How Sam Caudle Generated Over $500,000 Of Revenue From His YouTube Channel

Summary

Podcast Title: YouTube Creators Hub
Episode: How Sam Caudle Generated Over $500,000 Of Revenue From His YouTube Channel
Host: Dusty Porter
Guest: Sam Cottle, Creator of Living in Tampa, Florida
Release Date: October 18, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of the YouTube Creators Hub, host Dusty Porter welcomes Sam Cottle from Tampa, Florida. Sam shares his remarkable journey of leveraging his YouTube channel, Living in Tampa, Florida, to generate over $500,000 in revenue through his real estate business. The conversation delves into Sam's strategies, challenges, and insights, offering valuable lessons for creators aiming to elevate their YouTube presence and integrate it effectively into their business models.

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Origin Story: Launching the YouTube Channel

Dusty Porter kicks off the discussion by exploring how Sam initiated his YouTube journey:

• Relocation and Real Estate Beginnings: In 2020, amidst global uncertainties, Sam and his family moved from Colorado to Florida to be closer to his wife's family. Concurrently, Sam ventured into real estate, experimenting with various lead generation methods like direct mail, Facebook ads, and door knocking[^03:00].

• Discovery of YouTube's Potential: Frustrated with ineffective strategies, Sam stumbled upon a podcast featuring YouTube creators discussing pros and cons of living in specific areas. Inspired, he reached out to them, expressing his desire to emulate their success[^03:33]. This bold move led to a partnership and the birth of Living in Tampa, Florida.

Notable Quote:

“I just took the ball and ran with it.”
— Sam Cottle [04:21]

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Strategy & Funnel: Integrating YouTube with Real Estate Business

Sam elaborates on his strategic approach to using YouTube as a lead generation funnel for his real estate business:

• Reverse Engineering the Funnel: Sam emphasizes addressing early-stage questions potential movers have. Instead of targeting final decision-makers, he focuses on broader queries such as “Should I move to Tampa?” or “What are the best restaurants in Tampa?”[^04:43].

• Building a Value Library: By creating content that answers foundational questions, Sam provides value early in the search process, positioning himself as a trusted authority when viewers are ready to engage in real estate transactions[^05:21].

Notable Quote:

“I want to demonstrate that I can be trusted by these people if they reach out to me, not going to push them in the wrong direction.”
— Sam Cottle [07:55]

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Content Creation and Growth

The conversation delves into how Sam developed his content strategy and improved his on-camera presence:

• Content Planning Tools: Sam uses tools like TubeBuddy, VidIQ, and Notion to research keywords and plan out a library of 20-30 videos[^05:33]. This systematic approach ensured his content addressed the right questions even before he had a substantial client base.

• Overcoming On-Camera Anxiety: With a background in live production, Sam found the technical aspects manageable but initially struggled with confidence on camera. Over time, building frameworks around trust and showcasing client interactions bolstered his self-assurance[^06:17].

• Continuous Improvement: Sam focused on refining his process, such as developing consistent call-to-actions (CTAs) and creating comprehensive guides to complement his videos[^08:26].

Notable Quotes:

“It was probably a year and a half in I made a couple hundred thousand dollars already from doing this.”
— Sam Cottle [06:58]

“I started just building out some kind of frameworks. So very basically, I want to demonstrate that I can be trusted.”
— Sam Cottle [07:55]

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Technical Aspects: Video Production and Editing

Sam shares insights into his video production workflow:

• Equipment and Setup: Utilizing a Sony A7C camera on a tripod with a shotgun mic, Sam ensures high-quality visuals and audio. Recently, he added a camera operator and a gimbal to enhance video dynamics[^15:22].

• Editing Process: Initially handling editing himself, Sam eventually hired an editor who streamlined the workflow. Communication between Sam and his editor is managed through Notion and Dropbox, where they organize footage and collaborate on content[^17:04].

• Thumbnail Strategy: Emphasizing clarity and recognition, Sam designs thumbnails with prominent faces and recognizable backgrounds, inspired by creators like Marques Brownlee. His titles are straightforward, aiming for longevity and SEO compatibility[^19:43].

