← Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
932: How I Accumulated 35,527+ Watch Time Hours Before Even Starting My YouTube Channel
00:29:50
I wouldn’t consider myself a YouTuber, and I wasn’t posting regularly, but I had an entirely different motivation that gave me a huge leg up.
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- [00:00]
Emily Williams
I got a lot of floss. I also got a lot of learning to do and I am totally aware that I could be better at this. That's okay. You have to start somewhere. I don't actually want to listen to my earlier podcasts. I'm sure they're terrifying, but I've done this 900 times.
- [00:23]
Abigail Pumphrey
Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project on. I'm your host, Abigail Pumphrey, and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way. One that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your.
- [00:52]
Emily Williams
Life every step of the way.
- [00:54]
Abigail Pumphrey
Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Business settle in. It's time to talk strategy.
- [01:04]
Emily Williams
Most people start a YouTube channel from scratch. Zero videos, zero audience, zero watch time. But before I even officially launched my YouTube channel, I had accumulated over 35,000 watch hours. And I'm going to tell you exactly how I did it. I definitely wouldn't consider myself a YouTuber, and I definitely wasn't posting on any sort of regular basis. I wasn't following some guru's step by step advice. I had a completely different motivation and I think it's going to give me a massive leg up. In fact, it wasn't even about YouTube at all. I was simply focused on community and creating a true impact. And the watch hours, the thousands and thousands of watch hours, that was a byproduct, the consumption was a byproduct of, of focusing on making a real difference. I never set out to grow on YouTube. I simply focused on how I could help people, how I could give them the tools they need, how I could support the community I was building. I think my approach, like, entirely goes in contradiction to the typical content creator concepts. Like there was no plan. And I think there's a real reason why that worked. But don't worry, I'm going to break it down. I'm going to share exactly what led to those watch hours, how I was able to accumulate so many, and how that might change your approach to launching a YouTube channel. As you may or may not know, when you want to monetize a YouTube channel, you need 4,000 watch hours in the last calendar year to qualify. And unless you're creating really binge worthy content, most people struggle to accumulate those amount of hours in any sort of reasonable time frame. We're talking the average person who starts a channel. If they're really focused on getting to that mark, they are spending the next 12 to 18 months of their life creating content for free. Instead of going that traditional route where I was all in on a strategy and focusing on producing, producing, growing, grinding, grinding, grinding, putting stuff out there, I Instead was using YouTube as a backdoor. Now, there are a lot of different ways you could go about doing this yourself, and I'm going to give you a lot of ideas that I think might inspire you on your own creator journey. But I specifically want to make sure I'm covering and being fully transparent about the things that worked for me and what I think made the best biggest difference in accumulating so much watch time so quickly. Investing in creating long form content takes time and energy and expertise and focus on SEO and what people want to consume and testing and experimenting and all those things. But if you want to do this effectively for a long period of time and you want your business to grow, you need to be creating assets. Your evergreen content isn't just about trying to go viral. It's not just about trying to reach more people. It's about trying to solve real problems. It's about giving solutions to your ideal audience, the kind of audience that you hope to monetize not just for views, but into your own offers. I've had a focus on long form evergreen content since the day I opened my small business. Originally that was primarily focused on blogging, and that ultimately transitioned into a huge emphasis on building my podcast, the Strategy Hour. But video was always a sideshow component to all of that. Specifically, if we were going to rewind and really focus on the inception of the Boss Project blog that started as a community builder. My focus was to bring knowledge to the people. I wanted to solve problems. I wanted to give how to advice, I wanted to make it easy for small business owners to get the information they needed. And I didn't have time to do that every single day in the way that I wanted to. I wanted to be able to give more knowledge away. And so pretty early on in my blogging journey, I started taking on guest contributors. Now that has been a strategy I've taken on and taken away at various points in my business. But if we're talking specifically about building watch time, I can't miss this particular season in business. Okay, so is regularly taking guest contributors to the block and they could write a piece of long form content that was helpful, strategic, gave away real advice, and it gave them an opportunity to link back to their business, to the things they were doing, and potentially even their own offers. As part of that writing exercise, if they wanted to, they could produce a companion video that we would feature specifically on the blog to highlight their expertise. And we called it TCC tv. Back in the day, we were technically think creative, collective, hence the collective, hence the people contributing. Right. And we were showcasing their expertise. So because of that, I was regularly publishing content that wasn't mine. I didn't create it. All I did, all I did was put an intro on the front and put it on technically, what is my YouTube channel. But I was never promoting the YouTube channel. That wasn't part of the strategy. The strategy was simply to post it to the YouTube channel. So I had a free place to host video and I was putting that content on my website and driving traffic to my website via SEO. Well, that strategy was working. We were building our list like crazy. I was able to grow my email list to over 100,000 people. And in large part that was