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Really quick. If YouTube growth matters to you, you can't afford to keep guessing. The YouTube Growth Sprint is a free three day online event designed to give you clarity, focus and real momentum fast. You can register for free@ytsprint.com and we're also doing a bunch of cool giveaways, including gear for your YouTube channel, software that'll help you get more views and subscribers and going to be a lot of fun and you're going to learn a lot. So just go to ytsprint.com to register for free. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Let me guess, that small channel advice still isn't working. You're checking your channel day after day, things are looking about the same and you're waiting for that video that's going to break through and change things for you. Well, the good news today is I actually don't think a lot of that pressure is on you as it is the advice that you're taking in and trying to execute on. There's a lot of half truths out there when it comes to how to grow on YouTube as a small channel. And I get it. A lot of this advice sounds smart. It's coming from big channels, it's coming from people with supposed credentials. And so it's like, why wouldn't you try this? I've worked with hundreds of creators helping them grow, monetize, and continue making money with their YouTube channel, throwing my name into this conversation as well. But today I'm gonna walk through six of the most dangerous pieces of YouTube advice that's floating around out there for small channels. And more importantly, give you an actual framework to think through that you can filter through these three and it will help you decide, is this a YouTube strategy I should use or is this one that I can ignore? Number one right here. The first piece of advice that is pretty dangerous, that's messing people up. We're just going to talk about it right away. The advice is just let AI do it. Just let AI do it. And by do it, I mean do everything for you, like actually outsource everything. Who needs to worry about doing thumbnails? I can do it. Who needs to worry about crafting that title? I can do it. You don't even need to write your script. Some advice out there is like, hey, hey, you actually don't even need to show up on camera because of the way, like, AI video creation, AI audio creation. You don't even need to use your voice. You can actually just press buttons and pop off. That is an Extreme take. But I've heard this before and this is where I see a lot of small channels drifting into, because I understand it. YouTube is hard. I would love to be able to push a button and stuff starts to happen on my channel. But what you don't realize that you're doing, this is why it's a half truth. Just let AI do it. Because AI is a wonderful assistant. We have AI tools here at Think Media that we use all the time, but AI tools should assist your process. This means that if you start YouTube and you're a small channel and you're trying to grow and you start YouTube, by outsourcing your process to all these other AI tools, you're removing the thinking that's required to go into crafting a YouTube video that's going to do what you want it to do, right, which is go viral, get views, but ideally for the right people. So you start to create an impact. And whatever your ambitions are with YouTube, be it on platform or off platform, it all comes back to making videos that actually get views and get views from the right people. So when it comes to AI, what's a better approach to this? Instead of thinking of yourself, right, and you're over here, yippee, we're starting YouTube. We're all happy. It's a horrible face. This is terrifying. Kyle, instead of just like outsourcing to all of the different tools that you possibly could, which by the way, all, all of this is going to cost you some money as well if you're actually going to get the pro versions of all of this stuff. If you're going to use AI tools, I would highly encourage you to use custom AI tools. What does this mean? You might as well go ahead and use a tool instead of just the generic ChatGPT thread that you open up or Gemini or cloud or however you rock and roll, you should actually invest in tools that are custom made that already have the pre built YouTube process in it. Because no disrespect, but as a small channel, if you're still trying to learn YouTube, good luck prompting AI the right way. This is why the advice of just let AI do it, my friend. You're still learning YouTube. You don't even know what to say to AI. You have to understand the psychology of the people you're trying to reach. You need to understand what viewer signals are on YouTube. You need to understand the whole process of how people consume content because otherwise you're gonna get some pretty bad results. And AI is amazing, but it's honestly only as good as the person prompting it. So to the. To the degree that you understand your audience, that you understand your content, and you understand YouTube, that's where your prompting is going to get better. And now I actually becomes an asset. The second piece of the most dangerous advice on YouTube is promote your videos. I actually was just hanging out with a fellow strategist in this space before this episode to kind of just like, pick his brain and be like, hey, man, like, what's going on? What are you seeing? And he does a lot of onboarding calls