategy but it really is a broad Market appeal and you're there's a lot more competition there's a lot you're competing for people for for their attention in the the homepage and being a recommendation for someone there's there's a it's a lot harder to get into that and it's a lot harder to stay there consistently than once you're in search like we have so many videos now that are coming up on 8 n years old that are still getting views still getting traffic still helping people still having ads run on them so we're making money from it uh still having our affiliate links clicked still growing our email list all those years on so with a a strategy for showing up in search results you don't need to to stand out and be in competition with people like Mr Beast we're really we're narrowing the playing field and we're looking at for when our potential clients customers are typing stuff in how do we show up to be the the guide the person that helps them to that uh that you know we can build that no like and trust with them on autopilot if we're doing this consistently so to me that is the lwh hanging fruit but it's also that research piece the SEO piece is a piece that a lot of people don't want to do but it's also not that daunting of a task it's going to allow you again to to to be well ahead of most people that are uploading on the platform now you'd mentioned this to me like a year or two ago something like that and said this is the approach to take and I was like yeah that makes total sense but it wasn't like the part of the business I was working on at that at the time and so we've started doing longform videos for YouTube now and we did them like with just you know choose whatever topic put it up there not search focus at all and I went back through and looked at what are our most successful videos and I found they were ones that had a specific keyword in there and have been just like terrible videos like if you watched it you'd be like this this is so bad how could this possibly do well it's got bad sound it's got bad um lighting it's got bad camera it starts with no hook it just starts with me going well it what we've already done is this and I'm like where when in what video like there's just nothing about it is good and yet it's our top performing video that we've ever had and I'm like okay I should do more like that you know so it's it's crazy how that works sometimes and this is where a lot of people get lucky and they'll they'll they'll do some sort of tutorial or how- to piece of content or something and they're not looking they're don't doing keyword research but those go on to be the ones that stick around for years uh and that's that's really what we're talking about here how do we create this Evergreen style pieces of content it doesn't mean that every video has to come from that place but the other side of it is by doing this keyword research topic research really is it's going to give us insight as to who it is where're actually going to be speaking to inside that video before we make it uh and we will know then based on that phrase that we're going to optimize for what level they're at is this is this a beginner that would be searching for this thing or is this someone who's further along like is this is this Advanced terminology that we're creating this content around so we're able to create this experience inside our videos by having this uh insight as to who it is that's going to be watching and exactly what they want and it really feels like we're almost cheating the system a little bit because the viewer experience on the other end is this video covered everything that I needed it didn't you know it wasn't just dragged out for to to be a longer video for the algorithm it was exactly what I needed in this moment which is when I'm I'm looking for help and I'm searching for Stuff on YouTube but the the awesome piece about this whole SEO thing as well is like with a channel like ours our number one traffic source is YouTube search but our second biggest traffic source is external which is Google search so we have content showing up on Google search as a massive leadin to YouTube yes same company Google owns YouTube whatever but it's we're grabbing people that are clicking to choose to watch a video that haven't even gone to YouTube so that's the other side of how powerful this is and and the other thing I found with this search based video so I've been doing a lot of the keyword research lot of the basics and this going through using um vid IQ and you know pulling up all the all the different um numbers for the different keywords and as I do it I've been like looking at doing some of the searches myself and seeing what videos are coming up and they're Terri like they nothing to do with the search term I'm like oh my God this is wide open I would have thought this point in YouTube existing this would have been like you know but there's just you'll search for some search them let's say online course sales page we're doing a video about at the moment just did one yesterday and the top one that comes up is Alex hosi teaching how do you sell online courses and it's like that's great Alex hosi does amazing content but he is not talking about online course sales pages and in fact as you go down the page nobody is talking about online course sales some people talk about sales pages and some people are talking about online courses and I'm like oh my God this is this could be really powerful so that's that's exactly what we're talking about here is and why I say it's the lwh hanging fruit most people aren't optimizing their content or they make the video and they're like oh what keywords could we put in afterwards if you start from that fact you know what people are searching for you know what they want you know that you can deliver a great experience that where the viewer feels like that video was created just for them to your point like YouTube's found that when it does put those Alex hosi videos in the results of people searching for that phrase that people do click on it it's going to keep uh they're going to keep putting it there right because if they we put this video here and it gets clicked more than others we'll keep it there but that doesn't mean that that video has been optimized to to be the best one that's there or or is also the best piece of content that should be there it's it's just the best fit that it's found so so many times we're finding that a lot of the top videos out there they're not optimized and that is a massive opportunity but the other side of this too is even if there were some there that were optimized and I know that a lot of you guys listening you've probably seen this that a lot of people out there are already making the videos you want to make some of them have millions and millions of views that to me is the perfect opportunity for you to make a new version of that video now sharing your thoughts and opinions it doesn't mean you're in competition necessarily because YouTube rewards new content it wants new good recent content it doesn't want to necessarily serve out a video from 9 years ago like what what's the human on the other end going to click they want to know if this like what's the strategy for now what's the solution for now so it's a massive opportunity and it breaks you out of that noise of trying to compete with the hoses and uh the GVS and all of those kinds of things so you can see that that strategy does work too but that strategy really relies on already having the personality they're big personalities and like I'm much more of an introverted person I know that a lot of people you know freak out to get on camera I used to hate having my photo taken so the thought of bringing and being that kind of a personality that's not me so how do we the rest of us uh the mere mortals uh compete with that and that's really where search comes in as a massive opportunity and look it doesn't mean that every one of your video needs to be search optimized you can still experiment still do the feel-good one that you want to cuz that's what you you want to make in the moment I'm all for that but if all of your videos are that that it's such a hit and miss strategy that it's it's going to be stressful and it's unlikely to get you to where you want to go so I would say be strategic with the content wherever you can all right so let's say someone's listening to this they have been doing some work on YouTube but they haven't been doing search Focus stuff um they're sold they're like this sounds great I'm going to do more of this the first step it seems like is the keyword research is that fair yeah that's where I would be recommend you start yep um so what is your process when you're doing that how do you do that keyword research so it's actually pretty simple if we look at the viewer Behavior again and look at and knowing that YouTube is a search Eng and knowing that the algorithm is trying to create a good experience for the viewer on the other end of that then if we look at what our behavior is on YouTube when we're going to search for something not just showing up or open the YouTube app on our TV and browsing through and finding stuff when we're actually looking for something what is our behavior and it's to go to that search bar at the top of the page and we start to type in it might be three words two three five at the most words and we're going to expect that on the other end of us typing in that that something related to what we're typing in is going to show up right that's that's how YouTube works so we follow the same process when we're doing our keyword research because it's following what the viewer would do so we go to YouTube and we start to type in two or three words related to our topic or or Niche the video that we're thinking about making and we're seeing what pops up those Auto suggestions I'm so sure you've all seen that before they're not random suggestions from YouTube or Google these are things that people have actually searched for so you know that anything that's showing up there there's there's demand for it there's been people looking for this previously so that is the main the main First Step that we're going to is like let's see what's in there and let's use you can use a wild card you can use the underscore the line across the bottom um between words and that will be like a fill-in the blank so you could go how to underscore editing and they would fill in the blank and and and add extra words around that so amazing like just to come up with topic ideas now we can go one step further and we can use a tool like keywords everywhere and it's a Google Chrome plugin um I think it works for Firefox too and that will overlay in that search box the amount of searches per month uh that each of those search phrases are having so we can then see is this is this a 4,000 Searchers per month or 400,000 Searchers per month so then we can gauge which one of these we want to to focus on um but that's really in a nutshell it so yes there are other tools like vid IQ that you mentioned there's tube buddy morning fame um but what we find is with a lot of those other tools they've got their own algorithm at play so they uh and they're trying to obviously help you do the manual piece of then researching and seeing competition and is this a video you should make based on the size of your Channel all of that stuff but what it can end up doing is it can oversimplify things and end up it becomes a race to the bottom because everyone is fed the same information so everyone then goes ahead and optim optimizes for the same things but so many times it has told us not to make videos that go on to be the biggest videos on our Channel and likewise the same the other way it's told us to make stuff uh because it's got a good competition score a good ranking score and uh and they've just tanked so what we've found to be the best Northstar is the process that I just shared with you let's go and see what YouTube and Google themselves are suggesting and then let's validate how many searches per month with that keywords everywhere plugin that is as far as we go with that and do you think that the the search volume that keywords everywhere is giving you is more accurate than the vid IQ one is that because vid IQ could just give you the search volume and you could use that instead it could but what we found is that there's discrepancies between them right so we'll find we've got vid IQ we've got keywords everywhere and all these other tools and they'll be totally different so massively different it's like what is I I sumon it's like this one says 2,000 and this one says zero and it's like okay well you got to choose one I guess but what so why have you chosen keywords everywhere though is that like have you found it to be better from years of doing this that one constantly is the the best representation of uh search volumes from what we've seen now if we're really looking into this technically it's Google search volumes that that's giving us so it's but what we're using it for is not to determine will this be successful on YouTube it's do people want this and how are they articulating the thing that they want what words are they using what words are they is Google suggesting from what we've typed in because you'll see that a lot of times you type something in and it says like did you mean this right then that's really interesting okay maybe we take a step back from what we were going to name this and let's look at what Google is suggesting here so keywords everywhere is our North Star we don't need to over complicate it with those other tools nothing against them but too many times their algorithms at play have been misleading and we see that with clients and students as well got it okay cool so you've done the keyword research what's the next step for you are you creating the title and the thumbnail before you make the video or like what order are you doing things in so keyword research by far and I got and what we'll end up with is uh at least one primary phrase three to five words that we want to optimize for and I'm going to use that in the title to to form the basis of it I want it in there somewhere I don't just want to load keywords in cuz it's still got to work for the human on the other end it's got to be compelling it's still got to get the click right so the title is definitely done before I make the video because that is the framing I keep coming back to that when I'm planning out what to say in the video because it's in context of that the goal of the video the title The Promise so it so if I sorry to interrupt but if I understand right you're taking the keyword you go right this keyword I found it through going to YouTube search bar I see that people are searching for that I saw keywords everywhere told me there was enough traffic oh actually take one step back what what do you count as enough traffic in your question right so there are videos that we've done and keywords everywhere will show you down to I think 100 searches per month there are videos that we've done around 700 or 800 Searchers per month knowing that like that's not going to be a massive video but it's still something that we want to create and when people search for it we want to be the person that shows up on the other side of that so there are videos that we will make as long as I I guess as long as there's some uh numbers showing in there some search volume then it's enough of us to to say okay people do want this to some degree uh but what I'm really looking for is i''s say anything 5,000 plus um but there's so many cases where you know as you said you're looking at the keywords and you're looking at who's optimized that we'll find some of the big ones 100,000 200,000 plus where no one has optimized for so obviously that's really what we're looking for um but we gauging interest and with the the search volumes is per month right so you'll also be able to tell if something's trending up or trending down so a lot of the AI Searchers you might get an average it might say right now the average is 40,000 Searchers per month but when you really look into it it could be closer to 100,000 if it is something that's that's