Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. So over the last seven years, I have made over a thousand YouTube videos and grown my channel to over 5 million subscribers. And in this video, I want to share some of my best advice for beginners who want to start today.
This is something I've personally learned a lot about over the years. I've also taught thousands of students in a part-time YouTuber academy over the last four years with some amazing reviews. And recently, I was actually invited to give a talk as part of an event that was run by Think Media. And there were a bunch of questions from the audience all about how to grow an audience on YouTube. And so this video is going to be the best pieces of advice from that event.
So, this is a little magic trick. I have a sort of three part framework for thinking about YouTube. And I wanna talk through this because, you know, I've done some videos about this in case you might have seen.
But I really think it's worth appreciating where we are on the YouTube journey. And sort of this is level one, we've got level two, and we've got level three. Level one is get going. If you are under 100 subscribers, I think you are squarely in the get going stage.
I'd say this is maybe, I don't know, like 20 videos. Sometimes I say 10 videos, sometimes five videos. Like this is where you're just getting started with YouTube. This is where we don't want to overthink anything. We just want to start making videos.
A lot of people are worried about finding their niche. Finding niche is something you don't worry about when you're in the get going stage. At level two, you're getting good. And this is where the whole point is that we're trying to get better at the art and craft of making YouTube videos. and as you know, there's an internal quality bar and then there's an external quality bar.
The internal quality bar is where you're no longer cringing at your own videos and you think, yeah, you know, if a colleague, if a friend, if a family member were to watch my videos and say, hey, I saw your YouTube channel the other day, I wouldn't die of cringe and embarrassment inside, right? If you're dying of cringe and embarrassment every time someone watches your video, probably your videos are not sufficiently good to meet your own internal quality bar. Either that or we've just got loads of emotional issues, which maybe we might wanna see a therapist about, but. But yeah, usually that's a sign that the videos are not quite internally good enough, potentially.
And then we have the external marker of, is this good? And this is where we start getting comments from people. And maybe the views at this point are still, you know, only 10 views, 20 views, 30 views, but we're starting to get a few comments. We're starting to get comments coming in saying like, oh, this, I found this video really helpful.
This was really entertaining. This was really insightful, this sort of stuff. And then finally we come to level three, which is get smart. Now, crucially, in between level one and level two, there is a choice. and this is the choice of do you want a casual relationship with YouTube or a serious relationship with YouTube?
Now the thing that dictates a casual relationship is just like a casual relationship in real life. Yeah you know we're not that committed to each other we're just going to see each other whenever it's convenient. A serious relationship is one where you commit to seeing this person regularly.
A serious relationship with YouTube is one where you commit to being consistent on your YouTube channel. It doesn't have to be once a week but like you commit to a certain level of consistency and you stick to it. If you are happy with just just having a casual relationship with YouTube, the rest of this talk is not gonna apply to you because it's casual, it's like whatevs.
Like you can't expect any results if you're gonna have a casual relationship. You can't expect to build something good with a person you love if you're gonna have a casual relationship with them. Maybe that's controversial, but I don't think it should be. Then once you get to level two, there's another decision you need to make. Do you wanna treat YouTube as a hobby or do you wanna treat YouTube as a business?
And if you wanna, and there's no right or wrong answer here. A hobby is something that you do for fun. and a hobby is something you do for yourself.
I play the guitar and the ukulele. I do those things as hobbies. I do them for fun and I do them for myself.
A business is something that primarily you do for money and primarily you do to add value to others because the way businesses make money is that they give value to other people and then they monetize that value. So on a scale of zero to 10, zero being hobby and 10 being business, if you're being honest with yourself, where is your relationship with YouTube? On the scale of zero to 10, zero to 10. I also like to treat YouTube as a business because I wanna make money from it, I wanna add value to other people, and of course I wanna have fun along the way, but the having fun is not the primary goal. Having fun is the secondary goal.
At a certain point, you find that once the business is off the ground, having fun then continues to become the primary goal, and actually when you have fun as the primary goal, actually the business starts to get really good, but a lot of us are in the getting started stage, and in the getting started stage, we've gotta be optimising for this key thing. We've gotta be optimising for the value we are providing to others. And crucially, Essentially, it's only at this stage that I think you should worry about your niche. Most of you guys are less than 100 subscribers.
If you're less than 100 subscribers, don't worry about your niche, right? It doesn't matter. Just have a think, what videos would I want to, well, what videos do I like to make?
If you're an educational channel, you might like to think, what do I know right now that I didn't know two years ago or three years ago or five years ago? And what can I teach myself? What I want to talk about next is consistency and time management.