Notable Quotes:

“I want enough behind me to where they can see, they can tell where I am, but I also want enough behind me to where I can interact with what's behind me.”
— Sam Cottle [16:42]

“She sends me, you know, frame IO link to review. I review that. And we've worked together long enough now to where after that, she uploads it to YouTube as unlisted.”
— Sam Cottle [19:19]

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Monetization: Generating Revenue Through YouTube and Real Estate

The core of the episode focuses on how Sam monetizes his YouTube channel:

• AdSense Revenue: Despite a modest view count, Sam earns a consistent $300/month from AdSense, which he considers a bonus compared to his main revenue stream[^23:50].

• Real Estate Commissions: The primary income comes from real estate commissions facilitated by leads generated through the YouTube channel. In 2024 alone, Sam reports $500,000 in revenue, with a high profit margin due to efficient operations[^24:37].

• Partner Contributions: Tangential partners such as lenders and title companies contribute by covering expenses like editing services, allowing Sam to reinvest in content creation[^24:46].

Notable Quotes:

“I have partners that offset all of my expenses related to this as well, that pay for my editor, that pay for other things.”
— Sam Cottle [23:56]

“We're looking at about half a million in revenue so far this year.”
— Sam Cottle [24:34]

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Lessons Learned & Tips for YouTube Creators

Sam imparts several key lessons and actionable tips for aspiring YouTube creators:

1. Focus on Inputs Over Outputs:

   • Emphasize consistent content creation without obsessing over immediate analytics or subscriber counts. Trust that perseverance will pay off[^27:36].

2. Build Evergreen Content:

   • Create content that remains relevant over time, ensuring continual value and long-term engagement. Avoid overly specific or transient topics that may lose significance[^21:25].

3. Geographical Targeting:

   • Leveraging local or regional focus can reduce competition and establish authority within a niche market. This strategy is beneficial across various industries, from real estate to technology[^33:55].

4. Incremental Improvements:

   • Aim for continual, small enhancements in each video, such as refining CTAs or improving storytelling techniques. These incremental changes accumulate to substantial growth over time[^34:47].

5. Engage with Your Audience:

   • Foster community by responding to comments, engaging on social media platforms like Instagram, and making it easy for viewers to reach out through multiple channels[^13:55].

6. Leverage Multiple Platforms:

   • Complement YouTube with other social media platforms to provide alternative ways for potential clients to connect, enhancing lead capture and engagement[^13:55].

Notable Quotes:

“You have to get obsessed with it.”
— Sam Cottle [31:38]

“You build. You. You do find the skills. If you keep doing it like people are, always so worried about, like, they, they feel uncomfortable or they don't know the camera thing yet.”
— Sam Cottle [34:47]

“It's all about the input at that point.”
— Sam Cottle [28:10]

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Conclusion: Final Advice and Wrap-Up

As the conversation wraps up, Sam emphasizes the importance of consistent effort and gradual improvement:

• Persistence Through Challenges:

  • Maintaining a steady workflow despite slow initial growth is crucial. Celebrating small milestones, like gaining the first view or subscriber, can sustain motivation[^29:37].

• Storytelling and Authenticity:

  • Incorporating personal stories and authentic interactions enhances viewer connection and trust, making the content more relatable and engaging[^32:17].

• Final Takeaway:

  • Sam advises creators to focus on building their skills incrementally, consistently producing content, and staying dedicated to their long-term vision. This approach, he asserts, leads to significant progress and success over time[^34:47].

Notable Final Quote:

“If you keep doing them and just going back to the inputs, that's really what I want people to take away is, yeah, look at where I've gotten in four years. If you want that, then do that weekly input for four years.”
— Sam Cottle [35:34]

Closing Remarks:

Dusty Porter thanks Sam for his invaluable insights and reiterates the importance of perseverance and strategic content creation for YouTube success. Listeners are encouraged to apply these lessons to their own channels, regardless of their niche, to achieve sustained growth and revenue.

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Key Takeaways

• Strategic Content Planning: Focus on addressing early-stage questions to build a valuable content library that attracts and nurtures potential clients.
• Consistent Effort: Prioritize regular content creation without being overly fixated on immediate metrics.
• Multi-Platform Engagement: Utilize additional social media channels to enhance lead capture and audience engagement.
• Evergreen Content: Invest in creating timeless videos that continue to provide value and attract views over years.
• Incremental Improvements: Continuously refine content quality, CTAs, and storytelling to enhance viewer experience and conversion rates.