trending up so I think that the that's that's why that is the first step is this worth me taking the next step and exploring this further do people actually want this thing um and then what do they actually want so we frame that around is this is this a beginner video Advanced is this talking about free stuff like what is it that we want to frame this around because one keyword phrase could be multiple videos right so like best editing software for who for free for beginners for advanced for iPhone for Android for Mac for Windows right so we make all of them so we totally dominate for best editing software the irony is best for who best for what like there's no best but uh the viewer thinks they might be so they're going to click the video so we find our phrase uh then we do our thumbnails last I know a lot of people say make your thumbnail um first uh I don't I don't have a problem with that but to me I'm shooting the thumbnail image for most of our videos at the end of recording the video because if it is a product review or something I can hold up the product I can I can I can show it I can you know showing something on my phone I'm lifting that up um so I'm able to create something specifically for that but but it's also done at the time of recording I just leave the camera recording and uh and I'll point and pull silly faces and feel like a total idiot but I'll do whatever it takes to get the silly faces is like a requirement isn't it for YouTube oh I wish it didn't work and look we've tested it and every time we AB split test I'm like can we try again one without my face uh and yeah it's the it's the expression you know the Intrigue the why is he pulling that face or that guy can't look that bad I have to click the video to make sure that you know that that's not his real face so I'm prepared to for everybody Ling Justin is very handsome he does I'm paying him to say this right now yeah thank you yeah so yeah thumbnail thumbnail is normally U after we've shot the video yeah gotcha Okay cool so we're doing the keyword research and we're looking for for in your case you're looking for um search volume from seven or 800 at the bottom end to maybe 40,000 or 100,000 at the top end and do you find it's generally easier to rank for those smaller keywords or you doing those because maybe they're more like bottom of funnel more somebody who is like interested in taking who who looks from the phrase that they're more interested in taking action straight away or like how are you deciding why would you why would you ever do the 700 rather than the 40,000 so we we would mix it up and so an example of one that was 700 and now is much higher was best email platform or best email marketing platform it's one that we wanted to share our thoughts and opinions on that and now the search volume for it is much higher so I'm glad that we made those videos uh we could probably refresh them uh and create a new version of them but uh at the time where like this these aren't going to be big numbers but as you said anyone that's looking for that and is looking for an active campaign vers convert kit or something like that they're so much closer to the fence of taking action which makes it a great affiliate play but also it's a different topic and something that you might or like I wanted to talk about uh like that's something that I would geek out on um and and sharing the pros cons whatever again just our thoughts and opinions so there will be some videos where the the numbers are lower and you know I I guess I wouldn't want them all to be that low uh so we're doing them every now and then likewise I wouldn't want them all to be super high numbers but also High competition what the best case scenario what we're looking for is high search low competition and they are how are you identifying that low competition cuz vid iq's obviously got their like score for that and you're ignoring that you don't you don't trust that one so are you just going into each search term and going like what do I think how good are these videos are they optimized for this term that kind of thing yeah pretty much but it's not what I think there is a way that we can uh actually look as well so obviously if we want to play in the realm of this search phrase that we've identified best editing software right best editing software in Mac so something more specific I'd run that search and I'd say well who's on here and I'd look at are those videos actually getting views like we know that it's got x amount of search volume but is that relevant for right now are the videos that YouTube is showing in the top are they actually performing because sometimes you might find that the search volume could be skewed could be misleading so we found this with an app like uh think of an app like descript right if people go to Google they type that in but they just want to log into the website they're not looking for a tutorial or anything so that's going to skew the search volumes so we can't say we need to make a descript video because this the word descript has x amount of searches per month we've got to look a little deeper than that so uh I totally lost my train of thought there where where was I we'll cut that bit out that's fine um it we talking through we're talking through how do you choose which of those keywords um uh we like what what the competition is cu youve said you want to have high volume low competition but how are you defining low competition is it is it like seven things that happen in your brain or can we pull those out and help people listening to to figure that out yeah no totally lost my trying to thought that yes so the competition piece is uh I'm going to run that search because yes we want to validate the traffic um having that keywords everywhere extension installed it does tell us the number of views per day that those videos have as well so we're not just seeing do they have views on them we can see are they still getting views especially if they're older videos which is going to tell us that people do still want this so we're validating that and we're validating that those videos that are up there that are top of search results are are getting views but the other thing that I'm actually going to do on that page is I'm going to search that page so contrl F or command F uh to to search the page for that phrase and I'm going to see platform agnostic in your in your uh your find shortcut yeah doing too many tutorials where people like what about on Windows yeah this is good uh so hey you you got to cover basis so uh I'm I'm going to do a search on that page in in the web browser and it's going to highlight uh wherever that exists I know this may sound very rudimentary but it's going to show you in the title where that exists it's also going to show you if if it's in the description or in the chapter markers as well uh cuz you're seeing a lot of that in search results now and I would say if the top four or five videos had a lot of views and they had optimized for that had that in the title and somewhere in the description then I would say that's a High competition because we're we're banking on them not being optimized to that level now that doesn't mean that we won't make the video but we'd make the video with the expectation that there is going to be a lot of competition we might this video might not perform or it might take a long time to perform because there's already like a proven track record there it's they're clearly still getting views they're already optimized for it so it's going to be tougher for us to knock them out but again we've always got that piece of a new video always has potential to take down whatever else has been up there before if it's a better video nice Okay cool so we've got it it sounds like it's not a an exact number or something you're not going right take the number of videos look at how many chapter markers divide that by this number or something like that it's a bit more judgment but you're basically looking for how optimized are they and are they getting searches so if they're getting searches that means that people are clicking based on um the search term which means that that's that's worse if people are if they're getting more search that means comp comptition yeah I yeah so we are we're looking for low competition there we're looking for uh where videos don't have clicks where there is a good amount of search term where they don't they aren't optimized in the title or the chapter markers or the description or any of those places ideally and if they are optimized then we might still go okay we still think we can do better we're going to put something out but it might not perform so that's kind of a you know a bit of a judgment call or what I would do in that case if it was totally saturated and it was a really broad search term is I would say how else would someone articulate this pain problem thing that they're looking for is there another a lower uh searched keyword phrase that would essentially be the same video where we could come in and we could dominate with that search phrase still create the same piece of content to then start to also show up uh potentially get you know when we're not in competition with them we're kind of going around them and for a lot of things there is we're just articulating something a little bit different got it so sometimes when there's that high competition say okay well we still might make a similar video but we're going to find a different keyword phrase we're going to look for a different angle to find an untapped vein of uh of um search Okay cool so you've now got a keyword that you're going to make a video for we're making the title I'd interrupted and taking us back back a stage there but you're making the title Do you have a process for that title obviously you need to have the keyword in there does the keyword need to be at the beginning should the video title just be whatever the the phras is that people are searching for you know how to use uh descript or whatever it is or do you add in some curiosity or some um you know anticipation or like you won't believe number seven tip number seven or like how what are you kind of doing as your process for that we definitely don't want to just have the keyword phrase it's not enough because if we we think of the experience again if you've ever search for something on YouTube and you see you've got still a bunch of options there that show up what makes them stand out so we're not even going to talk about the thumbnail image at this point but if if everyone just had best editing software or descript tutorial why for who uh like why do I need to click on your video so we should have something in there that's going to create that Intrigue or elude to the video so if it was um like personal training or workout stuff right it could be at home no weights necessary this this will make you sweat right they're not things that people going to search for but if they're like Ah that's me yeah I really want to sweat and I've got no equipment at home or I want in 10 minutes or your kids will love this recipe or something like that it's the piece it's the why they want the thing that they're they're not searching for so we want to add something like that in now to your other point do you put that at the start do you put it at the end I really think it's got to be at a case-by casee basis and looking at what does the viewer need to see do they need to see best editing software or do they need to see number seven will blow your mind what do they need to see to get that click over the others so you might find on some of them the keyword phrase is the perfect phrase that summarizes what the content's going to be about and then the why you should click piece could be towards the end um we don't want to make them too long though because you'll see in a lot of places on YouTube is truncating and chopping off uh your titles to shorten them up so you still want to make sure that whatever the most important piece for the viewer to see and after they've searched for it cuz that's what optimizing for do they need to see the keyword phrase again or do they more so need to say I'm on a curated list because I've already searched for something so they've already like know that these are related to that keyword phrase do they need to see see the keyword phrase again so it really has to be done on a caseby casee basis um but you've always come back to what what what does the viewer want let's keep the viewer in mind and that's what YouTube is optimizing for got it so you're looking at that keyword and you're thinking if I was searching for this what would what what would get me to click on it what would I be actually after try and put yourself in the mind of the the Searcher and be like okay so I'm searching for best Mac video editing software 2024 or whatever the phrase is right okay who am I what do I want what would get me to be interested right now and clicking on it people I know who are searching for that what would they be doing and then do you do you have do you have parts that you tend to add in there like does it tend to be curiosity based do you go a bit clickbaity like what kind of approach do you are there like a few that you select from as your options of how to improve it so even adding words like best no one wants the second best no one wants the worst right they want best so key word phrase isn't it second best Mac video editing software I mean look I'd probably still click it but uh so uh things like best DIY how to they can work really well at the start but in terms of getting the click um it could be things like um like we said with the you know this will make you sweat uh for free even just adding the date is one that we use a lot 2024 people don't want necessarily the 2023 one if there's a 2024 version you might be outdated even if it's not um so they're always going to click on a newer one the one that they think is going to be the best fit for them which is why we we update a lot of videos and we make new versions of videos every year because we know that the viewer is going to click on the the latest one um you know if it's presented to them even because they think that something might have changed even if it hasn't um so you ever thought just doing this is this is probably not very good quality videos it would be but like just when you record it going 2023 and then saying 2024 and then like cut that at the video afterwards can you that's no good that's good okay we just won't say the year look I mean is the thing that it's it's on there like we have videos where like best editing software we doing them for years so there's like a 2019 2018 and those still get views we're not hiding it we're not like changing anything on there but for whatever reason those are still being watched and people are clicking knowing that that you know YouTube is suggesting it to them or they're finding it there in search uh that that's the best one for them but likely if they do land on one of those then the one that will be recommended on the side will be one of ours same channel same topic like very similar title so they're more likely to to jump across and watch the other one too um and the only time we would take down an older video is if it's going to be really misleading and send someone down a wrong pathway um so if if not then it just it's part of the archive it's that was our recommendations at that time the other piece that you said sorry you just I think this this is I like that you said you're getting people in the heads space of what would you uh what would you think like what would you search for but I think the next step is that's all well and good for us but we're we're in our own industry where we we know more than our prospects the the harder thing but probably the better thing to do is after you've done that what would I search for to find this that's a great place to start but what would someone search for what would they type in if they didn't know what I know if they knew this video existed out there what are they searching for so an example from our world would be or my world would be I could do a color grading tutorial right and some of you