#242: Mark Manson – Why YouTubers aren’t making more money [Greatest Hits]

Summary

Creator Science Podcast Episode #242: Mark Manson – Why YouTubers Aren’t Making More Money [Greatest Hits]

Release Date: May 27, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode #242 of Creator Science, host Jay Clouse delves into the intricate business dynamics behind successful YouTube channels with renowned author and entrepreneur, Mark Manson. Known for his bestselling book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck,"* Mark brings a wealth of experience in scaling YouTube channels and navigating the often unstable monetization landscape of the platform. This episode offers deep insights into why many YouTubers struggle financially despite high view counts and explores strategies for creators to build sustainable and profitable businesses.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Business Side of YouTube

Mark Manson emphasizes the critical yet often overlooked business aspects that underpin successful YouTube channels. He notes that while many creators focus solely on content creation, they neglect essential business operations such as hiring, managing teams, clear communication, setting proper incentives, and optimizing monetization funnels.

Mark Manson [01:29]: "Most YouTuber businesses are incredibly unstable if these channels are getting this many views and they clearly have no idea what they're doing on the business side, there's a ton of opportunity here."

2. Challenges in Hiring for YouTube Channels

Both Jay and Mark discuss the difficulties in assembling a professional team for YouTube operations. Mark highlights the dichotomy between hiring from traditional media versus within the YouTube ecosystem, pointing out that traditional professionals often come with high expectations and a sense of entitlement, while younger YouTube-based hires may lack professionalism and essential workplace skills.

Mark Manson [07:06]: "You really have two options if you want to hire somebody really good. One is you go poach from Hollywood... and then on the YouTube side... there's just this complete lack of professionalism."

3. Monetization Issues on YouTube

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around the inadequacy of YouTube's monetization model. Mark argues that relying solely on YouTube’s ad revenue and brand sponsorships is insufficient and often unstable. He advocates for diversifying revenue streams through podcasts, newsletters, products, and services to create a more reliable income.

Mark Manson [12:42]: "The monetization on YouTube is actually not great. Like YouTube as a business, financially on its own... it's not getting paid super well for the amount of eyeballs and audience that you're generating."

4. Importance of Diversifying Platforms

Mark stresses the importance of not putting all eggs in one basket. By expanding into multiple platforms, creators can enhance their revenue potential and reduce dependency on YouTube's fluctuating algorithms and policies.

Mark Manson [12:42]: "Even like diversifying your platforms, like podcasting, for example, is financially way superior. You get paid way more per unit of effort for a podcast than you do for a YouTube video."

5. Content Strategy: Growth vs. Engagement

The discussion delves into the balance between creating growth-oriented content that attracts new viewers and engagement-oriented content that fosters a deeper connection with the existing audience. Mark highlights the importance of not sacrificing long-term audience loyalty for short-term view spikes.

Mark Manson [23:40]: "Generally, the things that are going to get the most reach don't develop the deepest relationship... you definitely want some sort of mix of both and there needs to be a ratio of both within your content."

6. Brand Sponsorships and Their Pitfalls

Mark shares his experiences and lessons learned from engaging in brand sponsorships. He explains how many sponsors focus on immediate view metrics without considering conversion rates or audience relevance, leading to short-lived and often unprofitable partnerships for creators.

Mark Manson [27:32]: "We're actually going to start seeing more of that down the road. But I would say the biggest lessons that I've learned is... brands are going to leave if your audience isn't buying their stuff."

7. Building a Sustainable Business Behind YouTube

Towards the end of the episode, Mark outlines actionable steps for creators to professionalize their operations. He emphasizes the necessity of treating a YouTube channel as a serious business venture, encompassing aspects like education on business management, understanding customer lifetime value, and preparing for long-term sustainability.

Mark Manson [36:08]: "If you want to have the longevity... take it very, very seriously."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Mark Manson [01:05]: "It's incredible to have a space to learn alongside other people, sharing best practices, asking for help, giving help, lifting each other up."

• Mark Manson [04:21]: "Nothing on the back end of views, like nothing. And that's it?"

• Mark Manson [07:06]: "Most YouTuber businesses are incredibly unstable if these channels are getting this many views and they clearly have no idea what they're doing on the business side, there's a ton of opportunity here."

• Mark Manson [12:42]: "The monetization on YouTube is actually not great. Like YouTube as a business, financially on its own... it's not getting paid super well for the amount of eyeballs and audience that you're generating."

• Mark Manson [23:40]: "Generally, the things that are going to get the most reach don't develop the deepest relationship."

• Mark Manson [27:32]: "Your audience isn't buying our stuff, so thank you, but we're out of here."

• Mark Manson [36:08]: "If you want to have the longevity... take it very, very seriously."