This is by far the most common question I get. In case you guys aren't familiar with my story, I used to be a doctor. I was working for a company called Pantene.
full-time. And for the first three years of my YouTube channel, I was a full-time medical student and then working full-time as a doctor here in the UK in the National Health Service, including during the pandemic. Now, I don't know about you guys, but if you have a real job, it is unfortunately not optional to go to that day job.
You have to rock up. You got to like wake up at 6.30, got to drive an hour to work in my case, got to be at work from like 8 a.m. to like 5.30 p.m. and hope that you don't have to stay behind late. You drive an hour back home from work.
It takes a bit longer because it's rush hour and everyone's trying to get home. You get home, you cook and you eat something. And then by that time, it's time to sleep again and then just repeat the process and go to work the next day.
And so like, where the hell do you find the time to make the YouTube videos? This was always a struggle for me in the first three years of my YouTube channel. Even now, I still struggle to find the time for YouTube videos because now I'm building a business and blah, blah, blah, and have a whole team of like 20 people and all that jazz. And I thought that, hey, when I become a full-time YouTuber, I'm gonna have so much time to make YouTube videos. But every full-time YouTuber I know also struggles to find the time to make YouTube videos.
videos. So if you're worried, if you're struggling with time management and you're struggling with consistency, don't worry about it. Even those of us with millions of subscribers and millions of dollars in revenue are struggling with time management and are struggling with consistency.
So like take solace in that. And so I want to share some of the things that have really helped in the world of creating educational content that makes it feel a little bit more effortless. Essentially what I realized after talking to a business coach who, this is kind of a fun story.
I was outside the hospital one day, this was like, two and a half years into my YouTube channel and some dude who was like some dude in his 40s he recognized me outside the hospital because I was in my scrubs he was like Ali Ali Abdaal I've been watching your YouTube channel and I asked him what he does and it turns out he was an executive coach for GSK GlaxoSmithKline which is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world and I asked oh what does an executive coach do and he said oh I you know I help them I help them grow their business and help them be more productive in their business which is kind of interesting and he offered to do a few free coaching sessions for me, which was kind of fun. And in one of these coaching sessions, I told him that like, I'm struggling with time management and consistency when it comes to my YouTube channel. And what we did was we got out a big piece of paper and we drew out the stages of video production.
And the first stage is idea generation. The next stage, you know, at the time, I was making the video first and then doing the title and thumbnail. But what I appreciate now is that title, thumbnail, and even hook, TTH, comes first. If there is only one one thing you take away from this talk, please make it that do not even think about what your video is going to be. Don't even think about writing the video unless you know what the title, thumbnail and hook is going to be.
You don't have to create the thumbnail in Canva or Photoshop and stuff, but like you should have a very good idea of what's the title, what is the thumbnail and what's the hook. And by hook, I mean the first 30 seconds, all of that stuff should be done way in advance of actually trying to write that video. So you start with the idea. This is the concept of the video.
You've got title, thumbnail, hook. Then it comes down to writing the video. Then it comes down to film. Then it comes down to edit. And then sort of like publish and analytics and stuff.
That sort of thing. And at the time, he asked me, you know, how much time are you spending at each level of the process? And I was spending like 10 hours a week on editing, which was just really dumb.
And he encouraged me to outsource my video editing. And so after two years of doing all my video editing myself, I decided to outsource my video editing. The number one tip, unfortunately, that I would recommend.
recommend for anyone who is struggling with consistency or time management is you cannot be editing your own videos unless you really, really, really love it. And if you really, really, really love it, then fine. Okay.
Is it the highest value thing you could be doing, et cetera, et cetera. But we're thinking like a business, right? Editing is for most channels, a thing that could be done by other people.
So you automatically free up a ridiculously large amount of time by just outsourcing your video editing. Then at this point, you're like, well, I'm not making enough money and et cetera, et cetera. And yeah, I w I w I would really be thinking, what is the dollar value of your time?
Maybe your YouTube channel isn't making money, but how much do you value your time? Would you rather edit videos for eight hours or would you rather spend those eight hours coming up with new ideas or coming up with filming new things or spending time with your family or hanging out with your kids? All of that stuff. What I realized is that even when my YouTube channel wasn't making money, I should have really outsourced my editing because I was working as a doctor.
I was earning like $15 an hour. So my time is worth at least $15 an hour, right? And I can find an editor for $10 an hour.
