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$183K a Year on YouTube - Here’s How He Did It | Eric Wormsley
00:37:33
In this episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast, Dusty interviews Eric Wormsley, a content creator who transitioned from family vlogging to a niche channel focused on preparedness. Eric shares insights on the importance of having a business...
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- [00:00]
A
But when you're a YouTuber, and especially for those who are aspiring to be a YouTuber who makes it so that's bringing all their money, you need to keep in your mind that if you don't work, you don't get paid.
- [00:10]
B
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I am so excited that you decided to join us this week, whether you're listening through an audio podcast or watching us over on our YouTube channel. Welcome. Subscribe to those if you're not already. It's free and you'll get notified every time we release a new episode. We don't have any sponsors on this show. We just have a few things that we offer you, the creators. And right Now I offer one to one YouTube coaching. So if you're looking for a private tutor or private coach to help you along your YouTube journey, check the link down below. I also do channel reviews and channel audits where I do a 7 to 10 minute video recording of taking a look at your channel, getting a new set of eyes on your channel. And then lastly, for five to ten bucks a month, you can have access to our creators community group. There's over 150 creators in there right now. We just had our mastermind call for this past month. Thirteen people were on that call. You get access to those recordings, you get access to Join us and you get access to our forum on Discord where you can chat with creators all throughout the week. So with that said, let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation. Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I'm joined today, as always, with a wonderful content creator. Today I'm joined by Eric Wormsley. He was a nuclear specialist in the military during the Gulf War, and after that he attended medical school and became a physician working in the ER for a few years before moving into private practice. Later he taught college courses and even did a little acting in South Florida. So it sounds like you had a lot of different ventures that you were into. Eric, how are you doing today?
- [01:46]
A
I'm great. How are you, Dusty?
- [01:47]
B
Doing wonderful. Now let's Talk about your YouTube channel. Let's talk about what you have going on over there. Let the audience know, like, what is the channel about and what type of content do you create?
- [01:59]
A
Sure. Actually, if anything, I want to rewind a little bit. I started out as a family channel in 2017. I was retiring from teaching at a college and my family and I got a camper and we Traveled around the country for a year looking kind of like for a new place to live, kind of like out in the middle of nowhere. And so I thought, what a perfect thing to vlog our journey and take videos as we went. And that went on for years, even. Even after we found our place here in Michigan. Filming, putting up five videos a week, Monday through Friday. Obviously, we'll talk about monetization later, but it was always looked at as being a hobby. And I'm a business kind of guy. I've like, I love entrepreneurship. And of course, the pandemic hit. And I've always had a mindset. Most of it stems from my military background and a kind of like a preparedness aspect. And I'm going to go ahead and say right off bat, it's not like craziness as far as just doing everything, like survivalist type stuff, but I like being outdoors and I like just being prepared for any type of problems that may arise. And I notice a lot of people that, especially because of the pandemic, were thinking that and were asking us questions. So we decided to go ahead and make a business decision, by the way, and switch it from a family channel to more about preparedness and just teaching people what to do as far as canned food or something you might have in your house.
- [03:12]
B
So the name of the channel is, and you correct me if I'm wrong, it's gon prepping. Is that correct?
- [03:17]
A
Exactly right.
- [03:18]
B
Okay, so it's gon prepping. 232,000 subscribers as of the recording of this podcast episode. You made that pivot and you've really leaned into the kind of the motto that you have on your channel. Seize the day. Make the most of today to prepare for a good tomorrow, which I absolutely love that. All right, so talk about what you learned early on from doing the family content and then through that pivot to the new bit of content that you're doing now. What were some things that you learned early on and you were. You still hold on to, to this day that really helped you continue to grow the channel?