thanks to not just search engine optimization, but building a community where people felt like they were a part of something. Like they weren't just consuming the things I was putting out into the world, but they also got to contribute to the collective. When we're focused on giving content away and helping other people, things change. I think there's so often this emphasis on we must sell, we must showcase our expertise, we must show people exactly why we are so knowledgeable so that they can trust us, so that they'll buy our things. And that's true to an extent. Like, you do have to give people an intro into who you are and what you stand for and the kind of values you have. Those things are important. But if I really look back and I look at the things that built my business, the things that made the biggest impact, it was when I was focused on freely giving, when I wasn't worried about it being this reciprocal exchange. And so it seems pretty counterintuitive to do this next strategy, but it was one that I think made a really massive difference. I build a program years ago called Trello for business. It has gone on to sell more than 10,000 copies and I was only charging $29 a pop, which is a small price in the grand scheme of things. Especially when I talk about the kind of support that I provided on the back end. People weren't joining a membership, people weren't paying monthly. They were simply buying one time. And when they got into that program, I was giving them the basics, everything they needed to know about project management to set their business up for success. And they were able to implement that system usually in a couple of hours and within like a weekend or so could completely revolutionize the way they were running the operations. But a big part of the success of that program was the fact that I was teaching about a software company a set of information that I had nothing to do with. Like, I was not creating the thing, I was not maintaining the thing, I was not building the piece of software, I wasn't fixing bugs. I was supporting small business owners. And at the time, Trello specifically was focused on bigger businesses. They weren't supporting the small business, the solopreneur. And so when they released new features or updated their tech, they were not explaining it in a way that would make sense to the users that I was bringing into the fold, the people I was selling to, the people I was trying to make an impact on. And so I think a huge part of what leads to success in small business is how well on the back end, you support the people that have already bought from you. It's really easy to just focus on the sale and churn them and burn them and not worry about supporting them long term. But when you really, really, really want to see change, want to see impact, want to see people buy from you again and again and again, you focusing on client experience is huge. You want people to be successful. You want people to know that what you're putting out into the world not only matters to you, but you want to actually see them be successful. You don't just say that for marketing. So I couldn't tell you how long this lasted. I'd have to go back and look at the archives to attempt to figure it out. But there was a season in my business where every week we were producing a very short tech how to related to the piece of software that our digital product was about. And the focus was not on how do I make sure this is the most searchable thing on YouTube? It was not growing a YouTube channel. It was simply supporting the small business owners who'd already bought from me, who had already said yes, who were already implementing the systems I had given them. It was about supporting that community.
- [12:10]
Abigail Pumphrey
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- [12:32]
Emily Williams
The trial and error.
- [12:33]
Abigail Pumphrey
These are the exact resources I've used to build a seven figure business. So stop spinning your wheels and join me. Inside. Head to creative templates.com membership and make running your business easier today. That's creative templateshop.com membership. The last thing I want to think about as a small business owner is the legal side of things, but it's a necessary and essential part of doing business. The Contract Shop is here to help you with contract templates specifically tailored to your business. Created and reviewed by lawyers, each template is super easy to use. It's free of legal jargon and includes a Hold my hand video guide where a lawyer shows you exactly, exactly how to use it. Whether you need a new client contract for your services or desperately need to update the terms and conditions on your website, the Contract Shop has you covered. My favorite part? It includes lifetime free updates so you'll always stay protected even as new changes pop up. Recent updates help protect artists and photographers from their work being misused by AI. I'm positive you're gonna love their products and they stand behind them with a 14 day no hassle return policy. Save 30% off your first order at the Contract Shop with the Code Strategy Hour or click the link in the show notes to have the code automatically applied at checkout. That's TheContractShop.com with code Strategy Hour for 30% off your first shorter when it comes to tax time, let's face it, the stress is real. Let FreshBooks handle your taxes so you can focus on what you do best. With FreshBooks, you'll save time and get peace of mind. And it's not just about taxes. FreshBooks automates your workflow year round. Imagine having all of your expenses neatly organized, your profit and loss report ready to go, and a clear picture of your business health all in just a few clicks. No more late nights, drowning in paperwork or searching for lost receipts. Snap photos of your expenses on the go, send professional invoices in seconds, and track payments seamlessly. When tax time comes, everything's prepared and ready for your accountant, so why not give it a shot? Switching to FreshBooks has never been easier. Even if you're coming from Another accounting tool, FreshBooks makes migrating your data simple, and their support team is ready if you need help. Don't wait for the stress to pile up. Visit freshbooks.com to get freshbooks 70% off for four months. That's freshbooks.com get started today and thank yourself tomorrow.