Great. Great, I've now got arbitrage on my time. I have now freed up this enormous bottleneck, which is the fact that it takes me 10 hours a week to do my editing.
So the first recommendation I would give is please, please, please outsource your video editing. People always have issues with this. I have a whole session in my course where we teach people how to outsource their video editing.
People are always like, oh, but I don't have the money, no one can edit like me, but like my style is so unique. And every time for the last four years, I've been saying to every student in my YouTuber academy that like, guys, come on, you just need to outsource your editing. Here's how you do it.
And- Every single person I've ever met who's actually outsource the editing has come back and said to me wow i'm so glad you pushed me to outsource my editing because now i have all this free time and now i'm not stressed anymore etc etc so if there is one thing you take away from this talk please let it be that if you are currently doing your video editing i would implore you do whatever you can to outsource that shit, get it off your plate, because usually for most people, editing is not the fun part of making YouTube videos. If it is, it's a different story, but you're kind of in the minority there. And if you do succeed on YouTube and start making some money, then you might want to invest that money with a service like Trading 212 who are very kindly sponsoring this video.
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Idea generation is kind of quick. Making a title and a thumbnail, like you just take a lot of photos, you have a thumbnail photo library, you have a house style for thumbnails, it's not that bad. The writing process has the potential to take a very large amount of time.
So if you are a and educational YouTuber and You are struggling to produce videos consistently. I would very much recommend not scripting your videos and Instead just talking through bullet points. Ideally when it comes to this thing around finding your niche Ideally the thing you're making videos about is something you feel you're enough of an expert in that You don't need to script things word for word because usually talking through bullet points. You're more confident on camera you're more comfortable doing it and and And it takes a lot less time than scripting videos word for word.
So what I realized for myself is that if I wanted to be consistent with making YouTube videos, especially when I had a day job, is that I could not script them word for word. I tried, but it would take me like 12 hours to script a video. And then I'd be trying to read it off a teleprompter. And then it would be a total shit show. And I'll be like, oh, I'm stumbling over my words.
And so if I just remove that requirement to script things word for word, and I just thought about bullet points, then that made all the difference. So number one is no scripting. No scripting.
Uh, number two. is that there is a magic number of things to say in a video and that magic number is three. Back in the day and even to this day I still feel the need to say more than three things in the video.
I still feel like ah I need to say nine things or eleven or thirteen or seventeen things to make this video worthwhile because I have all this imposter syndrome. What I realized over time is that the audience cannot take in seventeen different pieces of information. Three at an absolute stretch four or five is a good sweet spot.
So now when I'm thinking about making a video once I figure out what I want to say in a video figured out what the title and thumbnail and hook is, I think, okay, if I had to only say three things, what are the three things that I would say for this video? And I'm going to show you exactly what my script writing process is. So in the chat, can you give me a video title? And I'll pick a random video title and I will show you exactly what the process looks like of how I would turn that into a YouTube video.
How to raise your self-worth. Amanda Welliver. Okay, that's actually good. I've never done a video about how to raise your self-worth.
So let's see what this process would look like. Okay, cool. We start off with a concept, which is sort of something about self-worth going up. Now I need to think about title, thumbnail, and hook. So how to raise your self-worth.
What I'm thinking about is that, is this really the best framing for this topic? So this is literally the process that me and my team go through. How to raise your self-worth. What I'm doing is I'm doing some title and thumbnail research and I'm figuring out, okay, does this video have, like, what is the framing of this video that would make this have the best chance of getting views?
So okay, so we've got self-esteem from Psych2Go. Ooh, watch this if you're struggling with your self-worth. 1.2 million views. That seems promising. Psych2Go is a very big YouTube channel, so like, you know, I'm not going to take that with a bit of a pinch of salt.
How to improve your self-esteem. 500K on Jay Shetty's video, struggling with low self-esteem. Essentially, well, I'll just go through YouTube and I'll think, okay, other than the title of how to raise your self-worth, is there a better way of framing this video?
Is it about self-esteem? Is it about self-worth? Is it about not caring what other people think?
Is it about how to be more confident in yourself? Could I frame a video about self-worth based on confidence? This is sort of the thought process because one of the things that I've really realized about YouTube over time is that 80% of the value is in these two things, literally 80%.
It's the concept, the title, and the thumbnail, and the hook. If you can get this stuff right, it like massively increases your chances of this video potentially going big and potentially growing your channel, which is why it's worth not just going with the first title that comes to mind, How to Raise Your Self-Worth, but to think about like, what are the different alternative framings of this title that I could potentially do? Okay, so as I'm looking at these view counts, what I'm seeing is that something around confidence seems to be getting more views than something around self-worth.