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Conclusion and Insights

This episode of Creator Science with Mark Manson serves as a crucial reminder that content creation extends beyond producing engaging videos. For YouTubers aiming to achieve financial success and sustainability, understanding and managing the business facets are paramount. Mark's insights encourage creators to adopt a holistic approach—balancing content growth with audience engagement, diversifying revenue streams, professionalizing operational processes, and building long-term relationships with both their audience and brand partners.

By treating their YouTube channels as serious business ventures and investing in the necessary business acumen, creators can navigate the volatile landscape of online content and build resilient, profitable enterprises.

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Join the Lab Community: If you're a creator looking to elevate your business with evidence-backed strategies, consider joining The Lab, Jay Clouse's membership community. Whether you’re earning $10,000 per month or just starting, The Lab offers valuable resources and a supportive peer group to help you grow your audience and income. Learn more and apply at creatorscience.com Lab.

Transcript

[Jay]

You've probably heard the phrase you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I don't know if things are quite that simple, but here's what I do believe the fastest way to grow is to be around others who are pushing themselves. And that's what our membership community, the Lab, is all about. The Lab is an out of the box peer group of creators like you who are pushing themselves to expand their reach and generate more revenue. Our standard in VIP tier is application based and looks for creators earning $10,000 per month or more. On average, our Standard and VIP members earn nearly $37,000 per month. But don't worry if you're not there yet. You can join our Basic tier today without an application. Inside the Basic tier you get access to all of my educational material as well as my personal monthly behind the scenes videos where I break down what's happening in my own business. My courses in Creator HQ alone are worth $1,600 and you can join the Basic tier for less than half of that. Above all, the Lab is all about the people. It's the most active community I'm a part of and I'm constantly blown away by the generosity and speed members jump in with to help each other. And if you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe Kat.

[Mark Manson]

It's incredible to have a space to learn alongside other people, sharing best practices, asking for help, giving help, lifting each other up. It really has helped me to feel a sense of camaraderie and a sense of momentum as well.

[Jay]

Later in this episode, I'll tell you more about our upcoming two day event exclusively for members of the Lab. But for now you can learn more and join [e-mail] Lab.

[Mark Manson]

Most YouTuber businesses are incredibly unstable if these channels are getting this many views and they clearly have no idea what they're doing on the business side, there's a ton of opportunity here.

[Jay]

Meet Mark Manson. Mark is an author who wrote the best selling book the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Wait, no. Mark is a YouTuber who. Hold on.

[Mark Manson]

I guess I identify as like a creator or an entrepreneur first.

[Jay]

This entrepreneur first approach is how Mark has been able to speedrun YouTube success, gaining 2 million subscribers in just two years. But beyond subscriber growth, here's why that approach is really important.

[Mark Manson]

The monetization on YouTube is actually not great.

[Jay]

In this episode we break down Mark's whole approach to YouTube from content strategy.

[Mark Manson]

There's growth oriented content and there's engagement oriented content. Content. It's very hard to optimize for both of those things in the same piece.

[Jay]

Of content to how he's setting up his channel for long term success.

[Mark Manson]

Most YouTube power users are probably teenagers or early 20s. What are they going to be interested in seeing, say, five years from now? How can I be already excellent at that by the time they get there?

[Jay]

And now let's talk with Mark Manson. What have you seen in terms of how entrepreneurial most YouTubers seem to be?

[Mark Manson]

I'm going to be honest, I was a little shocked. I mean, granted, the average YouTuber is quite young, but I was shocked at the lack of business sense and expertise. I noticed this too when I started hiring. I hired most of the people on my team, worked for other large YouTube channels, and the things that they would tell me about how their previous YouTube channels functioned was absolutely shocking to me. It actually made me more bullish on the space because I'm like, okay, if these channels are getting this many views and building audiences this big and they clearly have no idea what they're doing on the business side, there's a ton of opportunity here. We are still very, very early innings. And I guess I'll be a little bit specific here. When I say the business side, what I mean is like nuts and bolts stuff. So hiring, managing clear communication, setting incentives properly, monetization, like optimizing funnels. Right. So if somebody comes in through my YouTube channel and they subscribe and they watch a bunch of videos, obviously the next thing I want to do is get them onto my newsletter. And then once they're on their newsletter, I want to like get them into a product or buying a book or signing up for a course. And it shocked me how many youtubers not only like did not have those processes figured out, but didn't even know that that's what you should be doing.

