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The Think Media Podcast
Is It Too Late to Start YouTube? 3 Brutal Truths and 5 Big Opportunities...
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Sean Cannell
Hey, quick heads up. Before we get into Today's episode, our YouTube Jumpstart online event is actually happening right now, but there's still time to join. It's a free three day training where we will walk you through how to start and grow on YouTube fast. Even if you're starting from scratch, you'll learn the exact blueprint we use at Think Media to get views and the best ways to start earning money. Even before you have 1000 YouTube subscribers. No fancy gear needed. Plus we'll be sharing some brand new strategies and AI tools to help you go faster. So to get access, just go to tubejumpstart.com right now to grab your spot and get access. Now, this event is live with limited replays, but those replays will be coming down. So if you want to get access to everything for free, just go to tubejumpstart.com and you can see all of the details. That's tube and jumpstart dot com. Now let's jump into today's episode. Let's talk about the future of YouTube. Is it too late to start YouTube? Well, there's five big opportunities and three brutal challenges you must overcome right now to win. And some new stats that we need to know as business owners and content creators. Here's the truth right now, over 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. I've been talking for two minutes. That was a thousand hours of video have been uploaded in the last two minutes. It's, it's crazy. And we have to face the brutal facts. And here's the truth. Most creators will never get views, will never make money, and will quit. Well, here are three brutal facts creators and business owners need to know right now. Number one, there's more competition than ever before. There's more competition than ever before. And the algorithm doesn't care about you. The algorithm only cares about viewers. So here's YouTube's official blog. This, you know, makes me want to fall out of my chair. On average, There are over 20 million videos uploaded daily to YouTube. 20 million daily. And this is according to YouTube's official blog. By the time I finish this sentence, another few thousand videos were just uploaded. That's a lot of noise. That's a lot of competition. Brutal truth number two, low effort. Content no longer gets views. There was an era where you could kind of just throw together a video, hope to get lucky, lob it out there. But hope is not a strategy. And Neil Mohan, CEO of YouTube, said that over 90% of videos people watch on YouTube are recommended by the algorithm. So you've got to figure out how to create content that's going to trigger the YouTube algorithm that's going to resonate with audiences, because boring or lazy videos get buried fast. And if people stop watching your video early, the algorithm stops pushing your video and you can't fake it anymore. If your content doesn't connect, YouTube won't promote it. Here's the third brutal truth. Most creators quit before they ever get traction. They don't got a clear plan, they don't have a system, and they don't have the stamina to keep going. Pew research revealed this. The average YouTube channel uploads just 22 videos before going inactive. So most creators quit because of low early views. They start, but they don't keep going. Of unrealistic expectations. Getting, getting clear on the timeline this could take. Now you're going to hear a lot of stories about people that crush it, you know, in their first week or in their first month. And there is something about having the right plan and the right system and the right strategy that can help you reach success much faster. But a lot of people have unrealistic expectations, and as a result, they don't go into YouTube with the right mindset. So most creators quit because of low early views, unrealistic expectations, a lack of a system or support, and then burnout from doing too much too fast. That's one reason why we're sending you the how to create fast YouTube videos checklist. So you can have a simple plan of how you can do YouTube successfully in under five hours a week. That's one of the guides. It'll be coming to you this week during the YouTube jumpstart event. And that'll happen. That will send that to you when you register. So, yes, YouTube is more crowded, but it's also more full of opportunity than ever before. So competition's high. You know, there are challenges to get reach in the algorithm, but what's the opportunities? Let me show you five reasons why now is still the smartest time to go all in opportunity number one. YouTube is still growing and grabbing more attention than ever. We see this growth wave that there is 2.9 billion monthly active users on YouTube. That is incredible. Yeah, there's a lot of videos being uploaded, but there's a huge audience. There is a massive group of people around the world that watch YouTube every day, consume YouTube every day. I am one of them. That watch it on their smartphone and watch it on their tv. I am one of