might know what that is uh right but what would people who don't know what color grading look for how do I fix the colors in my video exactly the same video right same outcome I'm going to show you how to fix the colors in your video but I'm titling it two totally different things so there could be a way where we if color grading tutorial was the phrase then we could still have how to fix the colors in your videos 3 easy steps whatever you know we could make it click clickable um but we could please both the people that you know more advanced person isn't necessarily not going to click that video because it's how to fix the colors but a beginner person that's that's speaking exactly to what they want so we can take that step back if someone who didn't know our industry speak our industry lingo what are they searching for what's the outcome what's the feeling what's the the problem or pain that they want to solve and how are they articulating it and that's where I really like that keyword research because that helps us get to that point sometimes we are too close to our own thing and we know that this is Tech like this is called a sales page well what does someone call it if they don't know it's it's a sales page right so if we can get to that point it could be more so how do I make more sales well the answer is a sales page and we're going to show you how to do that but they're back here like I just want to sell more stuff and so the niching on how to sell more stuff could be I'm going to give you a sales page tutorial one of the things so looking at from like um as I've gone through this process with the keyword research I'm seeing some of the stuff that I think of like online course sales page right so super specific to our Niche exactly our target audience can to be searching for it that might only have I don't know 500 searches a month something like that how to sell online courses is super broad but I'm like but there's higher competition and I'm trying to figure out like how how broad do you go when you're doing this do you have like right this is the niche that I'm after I'm only going to make stuff that mentions that nature whatever or do you go I'm going to go super boor but this one might just be it gets more views but only a percentage fit for my video editing or YouTube course and the others might what just like click an affiliate link or something like that how are you making that decision about like how how targeted you are with that the a lot of people say the riches are in the niches I don't necessarily disagree with that but I think there's way more people we can show up we can help we can impact way more people if we think broader so in your case of the uh creating the sales page um or how to sell a course you say is way way broader I think that was your example um we could the one is going to help them do the other if the thing they want is to sell the course then we can still Target that how to sell how to get more course sales or how to sell a course um then your niching piece on that the the the icing on the cake piece becomes this specific video is about sales page Why you need a sales page why your sales pag is letting you down so we're still able to do that but we're we're then showing up for people that we looking for sales page help which is more advanced more further along they they're they're aware that that's the thing that they want but we're also showing up for the people that are are a fur a step further back and when they see it they're like oh yeah that's the one that's you that's that's the thing that I want so we're able to get both we're able to double dip and you could even have double keywords like a long keyword in there for that yeah so if we look at like email marketing right that's a very very broad term what I found like the the search volume I got here is about 300,000 searches for that for how to sell an online cours is 7,000 a month how to uh um online course sales Pages like a few hundred a month so it's like there's that kind of balance it seems like but you're also considering this idea of the the maybe two keywords in one video as well interesting okay I would be leaning to the bigger number for that one bigger numbers okay okay in that specific case where the option was was it 30,000 and 500 or something or a few thousand and 500 I would be leaning to the bigger one knowing that those people are are going to want this video as well like this is going to help them with that bigger search phrase that they were looking for um so then if there was a second phrase of sales page or something sales page design optimizing sales page sales page conversion um something like that that I would be trying to add in if I could um but I'd also that's we're just talking title right so we don't need to jam them all in there the first line of your description is the other place where YouTube is looking to understand your content the first 155 characters of your description should be used to describe your video to the viewer but if we're able to add in some of those phrases it definitely will help you with your ranking as well so you if you you don't want to load them all up in title put them in the started the description as well got it okay cool so we've done keywords title I'm going to guess here this is based on my understanding so far the next thing is so maybe maybe the next thing is some of that stuff like the description and the chapter markers and making sure you have the keywords in those places and then the one after is maybe making sure people stick around for the first 30 seconds of the video and actually you're going to watch it is that have I got that in the right kind of order how do you think about this in terms of the priorities yeah in terms of your process like what are you yeah I suppose so I suppose they're separate things aren't they um if I wanted someone to stick around earlier in the video like in the video and I want to hook them in at the start then I'm going to try to incorporate some of those key words in so what I'm saying at the start is hitting the words that they've just searched for because we know we're optimizing for search are you looking for the best editing software on Mac in 2024 well I got you covered in this video we're going to break down the top options so the viewer hears that and they're like oh good this is exactly what I clicked on this is not clickbait uh the algorithm is or YouTube is transcribing your videos and hey I've said word for word in the right order what that search phrase is it's going to at least start to test it in those top spots because all the planets are aligning with with what it is we're doing so if it makes sense you want to bake it into the video as well but it works for the viewer it makes them relax there's almost like this anxiety when someone clicks on your video did I click this one I should I have clicked this one this one's 8 minutes um it had a average thumbnail the other that pink one was really interesting maybe I should have clicked that so that Hook is so important uh to keep them watching and to let them know that they're in the right place so by saying some of those things repeating it back to them we'll even have text on screen that says exactly the title of the video um so I'm over on one side and the the title of the video is on screen for the other because if we think of what the viewer behavior is right now on YouTube they're starting to play your videos as you put your mouse cursor over them or if you're scrolling along toilet TV right it's uh it's AO playing with the sound off uh that's viewer Behavior right so they're not listening to it how do we let them know that they're in the right place nice Okay cool so we're aiming to say the keyword back to them show it on the screen at the same time uh you're on one side the keywords on the other side is the hook as simple as that for you when it's a search-based one or is it like is there more to having great hook so the hook is to let them know that they're in the right place let them know uh why they should stick around um but then we kind of want to open Some Loops like let's give them let's give them some reason like I'm I'm also going to share with you the biggest mistakes people make or so like let's give them a reason that after we've they've got the thing that they need that uh they'll stick around for something else and this is where like obviously to to get to the email point of it we're growing our email list um we we don't want them to just get the YouTube piece and leave we want them to take action and and you know move further along our funnels where we have them nice okay cool what do you see as like a good engagement time for that first 30 seconds is that a metric that you that you're looking at specifically in terms of the drop off rate if we're seeing how many people you still want around yeah I'm aiming for 60 65% and above and uh that's class as good uh so which is very a big hit to a lot of people's egos mine especially where you're like what 65 people 65% of people are are still watching what what about the rest of them and some of them can be much much lower and you've got to think again viewer Behavior on YouTube is your video might autoplay off another one so it's the numbers are always going to be skewed because people might not have chosen to be on that video but your goal is to how do we maximize the or minimize the drop off at the start of our video so because if we can do that then even if they've got a downward trend people slowly drop dropping off throughout we've maximized what's left at the end of the day like at at the end of the video so uh the hook is the biggest thing that I am working on and trying to get to the point even uh so we go hook intro content we then have a bonus piece which is what you know the reason they should stick around for join our email list or download our free guide and then a call to action at the end um that's kind of our structure that we we we flow through and that we teach um so the intro piece though I'm now making that so much shorter it used to be hey it's Justin from Primal video where we help you grow your brand and and we'd find that people would just skip across that no one cares I mean we used to do it at the start of the video and it's like hey it's Justin like does this guy who look like you know Chris Martin from Coldplay is he going to get to the point uh right so we we it's not about you it's not about you it's the viewer wants like it's a selfish thing from their side just get to the point so we've removed all of that I'll still have a name card that comes up like title Justin Brown whatever um but I'm not breaking the flow of the video I'm getting to the point much quicker it was fascinating I watched a video from I forget what her name was but some a female marketer who's got a good good size audience you know a million or 500,000 something good size and she had a big section after the intro so after the after the hook which was very lifestyle based and it was fascinating to watch because it was such a female versus male marketer type thing like it was much more of like a you're buying into you want to be like her as a person or something there was videos of her walking down the street and like this beautiful town that she's in and her lovely dog and he just like just like beautifully edited together nice background music I was just like why would I care but it's similar to like if you look at Amy portfield for example like it's very much like a Lifestyle brand people want to be like Amy so that's an important part of it whereas I think most mail marketers would never do that would never be like like here's why you should be like me and I don't know if that's something that maybe would work for some guys but I've never seen a guy do that I think so I think there is a piece of Personality that comes with those and there's definitely creators that I watch where in the middle of a tutorial they'll pause and they'll go andate cinematic b-roll of making a cup of coffee and look it seems to be the thing uh whereas to me my brain goes I clicked on a tutorial this isn't a vlog this isn't a day in the like get back to the teaching piece so I guess we create the videos that we want to watch ourselves so if that is you for sure like you you've got permission to play um but I'm always mindful of what does the viewer need what does the viewer want and with me I don't think people want to see me making coffee uh so there yep okay so it really depends whether you're looking at a tutorial video or a top five tips or something like that as to how you structure that kind of video in terms of the the do you need to get people to stick around by going you'll never believe what's in number four or do you just say no I'm just going to teach ex I'm going you're going to follow along on screen as I am going to actually do the color grading or whatever it is that you're doing yeah I think it's really got to be context for the video because if if you've if it's something that they don't know what's that's coming up like your top five affiliate marketing tools or something like that then you want to tease out to get them to stick around for number five uh like even though the structure itself is an open loop you're saying that there's five they want to hang around to hear out number five in case that's the game changer for them we can add uh you some extra context to that like number five has made us an extra million dollars so oh it's a good reason for me to stick around and hear out through to number five whereas with the tutorial one it's it's more it's a process so I need to follow all the steps to have success with this so that they're inherently opening Loops as well so I find that those the watch time the the drop off is less once people are in uh whereas the the other people jump in they'll they'll want to check out quickly what's what kind of suggestions are these um oh I already knew about genius link I already knew about thirsty Affiliates yeah I'm out so we want to do a better job of hooking them to keep our content uh if if if it's not a tutorial gotcha okay so after all of that we've got videos that are showing we've got people clicking on them we've got people watching the video that's not actually what you want the thing that you want at the end of it is an email subscriber or an affiliate click or whatever you like how much of what you're doing is can I get someone onto my email list and then sell them my courses and how much is pointing them off somewhere else with affiliate links and are there any other options actually as well so this is something that uh I guess we could geek out on and this is something that uh I think look our YouTube channel is the face of our business the business behind the channel is is our email list and I know that like this this is your thing so you're no no one's better to talked about this stuff than you but the uh the our goal is not to get every session every person watching to leave YouTube because obviously if YouTube's seeing that that's happening all the time then it's not what it wants it wants people to stay stay on platform it wants a long session time so we don't want to be a session killer where at the end of every video someone leaves and then they don't come back right YouTube's going to see that as a as a big negative indicator so for us where we do put email optins and leap magnets and things is where it is a perfect fit or the best next step for someone after they've watched one of our videos so if they're watching one of our editing uh tutorials we have an editing checklist that they can download print out and follow along so it's perfect fit for us to mention that it's not salesy it's not sleazy or anything like that it is the next best step for that viewer uh so it works out that around 30% of our videos have a call to action to leave YouTube um but my biggest call to action in every video regardless of whether it's actually getting them off platform or not right now is to get people to go to the description box that is I'm not asking for a subscribe I'm not asking for a thumbs up or any of that stuff like you hear all the