- [03:57]
A
Sure. The biggest thing is simply having the correct business mindset, because even owning businesses like I do, I've run into so many people. And of course, we know most businesses fail within the first five years, and people get this mindset of, oh, I'm going to have a business. I open the doors and all the customers are going to come running in. And that's not. That's far from the truth. And the same thing with YouTube. We have to look at it With a mindset that you can't simply just start a channel and put videos out and just hope by sheer luck that people are going to show up to your channel. Because this is a business. You're in a town full of businesses, you're in a world full of businesses. And there's something that you have to do to make your videos stand out numerous ways, obviously. And when I did the Family Channel, I didn't shoot for any of that. I just vlogged and put it out there and we started getting a healthy following, few thousand people, but it just, it plateaued and. And I had to step back and as an entrepreneur, look to see what's going on. And obviously it's because there was no, like, marketing per se. There was nothing I was doing in my thumbnails or in my titles or anything to try to really bring people in and that. So when I shifted over to preparedness, I shifted my mindset into business as well. And that's when I started shifting my thumbnails and titles and of course, the whole gamut of all the things we do to try to get people to see your videos. Because, you know, as your video is just one little video of thousands that'll pop up and trying to get them to click on yours is really kind of like obviously the big strategy or even game. And that's when my mindset shift. Mindset. When my mindset shifted, that's when my channel really started growing.
- [05:33]
B
What did you decide to do? Aside from the thumbnails and titles and all the normal things that we do, what did you decide to do to make your content stand out? What was your thing? What did you decide on?
- [05:46]
A
I decided to use not simply just my specific niche, but my expertise in the area. And I, my. And of course my followers today say that's what makes me stand out compared to the other channels. As far as preparedness goes and for the fact that I am a physician, I can talk about medical stuff and I could talk about it with relevance for the fact that I've been there, I've done it, I know what's going on with that. I sometimes will talk about nuclear videos and I'll talk about as far as the truth, because I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of information out there, not even just preparedness on YouTube where unfortunately people step on there and don't. They're not experts in the field. They'll hear it from somebody else, usually watching from another YouTube channel, and it'll kind of spread through wildfire across the Internet information that is not true at all. And so I decided to go ahead and use my expertise in the areas to strategically teach all of my followers the right way of doing things. And honestly, in reality, preparedness, I find there's a huge arena of channels that really try to invoke fear when it comes to preparedness. I was going to call the channel, by the way, just ready, like this is how many smoke detectors you have and this is what you want in your first aid kit. But of course, when the pandemic came around, that's what people didn't want to talk about, that they want to talk about everything happening, including medical fears too. And so my whole, the whole thing about having a better or a good tomorrow is I may talk about some of the things we see in the news, but the whole video is always about just trying to de escalate, relax. Let's go ahead and look at this with, without emotion. Let's look at this exactly what you should do if you are worried about this. And this is how you should prepare for it. And that is the premise of Goshen prepping.
- [07:27]
B
When you made the pivot to, from family to preparation and preparedness for the things that you're talking about, how important do you think it has been for your channel and your brand that that you niched down so much to talking about just prepping for disaster or pandemic? How important do you think it is for creators to not spread too wide of a net?
- [07:55]
A
I think it's very important and it's interesting because of course, I've been following you for a long time and all the other people that tell you how to do YouTube will always say you need the niche down and make it very specific. And truth be told, I didn't believe anybody when they said that. I was like, what are you talking about? Let's throw out a huge net and catch as many people as we can. But it's when I did niche down is when I found this very distinct culture group of people who really are serious about that. And that's the thing is you put out a big net, you may catch a few people, but they're not going to stick around. They're not going to be. Even if they subscribe, they'll unsubscribe as soon as you put your second video out. And so obviously we're looking at a huge ocean full of people watching YouTube. And even if you put a smaller net out, you'll still catch, metaphorically speaking, obviously, a countless amount of People who want to follow your niche. So niching down now I'm a believer because the obviously the proof is in the pudding is what we definitely should do.
- [08:49]
B
How do you plan your videos? What is a like when you have an idea, do you have a list of ideas on a Google document and just walk us through your full process of video production from idea all the way to publish?