[Jay]

Just nothing on the back end of views, like nothing. And that's it?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, it's like maybe a brand sponsor. But even then they're like, I don't know how to negotiate a price. I kind of just take whatever price they get. I'm sitting there, I'm like, dude, you get like 2 million views a video. What are you talking. You should be getting paid like three times as much as you're getting paid. It was shocking. I went to a dinner here in LA and I met a guy, wonderful guy, super nice, but yeah, probably early 20s, YouTube channel, over 10 million subscribers. And one of the first questions he asked me was about taxes. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, what do you do for taxes? I'm like, I have a fucking cpa. Sorry, can I curse? Of course. I'm getting worked up over here. Of course. I just, I kind of looked at him, I'm like, how much money are you making? Oh my God. So I actually think, and this is why I'm like, I'm, I'm really thrilled with like, you know, what you're doing and what Nathan's doing, what Colin and Samir are doing. Like, I think this is so important because I think this space, the, the audience of this space has grown so quickly and the, and the creators growing. These audiences are so young and they've never had a real job. A lot of them never went to college. We need to get the business side caught up, right? Like all this stuff that happened with Mr. Beast this year, it's funny cause I've actually hired people who used to work for him and I heard the stories from them and I posted a little bit publicly. But I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, man, this guy, he's gonna have. Something really bad's gonna happen, like something on set or there's going to be a big lawsuit or something, you know, and all this stuff that has come out and it's not surprising. It's like you've got this 20 year old guy who has never had a job in his life and he's making millions of dollars and he's hanging out like his employees are his high school friends. Like, of course, of course it's going to be a rat's nest of a business for four or five years until he gets it straightened out. So I think there's, for those, the people listening who are early in their creator career or even if you're well along. The business side of this is so important. You have to take it seriously as, treat it as a startup, treat it as a small business. And if you don't enjoy that side of it, you really need to go find somebody who you can either hire or who can advise you to do these things properly because you can absolutely shoot yourself in the foot.

[Jay]

Yeah, this is true. Not just of the face on screen, but the teams too. We've gone through some thumbnail artists and our first thumbnail artists that we had on the channel, Super Talented, couldn't get them to respond to an email or a message to save our life. And it wasn't that they didn't deliver, but we had no reason to believe that they would. We would just get the Files in our inbox, hopefully before the deadline that we asked for them. But no communication up to that point. And it was so frustrating. Like, really talented young people who just don't have communication. And it's really hard to work. It's really hard to do a professional endeavor when you're not working with professionals.

[Mark Manson]

A hundred percent. I actually, you know, so we. I have a team of about 15 people, of which about half are on the video production side of things. And it's funny because I find it twice as hard to hire People for YouTube and podcast production than any other aspect of my business. And what I have found is that you really have two options if you want to hire somebody really good. You kind of have two options in this space. One is you. You go poach from Hollywood. You poach somebody from traditional. And what I found with people from traditional is that a, they are vastly overpaid and very entitled. Like, they expect. They expect you to move moons for them before they even, like, set their foot in the door. And for them, it's like they're taking. YouTube is low prestige. So they kind of have this arrogance about them. And so that's super frustrating. And then on the YouTube side, like you just said, there's just this complete lack of professionalism. And I've run into it too, with editors, producers, thumbnail people. And a lot of it is just because it's a lot of people who. They started editing in high school for their friend, and they started getting paid for it, and now they still do it. And they're 22. They've never had a real job, They've never worked for a real company. So they don't have those communication skills, the punctuality, the dependability, like knowing how to communicate to a boss, knowing how to communicate to a client. They've never had to learn that stuff. And it's. Yeah, they don't stick around on my team very long because I just don't tolerate it. Yeah, I'm like, I don't have time to train you, man. Go figure this out.

[Jay]

The plus side on the hiring front is I find that I get to just act like a talent scout a lot of the time, where even if I'm not actively hiring, I'm kind of building these lists of people where I see their work, and it's like, wow, that person is really talented. They're probably undervalued by the market, and we can create something really great together. Probably as a stepping off point for them to do something that can pay more than I can at some point. But it's fun to collaborate with really talented people in this space because now the people that you're hiring, they grew up on YouTube, they breathe the culture, and so they can bring so much to you, the creator, and the channel as a whole. Because nobody that I've hired on the video front has had the same viewer behavior as me, which is super valuable when you have people that their YouTube thing is just vastly different than yours in terms of what they like to watch.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And I'll add to what you said, I agree about the talent thing. When you do find a really talented person in the YouTube space, they tend to be fantastic. And the other thing I'll add is that what I have found is that because most YouTuber businesses are incredibly unstable and poorly managed, if I can be an island of stability, I've noticed that really talented people, YouTube people, they just feel so relieved. Like they're just so. They feel very safe and taken care of on my team. And again, I saw that as a competitive advantage that I could have of like, hey, I know how to manage people. I've got like a really steady revenue stream. You're going to get paid, you're going to have work, you're not going to have to worry about the ups and downs. You know, if a brand sponsors, if a brand cancels this month, like, it's not like the world is ending, things are going to move on as normal. And so what I have found is that a lot of the YouTube people on my team are just thrilled with the stability and kind of calmness that we have.

[Jay]

After a quick break, Mark and I talk about why monetization on YouTube is not all it's cracked up to be and what YouTubers should prioritize instead. So stick around. We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Mark Manson. I want to talk about this insight you had about a lot of the channels that you talk to. They make great videos, they get a lot of views, but then there's not a lot on the back end. I kind of think of it as like front of house and back of house. I've always seen myself as a great back of house operator. And I've really had to push myself to figure out how do I get people to actually care and pay attention. So I've gone in reverse. And that's nice because then any gains you have on the attention front, you see a direct correlated return on the back end. But curious, from your standpoint, what should YouTubers be thinking in Terms of after I get the view, what really should I be doing to build a business on the back of this channel?