time I am asking them to click to go to the description and I frame it in a way of uh and has mentioned a few times throughout that there's a bunch of other links and resources down there to help them even further with this topic and that's exactly what there is in the description think of it like a Blog article where we can have links off to other videos other articles affiliate links so that's how we have uh like affiliate revenue for us is one of the biggest ways that we make money in our business and YouTube obviously is a Big Driver of that so there's affiliate links there's uh links to our courses and programs where people can go and find out more the people that are interested will will like even if you're borrowing them in your video at that point but they like the topic they're clicking the description even as a distraction there's more things on there that they could click off to and keep that session going or work you know move further down your customer Journey with you so my goal is to get people to go to the description because right now YouTube has made it uh harder than ever before for people to get to the description if you've seen it lately it's a it used to be this big thing now it was then it was one sentence now it's a couple of words with a little read more button um so I'm mentioning throughout if I'm saying links or anything related that's I'm I'm getting people to go to the description box to to to to find that so that then they find everything else that's in there beautiful okay so about 30% of the people 30% of the time you're pointing people off to a separate call to action to like go and download a lead magnet for example we call that the golden click method it's like there's a time in somebody's viewing experience or when they're on your blog or whatever when it's like this is what they need right now this is the perfect exact right next thing for them to get this and get on our email list at which point it's like well make sure you put it there make sure you tell them how to go get that checklist or guide or whatever it is okay and so you are though on 30% of them getting them off to that to that um email list and then that's I assume like the backbone of your actual main like revenue is it is a lot of the revenue from affiliate or is is more of it from your email list so we have three revenue streams one of them is YouTube ads uh that's given the size of the channel and the amount of traffic we have coming through search is not a small amount um the the it changes the other two so one is our digital products the membership and some small courses that we have um and the other is Affiliates and they're both variable with the membership and obviously variable with Affiliates as to which is the biggest each month um but at you at the end of the year it's a it's a seven figure annual business so I like that a lot of it isn't uh like is is automated with the affiliate stuff Affiliates is something that I wish we'd started earlier because it's not relying on me to deliver to whatever like that's that's I think for anyone starting out like Affiliates is the quickest way that you can start making money it's not the quickest way to to make millions of dollars uh but it's the quickest way to start making money on YouTube that does scale as your channel grows beautiful okay I'm aware we've run long I appreciate you sticking around for that I think we're pretty much uh we'll cut this bit out but I think we're pretty much gone through everything I was like thinking or can we also talk through your your membership and your course business but I think that's like totally unrealistic um in in the same episode it's like a whole another whole another and and we could work something out with an affiliate or or something if you were going to do that to make it like mutually beneficial so that's that's interesting point yeah I hadn't thought about that um but yeah a bunch of our audience would probably benefit from from Primal video um I've been wondering whether we would I'm like we've gone through a bunch of different courses but I really like the approach that you take with this it's really cool okay so only other piece is that go on that might help is that with all of this the main thing for like it's not about amount of content it's uh like we do one video a week we're now experimenting with a second but the bulk of our grow like cuz people might hear this and like [ __ ] how much work is this yeah Okay cool so we've got this whole process we've got everything figured out from the keywords the title The Hook Etc how many of these videos are you doing it's a good question cuz I guess a lot of people are probably sitting here going that sounds like a lot of work and already think that they got to create a lot of content we've been doing this now for 9 years and we've been consistent with one video a week now obviously when we started we had no idea what we were doing uh but our goal is one optimized strategic video per week I'm not just coming up with a random idea jumping in front of the camera we just shared our process we're doing that research first so that we can be strategic so we know then we're actually building an asset that can show up and can perform and work for us uh have people find us add impact help you know adding value to the internet but also affiliate Revenue ad Revenue all of that stuff and growing the business and everything as well so we are one optimized video per week and if you're sitting here listening to that and go well even that you know would be a stretch we've seen this work really really well with one every other week so one every second week or something like that as well so do what you can uh I know that some videos do take longer to make especially if you're making something um but be consistent uh so that your viewers know when to tune back in so that YouTube starts to see okay this channel is actively uploading stuff um but you know don't don't wear yourself out in the process YouTube's not sitting there going to fire you if you miss an upload day or miss a week or something like that it's it's a platform so uh that would be what I would recommend it's not about amount of content more more content doesn't me more results we have people that just say hey I'm going to miss my week so I'll just shoot something quick just so I've got something up there but if that something is not going to be optimize is not going to show or show up or matter in a year's time then what's the point so uh I'd much rather see strategic optimized stuff um that's really what moves the needle more recently now that we're past 1 and a half million subscribers we are experimenting with a second video a week um but it's not me doing it we're we've got presenters and things doing that so we're looking at how we can scale this without scaling the time effort energy that I'm putting into it so we're playing with this stuff now so always be playing always be trying and testing stuff but come from that place of this is an optimized asset that can show up and perform for years not just a quick little YouTube video gotcha yeah so no point putting out a video if it's not going to be good if it's not going to be optimized if it's not going to be having a good clickthrough rate and having a good retention rate and all this kind of thing but probably ideally one a week do you think two a week or three a week is better if you have the resources for doing it or do you think there might be downsides to that I don't think there would be downsides if you've got the resources and team to help you do more then for sure do more as long as you are creating the Strategic content the the other thing I would be saying now that I have never really said before would that I would my non-negotiable is the one regular YouTube video but I would also be playing with shorts uh I think that is something that now that YouTube is pushing shorts in search results as well is a is a massive value opportunity our biggest shorts that are over a million views have getting traffic from search Google search YouTube search so people just looking for quick answers to stuff so we have the opportunity now where we're doing that keyword research and we know exactly what people want we're making the long form but we're also doing a really quick version and the quick version links to the long form but the quick version for some people might be enough might be enough to help them move forward to build that no like and trust with them and if they watch one of our videos on either side they're more likely to see more of our content so shorts could be another opportunity but not at the expense or not not at the you know in place of solve a regular YouTube video would be my strategy got it so with the shorts I've had mixed opinions from various different people on YouTube and some people are like I just don't even see the point of it like cuz how is that actually leading to anything that I want it's not getting me email optins it's not necessarily getting me more watches of other videos but you're finding it sounds like that it does like if you is it because you're very carefully linking the short to a longer form video on the same topic is that like the crucial step in there do you think that's where we've had the best results especially from the ones that are showing up in search yeah linking it back and you can now go back retrospectively and add links from shorts to longer form um that's you I think if someone liked that short and it was a teaser for your long form content then uh that's what we've seen work really well for a search based strategy especially if you're doing this as a business and not as an entertainment Channel got it so the crucial thing there sounds like is take the search term when you've got the long form make a short form that is about that same search term so that you can link so it's a perfect alignment you can link to the long form video and you're actually creating that short specifically for that search term rather than like just cutting out bits from the the long form video or something like that is that correct yeah those have never worked well and I'm sure they have for some people but I've never been able to get that repurposing thing it's almost to me if we look at viewer experience a lot of those can come across as lazy content now it makes sense if it's a long form podcast or something like that and it is an absolute nugget and that nugget stands on its own two feet and blows people's minds change the way they think gets them to take action it makes sense for that but there's so many out there where people are just trying to cut a piece of content it's got Cuts every every word every breath is removed because they're really trying to repurpose something our best ones I've literally just grabbed my phone after shooting on the nicer camera I'll pick up my phone and just give the recap so it's I'm not holding back I'm not saying if you want to find out what the best apps are go watch this other video I'm saying the best apps are cap cut and Luma fusion and if you want to find out more about them then check out the link so I'm they that but by giving the answer they're there there's still a fit to watch the longer form but for some people that's all that they need and then they're more likely to see more of our content from that point on beautiful beautiful okay that's actually really strategic that like actually explains where does where does shorts fit into the whole the whole process and you're just doing that on your phone summarizing the main video that you've done okay nice it didn't fit into our strategy it was just test until it became uh optimized for search CU otherwise you you really got to create viral content and be showing up and competing against people I don't know dancing or doing crazy stuff uh people don't necessarily want to learn in shorts like Tik Tok right so uh this is where now that it's in search like we have so many views coming from search Google search as shorts as well uh which is crazy beautiful nice okay cool this was amazing thanks so much Justin really appreciate you breaking all this down for people the next thing it sounds like if somebody wants to if they're like man Justin knows his [ __ ] I want to follow Justin's process they can go to Primal video right and actually check out your your membership how does that membership work what's kind of included in that yeah so the membership is kind of the deeper dive into what we teach on our uh YouTube channel so and everything around making videos effectively making them easier using gear that you've already got through to the uh getting eyeballs on them then through to the monetization piece to build the business around teaching affiliate marketing strategies and those sorts of things um so yeah all the details are on our website primov video.com or you can just check out some of our YouTube videos to see the types of things that uh that we can help you with and um yeah hopefully there's some there for Primal video on YouTube that's it perfect and we'll link those in the show notes as well Justin thanks so much for coming on today I really really appreciate your time this has been absolutely fantastic before we wrap it up I want to remind you how much your support means to us we're here to make your podcast experience better and you can help us with a quick favor by taking a moment to rate and review the podcast you're going to give us Priceless feedback that'll help shape future episodes and help more people discover it as well so has the show helped you to make money has it helped you grow your business improve your courses if it has please share it in the reviews go to rate thisp podcast.com onlinecourses nothing would make me happy today and to hear how this show has helped you we've done over a 100 episodes of the show today I'm dying to know which one was your favorite which guest you enjoyed what you'd love to hear from us in future or what kind of results you got so make my day and let us know in the review go to rate thisp podcast.com online courses and let me know what you think let's make this podcast the best that it can possibly be make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening and thank you so much for listening as always and Justin thanks so much for coming on thank you very much for having me

hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses we're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from Top performers in the online course industry my name is John answorth and today's guest is Justin Brown now Justin is a Netflix featured producer and video marketing specialist helping entrepreneurs Leverage The Power of online video to build and scale their businesses together with his brother Mike they've grown their YouTube channel to over 1.6 million subscribers and built a seven figure automation driven business off the back of it Justin now teaches their proven systems for creating impactful videos building targeted audiences and scaling revenue streams at Primal video.com and today we're going to be talking about proven SEO YouTube tactics and dive into how you can boost your Channel's visibility increase your views and grow your subscriber base now before we dive into today's episode I want to share something incredibly valuable with you if you're looking to boost your course Revenue you need to check out our 7-Day road map to increase your Revenue it's the same system that we've used to help countless clients achieve predictable Revenue without making sales calls running paid ads or competing on price you're going to learn how to increase your course Revenue by 30% how to identify and fix the missing parts of your current funnels and how to optimize your funnels for maximum performance so if you're ready to take your Revenue to the next level go to datadriven marketing. c/ roadmap and download it Justin welcome to the show thank you very much for having me back on nice so YouTube SEO is constantly evolving what are any strategies that remained consistent in organic SEO on your YouTube channel so if we look at what YouTube needs whether you've got an SEO Focus or not YouTube needs to understand your content so we need to to pass whatever information we can to YouTube so that understands what our content is about so that it can push it out to the right people so that's the first thing we need get our content shown we then need to get our content clicked on world's best video doesn't get clicked on no one sees it so the thumbnail strategy super important part of that and then the third piece is we need to keep people watching so the SEO really falls into the first part uh as in what does the search engine what does YouTube need to uh to understand our content what can we do to get that leg up uh to be ahead of most other people are just uploading and hoping fingers crossed that uh our content is going to show up um we we can we can jump past all of that by getting some insight as to what people actually want what are they searching for um and then what do they actually want inside of those pieces of content um that's really what we're looking at in terms of that so we need to get our content shown on the platform we need to get it clicked on and then we need to keep people watching that's really in a nutshell what YouTube is looking at with that first one with the getting it seen why Focus because you focus mostly on like a search based approach right rather than Discovery based and Discovery based is like 90% of YouTube so why why do you focus on the search based side it really is the lwh hanging fruit but there's extra steps in there that where a lot of people are like you know what if it's all good for Mr Beast and he doesn't have to he doesn't worry about key words then why should I but if we look at that and we break that down for a lot of those channels there's nothing wrong with that strategy but it really is a broad Market appeal and you're there's a lot more competition there's a lot you're competing for people for for their attention in the the homepage and being a recommendation for someone there's there's a it's a lot harder to get into that and it's a lot harder to stay there consistently than once you're in search like we have so many videos now that are coming up on 8 n years old that are still getting views still getting traffic still helping people still having ads run on them so we're making money from it uh still having our affiliate links clicked still growing our email list all those years on so with a a strategy for showing up in search results you don't need to to stand out and be in competition with people like Mr Beast we're really we're narrowing the playing field and we're looking at for when our potential clients customers are typing stuff in how do we show up to be the the guide the person that helps them to that uh that you know we can build that no like and trust with them on autopilot if we're doing this consistently so to me that is the lwh hanging fruit but it's also that research piece the SEO piece is a piece that a lot of people don't want to do but it's also not that daunting of a task it's going to allow you again to to to be well ahead of most people that are uploading on the platform now you'd mentioned this to me like a year or two ago something like that and said this is the approach to take and I was like yeah that makes total sense but it wasn't like the part of the business I was working on at that at the time and so we've started doing longform videos for YouTube now and we did them like with just you know choose whatever topic put it up there not search focus at all and I went back through and looked at what are our most successful videos and I found they were ones that had a specific keyword in there and have been just like terrible videos like if you watched it you'd be like this this is so bad how could this possibly do well it's got bad sound it's got bad um lighting it's got bad camera it starts with no hook it just starts with me going well it what we've already done is this and I'm like where when in what video like there's just nothing about it is good and yet it's our top performing video that we've ever had and I'm like okay I should do more like that you know so it's it's crazy how that works sometimes and this is where a lot of people get lucky and they'll they'll they'll do some sort of tutorial or how- to piece of content or something and they're not looking they're don't doing keyword research but those go on to be the ones that stick around for years uh and that's that's really what we're talking about here how do we create this Evergreen style pieces of content it doesn't mean that every video has to come from that place but the other side of it is by doing this keyword research topic research really is it's going to give us insight as to who it is where're actually going to be speaking to inside that video before we make it uh and we will know then based on that phrase that we're going to optimize for what level they're at is this is this a beginner that would be searching for this thing or is this someone who's further along like is this is this Advanced terminology that we're creating this content around so we're able to create this experience inside our videos by having this uh insight as to who it is that's going to be watching and exactly what they want and it really feels like we're almost cheating the system a little bit because the viewer experience on the other end is this video covered everything that I needed it didn't you know it wasn't just dragged out for to to be a longer video for the algorithm it was exactly what I needed in this moment which is when I'm I'm looking for help and I'm searching for Stuff on YouTube but the the awesome piece about this whole SEO thing as well is like with a channel like ours our number one traffic source is YouTube search but our second biggest traffic source is external which is Google search so we have content showing up on Google search as a massive leadin to YouTube yes same company Google owns YouTube whatever but it's we're grabbing people that are clicking to choose to watch a video that haven't even gone to YouTube so that's the other side of how powerful this is and and the other thing I found with this search based video so I've been doing a lot of the keyword research lot of the basics and this going through using um vid IQ and you know pulling up all the all the different um numbers for the different keywords and as I do it I've been like looking at doing some of the searches myself and seeing what videos are coming up and they're Terri like they nothing to do with the search term I'm like oh my God this is wide open I would have thought this point in YouTube existing this would have been like you know but there's just you'll search for some search them let's say online course sales page we're doing a video about at the moment just did one yesterday and the top one that comes up is Alex hosi teaching how do you sell online courses and it's like that's great Alex hosi does amazing content but he is not talking about online course sales pages and in fact as you go down the page nobody is talking about online course sales some people talk about sales pages and some people are talking about online courses and I'm like oh my God this is this could be really powerful so that's that's exactly what we're talking about here is and why I say it's the lwh hanging fruit most people aren't optimizing their content or they make the video and they're like oh what keywords could we put in afterwards if you start from that fact you know what people are searching for you know what they want you know that you can deliver a great experience that where the viewer feels like that video was created just for them to your point like YouTube's found that when it does put those Alex hosi videos in the results of people searching for that phrase that people do click on it it's going to keep uh they're going to keep putting it there right because if they we put this video here and it gets clicked more than others we'll keep it there but that doesn't mean that that video has been optimized to to be the best one that's there or or is also the best piece of content that should be there it's it's just the best fit that it's found so so many times we're finding that a lot of the top videos out there they're not optimized and that is a massive opportunity but the other side of this too is even if there were some there that were optimized and I know that a lot of you guys listening you've probably seen this that a lot of people out there are already making the videos you want to make some of them have millions and millions of views that to me is the perfect opportunity for you to make a new version of that video now sharing your thoughts and opinions it doesn't mean you're in competition necessarily because YouTube rewards new content it wants new good recent content it doesn't want to necessarily serve out a video from 9 years ago like what what's the human on the other end going to click they want to know if this like what's the strategy for now what's the solution for now so it's a massive opportunity and it breaks you out of that noise of trying to compete with the hoses and uh the GVS and all of those kinds of things so you can see that that strategy does work too but that strategy really relies on already having the personality they're big personalities and like I'm much more of an introverted person I know that a lot of people you know freak out to get on camera I used to hate having my photo taken so the thought of bringing and being that kind of a personality that's not me so how do we the rest of us uh the mere mortals uh compete with that and that's really where search comes in as a massive opportunity and look it doesn't mean that every one of your video needs to be search optimized you can still experiment still do the feel-good one that you want to cuz that's what you you want to make in the moment I'm all for that but if all of your videos are that that it's such a hit and miss strategy that it's it's going to be stressful and it's unlikely to get you to where you want to go so I would say be strategic with the content wherever you can all right so let's say someone's listening to this they have been doing some work on YouTube but they haven't been doing search Focus stuff um they're sold they're like this sounds great I'm going to do more of this the first step it seems like is the keyword research is that fair yeah that's where I would be recommend you start yep um so what is your process when you're doing that how do you do that keyword research so it's actually pretty simple if we look at the viewer Behavior again and look at and knowing that YouTube is a search Eng and knowing that the algorithm is trying to create a good experience for the viewer on the other end of that then if we look at what our behavior is on YouTube when we're going to search for something not just showing up or open the YouTube app on our TV and browsing through and finding stuff when we're actually looking for something what is our behavior and it's to go to that search bar at the top of the page and we start to type in it might be three words two three five at the most words and we're going to expect that on the other end of us typing in that that something related to what we're typing in is going to show up right that's that's how YouTube works so we follow the same process when we're doing our keyword research because it's following what the viewer would do so we go to YouTube and we start to type in two or three words related to our topic or or Niche the video that we're thinking about making and we're seeing what pops up those Auto suggestions I'm so sure you've all seen that before they're not random suggestions from YouTube or Google these are things that people have actually searched for so you know that anything that's showing up there there's there's demand for it there's been people looking for this previously so that is the main the main First Step that we're going to is like let's see what's in there and let's use you can use a wild card you can use the underscore the line across the bottom um between words and that will be like a fill-in the blank so you could go how to underscore editing and they would fill in the blank and and and add extra words around that so amazing like just to come up with topic ideas now we can go one step further and we can use a tool like keywords everywhere and it's a Google Chrome plugin um I think it works for Firefox too and that will overlay in that search box the amount of searches per month uh that each of those search phrases are having so we can then see is this is this a 4,000 Searchers per month or 400,000 Searchers per month so then we can gauge which one of these we want to to focus on um but that's really in a nutshell it so yes there are other tools like vid IQ that you mentioned there's tube buddy morning fame um but what we find is with a lot of those other tools they've got their own algorithm at play so they uh and they're trying to obviously help you do the manual piece of then researching and seeing competition and is this a video you should make based on the size of your Channel all of that stuff but what it can end up doing is it can oversimplify things and end up it becomes a race to the bottom because everyone is fed the same information so everyone then goes ahead and optim optimizes for the same things but so many times it has told us not to make videos that go on to be the biggest videos on our Channel and likewise the same the other way it's told us to make stuff uh because it's got a good competition score a good ranking score and uh and they've just tanked so what we've found to be the best Northstar is the process that I just shared with you let's go and see what YouTube and Google themselves are suggesting and then let's validate how many searches per month with that keywords everywhere plugin that is as far as we go with that and do you think that the the search volume that keywords everywhere is giving you is more accurate than the vid IQ one is that because vid IQ could just give you the search volume and you could use that instead it could but what we found is that there's discrepancies between them right so we'll find we've got vid IQ we've got keywords everywhere and all these other tools and they'll be totally different so massively different it's like what is I I sumon it's like this one says 2,000 and this one says zero and it's like okay well you got to choose one I guess but what so why have you chosen keywords everywhere though is that like have you found it to be better from years of doing this that one constantly is the the best representation of uh search volumes from what we've seen now if we're really looking into this technically it's Google search volumes that that's giving us so it's but what we're using it for is not to determine will this be successful on YouTube it's do people want this and how are they articulating the thing that they want what words are they using what words are they is Google suggesting from what we've typed in because you'll see that a lot of times you type something in and it says like did you mean this right then that's really interesting okay maybe we take a step back from what we were going to name this and let's look at what Google is suggesting here so keywords everywhere is our North Star we don't need to over complicate it with those other tools nothing against them but too many times their algorithms at play have been misleading and we see that with clients and students as well got it okay cool so you've done the keyword research what's the next step for you are you creating the title and the thumbnail before you make the video or like what order are you doing things in so keyword research by far and I got and what we'll end up with is uh at least one primary phrase three to five words that we want to optimize for and I'm going to use that in the title to to form the basis of it I want it in there somewhere I don't just want to load keywords in cuz it's still got to work for the human on the other end it's got to be compelling it's still got to get the click right so the title is definitely done before I make the video because that is the framing I keep coming back to that when I'm planning out