- [09:04]
A
Sure. I do have a Google document that I keep track of. First off, I have whenever any of my followers say, hey, have you considered doing a video on and then fill in the blank, I'll I keep a running list of that. So any day I'm really wondering what I should put a video out. And there's nothing really in the news because the news really exacerbates this area of preparedness and people want to know what's going on with it. So let's say it's kind of like a just a quiet day in the news. I'll refer back to my list and say, all right, let's talk about like canned food, for example, and the myths about canned food. And my whole process, I really have it nicely streamlined. It didn't used to be when I was a family channel, I would film all day, spend three hours editing and trying to make it as perfect movie like as possible. But now I get up in the morning, I have my coffee, surf around, see what I'm what's going on in the news, what's trending, what I want to make my video. I'll sit down for about a half hour and write out the script and then I'll get up, finish up, get my shower and everything, come back, sit down, film it, and then edit it. Editing for me takes maybe about 30 minutes and the whole process within three hours, including the thumbnails and stuff is done. So I work about three hours a day working on a video. And right now I do that Monday, Wednesday and Friday, practically speaking, and that's it. So about 10 hours a week in making my three videos a week.
- [10:17]
B
As far as like post, publish, do you do anything afterwards? Do you share it in specific places? What are your thoughts about things you should do after a video has been uploaded?
- [10:28]
A
First off, I use the three thumbnail process that YouTube allows where you look at the three thumbnails. And by the way, I own a martial arts studio in the evening. That's when I'm teaching martial arts. And that's the perfect time for my videos to come out is while I'm teaching martial arts. So I would like to have it So I could jump right on there on my phone or computer. But of course I'm busy teaching. So usually when I'm done teaching my school, I'll come back home and I'll jump right back on. And the only thing I really do post processing is possibly change the thumbnail on occasion, even change the title a little bit, because obviously you can tell within the first couple hours if the videos gained traction at all. And so sometimes, maybe a quarter of the time, I'll go through and change a few things and then just make sure the thumbnail is relevant and the title is relevant to it. I used to post almost religiously on Facebook and such. Now I find that if it's only a very relevant video per se, that has to do with maybe some headlines or something everybody's talking about, I'll go ahead and share it on Facebook or something like that. But on the most part, I don't. I pretty much just keep it to YouTube and then just kind of let it go where basically the direction it heads down. And I'll do some minor changes afterwards.
- [11:34]
B
How is your design concepts for your thumbnails and titles changed over the years as far as the process of. I'm looking at your thumbnails now. They all have a streamlined look to them, which is what we always tell students. Try to keep a good streamlined look for your branding. So people know, hey, that's a goan video. Goshen prepping video. How has that changed over time and what have you landed on now and why?
- [11:55]
A
First off, you nailed it when it comes to saying streamlined. Because what I have very much learned is you want to make it as simple as possible. And I think a lot of people think simple as possible is like three words or five words. And although that's part of it, just not having a cluttered background, not making it so when they see it, because you probably know the numbers. Dusty. It's milliseconds as far as people glancing over your thumbnail. And you want to make it as simple and clear as far as the message as absolutely possible. And what I will do, though, just kind of. If you have a marketing thing in a grocery store, let's say you sell a laundry detergent. And that laundry detergent has a very specific design on the bottle you use for a couple years, you'll notice that the designs change on the bottles as well. And so I kind of subscribe to that with my. With my. My thumbnails. And I'll usually have a certain font, a certain way of putting it on There. And I'll keep it on there for six months to a year. Then I will force myself to change to a new type of font and kind of like maybe slight changes in the thumbnail itself just to keep it more fresh. Because what I find. And you'll find people watching the channels, and they'll watch the videos. And you know how it is. People get bored. They're like, okay, I haven't seen enough Goshen prepping. And then for the next few months, every time my thumbnail pop up, those certain people will be like, oh, yeah, I'm done watching him for now. Which happens. But when I change the thumbnails after a certain amount of time and start putting in just slight changes, they'll see that and say, oh, what is this thumbnail? I haven't seen this before. And sometimes they'll even come back and say, oh, gosh, you're prepping. I haven't seen them in a few months. They'll click on it and watch it. And I have followers saying that all the time. Oh, look. And right when I make my changes in my thumbnails is when they start coming back again. But keeping it streamlined and simplistic is the key.
- [13:36]
B
And you do this about every three to four months or so. Every quarter, you make a slight tweak just to get the attention of people who might be a little bit not bored, but a little bit. It's just common that they've watched your videos and they've moved on.
- [13:48]
A
Exactly. I don't have a specific timeline set for this. I would say four to six months.