[Mark Manson]

Oh, man, where do I start? Okay, the first thing to realize is that generally speaking, the monetization on YouTube is actually not great. Like YouTube as a business, financially on its own, like having a popular channel, even doing brand sponsorships, you're not getting paid super well for the amount of eyeballs and audience that you're generating. So even if you're not even talking about backend products or creating some sort of funnel or coaching or consulting or whatever, even like diversifying your platforms, like podcasting, for example, is financially way superior. You get paid way more per unit of effort for a podcast than you do for a YouTube video. Newsletters, potentially, you can get paid way more per unit of effort than you do for a YouTube video. So I think the first thing YouTubers should start thinking about once they've built that initial audience is like, okay, how can I diversify my platforms so that I can monetize on more fronts? And YouTube's superpower is audience discovery. Its weakness is audience monetization. The second thing is to start thinking of your audience over the long term. I think a big trap that younger creators or newer creators fall into quite frequently is that they get so caught up on that cycle of just like, oh, let's get the next viral hit out, let's do the next, like, what's the new trendy thing? Let's put the next thing out that's going to get a million views. A lot of times you can burn your audience out. You can burn the trust and credibility that you've built with your audience. And so maybe you get more views in the short run, but because you're harming your reputation with your audience members, they don't stick around as long or they're going to trust you less and they're going to be less likely to buy from you. So I really think it's important to don't judge each video or piece of content purely on the views that it gets in and of itself. Think about the quality of those views as well. Are these views from people who are likely to stick around and see another video? Are these views from people who are likely to sign up for your newsletter or buy something from you? Because a lot of times optimizing for high quality views is going to be a very different video than simply optimizing for quantity of views. And then finally, I think it's really important to understand once you've built that audience, maybe you've launched a newsletter or something, you've developed more engagement with them. Really think about what problems your audience members have in their life, what is a solution that you could provide for them and find some sort of product or service that you can do to provide for it. I mean, you don't have to launch your own products or services, but ultimately it is the best form of monetization that you can develop for yourself. It's going to be the most stable, the most dependable, and it's also, if done very, very well, it's going to bring in the most revenue by far.

[Jay]

Couldn't agree more with all of this. There's a bit of a chicken and the egg situation that I think a lot of creators have where they make videos because they want to make videos. And if we are to believe that YouTube is a great recommendation engine for bringing you new audience and it'll continue to get better and better, there is this underlying need to kind of package yourself your channel as the place for something and that will inform what videos you make, that will inform what products that you make. But when should people really be polishing that part? You know, when, when should people really be thinking about what is this channel about, what is this business about, what am I about? How early in the process, I think.

[Mark Manson]

It should be something you're working towards from very early on, I actually think that the process that a creator goes through is very, very similar to the process that a startup goes through. It's just that the product is different and the testing is different. So if you look in the startup world, obviously everything starts with an idea. Bunch of founders get together, they've got an idea for a product, but everybody kind of understands that nine times out of 10, that initial idea is not what actually works. And so in the startup world, they'll go, maybe they raise a little bit of money from their friends or their family and they start testing their product ideas. So they create a little piece of software, they launch it, they share it on Twitter and LinkedIn and send it out to their friends or whatever, get some feedback. Doesn't work. So then they iterate on it, change a little bit, send it out again, see if that gets anything. Doesn't work. They get feedback, tweak it again, they go through that cycle probably 5, 10, sometimes even 20 times, and then eventually they find something that it takes off. People start recommending it to their friends, they start recommending it to their coworkers. Suddenly you get all these people that they've never heard of before signing up for people, and Lithuania and Australia are suddenly signing up for it, and they're like, oh, wow, okay, we found something, right? And that moment when that happens in the startup world, it's called product market fit. It's essentially, you have found a product that solves a problem for a market, and that means that you can make. You are very likely going to make a bunch of money. And that's the moment then that startup founders usually go and raise money, raise investment, so that they can scale. That product creator goes through a very similar process. Right? Let's say you want to start a TikTok channel or a YouTube channel or a substack. It could be anything. And you have an idea of what you want to create. Nine times out of 10, that initial idea of what you want to create is not actually what's going to work, but you have to start there because it gets that virtuous cycle going of, okay, you put out the video ideas that you had. Nobody really watched them, but your friends gave you some feedback and it gave you an idea for a different video. And so then you put out a couple new videos of that different idea and you start going through that cycle. And then sure enough, it's around idea 8, 9, or 10 that you find, I call it content audience fit instead of product market fit, but you find content audience fit of like, boom, okay, this one took off. And suddenly I'm getting viewers from Lithuania and Australia and all these people I've never heard of or commenting and messaging me. And that's a really exciting moment. And that's kind of whatever that thing is, that's what you double down on and you start scaling up. And I think that is the moment, once you found the content audience fit, that's the moment that you really start thinking seriously about what you're talking about, which is like, how do I brand this? What is the. What is the message? Like, what does this channel stand for, essentially? And I think getting that right is kind of part of unlocking the next step.