with people, and he told me that about 90% of the creators he's interacting with have tried to promote their videos. And by promote your videos, I mean, like, actually using YouTube promotions, like paying so that YouTube will put your content to people. Paying for views is effectively what this is. And this goes right in line with the AI conversation, because this is yet again seeking to push buttons and things happen. Here's why this is so dangerous, though. When you pay to have a video of yours promoted, you will get views, okay? But if that's, you know, if that's all you're solving for is to get views, please keep watching the rest of this episode because we have a lot of deeper strategy to uncover together. But you will get views, but you only get views as long as you're continuing to pay. This might sound like an extreme example, but I kind of akin promoting videos to, like, taking steroids as you're trying to start the gym. You want to get big. You want to grow the muscles, so you're like, how can I make this happen as fast as possible? You're only as good as your omni. The stuff. You're only as good as you're on the juice. And the returns that you get from promoting your videos actually won't translate to a sustainable YouTube channel, because as a small channel, I get it. You want growth and you want it fast. But if you take shortcuts, you can seriously mess up your channel. Because now what YouTube knows what to do with your channel comes down to how you pay them, right? And the kinds of views that you get that you pay for, oftentimes they don't come back. You get views on that one video, but the views don't translate to any other views you upload. So that means every time you upload a video, you can get to the point where just because you want to get views on a video, every time you upload a video, you need to promote it. And that's a dangerous place to be at now. Am I against promoting videos? Am I against running ads on videos? Let's talk about this for a quick second. No, not at all. But you're far better off running ads against videos or even promoting things on the other side of proven content. Most of us are trying to promote content that isn't proven. What does that mean? That means like organically, on its own, it's a good video. It actually helped people, it actually served people and it did really well. But you know why? Because you can tell, you actually get the metrics. You can see the click through rate, you can see the average view duration, you can read the comments that are coming through from people that actually found your content because they were looking for it or YouTube suggested it to them and they actually watch most of your video. Wow. Now, you know, this video has done really well. And if you're a small channel, maybe you've been like going at YouTube for a little bit, you probably have some of these videos that have stuck out more than the others, you know. And so the best way to use a promotional tool, be it ads or be it on YouTube or be it wherever, is always going to be on the back of something that's already been proven. And again, as a small channel, your best bet is to not take shortcuts. It's to spend the time learning how YouTube works, getting very clear on who you're trying to reach. It's all the boring stuff that you don't want to do, but it's the stuff that you need to do to stay clear of all the toxic advice that's going around. Let's talk about number three. The third piece of dangerous advice I see floating around on YouTube right now is you have to post consistently. What? Nathan? I thought, well, you're supposed to be consistent. You're supposed to like every week, right? Yes, posting consistently matters. But here's where this advice is flawed. It's why it's a half truth. A lot of people that are following this advice are posting too frequently. If I may argue it this way, you're posting too consistently. Let me give an example. I was just on a coaching call last month with someone who came to the group. Coaching call. It's like 10 or 12 people in there, like our elite coaching program. And she came up, she just jumped in and she was like, okay, Nathan, can you just look at my channel? And I just want you to have a look at my videos and have a look at what I'm doing. I'm just not growing. I just started my channel a few months ago. And I've been posting every day. And I stopped her because I was like, wait, you're posting every day? And she was like, yeah. And when I looked at her channel, sure enough, one long form piece of content every single day for three months. And she told me, she was like, okay, so what do I need to do? And here's what I told her. I said, here's what you need to do. You need to go take a nap, you need to go chill, give yourself a week to recover. Because, my goodness, what there is to applaud is the sheer effort that goes into consistency. And if you're someone that's tried this, you've posted every day for a week, or every day for a month, or even just once a week, if you've been able to maintain some sort of content calendar, even in the early stages of a new channel, I just want to give you, like, the biggest fist bump ever, because you should be commended. That is no small thing. Most people don't even get off the starting line. But you're someone that's been posting. But there's a difference between intentionality and intensity. There's this kind of split here. On