- [13:52]
B
Interesting. Okay, that's really interesting. I've never heard anyone with that method, but it makes a lot of sense hearing you talk about it. How important is it as far as fostering a community on YouTube off platform? So, like, how are you, other than the comment section, how are you connecting with your audience and how important is it for a channel like yours?
- [14:16]
A
I can't stress enough in the preparedness community. Community is key. And I mentioned this in the videos all the time because there's a lot of. They call them lone wolf preppers. They just want to go out in their cabin by themselves and live there the rest of the days. That's not me. I'm such a people person, I could not handle that. So I always stress community. And I talk about strategic techniques in your community, how to meet up with other people who want to look into doing preparedness. And so what I have done is I set a face, set up a Facebook group that's the first thing I did where I have people come in. And specifically, since I obviously get inundated with questions endlessly, I refer them to our Facebook page and I will try to answer questions there. But there's a lot of people out there who have a lot of really good information, very sharp people. And so that way we have a community of people talking instead of just myself all the time. And that way they can literally connect back and forth for quite a while. I did a newsletter and had a mailing list, but just for the fact that I'm so busy, I put that on pause for a while and I'll probably get back into it again, especially because we'll talk about obviously in a little bit doing some other things as far as money goes, doing some courses. And that's what I'm working on now are some courses that eventually I'm going to sell on the channel. And having the email list obviously is key for that. But community is everything when it comes to preparedness. At least it should be anyway. And that's one of the things I continuously tell all of my followers.
- [15:38]
B
I want to interrupt this conversation just for a few seconds and tell you about our new offering to creators. It's our new channel reviews. 50 bucks get you a video recording from me where I take a look at your channel. You get a new, different set of eyes on your channel, and I talk about the things you're doing well, the things that I see you can improve on, and just the overall kind of, I guess you would say, direction of your channel. Get a bit of advice and technical stuff from me as I record that video. So again, that's our channel audit or review service. You can check that in the link below. Now let's get back to the conversation. So you mentioned you do about three videos a week, 10 hours a week, and you're super busy. How do you manage your time as a creator? Because I have a lot of folks come on these Mastermind calls or they get on these coaching calls with me and they say I'm just borderline about to be burnt out. And they're just doing one video a week, but they're spending like an absorbent amount of time on things that really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. So how do you manage your time as a creator? And what are some road guardrails and things you've put into place?
- [16:40]
A
Yeah, and I'll be honest with you, that's only from doing it for so many years that I have learned that it doesn't matter if I put for example in my videos, I don't put a lot of funny term fancy editing into it. And obviously even just transitions. Rarely I'll have some transitions on my channel. I try to make my channel and my videos to the point cut and dry. Here's what you do. And I still try to put in like a story or some kind of experience I have into on most videos. But I try to chop out as much fluff as possible because we all know that if you go to a video on how to put canned corned beef hash in your basement without it getting rusty, if you pull up, let's say five people have videos on that and this channel has it 13 minutes and this one's 12 and then ghoster prepping has it for four and a half minutes. We will tend to want the information quickly and click on the 4 1/2 minute video. Since I cut out a lot of the fluff, I try to do what I call in my words a one take. And so I have a bunch of kids and I'll say all right kids, time to go upstairs and just hang out in your room for five or 10 minutes while I film. And I'll do my best to try to like right now just do a one take video where I literally just talk straight through for the certain amount of time. And then sometimes just to keep the people a little bit more engaged, I'll put a couple video clips in there on top of that. But the thing is I didn't used to do this. I used to live on making videos. And if you don't believe me, ask my wife because she's. You're. That's all you're doing is editing all day. And I'd be like, no, it's only an hour. She's been on there for three hours. I would really try to hyper fix on trying to make it the perfect video. There is no perfect video. Even if you make your video perfect, not everybody will like that specific context. So just put out the videos, shorten them down. You don't have to make them fancy or transitions the information. At least on my niche the information is the key is what people come to for they want the information and how to do whatever so you can make it as fancy as you want to. You're just adding more and more time which is going to lead to burnout or simply just get to the point make the video. And it's almost like the lines of a short. And I don't really do shorts and but it's not uncommon to have a video for three or four minutes on my channel. Just really getting to the point, talking about something specific or talking about this is happening in the news. And look, you don't have to worry about this because here's why. And I try to cut out a lot of the. A lot of the extra information, which I honestly, I don't think that people really want that anyway. And so it's really helped me because my three hours a day working on a video didn't used to be three hours a day. It used to be hours and hours a day. And so that way it's freed me up with doing so many other things that I need to take care of between my family and my dojo and such. That's basically what I do now to try to make it so I don't burn out. And I also look at it too. It's a business, it's a job. Occasionally there'll be time. I'm like, oh, I really don't feel like filming today, but this is my job. This is what I need to do. And just if you work a regular job at a grocery store, you're still going to have to get up and go to the grocery store. So just sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do it and get it done with. And sometimes even doing that, I have some of the best videos I put out because, I don't know, it probably changes my mindset into the video. And I'll. All right, here we go, guys. Here's what's going on. And I can make it a little bit more streamlined, but that's funny things, because obviously you can try to put everything you want to in a video, but doesn't mean it's going to go viral. But then sometimes you're like, oh, this video is not the best video. And it does go viral. It's just some of those crazy things sometimes.