[Jay]

I was at VidSummit this year, and there was a creator named Hopescope there. And she talked about when she was starting her channel, she was making vlogs, and then she made a video about leggings, reviewing leggings. And then that hit super hard. And suddenly the majority of her audience came from a leggings video. And now she starts making leggings videos. And implicitly, this just kind of becomes what she is. And when she wanted to get out of that, she had to be very thoughtful for A very long period of time to basically slowly change the direction of the ship so that she kept some people going in this direction, but also, like, she didn't completely confuse YouTube in this direction. So there is, like, some risk of if you aren't being thoughtful about the content or. Or the audience for a piece, if you're not thinking about the audience for a piece of content you're making and you don't want to make more of that, if it goes well, which you would think is the best outcome, suddenly you're in, like, a worse position. Actually, yes, it's.

[Mark Manson]

People don't think about this until after it happens, but there is a world where you actually build an audience that you don't want to have, and you can do this unintentionally, starting out like the example you gave. I've also noticed that a lot of times, especially in the podcasting world, there's a concept called audience capture, which is essentially, people start. Creators start noticing. They're like, hey, when I talk about this really fringe, controversial subject, a ton of new people come in. It goes viral in these kind of, like, obscure sub niches. And so they start hitting on that controversial topic over and over again. Well, it brings in this kind of crazy town audience that nobody likes, and then it scares out their core audience. And next thing you know, your brand, you are known for that kind of crazy, fringe, controversial topic. And I can't tell you, I'm sure you've met plenty of creators, too, Jay, that in private, when you talk to them about their business, one of the first things they say is, like, man, I got to get out of this. I don't know how I got to pivot out. I need to rebrand. I need to launch something different. I can't tell you how many, I guess you would call them, golden handcuff situations creators can find themselves in, because they have either committed to a topic or a format that they don't actually. They're not super well suited to, but it generates views, it generates money. They go out and hire a bunch of people, and now they got to meet payroll, and they just feel like they can't stop. They feel like they're stuck.

[Jay]

And you can wind down a channel, but you can't, like, wind down a cultural perception of who you are.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Jay]

You know what I mean? So it's really kind of scary and just. I'm putting it out there because in this pursuit of content audience fit, I could see people just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall without thinking, like, if this goes as well as it could go. Am I happy with that future? Yeah, and I think that's a good question. And it goes in the inverse too. Like on, on our channel, our lowest performing videos in terms of views are like the videos where it's just me and my producer talking about stuff. But those videos also tend to have the highest AVD people stick around the longest, the people who choose to watch it. And we know like those videos are not going to bring in new audiences, but we also know it's serving a fundamental purpose for the channel, for the business, because it's developing a deeper relationship with the people in the audience who do want that.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's, I've always thought of this in terms of there's growth oriented content and there's engagement oriented content and very often it's hard, it's very hard to optimize for both of those things in the same piece of content. So like, generally the things that are going to get the most reach don't develop the deepest relationship. And then oftentimes the things that develop the deepest relationship don't get a lot of reach. And I think it's really important to diversify your content. I think the temptation is to just constantly grow at all costs and just try to hit bigger numbers every single time. But ultimately, again, coming back to that concept of fostering a relationship with your audience and thinking about your audience not in terms of like how many people are going to view this video, but it's how many people are going to view the next 20 videos and how likely is this piece of content to promote future viewership. So yeah, you definitely want some sort of mix of both and there needs to be a ratio of both within your content.

[Jay]

We've had Patty Galloway on the show a couple times. You've maybe met Patti, great consultant for YouTube growth in particular. And he's, he's a self proclaimed views maximizer. And I think view maximization is typically best served for an advertising based business where you're really trying to drive views for a third party. Whereas if you're diversifying your revenue streams and you're selling your own products or your own services, view maximization may not be the strategy that makes the most sense for the channel.

[Mark Manson]

It's funny because we've actually run into this in our own business. So I never took ads or did ads for basically up until a year and a half ago. And I, because I was investing so much in scaling YouTube and the podcast and I was hiring a bunch of people I was like, you know, we should bring more revenue in. And then also I kind of figure I'm like, over the long run, if I'm going to be in this space for the long haul, like, I should really understand how brand sponsorships work and advertising works and build some relationships with some agencies and some sponsors. So we started doing brand taking brand sponsorships about a year and a half ago, and I kind of had the same assumption as you. I was like, let's just get as many views as possible. You know, let's. And because the more views, the higher, the more we can charge the brands and then the more money we make. That's true. For the first year. What happens is those brands come back and they're like, hey, so those 50,000 people you sent to our website, only 100 of them actually bought our product. So we're actually not going to pay you. We're not going to re up for the next year. But if you're willing to sell to us for a lower rate, we might consider it. And so you actually start running into the same problem, which is if you're attracting viewers who don't buy anything, eventually the brands are going to leave as well because they need to pay their bills too. So I do think there's a little bit more kind of intermediation that happens between the sponsors. And also there are some brand sponsors who just don't seem to give a shit. They don't seem to check or care how much traffic you send or don't send. But for the majority of them, they, they will eventually look and do the math and come back to you and be like, hey, your audience isn't buying our stuff, so thank you, but we're out of here.