what to say in the video because it's in context of that the goal of the video the title The Promise so it so if I sorry to interrupt but if I understand right you're taking the keyword you go right this keyword I found it through going to YouTube search bar I see that people are searching for that I saw keywords everywhere told me there was enough traffic oh actually take one step back what what do you count as enough traffic in your question right so there are videos that we've done and keywords everywhere will show you down to I think 100 searches per month there are videos that we've done around 700 or 800 Searchers per month knowing that like that's not going to be a massive video but it's still something that we want to create and when people search for it we want to be the person that shows up on the other side of that so there are videos that we will make as long as I I guess as long as there's some uh numbers showing in there some search volume then it's enough of us to to say okay people do want this to some degree uh but what I'm really looking for is i''s say anything 5,000 plus um but there's so many cases where you know as you said you're looking at the keywords and you're looking at who's optimized that we'll find some of the big ones 100,000 200,000 plus where no one has optimized for so obviously that's really what we're looking for um but we gauging interest and with the the search volumes is per month right so you'll also be able to tell if something's trending up or trending down so a lot of the AI Searchers you might get an average it might say right now the average is 40,000 Searchers per month but when you really look into it it could be closer to 100,000 if it is something that's that's trending up so I think that the that's that's why that is the first step is this worth me taking the next step and exploring this further do people actually want this thing um and then what do they actually want so we frame that around is this is this a beginner video Advanced is this talking about free stuff like what is it that we want to frame this around because one keyword phrase could be multiple videos right so like best editing software for who for free for beginners for advanced for iPhone for Android for Mac for Windows right so we make all of them so we totally dominate for best editing software the irony is best for who best for what like there's no best but uh the viewer thinks they might be so they're going to click the video so we find our phrase uh then we do our thumbnails last I know a lot of people say make your thumbnail um first uh I don't I don't have a problem with that but to me I'm shooting the thumbnail image for most of our videos at the end of recording the video because if it is a product review or something I can hold up the product I can I can I can show it I can you know showing something on my phone I'm lifting that up um so I'm able to create something specifically for that but but it's also done at the time of recording I just leave the camera recording and uh and I'll point and pull silly faces and feel like a total idiot but I'll do whatever it takes to get the silly faces is like a requirement isn't it for YouTube oh I wish it didn't work and look we've tested it and every time we AB split test I'm like can we try again one without my face uh and yeah it's the it's the expression you know the Intrigue the why is he pulling that face or that guy can't look that bad I have to click the video to make sure that you know that that's not his real face so I'm prepared to for everybody Ling Justin is very handsome he does I'm paying him to say this right now yeah thank you yeah so yeah thumbnail thumbnail is normally U after we've shot the video yeah gotcha Okay cool so we're doing the keyword research and we're looking for for in your case you're looking for um search volume from seven or 800 at the bottom end to maybe 40,000 or 100,000 at the top end and do you find it's generally easier to rank for those smaller keywords or you doing those because maybe they're more like bottom of funnel more somebody who is like interested in taking who who looks from the phrase that they're more interested in taking action straight away or like how are you deciding why would you why would you ever do the 700 rather than the 40,000 so we we would mix it up and so an example of one that was 700 and now is much higher was best email platform or best email marketing platform it's one that we wanted to share our thoughts and opinions on that and now the search volume for it is much higher so I'm glad that we made those videos uh we could probably refresh them uh and create a new version of them but uh at the time where like this these aren't going to be big numbers but as you said anyone that's looking for that and is looking for an active campaign vers convert kit or something like that they're so much closer to the fence of taking action which makes it a great affiliate play but also it's a different topic and something that you might or like I wanted to talk about uh like that's something that I would geek out on um and and sharing the pros cons whatever again just our thoughts and opinions so there will be some videos where the the numbers are lower and you know I I guess I wouldn't want them all to be that low uh so we're doing them every now and then likewise I wouldn't want them all to be super high numbers but also High competition what the best case scenario what we're looking for is high search low competition and they are how are you identifying that low competition cuz vid iq's obviously got their like score for that and you're ignoring that you don't you don't trust that one so are you just going into each search term and going like what do I think how good are these videos are they optimized for this term that kind of thing yeah pretty much but it's not what I think there is a way that we can uh actually look as well so obviously if we want to play in the realm of this search phrase that we've identified best editing software right best editing software in Mac so something more specific I'd run that search and I'd say well who's on here and I'd look at are those videos actually getting views like we know that it's got x amount of search volume but is that relevant for right now are the videos that YouTube is showing in the top are they actually performing because sometimes you might find that the search volume could be skewed could be misleading so we found this with an app like uh think of an app like descript right if people go to Google they type that in but they just want to log into the website they're not looking for a tutorial or anything so that's going to skew the search volumes so we can't say we need to make a descript video because this the word descript has x amount of searches per month we've got to look a little deeper than that so uh I totally lost my train of thought there where where was I we'll cut that bit out that's fine um it we talking through we're talking through how do you choose which of those keywords um uh we like what what the competition is cu youve said you want to have high volume low competition but how are you defining low competition is it is it like seven things that happen in your brain or can we pull those out and help people listening to to figure that out yeah no totally lost my trying to thought that yes so the competition piece is uh I'm going to run that search because yes we want to validate the traffic um having that keywords everywhere extension installed it does tell us the number of views per day that those videos have as well so we're not just seeing do they have views on them we can see are they still getting views especially if they're older videos which is going to tell us that people do still want this so we're validating that and we're validating that those videos that are up there that are top of search results are are getting views but the other thing that I'm actually going to do on that page is I'm going to search that page so contrl F or command F uh to to search the page for that phrase and I'm going to see platform agnostic in your in your uh your find shortcut yeah doing too many tutorials where people like what about on Windows yeah this is good uh so hey you you got to cover basis so uh I'm I'm going to do a search on that page in in the web browser and it's going to highlight uh wherever that exists I know this may sound very rudimentary but it's going to show you in the title where that exists it's also going to show you if if it's in the description or in the chapter markers as well uh cuz you're seeing a lot of that in search results now and I would say if the top four or five videos had a lot of views and they had optimized for that had that in the title and somewhere in the description then I would say that's a High competition because we're we're banking on them not being optimized to that level now that doesn't mean that we won't make the video but we'd make the video with the expectation that there is going to be a lot of competition we might this video might not perform or it might take a long time to perform because there's already like a proven track record there it's they're clearly still getting views they're already optimized for it so it's going to be tougher for us to knock them out but again we've always got that piece of a new video always has potential to take down whatever else has been up there before if it's a better video nice Okay cool so we've got it it sounds like it's not a an exact number or something you're not going right take the number of videos look at how many chapter markers divide that by this number or something like that it's a bit more judgment but you're basically looking for how optimized are they and are they getting searches so if they're getting searches that means that people are clicking based on um the search term which means that that's that's worse if people are if they're getting more search that means comp comptition yeah I yeah so we are we're looking for low competition there we're looking for uh where videos don't have clicks where there is a good amount of search term where they don't they aren't optimized in the title or the chapter markers or the description or any of those places ideally and if they are optimized then we might still go okay we still think we can do better we're going to put something out but it might not perform so that's kind of a you know a bit of a judgment call or what I would do in that case if it was totally saturated and it was a really broad search term is I would say how else would someone articulate this pain problem thing that they're looking for is there another a lower uh searched keyword phrase that would essentially be the same video where we could come in and we could dominate with that search phrase still create the same piece of content to then start to also show up uh potentially get you know when we're not in competition with them we're kind of going around them and for a lot of things there is we're just articulating something a little bit different got it so sometimes when there's that high competition say okay well we still might make a similar video but we're going to find a different keyword phrase we're going to look for a different angle to find an untapped vein of uh of um search Okay cool so you've now got a keyword that you're going to make a video for we're making the title I'd interrupted and taking us back back a stage there but you're making the title Do you have a process for that title obviously you need to have the keyword in there does the keyword need to be at the beginning should the video title just be whatever the the phras is that people are searching for you know how to use uh descript or whatever it is or do you add in some curiosity or some um you know anticipation or like you won't believe number seven tip number seven or like how what are you kind of doing as your process for that we definitely don't want to just have the keyword phrase it's not enough because if we we think of the experience again if you've ever search for something on YouTube and you see you've got still a bunch of options there that show up what makes them stand out so we're not even going to talk about the thumbnail image at this point but if if everyone just had best editing software or descript tutorial why for who uh like why do I need to click on your video so we should have something in there that's going to create that Intrigue or elude to the video so if it was um like personal training or workout stuff right it could be at home no weights necessary this this will make you sweat right they're not things that people going to search for but if they're like Ah that's me yeah I really want to sweat and I've got no equipment at home or I want in 10 minutes or your kids will love this recipe or something like that it's the piece it's the why they want the thing that they're they're not searching for so we want to add something like that in now to your other point do you put that at the start do you put it at the end I really think it's got to be at a case-by casee basis and looking at what does the viewer need to see do they need to see best editing software or do they need to see number seven will blow your mind what do they need to see to get that click over the others so you might find on some of them the keyword phrase is the perfect phrase that summarizes what the content's going to be about and then the why you should click piece could be towards the end um we don't want to make them too long though because you'll see in a lot of places on YouTube is truncating and chopping off uh your titles to shorten them up so you still want to make sure that whatever the most important piece for the viewer to see and after they've searched for it cuz that's what optimizing for do they need to see the keyword phrase again or do they more so need to say I'm on a curated list because I've already searched for something so they've already like know that these are related to that keyword phrase do they need to see see the keyword phrase again so it really has to be done on a caseby casee basis um but you've always come back to what what what does the viewer want let's keep the viewer in mind and that's what YouTube is optimizing for got it so you're looking at that keyword and you're thinking if I was searching for this what would what what would get me to click on it what would I be actually after try and put yourself in the mind of the the Searcher and be like okay so I'm searching for best Mac video editing software 2024 or whatever the phrase is right okay who am I what do I want what would get me to be interested right now and clicking on it people I know who are searching for that what would they be doing and then do you do you have do you have parts that you tend to add in there like does it tend to be curiosity based do you go a bit clickbaity like what kind of approach do you are there like a few that you select from as your options of how to improve it so even adding words like best no one wants the second best no one wants the worst right they want best so key word phrase isn't it second best Mac video editing software I mean look I'd probably still click it but uh so uh things like best DIY how to they can work really well at the start but in terms of getting the click um it could be things like um like we said with the you know this will make you sweat uh for free even just adding the date is one that we use a lot 2024 people don't want necessarily the 2023 one if there's a 2024 version you might be outdated even if it's not um so they're always going to click on a newer one the one that they think is going to be the best fit for them which is why we we update a lot of videos and we make new versions of videos every year because we know that the viewer is going to click on the the latest one um you know if it's presented to them even because they think that something might have changed even if it hasn't um so you ever thought just doing this is this is probably not very good quality videos it would be but like just when you record it going 2023 and then saying 2024 and then like cut that at the video afterwards can you that's