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Sam Cottle's success story illustrates the profound impact that a well-executed YouTube strategy can have on a business. By integrating content creation with business objectives, focusing on consistency, and continuously improving, creators across various industries can replicate similar success.

Transcript

[Dusty Porter]

Welcome to the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where we help you conquer the Internet one video at a time. We cover everything from how to start a YouTube channel to how to make a video go viral. And now here's your host, the one and only Dusty Porter. Hello and welcome to this week's conversation on the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I am really excited to be here this week. We've got a really great interview for you with a wonderful creator. But before we get to that, just want to remind you that you can support us by checking out TubeBuddy, our primary sponsor, the one tool that I call the Swiss army knife tool of YouTube. So if you're looking for a tool to take your YouTube channel to the next level, check out what TubeBuddy has to offer. You get a free 30 day trial down below. Been doing a lot of coaching this week, so if you're looking for one on one YouTube coaching, launching a podcast, something of that nature in the creative space, definitely reach out to me. I'd love to work with you. As well as our really quickly growing YouTube creator community over on our Discord. We host monthly masterminds over there and you get access to that for five bucks over on our Patreon. All of those links will be down below. And don't forget to check out the newsletter if you want to stay in touch with me and see what I got going on. Just in my business in general. Man, what a week it has been. YouTube has been just crazily releasing and announcing new features. We have the YouTube shorts going up to three minutes now. I think that's probably going to be a game changer. I know that if you were ignoring shorts before, it may be hard to do that going forward just because of the nature and the amount of time they're putting into them. I believe we're gonna see them show up much more in search, which is gonna hurt certain channels like mine, but I do believe it's gonna also benefit them in a way as well. So definitely always stay up to on the news with what's going on with YouTube, you have to be willing to pivot. You have to be willing to evolve with the times and, and not always rest on your laurels. Certainly something you need to do if you don't know what we do here. Each and every week I interview a content creator specifically on YouTube. I chat with them about their journey, the failures they've had, what makes them succeed. And this week is no different. If that sounds good to you, stick around, subscribe to the show, we go live With a new episode every Friday morning Eastern standard time. And without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation. Hello everyone and welcome to this week's conversation on the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. My name is Dusty as always, joined today by Sam cottle from Tampa, Florida. YouTube channel is living in Tampa, Fl. I asked him before we hit record how his belongings were after the hurricane. If you're listening to this kind of current, there was a hurricane that came through and wiped out a lot in Tampa in that region, in that area. And we're certainly there in our thoughts and prayers. So he said his main home is okay, but he has. Has another that actually had some flooding. So we'll definitely. Hopefully you can get that taken care of soon. But let me tell you a little bit about Sam. Sam started his Living in Tampa yout channel shortly after moving to Tampa and getting into real estate in 2020. That's a theme here on the podcast. People for some reason get started on YouTube around that 2019, 2020 mark. They must have had some time on their hands. His YouTube channel has provided over $1.5 million in real estate commissions in four years alone, which is awesome. Sam, how are you doing?

[Sam Cottle]

I'm doing great, Dusty. Thanks for having me.

[Dusty Porter]

Absolutely. So give me the premise of it's 2020, you got a little extra time and you're thinking to yourself, I'm gonna do this YouTube thing. Give me the origin story of the channel and how it came to happen.

[Sam Cottle]

So yeah, in 2020 a lot of stuff was going on and we decided to move from Colorado to Florida to be closer to my wife's family. And I got into real estate at that time and was tried everything right off the bat. Tried everything horribly. Direct mail, Facebook ads, open houses, door knocking, whatever. I tried it all very half hearted and was trying to find some sustainable way for me to get leads that I also enjoyed. And I heard on a podcast these guys talking about their YouTube channel that talked about pros and cons and cost of living and stuff like that. And I just decided, I just, I reached out to them and I was like, hey, can I copy you? Like I didn't. I felt like there was some kind of etiquette I needed to follow there. They're actually like business partners of mine now, but I just took the ball and ran with it.

[Dusty Porter]

Now explain to the audience how this works. You make a video about a specific area in Tampa or a. Maybe a restaurant or a hotspot. Maybe you even do overview of a House that you've listed or something of that nature. Explain in detail what, how this, I guess you would call it a funnel, works from your YouTube channel to your real estate business?