them. And you probably are too. Like you Know who doesn't even watch TV anymore? You're like, I don't even really watch TV. Like, I watch YouTube. You know what I mean? Like, my attention has shifted. So YouTube jumpstart's all about helping you figure out your edge to find your small audience in this massive pool of 2.9 billion monthly active users. And over a billion hours of YouTube are watched daily. A billion hours are consumed every single day. And YouTube is the number one most used platform in the world. I mean, it's crazy to say these kinds of things, like more than anywhere else is terms of use and consumption. YouTube's at the lead. So even with all the noise, YouTube is still the biggest game in town. It's where the attention is and it's where your future audience already lives. And there's an international opportunity. Another reason why this Moment Matters is YouTube isn't just growing, it's global. There are now localized versions of YouTube in over a hundred countries in 80 different languages. So this means that no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak, there is a global audience already on YouTube. And the opportunity to reach them has never been big, bigger. Here's the second opportunity. YouTube videos work while you sleep. This is our obsession at think media. YouTube videos work while you sleep. YouTube is now the second largest search engine globally, only behind Google. Now that's actually been true. And while there is some debate, yeah, some people are going to chat GBT asking questions, which by the way, your videos can show up as answers to AI questions in the AI in the AI tools. But out of all the different search engines, all the different places people search, some people are searching on TikTok, which is like getting shut down and like shifting to, like another thing. So that's why YouTube is the best. And people are searching on Instagram. And they just said, now Instagram can actually be indexed in search. So there's search happening everywhere. It's called Search Everywhere Optimization. SEO is turned into. They're being a lot of diversity in where people are looking for answers to specific questions. But YouTube is still the second largest search engine only to Google. And guess who owns YouTube? Google. You know what happens to our Think Media videos all the time? Our Think Media videos show up on the first page of Google. So you really can win on both platforms. And this is why I love YouTube more than any other social media platform, because it's the only platform where the videos work for you while you sleep. And creators report that 50% or more monthly views come from older videos. Content made weeks not content made weeks ago, months ago, or even years ago. And that is the story. It's our story. It's our students story. If you've been doing YouTube for a while, you might notice that you're like, yeah, actually half the views I get every month are from videos I posted years ago. That is such a massive advantage to the exhausting social media hamster wheel of trying to post reels all the time on Instagram and trying to come up with a new Facebook post. Like, I saw one person, which by the way, I love all the social media platforms but they're like, you know, the key to success on Facebook is you post five times a day. I'm like, five times a day, bro. I got a two year old and a four year old boy. I'm trying to like take care of my health and stuff. Like, what do you mean five times a day? I want to post one strategic YouTube video and I want that video to still be getting views next month. Even better, I want that one strategic YouTube video to still be getting views next year. That's what YouTube jumpstart's about. That's what we're obsessed with. Because YouTube is the only platform where your content can thrive for years, not just hours. Opportunity number three. YouTube is dominating short form and long form video across all platforms. YouTube's winning both battles, short form and long form. Most platforms only do one. Well, YouTube is doing both at scale with monetization built in. So when it comes to long form, YouTube is the number one most watched streaming platform on TV. Here are the facts. YouTube is beating Netflix. YouTube is beating Hulu. YouTube is beating cable. And that's according to Nielsen's the Gauge that came out in 2025 stats. One billion hours of YouTube are watched on TV every day. Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, just revealed now, when it comes to short form videos, YouTube Shorts, they're currently getting 200 billion views a day. That's nearly 3x more than TikTok's last report. So YouTube Shorts is way bigger than TikTok. The viewership is up one hundred and eighty six percent year over year and it's not slowing down. So if you're ignoring shorts, you're ignoring one of the biggest waves of attention on the Internet right now. This is an opportunity to start posting, start testing and ride the wave early before it gets overcrowded. Now again, you might be like, well, do I do shorts? Do I do long form? We're going to be helping you put together the right plan for you because trying to do everything at the start can be overwhelming. And this is about man. How can you do YouTube successfully in five or less hours a week? How can you do YouTube as a side hustle before it becomes your main hustle? But for some of our community watching right now, you might be thinking about, okay, what is my long form strategy, but also what is my short form strategy now? When it comes to long form, YouTube videos are now regularly as far as not knowing how to talk and pronounce words 30 to 90 minutes long, including podcasts, teaching content, and DIY mini documentaries. Have you noticed a lot of long form content on YouTube? I mean, I'm turning on YouTube TV. I'm listening to podcasts, conversations. I'm cooking my carnivore diet right now. My bacon and eggs that I just had this morning. That's it. Cook the eggs in the bacon to just use all of that kind of fat and salt to make the eggs more flavorful. Get that protein, get that ketosis kicked in. All right, relax, Sean. This is a YouTube training. Okay? So, you know, I'm turning on YouTube in the background. You know, I'm listening on my headphones as I'm going on a walk, listening to video podcasts. I'm listening to teaching content. I'm also consuming shorts. Just have a few minutes looking for a little dopamine. Hit some entertainment, swiping through there. It's both short form and long form. And so YouTube is the best place to post right now. Your videos can go viral in 60 seconds and can work for you for six years. Because YouTube is kind of like a fine wine. It gets better with age. You post the right video today, you can keep getting views tomorrow. And so let's go to opportunity number four. AI is making it easier and faster to create. You know, I've been on YouTube since 2007. I uploaded my first few videos for a local church. Small town, small church. We did a 10 episode video blog series of the Pastor in 2007. That's why there's gray in my beard, man. It's like, dude, where did you come from? What are you? You're a relic in the, in the creator economy. Like, I was almost there at the beginning. Like 2005, YouTube kind of starts. 2006 was the first year. I'm there in 2007, uploading videos. So I kind of have a little bit, especially as a dad, you know, like, dad jokes. Like, my sons will say, I'm like, do you realize your dad had to walk two miles in the snow before he ever filmed a YouTube video. And then once he got there, I had to use a crank to power my camera. And like, no joke, I used Firewire cable to mini DV tapes and a Canon HV30. I feel like it came from the stone ages of technology. And not only has the cameras gotten better, the tech gotten better, the software gotten better, AI has come out of nowhere and is making things easier and faster to create. Now, I know there's all kinds of questions about AI and we'll be covering those because it's a massive wave. But in terms of an opportunity, you cannot be ignoring this. AI has made it. It's never been easier to start help you write your videos, edit your videos and post faster than ever before. YouTube's Culture and Trends Report revealed that 70% of YouTube creators say AI tools help them create content faster. So we're not going to, we're going to look at the brutal facts, but we're not going to complain or cry or get cynical. We're going to say look at also all these opportunities. Wow. The tools, the size of the audience and the fact that AI is here. And YouTube themselves, Dream Screen, Veo and built in AI editing tools are rolling out on the YouTube platform. Across Shorts, across studio, they are making like the YouTube platform is making it easier to create high quality content. And then tools like Chat, GPT, Opus, Clip, Vidiq, Descript, these different tools are helping creators go faster and cutting editing time down by 50 to 80%. So if you're busy, using AI is not just about working harder, but it's about working smarter. And that's one of the big themes. Of course, if we're talking about YouTube in a mid-2025, going into 2026 world, we gotta be talking about AI. And so over the next four sessions, we're going to be looking at different ways to use AI tools to get views, to come up with video ideas faster, to script and organize your videos, to hold viewer attention so that the algorithm will recommend your videos. And then as a reminder, if you're not registered to get all the perks and Benefits, go to TubeJumpStart.com or if there's a link in the description or we'll post it in the chat because that's how you're going to get full access to everything that we're going to be doing during YouTube jumpstart. Opportunity number five. YouTube is still the best platform to make money and build a business. Check these stats out. Since 2020, over $70 billion has been paid to creators $70 billion has been paid to Creators. YouTube's cutting checks. Most of the time it's digital direct deposit. In fact, I think that's probably like, has anybody actually like gotten a check? Do they mail you a check? Like you pretty much have to like, you know, you get monetized, you connect it to a way to get paid, bank account, the