- [19:59]
B
I was smiling when you said you had a bunch of kids. I have. I have two daughters and I have triplets on the way.
- [20:05]
A
Congratulations. I know, that's amazing.
- [20:07]
B
So it's interesting. How many kids do you have?
- [20:09]
A
I have nine kids.
- [20:10]
B
No. Okay. It makes. Okay, my five. My. My five. It seems extremely inconsequential right now with you saying that you have nine. That's. That's amazing that you can get all of this done as a creator, as a father, as a martial arts instructor, maybe. Speak on the flip side of what we just talked about. The freedom, as much as you can be bound to YouTube and it can Own you and you can be tuned with it. There is a, a great deal of freedom that comes with. I'm uploading these videos. But then these videos begin to work for themselves and I do nothing after that. Not nothing, but they are entities of their own. So speak on the freedom that YouTube allows and what that's meant for you and your family.
- [20:53]
A
Yeah, and now you'll see I'm smiling because that's right up my alley. It's the freedom because I've had many jobs before. Even if it's a job that pays well, like as a doctor, you have to be there a certain amount of hours. I love the freedom that I can decide, hey, today family, let's go to the beach. But it's a filming day. That's okay, I'll go ahead and film tomorrow and double up on it. That type of freedom in itself is worth its weight in gold. The fact that I can literally set my timetable. But as entrepreneurs say, and this is a saying that I hope everybody on who's listening to this really listens to, is as an entrepreneur, you can decide not to work, but you're also not getting paid. And that's the thing, is when you actually work a regular job, you're motivated by that paycheck of whatever you make per hour. But when you're a YouTuber, and especially for those who are aspiring to be a YouTuber who makes it so that's bringing all their money, you need to keep in your mind that if you don't work, you don't get paid, even at the beginning, because we all know that it takes a while to get that channel going. It takes a while, even if you're monetized, to really start getting good money with it. And you have to work at it and work at it and eventually a time's gonna come where that will be your sole income, which is fantastic. But here's why I like the freedom. As an entrepreneur, I use this analogy all the time. Let's say that you open up an old school store back in the old west and you have five things you sell, like shirts and boots and hats. And such an entrepreneur will realize that these certain type of stocks nobody buys. So I'm not going to keep selling those anymore. But I noticed that this trend, people really buy this now. So what's nice about YouTube? And I don't care what niche you have, trends always change and the way people see it always change. So I have the freedom, instead of always talking about very specific thing every single day in and day Out. I have the freedom of let's venture down this way with a video. If I go in this direction and nobody really likes it, that's fine. Maybe I'll try it again in six months, or maybe I'll just axe it. But then I have the freedom. Hey, let's experiment and let's try this. Whoa. That did really well. That's fun. So now I love the freedom of using my mind to branch out in different directions that I never would have conceived at the very beginning. And that's the freedom, besides going to a regular job that I love because I. I get bored doing the same thing over and over again. But when you have a YouTube channel, I don't care what niche you have. I don't care how narrowed down your niche is. The things you can do with it are basically endless.