I can still make a view. a video about self-worth, but the packaging of the video is just in the initial framing of it. So if I were just thinking about this out loud, how might, so I know I wanna do a video about self-worth, and if I can frame it in the language of confidence, what might that look like?
This is literally what we go through when we do our thingies. Now we think, okay, cool, what's point number one, what's point number two, and what's point number three? Okay, so if I were doing this video, how to raise your self-worth, or how to become more confident, I would be kind of, point number one would be get out. of your own way, where I would say something about kind of most of the blockers that hold us back are internal blockers.
We think that it's actually external circumstances, but actually it's internal blockers, et cetera. That's point number one. The next thing I'm going to say is that competence equals confidence. So it's very hard to have high self-worth if you've never done anything interesting. So I might say, I don't really believe in the sort of, you should just love yourself as you are.
I believe in it in that it's a great thing to aspire to. to I think most of us find it very hard to just spontaneously love ourselves as we are without any evidence so competence equals confidence equals evidence and the third thing I would say is Affirmations or something. I actually think affirmations are great.
Affirmations and mantras. These are the only three things I'm saying in this video. The video is about how to raise your self-worth or how to be more confident or something like that. I'll finalize the title.
Get out your own way. Competence equals confidence. Affirmations and mantras are like a nice thing to do. Then I have a video creation framework that's called the HIVES framework. H stands for hook.
I stands for intro. V stands for value. And ES stands for.
End screen sales pitch. At the end of your videos, we don't wanna hear any of this bullshit that's like like, comment, subscribe, blah, blah, blah. As soon as the audience gets even a whiff that the video is about to end, they will click off the video.
So we need an end screen sales pitch. Hey, if you guys enjoyed this video, you're gonna love this video over here where I break down in more detail exactly how to be more confident when you're feeling awkward in social situations. So check out that video right over here. That's the end screen. Not, all right guys, you know.
This was a really hard video to make. You know, I really appreciate all the love I'm getting, all the support I'm getting from you guys. Oh man, I just love reading the comments. It's so nice.
I hope you guys enjoy the video. You know, drop a comment down below and let me know what you think. Blah, blah, blah. People are just gonna turn off and you'll see your end screen like retention absolutely plummet.
We want an end screen sales pitch. We've got, we want a hook. To me, the hook is just the promise.
I think with educational content, hooks are easy enough. The Think Media YouTube channel actually does a really good job of hooks. We often use Think Media's YouTube channel as a thing, as like an example.
when we teach sessions for our own YouTuber Academy. Because you guys do a really good job of, you know, I remember one of Omar's videos was, in this video, I'm going to show you how to set up the perfect studio setup with a budget with under $100. Let's get into it.
It's like, oh, that's a nice hook. Omar El-Takori is telling me exactly what I'm getting in this video. Because essentially, when someone clicks on the title and thumbnail, what we're doing is we're creating an expectation in the viewer's mind.
So the Think Media... Video of how to set up your studio with under $100. I click on that video expecting to learn how to set up a studio for under $100.
Now with educational content, I can get away with my hook basically just being the title of the video. So if my title of the video is how to raise your self worth or how to be more confident, in this video, I'm going to share my top three tips for how you can be more confident. Easy. That's a hook.
That's the promise. We don't need to overthink it. The nice thing about educational channels is we don't need to do, oh my God, guys, in this video, we're going to give a million dollars to the person who's got the highest self-confidence and we're going to go.
to go on a trip and we're also going to do this and we're also going to do that sort of stuff is kind of necessary in the world of entertainment. Thankfully, it's not massively necessary in the world of education if what you have to say is sufficiently valuable. Oh, by the way, if you are enjoying this video, then you're probably the sort of person who will get a lot of value from the Part-Time YouTuber Academy.
This is my online course and community that we've been building for the last four years. We've got thousands of students from all around the world and the idea is that we'll teach you everything that me and my team have learned about how to build a multi-million subscriber, multi-million dollar YouTube channel, but also... We're going to give you the systems, the processes, the tools, the templates. You can literally just copy and paste them into your own system.
And you'll be part of this online community. We do regular online workshops. We share a lot of stuff. My team's always in the Circle community, responding to people and sharing useful stuff.
And we also do in real life meetups at various points throughout the year. So we might like to see you at one of those. Anyway, if any of that sounds good, you might like to check out the Part-Time YouTuber Academy linked down below.