[Jay]

Yeah, there are, there are some brands. There's like a, there's like a barbell, I think, or maybe it's the wrong way. Maybe it's a, maybe it's a, an exponential curve or something. But the, there are some brands that they have a huge budget that's all about eyeballs, and they're just trying to allocate that in as few of places as possible to like, lower the amount of time they're spending on it. I heard, like, Jordan Harbinger's podcast, he's got McDonald's and progressive, and it's like, what a wonderful place to get if you want to be sponsored by those brands, where it's like, mostly you reach a ton of people. We're trying to reach a ton of people. We'll sponsor you, but you're right in that most brands are running a math problem and saying money in versus money out. We sponsored you for this amount. What was the outcome of that? And I think a lot of YouTubers, they will optimize for getting the first brand deal or the first deal with a brand, and they create this revolving door of new brands trying it for the first time, but they haven't figured out the right pricing to actually build a relationship with the brand either. So how do you think about that now? How do you think about pricing and what brands you work with now you've had this experience?

[Mark Manson]

Well, it's funny because I'm actually going to stop doing brand sponsorships in 2025, but most of that is just personal. We could keep doing it, but I've just found that I don't enjoy it and I would rather promote my own stuff, release my own products and promote my own stuff. So. But I would say the biggest lessons that I've learned is again, coming back to that message of thinking long term because I did the same thing. I'm like, oh, wow, Shopify wants to buy 18 ads over the next six months. Hell yeah, let's go for it. Not thinking at all about conversion rates or is my ad read good? Is the CTA solid? Am I actually sending them any traffic or not? Does my audience even care about Shopify? Like, not. None of that stuff is going into my head. I'm just like, hell yeah, Shopify wants to give me money. Which I think is. That's kind of the standard creator, creator reaction when, when those emails come in. So if I was to keep doing it, I think, well, and this is, we already started doing this probably four or five months ago. Is getting much stricter on, like, which brands we accept. Because if you accept a brand that your audience doesn't like, it's actually bad for both of you. It's bad for the brand because they just spent a bunch of money and didn't get any return for it. And it's bad for you because now you're promoting a thing that your audience doesn't care about and it makes you look bad. So it's a lose, lose situation. And it's actually better to. I think the right approach is if I was to keep doing it, I would really try to zero in on like six or eight brands that my audience likes that I like and try to build a relationship with them over the long term. Maybe give them a little bit of a sweeter deal early on and just establish that trust and that reliability and Then do some sort of long term, like one year deal, two year deal down the road.

[Jay]

Because there's a little bit of a right sizing too. Like there's the, there's the brand audience fit, but then there's a right sizing of what the cost of the product is and the lifetime value of a customer. Where if you have a small channel and you're promoting, you know, meundies, that's a ton of units you might have to move to cover a several thousand dollar sponsorship, you know, whereas you're selling a larger product or a SaaS product that has recurring revenue, they might be able to sponsor you and get a return for fewer conversions. Maybe this is your experience too, because we're also thinking about not doing ads on the channel. I find myself being pulled through the content production process by deadlines that I've promised to sponsors that were too aggressive and it has a negative impact on the content as a whole.

[Mark Manson]

Totally.

[Jay]

And it's not a great relationship with a sponsor then because they're like, where's this video? And it's like, well, do you want a shit video or do you want the video that we want to make and can you give us another couple of weeks? It just like puts a lot of pressure on the situation where again, if you are selling your own products and services, you don't have to have that conversation. And also your audience is going to trust something made by you if they're watching your channel more than a third party.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, we've definitely run into those issues as well. I mean, I think people, I think creators. You underestimate the admin headache.

[Jay]

I definitely did, yeah.