- [23:15]
B
Speaking of freedom, let's talk about monetization. So part one of this question is, I guess the entire question would be, how are you making money from your content? I call them buckets. What are your different buckets that you're making money from the channel. And then you don't have to tell us exactly, but on average from your channel and the things around it. How much can you make in a normal month from your content?
- [23:40]
A
Actually, I'm rewind. Talking about now is the business aspect of the channel. Back when I did my family channel, we were plateaued. I think I had 27,000 subs at the time for a good couple years. And I always want to stress, you want to have enough subs to be monetized and possibly get a good following. But people focus too much on the subs. We want to look at how many people are watching the videos, obviously, because that is. And when we talk about the AdSense coming out, obviously that's the bread and butter. But back then I would make $300 a month and I would justify to myself by saying, oh, look, there's $300 a month that I didn't have before, as I would work hours editing a video. Now, instead of talking about specifically how much I make every single month, I think for AdSense it varies anywhere from 2000 to. Over the last year, there's been some months I made over $7,000 a month just from AdSense. I do Amazon affiliates, which most months I don't even touch on it. But when prime day comes around, I talk about to my followers that this is the perfect time if you've been waiting for that sleeping bag. And I do the same thing for myself, by the way. I Know the prime day is coming up, so I may hold off a little bit and buying something. When the prime days come around, I usually make 10 to $15,000 that month. When the prime day comes around, sponsor videos, I don't have a specific number for you, certainly in the tens of thousand dollars a year. Some months I may only make a thousand or two. Some months I may make four or five thousand dollars or more for those. And then I also, when I first started, I had another channel say, oh, you should, we do cookbooks, you should write a cookbook. So my family and I wrote a cookbook when we're at a family channel. Plus I have some downloadable like checklists that people can get for $12. And so I sell those on occasion too. I usually make 50 to $100 a month. So how much I make each month obviously varies greatly, but last year I made $183,000 with all that combined.
- [25:35]
B
Yeah. So as you can tell listening to this, as I always tell people, as a creator, it's never putting your eggs into one basket because that's like my channel, my channel varies. November, December, last year I made really good in adsense, it's all about the total views per day as opposed to how many views are you getting on your new subscribers do you have? I've modeled my tutorial channel around a view per day basis and I always want that number to be going up and I always want watch time. My goal this year was to try to average a thousand hours of watch time per day on my channel. And I've almost got to that, I think about about 9, 49, 50 right now going into the midway point of this year. So having those little goals. And I mentioned that to ask you, what are your goals? What do you have for your channel? Are they numerical? Are they interaction based? What are the goals for you, Eric, and for your content?
- [26:28]
A
It my primary goal right now and what I'm working on is content that people will be paying for. And I don't have a Patreon account I've considered in the past. But courses, master courses. And again, I, I, what I did was I sat down and I said, all right, what makes my channel unique in this niche? Why am I different from other ones? And how could that make it marketable? And the first thing that popped in as a physician, there's so many people in so many channels in this niche that try to talk out medically this and this, and they'll say things like get a first aid kit. But no offense, band aids are what you find in first aid kits. And if you're talking about any type of major disaster, they're not going to do a whole lot for you. Those are little boo boo type things. And so I'm working on a master course right now of the first one is going to be about just bleeding control. And it's. I think I have it down to 13 or 14 video series of everything you should do. Let's say some kind of disaster happens. There is no doctor or EMT or hospital. What can you do and what should you have on at home to be able to be ready for this? Because obviously even just watching a video and there's nothing worse than like an armchair person saying, oh, I watched this video, I know how to do that now. I'm like, this isn't the Matrix. You can't just pick stuff up like that. You have to practice, practice. So that is my next goal. That's what I'm actually working on right now is making some master courses. I'm doing a course mostly in medical, but I'm also working on the second one too. If you're brand new to prepping preparedness, here's what you do. Take the fear out of it. This is common sense prepping. Everybody should have a few weeks at the very least of food stockpiled because you never know what's going to happen. You may be a disaster or the power goes out for a few days. And so I always try to put relaxing common sense into it. And now my next shift is to put that into courses because as we know, once the courses are done, then it's just a matter of marketing to sell the courses. And it's a, practically speaking, like you said, it's not no work at all, but it's obviously it's a passive income coming in, practically speaking.