Next up, we have an intro. Now the intro is optional, but if there's only one thing that you take away from this talk, I would recommend you figure out what... what your intro would be. You don't have to include an intro in every video, but I personally think it's a good idea. An intro is who are you and why should the audience care?
In my humble opinion, the point of the intro is to explain who you are, welcome the audience to your channel, and give them a sense of your credibility. Like why should they give a shit that you are the one making this video? You know, audiences are paying for your video. They're not paying with their dollars, they're paying with their time and their attention, which is even more valuable than money. So what is it about you that is deserving of their time and attention?
You can do that within your intro. So for example, for me, seven years ago, I started making videos aimed at medical school applicants in the UK. And so I would say, hey guys, welcome back to the channel.
If you're new here, my name is Ali. I'm a final year medical student at Cambridge University. And in this video, I'm going to talk about how to do your interview prep if you're applying to med school.
The fact that I'm a final year medical student at Cambridge University is a massive factor in how I'm going to do my interview prep. So I'm going to talk about flex and it's social proof and it's credibility and it's like oh this guy knows his stuff that's why he's talking about this it is so much easier to grow a youtube channel when you actually have some real world credibility for the thing that you're trying to teach in the world of education yes you could be a 17 year old life coach if you really want to but it's very hard to grow a youtube channel as a 17 year old life coach so for example self-worth and confidence here is what i would do hook in this video we're going to talk about my top three tips for raising your self-worth so that you can be more confident in any situation. Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
If you're new here, my name is Ali. I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur, and I'm the author of the New York Times bestseller, Feel Good Productivity, Flex Flex. You know, I've been making YouTube videos now for seven years. And in that time, I've made over 900 YouTube videos. Now, when I started out, I was super unconfident.
I had very low self-worth. I had imposter syndrome all the time. And now seven years later, I've learned so much along the way, and I've learned all these strategies and tools that I can use to be more confident.
And now I feel like I genuinely do love myself. I genuinely... have high self-worth and now get invited to give talks and do stuff live and it's just super fun and so in this video I really want to share everything I've learned along the way hook intro and why why I'm the person to do this crucially you don't need to have major flex credentials one major kind of flexible one major credential you could have is just the fact that you used to struggle with the thing and now you don't struggle with it anymore so you have learned something along the way one of the things I don't like about YouTube is that it's very easy to think that you have to be a guru A guru is someone who has all the answers. But I don't like being a guru, I prefer to be a guide.
A guru says, this is what you should do. A guide says, hey, here's how I did it and maybe it can work for you. And so reiterating in your intro that actually, this topic is this thing that you've learned about, it's something that you have personal experience in, that can really help viewers feel more relaxed, feel more like they can trust you.
And it's a thing that you can just do for any video. Then you give them the value, which is point one, point two and point three, then you give them the end screen sales pitch. And now the video is done. And honestly, this is the level of prep I do for most of my videos. Point one, point two, and point three.
Maybe I'll write it out in Notion a bit, maybe I'll add a few bullet points to be like, okay, competence equals confidence. Maybe I want to cite this study. I think I'll use Bandura's self-efficacy because I'm familiar with the research around it.
Maybe I can talk about my book there. Yep, cool. That's fine.
Affirmations and mantras. I can talk about manifestation and how that works. I can talk about Hebb's law. In neuroscience that neurons that fire together wire together and so actually if you repeat something often enough to yourself You genuinely start to believe the thing.
Okay, cool. Yep. I can talk about that So that makes it a bit juicier and getting out of your own way internal blockers.
Well Hmm, I can talk about how 80% of all issues are emotional issues When it comes to business when it comes to YouTube when it comes to anything I don't really have any data for that stat, but that's fine and Okay, cool. Yep, I'm ready to film the video. This is literally the process that I use to make videos. And this is what I've been doing for the last 900 plus videos on my channel over the last seven years, because I found that when I have to spend freaking ages trying to research the topic, it takes the joy out of it.
It makes it take way too long. And ideally, I would like to make a YouTube channel that is a guide. It's not a guru.
A guide doesn't need to do research. A guide can just say, hey, I've done this thing and here's what I've learned along the way and I hope you find it useful. Let's go into the Q&A now. Robert says, for Ali, if you were to write a new book after Feel Good Productivity, what would it be about and what are you excited to share that wasn't in this one? Ooh, okay, that's interesting.
I kind of want to draw a diagram here because I think there's something interesting here. There's like, sort of this idea of... of what's your niche. So for example, if anyone knows who Ryan Holiday is, if you had to use one word to describe what Ryan Holiday does, what is that one word? He is the stoicism guy.