one side, you've got intensity, which is like sheer effort, sheer volume, just putting in as much as you possibly can. You're punching fear in the face, you're getting off the starting line, you're setting up the camera, putting up the lighting. I get it. There's so much that goes in to making a YouTube video. And so a lot of us in the small channel phase, you're right here, you're starting YouTube from a place of intensity. And this is what our fellow creator was saying in the coaching call. This is where she was at. And so my coaching to her was, hey, we need to go from just crazy bursts of energy to strategic effort. Something that isn't all over the place, but something that's a little bit more sustainable, something that you can show up with and not burn out before you even have a chance to find the success that you're looking for. So posting consistency. Okay, well, Nathan, like, what's the best way to post? The best way to post is actually not an algorithm question. This is what most people make it. Okay, how often should I post? You're trying to think about how to appease the algorithm. The way I've always coached this has been, I actually don't care about the algorithm. I care about you first. Because the reality is, if you're a small channel, you're trying to get started, you are Most likely doing this in spare time. You're doing this after hours. This was how I started myself, had a full time job, had a family, and that meant I had to use my mornings and evenings or weekends to be able to do this YouTube thing. And I'm assuming if that's you, you cannot afford to be careless with your time. You of all people actually, if you have like 3, 4, 5, 10 hours a week to be creating on YouTube, you can't afford to be way too intense for too long and try to white knuckle your way through. I'm going to post all the shorts, I'm going to do the live streams every Saturday. I'm going to make sure my uploads get. If I could do two long form videos a week, I think that's what I'm hearing, that's what I'm seeing people do. The people you're hearing and seeing are people who have already been past the part time stage. They've already been past the part time stage. These are people that are already full time that are telling you to upload such crazy amounts of volume and they're almost always never alone. They have a team, they have people that are able to help them keep up this velocity. So this is a question that starts with you, Nathan. How often should I post on my YouTube channel? Let's look at your actual life. Let's look at your week. How much time do you even have right now? Are you doing? Do you have a full time job? If you do, how stressful is it? Can you just not stand your boss or is it pretty chill? Like this might sound a little Hallmark ish and a little woo woo, but I'm telling you, after coaching hundreds of creators, this becomes freeing. And this is what leads me to these three things I want you to think about before we get into our, you know, number four, five and six of the dangerous pieces of advice that are out there. I want to give this to you. All right, real briefly, three things you need to think about when you hear YouTube advice. There's three places it has to start. The first place is you need to filter it through you. And this means your life, your routines, your calendar is probably the best way to say this. What time do you actually have? Right? Another thing that when it comes to you is also your goals, right? So if you think about your calendar, then you also have to think about your goals. What are you actually solving for? Is the way we would say this around think media because you post a YouTube video, what are we trying to make happen is it. I posted a YouTube video. I got more people to check out my course. I got more people to check out my membership. I got more people to buy my book on Amazon. I got more people to fill in the blank. Or because I posted a YouTube video, I'm getting closer to being monetized on YouTube. You have to just have a goal, right? So when you have a piece of information that says, hey, you need to upload every day, are you kidding me? How does this even pass this first test? There's no way you can do it. There's no wonder, actually, that that fellow creator jumped into coaching at a group coaching call because she was exhausted. She's like, it's not working. So you have to start with yourself. The second place that you gotta go actually is gonna be your audience. So after you think about yourself, filtering advice through you and what you can actually do, then you gotta think about your audience. And please be thinking about this. This actually might be the biggest takeaway from the whole thing. If you haven't been thinking about who you're trying to reach, start today, start thinking about who you're trying to reach on YouTube, because that's also gonna help you determine how to determining how to filter advice. Quick example, if you're someone that is creating content in more of the educational space, right, where you have something to share, something to teach, that kind of content lends itself really well to search queries. These are people that are actually looking for help on a specific topic. In my niche, it was a YouTube music production channel, so I'd help people make songs. And so some of the common search phrases were how to write your first song, how to write a chorus, how do