- [28:19]
B
Yeah, I always tell people all the time. I remember when Covid hit, I had done a Zoom video just about nine or ten months prior. How to use Zoom? It was about a 20 minute video. In that video, it exploded obviously when Covid hit. And I think I almost made $30,000 on that video. And I'm still making money from it to this day. We're talking six, seven years ago. That, that is the beauty of YouTube. And I love hearing people like Eric talk about just the success that he's able to have. And now his next steps is getting into that pa. Now with paid content, your free stuff has to be good. Like your free stuff has to be valuable. And if it's not, then no one's going to buy the stuff. Like, I released the channel reviews from this podcast. That was after 15 years and I'm averaging about five or six of those a day. And people, the only reason they're trusting me to do those reviews for them is because I've been providing this free podcast for a decade and a half. And so with that being the case, what would you say about free content? As a creator and Talking to these YouTubers that are listening to this, where would you focus? If you're early on in your YouTube stage, would you try to do the premium stuff or would you just make your free stuff as good as it could be?
- [29:34]
A
First off, your free stuff has to be as good as it can be. Because I don't care if you're a small channel or a huge channel. And if you're making videos and you're telling them on one side, hey, watch this video today, which is terrible. But then on the same note, on that same video, oh, you should purchase this. It's like buying some kind of piece of junk at the dollar store that breaks and then dollar saying, dollar store saying, you should buy another one. It's not going to happen. So your free stuff, I don't care if it's. I'm sorry, every one of your videos doesn't matter if it's free or paid for. You should be shooting for top notch. And like I said, that does not mean you have to put in a lot of fancy editing and transitions and everything else. That I think is a big mistake that a lot of people think that I want to make or even have intro. My videos used to always have an intro, but people are not there to watch my intro, even though if it lasts five seconds, they're there to get the information. And so even though we're streamlined, it has to be quality. Quality video, quality audio, obviously, quality content. And as we know, both of us have been in the industry for a long time, dusty that what, 90% of your video is the audio. And even for myself, when I'm surfing around YouTube, I've come across a channel that the audio you can barely hear or it's all staticky. Even if I know that person and I know the information's going to be relevant, good. I just, I can't keep watching it. And so no matter what you do, you should be shooting always for top notch, always shooting for 10. And if you shoot for a 10, as far as quality, not like on the scale from YouTube has it being a number one video. But if you're shooting for a 10 and you end up with an 8, that's great. But if you don't shoot for anything, you're going to end up with a three or four and you're not going to. Even if you turn into trying to sell content, nobody's going to buy it. Like I don't like watching you in the first place. I'm not going to go to this content from here. And so everything should be picture perfect. Everything should quality. Audio should be quality perfect. And I'm not saying that it doesn't need to be personable. There's nothing wrong with, hey, Dusty, I got a quick story for you. And you talk about something. There's nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, obviously that brings in a lot of quality on your content, but you better have a, as best you can, a clear, articulating voice. You should have excellent audio, excellent video. Use some scripts, ChatGPT or any type of AI is perfect at helping you set up your hook and how you should have your content to go through and trying to have it well organized. There's. In our day and age, there's no excuse for not having it done that way because again, I have people tell me all the time I should, they want more of these medical videos. And I do. I put out free content with my medical videos. But people also want organization too. If I literally walk them through a course and actually have it so they print out handouts for themselves afterwards, that's worth money and people pay for that. But again, I have to have the free content that's quality in the first place to make that happen.
- [32:18]
B
I used to tell people, five, six years ago, you got to optimize the first seven to 10 seconds. You don't have very long to capture the audience. It's about half that now. We're talking the first three to five seconds, maybe even shorter than that. Most people, their consumption starts at a young age with vertical content swiping up very quickly if they don't find that dopamine that they want or go into the next video. And so it's really, really neat to you say that as we close out the interview today. Eric, you've been a great guest, by the way. I'm so thankful that you were willing to come on today. What would you say? What would be your final words for the YouTube creators listening to this? Knowing that we're optimizing for people who are either anywhere on the spectrum, starting trying to grow, trying to monetize, what would be the one thing that you would say to these people listening.