Because he's written loads and loads of books about stoicism. He's known as the stoicism guy. If you had to use one word to describe James Clear, what would that word be?
Probably habits. He is the habits guy. If you had to use one word to describe Mark Manson, what would that word be? That word is fuck.
No, it's obviously subtle. Subtle is the word that used to, you know, um, habits is a very, very highly lucrative word to be known for. So James Clear makes loads of money for corporate speaking.
Stoicism is pretty lucrative. The F word is not lucrative at all. So Mark Manson does not make any money doing corporate speaking gigs because it's not corporate friendly.
Now, if you you had to use one word to describe Ali Abdaal, what would that word be? I'm hoping you will say one word. And I'm hoping that word is productivity.
And so when it comes to positioning your brand or your whatever as a thought leader, it's useful to figure out like, what is the thing I wanna be known for? What is the word? What is the phrase? Cal Newport.
Well, he's kind of the deep work guy. Tim Ferriss. Well, whether he likes it or not, he's the four hour guy. Ramit Sethi, the I will teach you to be rich guy or the money guy.
It's useful to know what that is. that thing is. And so just as a bit of an interactive thingy to the audience, if like 10 years from now, as you continue down your journey as an educational creator, what would you like people, what's the one word or phrase you'd like to be associated with your brand? So for me, I like being the productivity guy.
That is highly lucrative. If I wanted to make money, I could do loads of, I can find lots of ways to monetize productivity. It's fun. I can reframe productivity and almost like redefine it to be not just about work, but about holistic time management.
and using our time well, blah, blah, blah. And so what I'm trying to figure out for my next book is, the first one is feel good productivity. So feel good productivity is the first one.
And so the challenge is, how do I keep the word productivity being my word, but like still do something that's interesting? So something I'm thinking about is like productive relationships is kind of interesting. Something about like how to not waste your life is kind of interesting, it's about productivity. So it's like, I'm not really sure, but I would love any ideas if you can give me in the chat, like if you guys have any idea for. for a future book that I could do.
Why is it that some of my videos will get 10,000 views and some won't even get 500 when I feel like I'm copying the same format each time? Could it just be the topic? This is a big question. Why do some videos get more views than others? What we have found is that it basically comes down to the concept of the video.
Now I could make a video called how to raise your self-worth and maybe it'll get 100,000 views. I could make a video called five passive income ideas for teenagers, how to make $10,000 a month in your sleep. Which of those do you think is gonna get more views? Hint, it's not the one about self-care because no one gives a shit about self-worth in relation to the amount of kids that there are on YouTube who wanna learn how to make money.
So a lot of it is down to the concept and we have done so many analyses of the analytics on our channel. We have like millions of views, we can do all the analysis and we have found that... honestly, the thing that makes a video get more views is just that the concept was more viral. The concept had more views, like the concept of the video, what the video is actually about, that sort of dictates the ceiling of how many views you could reasonably expect to get. If I searched YouTube and I was doing a video about self-worth and I found that the most of you, the most views anyone's ever got on a video about self-worth is like 50,000.
My video is probably not going to break 50,000 views. But if I search, YouTube for passive income ideas and I see that the videos with 30 million views Okay, you know that that specific concept has a little bit more potential the other thing to keep in mind I've attended a lot of events hosted by YouTube a lot of these like fancy invite only youtubers summit in Valencia where the YouTube team and the algorithm team hangs out. And I've chatted, I've sat next to dinner with people who are literally engineers for the YouTube algorithm.
And I always ask them about the algorithm. And there's one thing they always say, the algorithm is the audience. and content is king. The algorithm is the audience. When you're asking, why does the algorithm not dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, just replace the word algorithm with the word audience.
Why does the audience not like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why does the audience not care about this particular video? Why does the audience not? And if you think about the real people that you're trying to target, the real people that are on the other end, paying to watch your video with their time and attention, that person could be spending time with their kids, but they're not.
They're paying that time to watch your video. What would that person want? And so that's the thing that we always like try and get to.
This is the mantra that I read to myself whenever I film a video. I don't care about the performance of this video. My only goal in making it is to share a message that I think is worth sharing for whoever wants to hear it.
This is gonna sound a bit woo, but I intend to integrate my mind, heart and soul into this and to share this message in a way that. feels authentic and natural. Three, I am not trying to force anything here.