I. And I would just answer these questions. Now, this matters because you have to be aware of your audience. So when you get advice that could be something like, hey, yeah, so what you really want to try to do is post shorts all the time. And what you really want to try to do is make sure you're hitting browse right? Don't care about search, because search is dead. Well, that actually goes right in the face of how my audience behaves on YouTube. My audience, at least for me personally and a lot of you out there, right, they're actually looking for you. You're just not doing the things to show up and to be present for when they are searching for you. So you got to think about yourself, you got to think about your audience. And the third on the list is the algorithm. Personally, this is actually how I coach. Like, I Don't even. I think a lot of us that are trying to grow small channels are falling for the dangerous advice and falling for the half truths and showing up to coaching calls exhausted. Because you post it every day. Because you start with the algorithm, you don't start with these other filters. And this is to just be honest, I don't hear anyone else talking about. Because to keep it real, it's very hard to sit here, look at the camera and actually have a conversation with you. Because I can't. Right? This is a very actually one sided conversation. I'm sitting here and a lot of other YouTube educators are sitting here and I hope and pray that they're sitting here just trying to give value, trying to help you out, trying to be aware of where you're at and trying to actually help you grow and not just sell you something. Right. And so it's difficult to have the filter system for all three of these because you and I can't have a one on one conversation right now. And this is why something like coaching is so powerful because I actually get to ask you about your week. I actually get to ask you about your audience and your content and what you're trying to do, the goals that you have because you're posting YouTube videos. Then as a coach, I can actually go to this whole section where I start to care about the algorithm and my understanding of how YouTube works, to then give you advice that actually will benefit you in your real life and your calendar and your goals and actually serve your audience. And by the way, if you're looking for a chance to get some coaching, to actually ask questions and get your situation heard, we're hosting a free event. If you go to ytsprint.com we're hosting a several day YouTube challenge where we're giving away free teaching and actually giving away different things, tech gear, YouTube creation gear. But we're also going to be sharing some coaching and this is an opportunity for you. You can show up and get the latest strategies on YouTube stuff that we're going through right now, but actually have the option to fulfill on these other two things, which is hearing more about you and more about your audience and even help you get more clear about your audience and help you create within the schedule that you actually have. This is for the part timers, this is for the YouTube normal people that are just trying to build something on the side when life has got you full everywhere else. You can register at ytsprint. The link is in the show notes below. The fourth piece of dangerous advice that's circulating out there is that search is dead and browse is how you grow. So the idea here is that browse traffic, which is YouTube's most explosive traffic source, is the place you need to try to plug into as a small channel. Because once you plug into that, boom baby, that's how you explode. And actually I'm not gonna refute that. That's actually 100% accurate. If you do want fast growth, if you do want fast explosive growth, getting into browse is hands down your best way to do that. I'm not going to refute that. But why this is a half truth and why this is flawed advice comes down to two things. First off, to say that search is dead and that search is irrelevant and you're better off not focusing of it largely stems from this percentage argument that people will throw out there searches. You know, I was trying to track this down in preparation for this episode and it ranges all the way from 1 to 3% to 15 to 30%. It depends on your niche. It depends on what study you're looking at. Are we talking about YouTube overall? We're just talking about different niches, entertainment versus education. The point being, search traffic on YouTube is a smaller percentage than browse traffic. That's what people will throw around. Here's the crazy thing though. Out of the ridiculous gajillion billion views that happen on the platform, I'll gladly take a smaller percentage of all those views because that's going to be a lot views. That's the first thing. But the bigger point is a misunderstanding of how the algorithm actually works. You can send some thoughts my way because I've spent way too long in YouTube support articles. I'm having weird dreams. But this is for you and I just want this to help you out. Okay? YouTube recommendations is what people are telling you to plug into. That's browse. That's how YouTube will push you. That's how YouTube will put you on homepages and make you more present to people. YouTube recommendations are fueled by things called signals, viewer signals. And there's all kinds of viewer signals by the way. Stuff like