- [33:05]
A
Obviously, like I said, having subscribers is not your, your standard. Having people watch your videos is the standard because you could have a certain amount of subscribers. But if more new people aren't coming in to add to that base, it's not helping. You really need to shoot for having videos that people have never seen your channel before will go to. But you have to be the expert in your field. And you being the expert in the field could mean that literally between the three hours of filming a day, you're reading every single book known to mankind to do that. And that's fine because there's nothing wrong saying you have to be the expert. At least you have to be well versed and know what's going on. So one of the things that when I talk to people who want to start YouTube I tell them is on that note, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You just have to be the expert in that field. And so I will sometimes Even just surf YouTube looking for video ideas of what some of the other channels are doing. And sometimes there are these AI channels which I personally, this is not my cup of tea, but you watch them and you can tell it's AI somewhat robotic voice. And they just put video clips in there. And what I do is I have a little, a recipe and this very much will help new channels. And the recipe is this. You come across this channel, they have a thousand subs. But wow, look at this video they came out with just three weeks ago. Already has 43,000 views. That's something you should be looking at if it's in your niche. And you, I'm not saying copy their video, but at least gives you the ideas of what did this channel do to make that happen. Obviously this is a hot topic. Obviously this is something that's trending or going viral. And since you're the expert in the area, instead of being a faceless AI channel, you can talk and say, listen, let's talk about what's happening with this and this. And if you go down those same paths, obviously people are talking about it, it's what's trending right now. And using that for the, for your own videos works well because then you may get, let's say because I have 230,000, something like that subscribe and when they, that one AI channel may have had 40,000 views, I'll have 200,000 views from that same type of concept. And so what I'll do is I'll put that out, but I put my own expert input into it. And sometimes again, even either debunking the myths or getting people to relax, guys, don't jump down this band path. That's not that or this bandwagon. That's not what this is about. And I try to put my own input onto it because I think what happens is. And this is the biggest thing that newer YouTubers should think about, your mind is telling you, make a video about this, a thumbnail about this, and a title about this, and we'll roll the dice and Hope that works. YouTube's already out there. People have already invented that wheel for that specific video you're making right now. See how other ones have done it and how they've done with it. And then sometimes as you're getting used to it, you copy kind of like how they do it. And I always say, don't copy their work, but copy how they do it, because they have those views for a reason. Because they've already figured out, specifically by inventing wheel, which way to go. And that helps out quite a bit because I have a friend of mine here in Michigan, he started a channel, and he's already up to, like, over 10,000 subscribers, and he has a lot of views coming in already. And as I've mentored him, and that's kind of what he does now, too, because the stuff's already out there. YouTube is not brand new. There's only like, three. Three channels on YouTube. That's a different story. But there's countless channels, and sometimes people will just hit pay dirt getting lucky. And that's something you need to look at to see why they did well, because it is not a roll of a dice on YouTube. The algorithm is very specific, and you just have to figure out how the algorithm picked their video to make that work well. And over time, you start to get a feel for it instead of doing it all the same way, you get a feel for what the algorithm's looking for.
- [36:39]
B
Awesome, Eric, thank you so much for your time today. Again, it's Eric Wormsley with the Goshen Prepping YouTube channel. I'll put a link to his channel in the show notes, as always. And Eric, we'll talk to you later.
- [36:52]
A
Thank you, Dusty. Appreciate it.
- [36:54]
B
And that's a wrap this week on the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. Man, what a great conversation it was with Eric. I'm so thankful for guests like him to come on and provide the value that they do. And speaking of value, you can subscribe to the show absolutely free, whether it's on our YouTube channel, whether it's on Spotify, Apple Podcast, we're all over the Internet. Just go to YouTube Creators Hub, search my name and you will find us there. And we get you get notified every time we release a new episode each and every Friday. Don't forget to check out all of our services for creators, the one on one coaching for me, the Channel Audit and review service, as well as our Creators Mastermind group. All of those will be linked down below. Talk to you next week.