no good that's good okay we just won't say the year look I mean is the thing that it's it's on there like we have videos where like best editing software we doing them for years so there's like a 2019 2018 and those still get views we're not hiding it we're not like changing anything on there but for whatever reason those are still being watched and people are clicking knowing that that you know YouTube is suggesting it to them or they're finding it there in search uh that that's the best one for them but likely if they do land on one of those then the one that will be recommended on the side will be one of ours same channel same topic like very similar title so they're more likely to to jump across and watch the other one too um and the only time we would take down an older video is if it's going to be really misleading and send someone down a wrong pathway um so if if not then it just it's part of the archive it's that was our recommendations at that time the other piece that you said sorry you just I think this this is I like that you said you're getting people in the heads space of what would you uh what would you think like what would you search for but I think the next step is that's all well and good for us but we're we're in our own industry where we we know more than our prospects the the harder thing but probably the better thing to do is after you've done that what would I search for to find this that's a great place to start but what would someone search for what would they type in if they didn't know what I know if they knew this video existed out there what are they searching for so an example from our world would be or my world would be I could do a color grading tutorial right and some of you might know what that is uh right but what would people who don't know what color grading look for how do I fix the colors in my video exactly the same video right same outcome I'm going to show you how to fix the colors in your video but I'm titling it two totally different things so there could be a way where we if color grading tutorial was the phrase then we could still have how to fix the colors in your videos 3 easy steps whatever you know we could make it click clickable um but we could please both the people that you know more advanced person isn't necessarily not going to click that video because it's how to fix the colors but a beginner person that's that's speaking exactly to what they want so we can take that step back if someone who didn't know our industry speak our industry lingo what are they searching for what's the outcome what's the feeling what's the the problem or pain that they want to solve and how are they articulating it and that's where I really like that keyword research because that helps us get to that point sometimes we are too close to our own thing and we know that this is Tech like this is called a sales page well what does someone call it if they don't know it's it's a sales page right so if we can get to that point it could be more so how do I make more sales well the answer is a sales page and we're going to show you how to do that but they're back here like I just want to sell more stuff and so the niching on how to sell more stuff could be I'm going to give you a sales page tutorial one of the things so looking at from like um as I've gone through this process with the keyword research I'm seeing some of the stuff that I think of like online course sales page right so super specific to our Niche exactly our target audience can to be searching for it that might only have I don't know 500 searches a month something like that how to sell online courses is super broad but I'm like but there's higher competition and I'm trying to figure out like how how broad do you go when you're doing this do you have like right this is the niche that I'm after I'm only going to make stuff that mentions that nature whatever or do you go I'm going to go super boor but this one might just be it gets more views but only a percentage fit for my video editing or YouTube course and the others might what just like click an affiliate link or something like that how are you making that decision about like how how targeted you are with that the a lot of people say the riches are in the niches I don't necessarily disagree with that but I think there's way more people we can show up we can help we can impact way more people if we think broader so in your case of the uh creating the sales page um or how to sell a course you say is way way broader I think that was your example um we could the one is going to help them do the other if the thing they want is to sell the course then we can still Target that how to sell how to get more course sales or how to sell a course um then your niching piece on that the the the icing on the cake piece becomes this specific video is about sales page Why you need a sales page why your sales pag is letting you down so we're still able to do that but we're we're then showing up for people that we looking for sales page help which is more advanced more further along they they're they're aware that that's the thing that they want but we're also showing up for the people that are are a fur a step further back and when they see it they're like oh yeah that's the one that's you that's that's the thing that I want so we're able to get both we're able to double dip and you could even have double keywords like a long keyword in there for that yeah so if we look at like email marketing right that's a very very broad term what I found like the the search volume I got here is about 300,000 searches for that for how to sell an online cours is 7,000 a month how to uh um online course sales Pages like a few hundred a month so it's like there's that kind of balance it seems like but you're also considering this idea of the the maybe two keywords in one video as well interesting okay I would be leaning to the bigger number for that one bigger numbers okay okay in that specific case where the option was was it 30,000 and 500 or something or a few thousand and 500 I would be leaning to the bigger one knowing that those people are are going to want this video as well like this is going to help them with that bigger search phrase that they were looking for um so then if there was a second phrase of sales page or something sales page design optimizing sales page sales page conversion um something like that that I would be trying to add in if I could um but I'd also that's we're just talking title right so we don't need to jam them all in there the first line of your description is the other place where YouTube is looking to understand your content the first 155 characters of your description should be used to describe your video to the viewer but if we're able to add in some of those phrases it definitely will help you with your ranking as well so you if you you don't want to load them all up in title put them in the started the description as well got it okay cool so we've done keywords title I'm going to guess here this is based on my understanding so far the next thing is so maybe maybe the next thing is some of that stuff like the description and the chapter markers and making sure you have the keywords in those places and then the one after is maybe making sure people stick around for the first 30 seconds of the video and actually you're going to watch it is that have I got that in the right kind of order how do you think about this in terms of the priorities yeah in terms of your process like what are you yeah I suppose so I suppose they're separate things aren't they um if I wanted someone to stick around earlier in the video like in the video and I want to hook them in at the start then I'm going to try to incorporate some of those key words in so what I'm saying at the start is hitting the words that they've just searched for because we know we're optimizing for search are you looking for the best editing software on Mac in 2024 well I got you covered in this video we're going to break down the top options so the viewer hears that and they're like oh good this is exactly what I clicked on this is not clickbait uh the algorithm is or YouTube is transcribing your videos and hey I've said word for word in the right order what that search phrase is it's going to at least start to test it in those top spots because all the planets are aligning with with what it is we're doing so if it makes sense you want to bake it into the video as well but it works for the viewer it makes them relax there's almost like this anxiety when someone clicks on your video did I click this one I should I have clicked this one this one's 8 minutes um it had a average thumbnail the other that pink one was really interesting maybe I should have clicked that so that Hook is so important uh to keep them watching and to let them know that they're in the right place so by saying some of those things repeating it back to them we'll even have text on screen that says exactly the title of the video um so I'm over on one side and the the title of the video is on screen for the other because if we think of what the viewer behavior is right now on YouTube they're starting to play your videos as you put your mouse cursor over them or if you're scrolling along toilet TV right it's uh it's AO playing with the sound off uh that's viewer Behavior right so they're not listening to it how do we let them know that they're in the right place nice Okay cool so we're aiming to say the keyword back to them show it on the screen at the same time uh you're on one side the keywords on the other side is the hook as simple as that for you when it's a search-based one or is it like is there more to having great hook so the hook is to let them know that they're in the right place let them know uh why they should stick around um but then we kind of want to open Some Loops like let's give them let's give them some reason like I'm I'm also going to share with you the biggest mistakes people make or so like let's give them a reason that after we've they've got the thing that they need that uh they'll stick around for something else and this is where like obviously to to get to the email point of it we're growing our email list um we we don't want them to just get the YouTube piece and leave we want them to take action and and you know move further along our funnels where we have them nice okay cool what do you see as like a good engagement time for that first 30 seconds is that a metric that you that you're looking at specifically in terms of the drop off rate if we're seeing how many people you still want around yeah I'm aiming for 60 65% and above and uh that's class as good uh so which is very a big hit to a lot of people's egos mine especially where you're like what 65 people 65% of people are are still watching what what about the rest of them and some of them can be much much lower and you've got to think again viewer Behavior on YouTube is your video might autoplay off another one so it's the numbers are always going to be skewed because people might not have chosen to be on that video but your goal is to how do we maximize the or minimize the drop off at the start of our video so because if we can do that then even if they've got a downward trend people slowly drop dropping off throughout we've maximized what's left at the end of the day like at at the end of the video so uh the hook is the biggest thing that I am working on and trying to get to the point even uh so we go hook intro content we then have a bonus piece which is what you know the reason they should stick around for join our email list or download our free guide and then a call to action at the end um that's kind of our structure that we we we flow through and that we teach um so the intro piece though I'm now making that so much shorter it used to be hey it's Justin from Primal video where we help you grow your brand and and we'd find that people would just skip across that no one cares I mean we used to do it at the start of the video and it's like hey it's Justin like does this guy who look like you know Chris Martin from Coldplay is he going to get to the point uh right so we we it's not about you it's not about you it's the viewer wants like it's a selfish thing from their side just get to the point so we've removed all of that I'll still have a name card that comes up like title Justin Brown whatever um but I'm not breaking the flow of the video I'm getting to the point much quicker it was fascinating I watched a video from I forget what her name was but some a female marketer who's got a good good size audience you know a million or 500,000 something good size and she had a big section after the intro so after the after the hook which was very lifestyle based and it was fascinating to watch because it was such a female versus male marketer type thing like it was much more of like a you're buying into you want to be like her as a person or something there was videos of her walking down the street and like this beautiful town that she's in and her lovely dog and he just like just like beautifully edited together nice background music I was just like why would I care but it's similar to like if you look at Amy portfield for example like it's very much like a Lifestyle brand people want to be like Amy so that's an important part of it whereas I think most mail marketers would never do that would never be like like here's why you should be like me and I don't know if that's something that maybe would work for some guys but I've never seen a guy do that I think so I think there is a piece of Personality that comes with those and there's definitely creators that I watch where in the middle of a tutorial they'll pause and they'll go andate cinematic b-roll of making a cup of coffee and look it seems to be the thing uh whereas to me my brain goes I clicked on a tutorial this isn't a vlog this isn't a day in the like get back to the teaching piece so I guess we create the videos that we want to watch ourselves so if that is you for sure like you you've got permission to play um but I'm always mindful of what does the viewer need what does the viewer want and with me I don't think people want to see me making coffee uh so there yep okay so it really depends whether you're looking at a tutorial video or a top five tips or something like that as to how you structure that kind of video in terms of the the do you need to get people to stick around by going you'll never believe what's in number four or do you just say no I'm just going to teach ex I'm going you're going to follow along on screen as I am going to actually do the color grading or whatever it is that you're doing yeah I think it's really got to be context for the video because if if you've if it's something that they don't know what's that's coming up like your top five affiliate marketing tools or something like that then you want to tease out to get them to stick around for number five uh like even though the structure itself is an open loop you're saying that there's five they want to hang around to hear out number five in case that's the game changer for them we can add uh you some extra context to that like number five has made us an extra million dollars so oh it's a good reason for me to stick around and hear out through to number five whereas with the tutorial one it's it's more it's a process so I need to follow all the steps to have success with this so that they're inherently opening Loops as well so I find that those the watch time the the drop off is less once people are in uh whereas the the other people jump in they'll they'll want to check out quickly what's what kind of suggestions are these um oh I already knew about genius link I already knew about thirsty Affiliates yeah I'm out so we want to do a better job of hooking them to keep our content uh if if if it's not a tutorial gotcha okay so after all of that we've got videos that are showing we've got people clicking on them we've got people watching the video that's not actually what you want the thing that you want at the end of it is an email subscriber or an affiliate click or whatever you like how much of what you're doing is can I get someone onto