click through rate or average view duration. You've probably heard before. Watch history is another viewer signal. But you know what YouTube cites as a viewer signal is search history. Search history is literally a way that YouTube recommends things. So to say that search is dead, to say that search is irrelevant and doesn't matter actually just means you don't really understand how the algorithm works. Because search is a part of the way YouTube recommends things. So search is not dead. Browse is explosive, but search still is very, very strong. Here's the other reason why this is flawed. And this is the part that kind of gears me up. The most common advice for small channels is to you're recommending people to get into browse as soon as possible. If you want to grow fast as a small channel, you gotta get into browse. Here's the thing that I've never heard anyone talk about. To coach someone to start YouTube and get into browse content creation requires a ridiculous skill set. You have to be really good at titles, at creating curiosity and click triggers. You have to be really good at thumbnails and how they complement your title and how they tell a story and how they open loops, have to be dialed in with your script. What's your opening line? How. What's the overall flow? How are your transitions and beats through your script? What was even the idea of the video that you put out? Right. This actually takes a very heavy skill set. And even as a performer, as you're creating your content, to be a storyteller and to be able to communicate in a way that keeps retention high. Browse videos perform well when there's a high click and there's a high quality watch. And to be able to do that right off the bat, I think is poor coaching. I would never coach someone who's just trying to start YouTube to put all their eggs in the browse basket. I would actually encourage you to start with. To start with search traffic because search is not dead. One of our foundational strategies at Think Media is called a sq. Answer specific questions. This is the place that small channels could be milking so much more. I actually think there's a lot of views for you because you're so focused on trying to get in browse that you're forsaking potential views you could be getting from search. Is search as explosive as browse? No. But are you actually serious about this YouTube thing or you just want to push buttons and pop off? Because once you decide that you are actually serious about this and you want to be around in two, three years, you're actually someone who's really trying to build something you could transition into out away from your full time job. We're talking about a sturdy YouTube channel, and I would argue any sturdy YouTube channel, especially in the education space, is going to have a healthy amount of search traffic. Because whenever the student is ready, whenever the viewer is ready, the teacher appears. If you can devote yourself to answering the specific questions of your audience, the things that people are always asking in your niche. For every one person that just got the answer to that question, there's another person who needs the fresh answer because they're just getting into it again. Some of those foundational questions as an example for me came from how to write a song in Logic Pro X. It's a piece of music creation software. Sounds a little boring. It's not as fancy and flashy. It's like a browse based title and thumbnail or video. But what it is is it's reliable. What it is is it's predictable. It's a slow burn, but it's a guaranteed burn. And I'm going to take that every day of the week and I'm going to coach that every day of the week. Because a new creator, a small channel should be focused on getting the reps in. And I think there's no better way to get reps in than by starting to answer specific questions that your audience is searching for. The fifth most dangerous piece of YouTube advice comes down to can you guess? Can you guess? Shorts. And I've actually heard it phrased this way. Just start posting them. Just start posting shorts. If you want to grow your channel, you're a small channel, you want to grow, you want to get those 1,000 subscribers, just post shorts. Just do it now. Are shorts a great mechanism for getting awareness, bringing subscribers? Absolutely. Like we use it all the time in coaching. It's just the advice of just post them. To just post them is the part that's flawed. We're not taking into account all those other things that we were talking about. How much time do you have in your week? And more importantly, what are you even trying to do on YouTube? And you have to decide, are shorts going to be one of your main pillars of content? Are these going to be one of the main formats that you use on your channel? Because I can tell you firsthand, I've seen this advice, just start posting shorts totally harm small channels because they start to build an audience all from shorts. And sometimes the audience comes from shorts in a topic or area that that channel actually decides they didn't even want to go. Right. If you're just starting, let's be honest, you're figuring things out. Very few of us start YouTube crystal clear, knowing exactly who we're trying to reach, aware of their problems and pain points and how our videos can help serve them right. So if you just start posting shorts, while I love the advice because it is an