whole deal. YouTube's cutting checks. And that's just if you get monetized on YouTube. That's not to say to all the other ways to use YouTube to earn money. And YouTube pays the best 55 ad split on long videos, 45 on shorts. So this is one reason why all these other social platforms like have struggled, whether TikTok or Facebook, because they struggle with monetizing YouTube content. YouTube or they, they struggle with monetizing video content and paying creators. YouTube planted a flag and that's why they have the market share. It is the best financial opportunity. And there's now 10 + built in revenue tools on the YouTube platform itself. Ads, memberships, shopping and more. And 3 million+ channels are in the partner program and growing fast. So the question's a lot less about the competition. The question is how do you rise into that top, top 10% of YouTube channels. You don't gotta be the top 1%. You don't have to be like the favorite creator you follow or somebody with a million subscribers or even a hundred thousand subscribers. If you never hit that, you can still cross the thresholds to build a significant income, to build a significant community of people and to tap into this opportunity of the partner program. And so we'll tactically talk about how in fact this is Sally. She got monetized in months and I'm sharing with you creators that didn't start in 2015 or 2010. She started in the last few months and her first few uploads felt slow. But she didn't quit. She just crossed a thousand subscribers, 4,000 hours of watch time. Her channel got monetized. Here's what she said. I finally hit the magic numbers and I feel more motivated than ever. Sally's a gardener in the Pacific Northwest. This is still happening every day. And that's why we've committed to show up to help you during this YouTube jumpstart event. Now Yahoo Finance said the critter economy is the fastest growing segment of small business. This is still happening right now. You want to start a small business, an at home business, a side hustle, get into the creator economy. Goldman Sachs said the creator economy could approach a half a trillion dollars by 2027, meaning it's going to double in the next year and a half. That's kind of the countdown, right? We've got about six months left this year. It's going to be the best six months if you lock in your strategy, develop a plan, then keep building that wave all through 2026 and then you're getting positioned now for this growth wave that is happening. And so as we land the plane, the question is, why do some people struggle for years while others succeed in months? Because I get it and I, and I can relate. I posted, I've started multiple channels and a few of them failed. And so I paid. I went through the frustrating challenge of uploading and wondering why am I not getting views? Why am I struggling? Like, what is my strategy? What's my channel even about? And putting in the time to edit videos or not have clarity about, even kind of like what's the identity of my channel? What's, what's, what's the, the approach that's going to work? How do you do YouTube the right way? I struggled for years and eventually I made so many mistakes. That's what I was able to then figure out some things that worked. And after not doing YouTube education at first, really doing tech and affiliate marketing, I was able to build a six figure income and actually doing a lot of lifestyle videos and experiments on my personal channel. Eventually cracked the code before I ever taught YouTube. But now it's become my passion to shorten people's learning curve so you don't have to struggle for years. How do you succeed in months? Well, now we've worked with thousands of creators and small business owners and here's what we've seen works again and again. This is how creators succeed in months, not years. Answer. They follow a system. A step by step method they can trust and repeat. They follow a system. And during the YouTube jumpstart, over the next four sessions, we're going to be talking about our seven step YouTube success system. Our main program is called Video Ranking Academy. There's seven steps in the system. We've learned that the system is timeless. It continues to work, but we continue to make updates. And so we're able to give you the latest stuff that's working right now, the distinctions and nuances of these seven steps. And I'm going to be walking through the whole thing with you this week. How to build a profitable and scalable YouTube channel. Even if you're just starting or if you're stuck. This exact system is what our students have used to break out. And the best part is it's repeatable, it's scalable, and it's proven to work across any niche, whether it's real estate to health to coaching to vlogging and beyond. And it's based kind of on this big idea from James Clear. He wrote a book called Atomic Habits. And he said this. You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. Let me know what is one of your YouTube goals? I read a lot of people that said it. I want to retire my husband. I saw your comments earlier. You said, you know, I want