my email list and then sell them my courses and how much is pointing them off somewhere else with affiliate links and are there any other options actually as well so this is something that uh I guess we could geek out on and this is something that uh I think look our YouTube channel is the face of our business the business behind the channel is is our email list and I know that like this this is your thing so you're no no one's better to talked about this stuff than you but the uh the our goal is not to get every session every person watching to leave YouTube because obviously if YouTube's seeing that that's happening all the time then it's not what it wants it wants people to stay stay on platform it wants a long session time so we don't want to be a session killer where at the end of every video someone leaves and then they don't come back right YouTube's going to see that as a as a big negative indicator so for us where we do put email optins and leap magnets and things is where it is a perfect fit or the best next step for someone after they've watched one of our videos so if they're watching one of our editing uh tutorials we have an editing checklist that they can download print out and follow along so it's perfect fit for us to mention that it's not salesy it's not sleazy or anything like that it is the next best step for that viewer uh so it works out that around 30% of our videos have a call to action to leave YouTube um but my biggest call to action in every video regardless of whether it's actually getting them off platform or not right now is to get people to go to the description box that is I'm not asking for a subscribe I'm not asking for a thumbs up or any of that stuff like you hear all the time I am asking them to click to go to the description and I frame it in a way of uh and has mentioned a few times throughout that there's a bunch of other links and resources down there to help them even further with this topic and that's exactly what there is in the description think of it like a Blog article where we can have links off to other videos other articles affiliate links so that's how we have uh like affiliate revenue for us is one of the biggest ways that we make money in our business and YouTube obviously is a Big Driver of that so there's affiliate links there's uh links to our courses and programs where people can go and find out more the people that are interested will will like even if you're borrowing them in your video at that point but they like the topic they're clicking the description even as a distraction there's more things on there that they could click off to and keep that session going or work you know move further down your customer Journey with you so my goal is to get people to go to the description because right now YouTube has made it uh harder than ever before for people to get to the description if you've seen it lately it's a it used to be this big thing now it was then it was one sentence now it's a couple of words with a little read more button um so I'm mentioning throughout if I'm saying links or anything related that's I'm I'm getting people to go to the description box to to to to find that so that then they find everything else that's in there beautiful okay so about 30% of the people 30% of the time you're pointing people off to a separate call to action to like go and download a lead magnet for example we call that the golden click method it's like there's a time in somebody's viewing experience or when they're on your blog or whatever when it's like this is what they need right now this is the perfect exact right next thing for them to get this and get on our email list at which point it's like well make sure you put it there make sure you tell them how to go get that checklist or guide or whatever it is okay and so you are though on 30% of them getting them off to that to that um email list and then that's I assume like the backbone of your actual main like revenue is it is a lot of the revenue from affiliate or is is more of it from your email list so we have three revenue streams one of them is YouTube ads uh that's given the size of the channel and the amount of traffic we have coming through search is not a small amount um the the it changes the other two so one is our digital products the membership and some small courses that we have um and the other is Affiliates and they're both variable with the membership and obviously variable with Affiliates as to which is the biggest each month um but at you at the end of the year it's a it's a seven figure annual business so I like that a lot of it isn't uh like is is automated with the affiliate stuff Affiliates is something that I wish we'd started earlier because it's not relying on me to deliver to whatever like that's that's I think for anyone starting out like Affiliates is the quickest way that you can start making money it's not the quickest way to to make millions of dollars uh but it's the quickest way to start making money on YouTube that does scale as your channel grows beautiful okay I'm aware we've run long I appreciate you sticking around for that I think we're pretty much uh we'll cut this bit out but I think we're pretty much gone through everything I was like thinking or can we also talk through your your membership and your course business but I think that's like totally unrealistic um in in the same episode it's like a whole another whole another and and we could work something out with an affiliate or or something if you were going to do that to make it like mutually beneficial so that's that's interesting point yeah I hadn't thought about that um but yeah a bunch of our audience would probably benefit from from Primal video um I've been wondering whether we would I'm like we've gone through a bunch of different courses but I really like the approach that you take with this it's really cool okay so only other piece is that go on that might help is that with all of this the main thing for like it's not about amount of content it's uh like we do one video a week we're now experimenting with a second but the bulk of our grow like cuz people might hear this and like [ __ ] how much work is this yeah Okay cool so we've got this whole process we've got everything figured out from the keywords the title The Hook Etc how many of these videos are you doing it's a good question cuz I guess a lot of people are probably sitting here going that sounds like a lot of work and already think that they got to create a lot of content we've been doing this now for 9 years and we've been consistent with one video a week now obviously when we started we had no idea what we were doing uh but our goal is one optimized strategic video per week I'm not just coming up with a random idea jumping in front of the camera we just shared our process we're doing that research first so that we can be strategic so we know then we're actually building an asset that can show up and can perform and work for us uh have people find us add impact help you know adding value to the internet but also affiliate Revenue ad Revenue all of that stuff and growing the business and everything as well so we are one optimized video per week and if you're sitting here listening to that and go well even that you know would be a stretch we've seen this work really really well with one every other week so one every second week or something like that as well so do what you can uh I know that some videos do take longer to make especially if you're making something um but be consistent uh so that your viewers know when to tune back in so that YouTube starts to see okay this channel is actively uploading stuff um but you know don't don't wear yourself out in the process YouTube's not sitting there going to fire you if you miss an upload day or miss a week or something like that it's it's a platform so uh that would be what I would recommend it's not about amount of content more more content doesn't me more results we have people that just say hey I'm going to miss my week so I'll just shoot something quick just so I've got something up there but if that something is not going to be optimize is not going to show or show up or matter in a year's time then what's the point so uh I'd much rather see strategic optimized stuff um that's really what moves the needle more recently now that we're past 1 and a half million subscribers we are experimenting with a second video a week um but it's not me doing it we're we've got presenters and things doing that so we're looking at how we can scale this without scaling the time effort energy that I'm putting into it so we're playing with this stuff now so always be playing always be trying and testing stuff but come from that place of this is an optimized asset that can show up and perform for years not just a quick little YouTube video gotcha yeah so no point putting out a video if it's not going to be good if it's not going to be optimized if it's not going to be having a good clickthrough rate and having a good retention rate and all this kind of thing but probably ideally one a week do you think two a week or three a week is better if you have the resources for doing it or do you think there might be downsides to that I don't think there would be downsides if you've got the resources and team to help you do more then for sure do more as long as you are creating the Strategic content the the other thing I would be saying now that I have never really said before would that I would my non-negotiable is the one regular YouTube video but I would also be playing with shorts uh I think that is something that now that YouTube is pushing shorts in search results as well is a is a massive value opportunity our biggest shorts that are over a million views have getting traffic from search Google search YouTube search so people just looking for quick answers to stuff so we have the opportunity now where we're doing that keyword research and we know exactly what people want we're making the long form but we're also doing a really quick version and the quick version links to the long form but the quick version for some people might be enough might be enough to help them move forward to build that no like and trust with them and if they watch one of our videos on either side they're more likely to see more of our content so shorts could be another opportunity but not at the expense or not not at the you know in place of solve a regular YouTube video would be my strategy got it so with the shorts I've had mixed opinions from various different people on YouTube and some people are like I just don't even see the point of it like cuz how is that actually leading to anything that I want it's not getting me email optins it's not necessarily getting me more watches of other videos but you're finding it sounds like that it does like if you is it because you're very carefully linking the short to a longer form video on the same topic is that like the crucial step in there do you think that's where we've had the best results especially from the ones that are showing up in search yeah linking it back and you can now go back retrospectively and add links from shorts to longer form um that's you I think if someone liked that short and it was a teaser for your long form content then uh that's what we've seen work really well for a search based strategy especially if you're doing this as a business and not as an entertainment Channel got it so the crucial thing there sounds like is take the search term when you've got the long form make a short form that is about that same search term so that you can link so it's a perfect alignment you can link to the long form video and you're actually creating that short specifically for that search term rather than like just cutting out bits from the the long form video or something like that is that correct yeah those have never worked well and I'm sure they have for some people but I've never been able to get that repurposing thing it's almost to me if we look at viewer experience a lot of those can come across as lazy content now it makes sense if it's a long form podcast or something like that and it is an absolute nugget and that nugget stands on its own two feet and blows people's minds change the way they think gets them to take action it makes sense for that but there's so many out there where people are just trying to cut a piece of content it's got Cuts every every word every breath is removed because they're really trying to repurpose something our best ones I've literally just grabbed my phone after shooting on the nicer camera I'll pick up my phone and just give the recap so it's I'm not holding back I'm not saying if you want to find out what the best apps are go watch this other video I'm saying the best apps are cap cut and Luma fusion and if you want to find out more about them then check out the link so I'm they that but by giving the answer they're there there's still a fit to watch the longer form but for some people that's all that they need and then they're more likely to see more of our content from that point on beautiful beautiful okay that's actually really strategic that like actually explains where does where does shorts fit into the whole the whole process and you're just doing that on your phone summarizing the main video that you've done okay nice it didn't fit into our strategy it was just test until it became uh optimized for search CU otherwise you you really got to create viral content and be showing up and competing against people I don't know dancing or doing crazy stuff uh people don't necessarily want to learn in shorts like Tik Tok right so uh this is where now that it's in search like we have so many views coming from search Google search as shorts as well uh which is crazy beautiful nice okay cool this was amazing thanks so much Justin really appreciate you breaking all this down for people the next thing it sounds like if somebody wants to if they're like man Justin knows his [ __ ] I want to follow Justin's process they can go to Primal video right and actually check out your your membership how does that membership work what's kind of included in that yeah so the membership is kind of the deeper dive into what we teach on our uh YouTube channel so and everything around making videos effectively making them easier using gear that you've already got through to the uh getting eyeballs on them then through to the monetization piece to build the business around teaching affiliate marketing strategies and those sorts of things um so yeah all the details are on our website primov video.com or you can just check out some of our YouTube videos to see the types of things that uh that we can help you with and um yeah hopefully there's some there for Primal video on YouTube that's it perfect and we'll link those in the show notes as well Justin thanks so much for coming on today I really really appreciate your time this has been absolutely fantastic before we wrap it up I want to remind you how much your support means to us we're here to make your podcast experience better and you can help us with a quick favor by taking a moment to rate and review the podcast you're going to give us Priceless feedback that'll help shape future episodes and help more people discover it as well so has the show helped you to make money has it helped you grow your business improve your courses if it has please share it in the reviews go to rate thisp podcast.com onlinecourses nothing would make me happy today and to hear how this show has helped you we've done over a 100 episodes of the show today I'm dying to know which one was your favorite which guest you enjoyed what you'd love to hear from us in future or what kind of results you got so make my day and let us know in the review go to rate thisp podcast.com online courses and let me know what you think let's make this podcast the best that it can possibly be make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening and thank you so much for listening as always and Justin thanks so much for coming on thank you very much for having me

Transcript for:Strategies for Selling Online Courses

Transcript for:
Strategies for Selling Online Courses