- [15:00]
Emily Williams
Now, I could never have guessed the kind of impact that would ultimately have on our sales long term because people loved that product. Like cult, like following like it was intense. People were producing their own podcast episodes about it, they were doing their own YouTube videos about it, they were blogging about it, they were emailing their list about it without an affiliate offer, mind you. They were promoting it because it made such a huge difference in their lives that they wanted everyone they knew in on it too. So if you're thinking about creating content to support the people that are already in your world, do you need to hide all of that behind a paywall? It's just a question. You know, I think you having your core program or the main part of your educational content for a particular course, like in order in lessons in a course portal, makes sense. But if you're supporting them more long term, does everything need to live behind the gate? Or could you introduce even more people to what you do by making it freely available, regardless of if you're trying to optimize it on YouTube or not? You simply posting it there and utilizing it in any other capacity is only going to benefit you long term, but you're only going to accumulate those watch hours if you make those things public. The third prong of this kind of behind the scenes strategy that I didn't even realize I was implementing by the way, was big focus on creating events that were impactful for small business owners. And so over a series of many years, I have produced every kind of event online you can imagine. I've done webinars and workshops and challenges one day challenges and full challenges. Big events with thousands of people in attendance, summits that I had 50 plus speakers for. I've ran the gamut. I've run pretty much online, every online event out there, aside from a full blown conference, which my summits were dang near close. But I see so many people trying to like save and contain these things in other formats. And I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't have some location that makes it easy for people to consume these events, especially post mortem after the fact, after it's already happened. Right? Those replays should live somewhere that makes sense for your audience and for your business. For me, the majority of that content lives on our course platform which we use Teachable. PS you could totally try it out yourself too. It's bossproject.com Teachable if you want more info on that. But you don't necessarily have to upload directly to those platforms. You can upload directly, and I think that makes sense for your paid offers. But if we're talking about free events, why aren't you monetizing that traffic? Now, I realize you're like, but I need the watch hours. I get it. But like, you can build towards the monetization by taking that content and instead of hosting it on Vimeo or privately on a course platform, you can put it on YouTube. And then when you send out the replay, anytime someone watches it, you're racking up that time. Now, this is going to seem small in the grand scheme of things, but just as an example, I did an online summit. This would have been probably going on five plus years ago. There was one particular speaker, incredible, by the way. She used to work for Disney, and her story is compelling and incredible. Her video, that's from five plus years ago, that was specific to a summit. And the whole format of the video is specific to the summit. This is not produced to perform on YouTube. That video got 66 watch hours in the last month. Five years later. Five years later. Now, if you're sitting here kicking yourself because you've been in business a while and you haven't been utilizing this as an opportunity to get started before you get started, I get it. When I really sat down to think about what this could look like for me, I was kind of kicking myself because it was something I did sometimes. It was not something I was consistent about. There's hundreds, if not over a thousand videos on my channel that are private or completely unlisted. That's not helping. That's not monetizing anything. They just exist. But for what? So that three people can watch them because they happen to know exactly this specific link. Like, if my goal is to help people, like, why am I holding back that information? I think the question is, what does this mean for you? And I imagine there's some of you watching this that are frustrated with me right now. You're like, I want the watch hours yesterday. I want to be monetized right now. I'm ready for YouTube to be a strategy that works for me and for my business. I get it. But I realize that that's only a percentage of you. There's a lot of you listening or watching that are thinking, wait, she's got a point. I'm not ready to invest in YouTube, but why not start with something like this? Now, I am no YouTube expert, so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that this is the best strategy or that I have it all figured out. I do not. But if your goal is to someday monetize that traffic, what damage does it do to start in some sort of pre launch capacity where your channel just exists? You're not focused on driving traffic to it. You're not overly worried about optimizing descriptions or worrying about exactly having the perfect thumbnail or cross testing stuff, or doing the SEO research. What if instead your focus was on serving your people, serving your audience, serving the people that you already are committed to your existing clientele on other platforms and giving yourself a pre launch Runway that makes it so that when you are ready to focus on this, when you are ready to spend time here, that you already have a massive leg up and you're not starting from scratch. I absolutely, when I decided I was going to go down this rabbit hole, I didn't want to overly look into all of the strategies and convince myself I only had to do it a certain way because that was the exact reason I hadn't started. That was the exact reason I hadn't built this channel. I didn't go down that road because I was overly intimidated by having the perfect editing style or the perfect setup or an expensive camera or whatever. And I felt the other types of long form content were way more accessible. I could blog with just my laptop and a website that I wanted anyway so that I could sell my offers. I could podcast with a $70 microphone that I have used for eight years now.