easier way to create, it's obviously Shorter in nature. It's using your phone. A lot of us are already familiar with your phone. You can start answering questions, demonstrating things, showing things. It's actually a really good skill builder as a content creator. But the advice of just start posting shorts can hurt your channel rather than help it if you're not clear on their place. There's a student that I was able to coach in our one on one coaching program. Her name's Kayla. She's got a YouTube channel called his Word My Walk and she's been crushing it. And when she first, you know, when we first started working together, we actually turned off shorts. We were like, we're not even gonna touch shorts until we get the channel to a specific place. Because in her channel, a big. Her main pillar of content is long form content. She posts these daily Bible studies. And so that being her main piece of content number one took a good bit of time. These are like actual Bible studies. She's really going deep with people, really helping people. And she did one, I think Monday through Friday was like the main upload schedule for her. And so shorts just didn't really have a place until we built the foundation through long form because that was specific and contextual to her. So you need to ask yourself, okay, if I did start doing shorts, first and foremost, how are they serving me in my week and my goals, second off, how are they also going to serve my audience? You see what we're doing, we're going through the three things. And then third off, yeah, of course, algorithmically they can totally help assuming you are making good shorts, because they can get a lot more views and reach a lot more people, often quicker than a long form video. And so I do think both of these go hand in hand. But just to say, you know, just start posting Shorts can be pretty harmful to your channel if you don't know how they fit into your Overall goal. Number six. Number six, most dangerous piece of YouTube advice that's out there for small channels right now is focusing way too hard on getting into the YouTube Partner Program, where YouTube's monetization, getting your 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, or your 500 subscribers and your 3,000 hours of watch time just to get in. I just want to get in. I just want to get into the partner program. Then life will be different. I'll start making money and life will change. While I'm all about the goal of getting monetized by YouTube. Yes, let's work on that. What I hear and see small channels trying to do is forsaking all these other opportunities. You could be making money sooner. So this is the goal. Why get into the partner program? Because I want to make money. I want that AdSense, I want super chats, I want whatever else. I want to be able to do things. You can actually be making money way before you get to 1,000 subscribers and way before you even get your watch time hours. If you have a monetization plan in place, you know, close to when you start your channel, we call this your money plan. And so the reason that this is flawed, the reason this is harmful because see people being like, okay, we'll focus on that. Get to YouTube once you get monetized, like they're going to push you more once you get monetized, blah blah, blah and all of that can have a place. But the idea of waiting to make money until you get into the YouTube Partner Program, I would just want to push back as your coach and say, hey, what else could we do sooner? Right? And we have a lot of resources on the podcast that you can simply search or look for. But things like brand deals are actually a lot more attainable than you might think. Things like just being an affiliate for something that you use, especially if you're in more of the education space too. What do you use as a part of your process? Again, easy to use myself because it's pretty fresh. But like as I did a music channel, my goodness, you know how many things I could link to or talk about? Speakers that I'd use, microphones that I'd use, equipment that I would like. What are the things that you naturally use that are part of your process that you could start talking about or reach out to a company? Like there's actually a lot more opportunity here for you to be making money and monetize before you even get to the YouTube Partner Program. Those are the six most dangerous pieces of YouTube advice that I'm seeing right now. But don't you forget that important framework, the three things to think through as you listen to advice. Even if it was from this video or videos that you go into this week. How does it affect you? How does it affect your audience? And then how does it affect the algorithm? Ideally, in that order. As a small channel, I want to invite you again to join us for free@ytsprint.com for a multi day challenge where we're going to help you grow and monetize your YouTube channel. This is specifically for you. If you're a small channel, it's free, it's free. Teaching come, get some coaching, get some eyes on your channel, get some help, surround yourself with some people who are trying to do the same thing as you. And let's make sure that we carry the momentum forward from the beginning of this year together again. You can go to ytsprint.com and to reserve your spot. This is the Think Media podcast. I'm Nathan Eswine, and I can't wait to connect with you in a future episode.