I'm merely speaking from the heart with the mind to inform structure and content and the soul to remain connected to the purpose behind the video. I'm going to enjoy myself and treat this process with lightness and ease. my deathbed, I'd give anything to be back here in the present moment, doing what I love, sharing myself with the world in a way that's enjoyable and energizing. I'm going to keep that in mind and not treat this process with too much seriousness, heaviness, or importance because we're just filming fucking YouTube videos again at the end of the day, guys, like we don't need to be too serious about it. And finally, I'm speaking to an individual who really cares what I have to say and who really wants to learn from me to level up their own life.
I'm in service to that person, not to my own ego, not to the retention stats, not to the algorithm. I'm purely in service to the person who has clicked. clicked on this video and whose life can be genuinely changed by what I'm about to say. I read this to myself whenever I film a video because it helps me appreciate that this is not about the views.
It's not about the algorithm. It's not about like the thing. It's not about the outcome. It's about the fact that I can potentially share a message that has the potential to help at least one person. And I can do that in a way that's fun.
And by staying core to that truth, yeah, there's all this shit around like the titles and the thumbnails and the strategy and all that kind of stuff. All of that stuff is kind of secondary to the value that I'm potentially hoping to give to the person on the other end of the Screen and the fact that I'm enjoying the process while doing so How do we outsource our editing? Where can we find people to edit? There is a method here This is the method you want to create a job description Where you give people a trial task and the trial task that I recommend that I recommend for all our students in our youtuber Academy is you upload raw footage of yourself speaking to the camera, like a raw, you know, the thing straight out of the camera from your video.
You upload it to a Google Drive or a Dropbox or whatever, and you find editors and the trial task should be to just edit the first... first 60 seconds of that video in your style. Then as you get people applying for that job, they're submitting their application, which is the first 60 seconds of the edit.
And that means you can instantly judge, is this video editor actually good or are they pretty crap? And then the next question becomes, okay, now how do you get people to actually see that? How do you get people to apply?
Well, if you have an audience, it's easy. You just put it out to your audience. You put out an Instagram story, a YouTube community post, a newsletter issue, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever the thing might be. And you say to your audience, hey guys, I'm looking for a video editor. If you're interested, apply.
lie here. If you don't have an audience, it's tricky because now you have to go to a place where video editors hang out. So you could go to ytjobs.com, YouTube jobs. You could go to Upwork, you could go to Fiverr, you could go to People Per Hour.
People Per Hour is the one I recommend. People Per Hour is how I found my first editor when I didn't put it out to my audience. I'm gonna give you a few like benchmarks.
If you currently outsource your editing, how much in US dollars do you pay for a video? video to be edited. How much do you pay in US dollars for a video to be edited? In my experience, $50 per video gets you a really bad video editor.
Yes, you can find a diamond in the rough, but you're gonna spend ages trying to find the- like there might be a 13 year old kid in Pakistan who will do it for $50 a video, but you're gonna be going through loads and loads and loads and loads of 13 year old kids in Pakistan to find someone who's really good at $50 per video. I think around sort of 100 to 150, you can get a reasonable editor, probably in a country where the US dollar is particularly strong, 100 to $150 per video, per video. That gets you a reasonable editor.
When you're getting into about 200 to 300, you get a good editor. When you get to about 500, you get a very good editor. And we currently pay a thousand pounds, which is $1,300 to our editors, which gives you world class.
This to me is the sort of the spectrum of the amount you pay for video editing. When I first started trying to outsource editing, I tried to do $50 a video and I tried one person and they were terrible. And I was like, oh, no one can edit videos.
Like I can't. I should just keep editing my own videos. And I kept editing my own videos for like ages. When I moved to paying 100 to 150 per video, That was when I got an editor that was actually quite good. I would say he was good rather than reasonable.
I found him on people per hour. People per hour. These numbers, it's all like, how much is your time worth, right?
Like for me, my business is huge. So of course I can pay $1,300 per video. Back when I was working as a doctor, my channel I think was making about 3K a month.
And so of course I could afford to pay $150 per video because my channel was making 3K a month. It just sort of depends on your circumstances. You could probably find... let's you know i'm from pakistan so let's say i was actually living in pakistan i would find a local video editor super cheap but it would take me ages to find the local video editor because most people are not very good just in general um this is not just in pakistan just like in general most people are not very good at the thing they're trying to do a few people are very good and those few people know how much their worth is so it would take me a while to find the editor essentially there's this balance the more money you're willing to pay for an editor the less time you have to spend finding that person and dealing with that person and feeding back on their videos the less money you're willing to pay for an editor the more you have to pay for that in terms of time, because it's gonna take way longer to find that person.