- [22:49]
Abigail Pumphrey
$70.
- [22:50]
Emily Williams
I'm using the same stand I got back in the day. This thing is falling apart. My husband has screwed it back together and added new bolts and the whole thing. I could have invested so much more money in those strategies, but I didn't. I just got started. And I imagine the same could be true for YouTube if I didn't feel this constant need to look like everyone else, to fit into the crowd, to have this perfect thing. I'm not perfect. I got a lot of floss. I also got a lot of learning to do and I am totally aware that I could be better at this. That's okay. You have to start somewhere. I don't actually want to listen to my earlier podcasts. I'm sure they're terrifying. But I've done this 900 times. I've written thousands and tens of thousands, probably a hundred thousand plus pages of copy. You get better by practicing. You don't get better by waiting to have the perfect strategy to then act on it. So my Hope is that if you're listening to this and think, well, someday I want a YouTube channel. Okay, turn it on. Post some stuff you already have. I started thinking about all of the things that I've taught in various places and sent an email about or posted in a community here or given out there that's still relevant, that's still valuable. It's not perfect for YouTube, but who cares if I help one person? That's always been my philosophy. If I help one person, it would have been worth my time to do so. Not every video needs tens of thousands or hundred thousand views. If I'm actually helping people because that one person that gets helped, they are far more likely to go consume my other content, to go buy from me, to go work with me, to purchase not just once, but again and again and again. And so I just want to challenge this concept that we have to have it all figured out, that we have to know exactly what we're going to do and what our content pillars are and our editing style and the right camera and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why does it matter? Why does it matter? Or does it? Does it matter at all? Or are you just making this more complicated than it needs to be? I had no idea how many watch hours I had. I knew I had hit the monetization button at some point in the past because we were making some adsense dollars from it. It was not a lot, but I'll take it if it pays for my Google Workspace subscription.
- [25:34]
Abigail Pumphrey
Fantastic.
- [25:35]
Emily Williams
My goal in the beginning was just that things paid for themselves. So I was never really worried about that. But when I looked at the data. Do you guys know how many hours? 35,000, whatever it is. What's the number? 35,527. Okay, for the record, I looked. I'm going to redo the math just to double check. 35,527. There's 24 hours in a day, right? So let's divide by 24. That's 1480 days of consumed content. Let's divide that by 365. That's four years. If someone had sat down and watched the content I was putting out into the world, they would have not had a potty break or eaten food for four years. And that was simply by focusing on serving the people that are already here. So I hope this is inspiring to you. I hope that you feel a little less pressure to look a certain way or to be a certain way or to do the things the way we're supposed to do. Them. Just be creative. Just serve your people. Just love hard. You got this. I believe in you. And regardless if you're watching this or listening to this, which I'm testing this, I have no idea if this video is going to be any good. It's also on the podcast so if you are watching but you're not listening, come check out the Strategy Hour podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. And if you are listening, go check out my YouTube channel, Boss Project. Make sure you're subscribed. Thank you so much. I'm so excited. I cannot wait to see what you go on and do with this information.
- [27:20]
Abigail Pumphrey
You're going to be fantastic. Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs.
- [27:28]
Emily Williams
To hear it and post on social.
- [27:30]
Abigail Pumphrey
You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway, or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me at Abigail says and ossproject so we can share it.
- [27:39]
Emily Williams
Okay?
- [27:40]
Abigail Pumphrey
Second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from Boss Project. I'd love if you join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me.
- [27:55]
Emily Williams
If you'd leave a rating and review.
- [27:57]
Abigail Pumphrey
It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring.
- [28:00]
Emily Williams
On quality sponsors so we can keep.
- [28:02]
Abigail Pumphrey
Bringing you this valuable content for free.
- [28:04]
Emily Williams
Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.