[Mark Manson]

I mean, it's funny because it's actually very similar. I ran into this like in my, in my publishing career. I ran into. It's a very similar thing with speaking. I don't know how much speaking you've done, but you know, when that email comes in, basically the email is like, we want to give you and then it's a large amount of money. And that's kind of where your brain seems to stop because you're like, that's so easy. And I was speaking, I used to notice this. I'm like, hell, I just fly to Nashville and talk for 30 minutes and I make all this money like, oh my God, that's so easy. And what your brain doesn't think about is all of the admin and overhead, all of the email chains, the approvals, the confirmations. You got to send them to your slides a couple weeks before you got to do your pre event meeting, you got to do your sound check, your VIP meet and greet. There's 8 million things that you don't think about that you have to do. And next thing you know, you just wasted four days on, you know, the speaking for 30 minutes. And I think it's very similar with brand sponsorships as well. Like that initial email comes in. You know, Shopify wants to give you a bunch of money and you don't think about like, okay, I'm gonna have to. The amount of email chains, the approvals that you have to go through, the deadlines that you set when it's like your editor gets sick, and so the video's gonna have to be pushed back a week. So now you've gotta, like, go back to the sponsor and explain to them and get their approval again. And, oh, well, it turns out that they don't like the single word you used in your ad read. So now you gotta go, like, get.

[Jay]

A haircut for continuity. Then you gotta sit down and rerecord.

[Mark Manson]

You gotta wash the shirt that you wore because it's in the laundry. You know, it's such a pain in the ass sometimes. And yeah, you don't think about that overhead. The other thing, I mean, you raise a really good point about the unit sales, which is something that, yeah, it's. You don't think about very much. Again, it's like thinking about what the sponsor's needs are and then trying to cater to those. Because, like, for, for example, if you're selling a sleep eight mattress, which is. Or eight sleep mattress, which is like, I think three or $4,000 per unit, that ad read should probably be different than me undies, which is like $20 per unit or $15 per unit. But again, as a creator, you don't really care, so you don't really think that hard about it. Whereas it's actually very, very important to those sponsors. The other thing that I'll add that we ran into a lot is my audience is extremely international. So, I mean, it varies per platform. But on YouTube it's 25 to 30% U.S. i think of it U.S. and Canada is, I think, 35 to 40%. And then the rest is international. So it's like two thirds of my audience is international, but there's a lot of brands that don't sell internationally. And we ran into this over and over again that they would buy an ad spot for our standard rate. They'd get really bad results, they'd come back to us, and then we'd Have a discussion. And they're like, well, we don't sell in Australia, and we don't sell in India, and we don't sell in Brazil, and we don't sell in Spain. Like, all these countries that I have a lot of audience in. So that's another thing of, like, being careful what audience you're building and, like, what the marketability of that audience is.

[Jay]

When we come back, Mark lays out how YouTubers can professionalize their business and what the future of YouTube holds. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Mark Manson. So if I'm listening to this and I'm feeling like maybe my business behind a YouTube channel is not very sophisticated, what do you think my best next steps should be?

[Mark Manson]

I think if you're new and starting out, let's say you are at the point you've hired your first couple employees, you just quit your job recently, you're kind of in that stage. I think the best thing you can do is just simply educate yourself, Go out and buy all the popular business books, buy the books on management, start watching YouTube videos, start following some business people. You have to treat this as a business because it is. Ultimately, you have to be a grownup. You have to think about taxes, you have to think about payroll, you have to think about cash flow. You should learn all these things. Learn what, what LTV means. What's the lifetime value of your. Your. Your average customer? And. And what's the lifetime value of a newsletter subscriber? What's the lifetime value of a YouTube subscriber? Like, you should be thinking about these things if you want to have the longevity. Because, I mean, it's again, being. Being in this space for almost 20 years. Like most, I'd say at least half of creators who blow up and build an audience, they don't last for more than five or six years. And in most cases, they did themselves in. They either destroyed their brand or reputation over chasing numbers, or they didn't manage their money and screwed up the business side of things and they went broken. Take it very, very seriously.

[Jay]

I think the opportunity that people don't realize when they get monetized on YouTube, you know, they get the YouTube partner program. Like, I'm getting monetized now. And yeah, you're getting a 55% split of AD revenue, which is better than any other platform. But still, why would YouTube give you that? You know, how much is the attention worth that you're bringing to the platform? Probably quite A bit. And so, you know, the more you can do to weaponize, monetize that attention for your business, the better off you're going to be.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Jay]

Given that you see that there's still a huge future for YouTube, you think it's early innings. It would stand to reason that a lot of other people will probably rush to the platform over the years also. So what are you doing now to try to stay ahead of the curve of what's going to be a successful business as a channel over the next five, 10 years?

[Mark Manson]