This is roughly for like 10 to 20 minute long video. Most editors don't charge by the minute and you're gonna, yeah, about a 10 to 20 minute long video. Another context that might be interesting, for two hour long episodes of our podcast, we pay $600 to our podcast video editor to do a whole podcast edit. But yeah, hope that helps. Okay, cool.
Next question. Was it easy for you to be yourself when you started your channel or did you try to be someone else? Great question. Actually, the person I tried to be was Peter McKinnon.
I have so much love for Peter McKinnon. I love the guy. Peter McKinnon is a big part of why I started the YouTube channel.
Peter McKinnon made photo and video tutorials fun. He added personality to the whole thing and he made me feel like, oh, I'm learning Lightroom. I'm learning Photoshop.
I'm learning how to use a camera and stuff and I'm enjoying the process. And so I would watch Peter McKinnon's vlogs all the time. I'd watch all of his videos and I thought, okay, can I be the Peter McKinnon of med school? Can I make talking about boring medical topics? Vibey and personality in the same way that Peter McKinnon does.
And so, you know, there's this idea of imitate then innovate. Imitate then innovate. Start off when you're a beginner by trying to imitate the people that you admire.
And then over time you can worry about the innovation later. So actually... my failure to imitate Peter McKinnon has resulted in the person I am today because I'm way more confident on camera now, again, thanks to Peter McKinnon because I've been doing this for a long time and I started off basically trying to copy what he does. I didn't do the, what's up guys?
But I, you know, I tried to think how would Peter McKinnon talk about medical school admissions, kind of weirdly. And my failure to imitate Peter McKinnon ended up in the personality that I now have, which is basically my authentic personality now. So yeah, good vibes. Matthias, hey Ali, I've seen that you've turned your videos longer in the past few months and my question is basically if it's working and how did you impact your channel?
How do you think people that maybe don't have that much credibility here can make longer videos and make it appealing for new audiences? I think it's really hard to make long videos appealing unless they're really, really good. It doesn't... really matter how long your videos are, but generally it is harder to make a longer video because it takes more scripting. If you script your videos, it takes more filming, it takes more editing.
So what I would personally recommend if you're starting out and don't have much credibility, eight to 12 minutes is very good. Either that or you go hyper long form. So there is a friend of mine called Simon Squibb who released a video recently that went super mega viral. 30 years of business knowledge in two hours and 26 minutes.
Two hours and 26 minutes is a long ass time. Also, he's got 30 years of business knowledge that he's condensing into those two hours, 26 minutes. It's a really good video. 3.9 million views published one month ago. Simon's channel absolutely exploded since this video has come out a month ago.
So there's like normal video length, which to me is eight to 12 minutes for an educational channel. channel. And then there is hyper long form, which is ridiculously long, where in a way, the fact that it's ridiculously long is an indication to the audience to be like, holy shit, this is ridiculously long. This must have so much value packed into it.
But generally what I'd recommend eight to 12 minutes is a good, a good length. One of the things that you guys might find interesting is when we analyze all of our students of our part-time YouTuber Academy, we've had like 5,000 people go through the Academy. The ones who have succeeded have broadly been the ones who have lent into some sort of unfair advantage. advantage. If you have an unfair advantage that would be difficult for someone else to replicate, I think you're far more likely to succeed on YouTube.
We all have unfair advantages. Sometimes it's difficult to see what they are from the inside because we don't know ourselves. So one question that you might find interesting to ask your friends and family is, what am I good at? What do you think I'm good at? If you had a question about something like, what are the sorts of things you might, like your friends and family might want to learn from you?
And what is it about you that they will, they would want to learn that? Maybe you're particularly good at like empathy. and so you can teach people about emotional intelligence.
Maybe the fact that you've been working in SaaS sales for the last 20 years is like, means that you know a lot about how B2B sales work. So you can do a YouTube channel talking about that, leaning into your unfair advantage. What I personally feel is that the more you can lean into advantages that you already have, the more likely you are to grow on YouTube.
I don't know how we got to that point, but yeah. Okay, so that brings us to the end of the video. If you have gotten to this point, you probably care about growing a YouTube channel. And so firstly, could I request that if you have anything specific that you'd like to know about, please.
can you leave a comment down below because I want to make way more videos helping people be greatest because I love this stuff and it's my jam and it's just really fun to talk about. So if you could leave a comment on this video with whatever you're struggling with, I can try my best to make a video on that topic. And actually, if you do want a more comprehensive video about what I would do if I was starting a channel completely from scratch today, then check out this video over here.
Thanks for watching and see you later. Bye.