to build a side income. You said, I want to get monetized. I want to express my passion. I want to help people. That's great. We need Clear goals. Goes. Goals are powerful, but we don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. So we're not just putting out random information. Over the next couple sessions, we're going to go through a systematic process so that you can actually follow a step by step system and develop a personalized plan for growing your YouTube channel. You're going to learn from actual case studies of creators in our community, people who are just like you, who followed the system and got results, real stories, real, real strategy and a real plan that works right now. And by the way, it's not theory at this point. This is not theory, as you can see. I mean, 29.2 billion views. This thing works if you work it. And don't forget, over 96% of users have never uploaded a single video. So the people who take bold action, the people who follow a strategy, and the people who stay in the game are the ones that win. So what's next? Here's how to get the most out of YouTube jumpstart week. And I hope you're fired up. I'm fired up. I know our whole team, we've been planning, we've been Preparing. We've got four sessions coming up. Here is your four step game plan to get the most out of YouTube jumpstart week. Number one, show up live. When you show up to the live streams, we're giving away coaching, resources, prizes. Today we're giving away a Hollyland mic. We're giving away a camera. I think on day seven tomorrow, I don't know what the full schedule is. You're going to want to get registered so you can see what all those details, details are. But only live viewers are eligible. Secondly, make sure to download your free resource. Make YouTube videos fast checklist. Because there's a way to do this simply, yes, lazy content, low effort content is getting buried in the algorithm. But strategic content doesn't have to take a lot of time. It just has to be more intelligent, more strategic. And when you got a checklist, it's going to help you make videos that get views fast. And we want to hook you up with that and then also block out your calendar. Plan ahead, Google Calendar, you know, talk to your family, talk to whoever. Put a sign on your door, do not disturb, call grandma, can you watch the kids? Plan ahead. Each session is going to be building on the last. And then don't miss tomorrow because I'm going to be Talking about the three simple steps to grow to 1000 subs or your next 1000 subscribers and to get monetized fast. And heads up, full transparency. Yes, there will be an offer during this event. We'll be opening up a limited time opportunity for those who want to accelerate their YouTube growth. But there's no pressure. These sessions are free for you. They're packed with value, whether you buy anything or not. You know, know, if you go to tubejumpstart.com you'll see like, oh, I could get this YouTube starter kit or you could join VIP. Those are totally option things and optional things. And congratulations, if you jumped into vip, that means we're going to get to do some interactive Q and A, get some other perks and bonuses. The YouTube starter kit, just some tools and resources that help you go faster. But I just want to be fully open. I mean, there's no. What's like, what's the hidden. There's nothing hidden because this is what we're doing. We're giving you four sessions coming up. This is session zero. Yes, there's gonna be an offer and when. In fact, we've never done an offer like this. We've never done a YouTube jumpstart before. So what that means is it's not just our program, but we have exclusive bonuses, some other perks, so we'll be sharing the details of that with you. But there's no pressure. So these free sessions are packed with value, whether you buy anything or not. If you wanna upgrade your experience, cool. If you don't, cool. All good. Just want you to know everything to expect over the next couple days. Listen, if you're serious about growth in 2025, you don't need more motivation. You need a map. And that's what YouTube jumpstart week is. A clear map with a proven system. So what you just listened to was session zero of our YouTube jumpstart three day event and if you're hearing my voice right now, there's still a limited time to catch the replays. So if you go to tubejumpstart.com or you click the link in the podcast show notes that will take you over to a place to register get access to the replays. But legit heads up we're only leaving these replays live for a limited time so if you want to watch all four of the deep dive sessions just go to tubejumpstart.com to register get access and you're also gonna get access to that fast. YouTube videos Checklist thanks so much for being a part of the podcast community and whether you listen on Apple or Spotify, a rating goes a long way. If you can leave a rating if you can leave a review. So grateful to be connecting with you today. Until next time, my name is Sean Cannell your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and I will catch you in a future episode.