There are two things that pop to mind. One of the things that I'm doing is I am, I'm trying to think of where the audience taste is going to be. The average YouTube viewer is quite young. Like most YouTube power users are probably teenagers or early 20s and they don't have a ton of money. They haven't lived, you know, they haven't had a career yet, they haven't been married yet, they haven't bought a house yet. All those kind of typical life stage stuff. I'm an older guy. My core audience is people in their 30s, late 20s, early 40s, and that's generally who I appeal to. So I'm trying to pay attention of these tens of millions of YouTube viewers who are today, they're watching Mr. Beast or Ryan Trahan. What are they going to be interested in seeing, say five years from now and when they're getting their first job or having their first kid? And how can I appeal to those sensibilities? How can I be already excellent at that by the time they get there? So that's what I'm focusing on. And so it's actually this kind of comes back to the, this ties into the discussion around long term value of an audience. A lot of the things that I'm working on right now are probably suboptimal for generating viewership today, but I think that they are going to be optimal for viewership, say over the next 10 years. One of the things we're working on is getting really good at a documentary style format. And today that is definitely suboptimal. But I think five years from now we'll be just completely ahead of the curve. So that's one way I'm approaching it. The other way I'm approaching it is understanding that. I do think as these platforms get more saturated and more competitive, it's going to get harder and harder for people to break through. And as somebody who has already broken through and has built a pretty vast audience, I'm thinking about ways to I guess finance or help smaller creators come along. I'm very interested in ideas around creator incubators. Finding a bunch of really talented creators who have developed a small audience, but they still haven't put all the pieces together. They don't have the business side figured out. They don't know anything about it. They've just found that content audience fit, but they're still struggling to scale it. If I can find a bunch of creators kind of in that spot, come in, accelerate their growth drastically, say over the next three to four years, but then bring them under a larger umbrella, almost like a studio system or something, I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity for those sorts of business ventures. So I'm. I'm thinking about that a lot and I'm in some early talks around that. But I think we're going to start seeing more of that down the road.

[Jay]

How did you land on documentary as a format that you think is interesting in the future?

[Mark Manson]

Trying to think how long I want my answer to be.

[Jay]

Up to you. You're already giving me bonus time. I'll let you go as soon as you want.

[Mark Manson]

No, man, no. This is a great question and it's something I've thought about a lot. I'll start with a theory and then I'll kind of get more into just explanation. I think when you look at YouTube. So again, the monetization on YouTube is not great. Like the amount of dollars per eyeball that's being generated, if you compare it to like Disney or Netflix, it's minuscule. But you make up for that in distribution, right? It's way easier to get say 10 million eyeballs on YouTube than it is on Netflix or Disney. As an average person, maybe if you're like Scorsese or something, it's not. That means that YouTube is. It makes sense that the best business models on YouTube are going to replicate the formats, the type of video content that is cheapest to make and has the widest appeal. And I think it makes sense to me why MrBeast blew up doing essentially reality TV format. Because reality TV is extremely cheap to make and it has extremely wide appeal. And so the Mr. Beast era of YouTube totally makes sense in that regard. You are tapping into the highest leverage video content format and just taking advantage of the wider distribution. I think somewhere up there is a documentary format. Documentaries are relatively cheap to make. You can make a really high end documentary for a million bucks, two million bucks, and then if you get rid of all the Hollywood bullshit, you can probably make one for 100k. But it's hard to get that distribution. There's 8,000 documentaries on Netflix or something, and most of them haven't been viewed by barely anybody. So if you can create a really, really good documentary that targets a niche audience, you can take advantage of the distribution and the discovery of the YouTube platform and generate a very large audience. So I very much see documentaries as kind of being. I don't know if it's the next step or the next phase, but I see it. It's another high leverage format of video content. And when I think about, okay, if the average YouTube power user today is 19 or 20 years old, what sort of content are they going to want to watch when, say they're 25, 26? I think documentaries is probably up there. Right? Interesting. I think young adults are probably very strong documentary consumers. And also I love making them. We tried a bunch of different formats and the documentary format was like the one. I guess as a nonfiction writer it makes sense, but it was the one format that I was like, this is a ton of fun. I could do this forever. So the combination of all those things is why I'm betting really heavily on it. I do think people are eventually going to get really sick of just kind of the talking head style guy at a desk giving you these five productivity tips or whatever, and there's eventually going to be a demand for something with a little bit more depth, a little bit more story, something a little bit more engaging. And I think a documentary format can fit that content extremely well and essentially deliver the same benefits, but in a way more engaging way.

[Jay]

Yeah, that's interesting. If I were to guess, I would have thought you would have said something along the lines of because you have a relative head start on the platform and because you have resources to invest, investing in a higher effort, more difficult medium, and getting good at that before other people do will give you a lead and a moat on the back end.

[Mark Manson]

Yes, that's a huge part of it as well. The problem, as someone in the self help space and the life advice space, the biggest problem on YouTube at the moment is that anything I create that hits and does really well, eight other people just immediately make the same video, sometimes with the exact same title, same hook, intro, everything. It's happened to me probably three or four times already in the last two years. So. And I see it happening among other people in my space as well. And we've, you know, ripped and done versions of other people's stuff. Like it's just anything, any new innovation any new concept, any new packaging that does well in my space it event, like within a month, eight or eight other people have done basically the exact same video. And I just. I look at that and I'm like, audiences are going to get sick of it. If they're not already, the audiences are going to get really tired of it. So I've already been thinking, like, what is something that when I do and it hits is not easily replicable that other people would. It's a massive learning curve that I've already climbed it. And other people are going to be like, oh, my God. It's going to take me two, three years to figure that out. So that's part of the strategy as well.