[Sam Cottle]

Absolutely. So first I want to go further up the funnel, I like to call it going further, further upstream. So if somebody is like interested in a restaurant, they probably already have a realtor. So what did they search for? You know, the 10 searches before that, they looked for best restaurants in a specific area, then they looked at schools in that area. So I'm reverse engineering this going all the way back to they typed in should I move to Tampa? Then what's the difference between Tampa and St. Petersburg? So it's answering those further up questions and providing a ton of value really early in someone's search and education.

[Dusty Porter]

How are you finding these questions? Like how are you, the realtor and the creator thinking? Do you have a list of questions that you hear, your clients that you're actively working with that they're asking? Is that kind of how you're creating that list?

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah, that's definitely what I'm doing now. But my first closing from YouTube was my third closing ever. So I didn't have clients that were asking me questions. So I didn't know. So I was using keywords everywhere and tubebuddy and vidiq and planning out my next 2030 videos and then just executing those videos, building this library that answers broad questions about moving. Also, I had just moved across the country. I had some of those questions too.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. So now that you've got this thing started and you've decided how it's going to be implemented and kind of work in the funnel in your business, what was next as far as did you have any experience as a creative? Do you go and reach out to people or what was your process like?

[Sam Cottle]

Sure. The easiest part for me was the camera because I have done quite a bit of like live production stuff and have a lot of experience in that and some post production. But overall that part of it was not intimidating. Actually getting in front of the camera and looking down the lens and like trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about was the heart the scariest part.

[Dusty Porter]

Right.

[Sam Cottle]

But yeah, you just gotta swallow it one pill at a time.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah. And how did you get better at that? What were some things that you implemented to help improve? Not necessarily your on camera presence, but your confidence, knowing that you know what you're talking about. And people who are going to come to you from this video will get what they're looking for.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah. So much of that is. It takes a long time to. To feel that. To feel like, no, I'm actually skilled at this. People are actually getting value from this. It was probably a year and a half in I made a couple hundred thousand dollars already from doing this. And I was still trying to piece it together. What am I actually like helping people with here? And I started to just build out some kind of frameworks. So very basically, I want to demonstrate that I can be trusted. Like, fundamentally, I feel like I can be trusted by these people if they reach out to me, not going to push them in the wrong direction. Secondly, I have their best interest in mind. If they don't want to do something, I don't want them to do it. And then lastly, just starting to demonstrate that we do have clients reaching out. People do call and this is how we help them and showing how that process looks. And then once I built some frameworks around that, I started to feel way more confident because it made sense for my brain.

[Dusty Porter]

So let's get technical then, for a minute. How are these people getting to you once they watch the video? What are the best practices? And this just isn't for real estate either. This is for anyone looking to use YouTube as a step in their funnel or a piece of their business. How are you capturing. Give me exactly. And maybe even things that you've learned. Like, I tried this. It didn't work very well. Give it again just in full detail of how you're capturing these people and landing them as your clients.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah. So I'll share kind of the evolution of that as well. So it started with just a basic call to action. We are local realtors. We want a chance to earn your business. Call, text or email anytime. I'm actually the one that will text you back. Those come right to my phone. That kind of call to action. The beginning and the end of the video. Next. And that worked for a long time. But organic has an ebb and flow to it. If you're getting leads from an organic source, it has a very unnatural ebb and flow. It's not that predictable. And now we're doing a lot of other things. Now we have people that have reached out that are in our database that didn't do anything yet. Right. So we still engage with those on the. On our back end, but we're offering a lot more lead magnets and guides and easier ways to enter. So I actually just shot a video yesterday, so this is a very early change. I'm making Right now. And this was like the ultimate guide to buying new construction in Tampa. And it's a 30 minute video and it's very comprehensive. And there's a guide, a downloadable guide that matches the video and is even more comprehensive. So I call to action to call me, but then a call 4, 3 or 4 calls to action in the video to download the guide.

[Dusty Porter]

And are you putting your phone number like in the video as a lower third? You're saying the phone number. You're also having a link in the description that get them to a landing page on your said website that can then capture their email address. You're basically trying to get them in any way you can in order to contact them.

[Sam Cottle]

Absolutely. But if they call and say, sam, can you help me buy a house? It's yeah, here we go. Of course they can go. There's links to the website. They can enter, fill out a form, they can chat directly to our database on the website. There's a lot of different ways, but the best leads call.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah. And when someone calls you, do you ask them at some point during that call, did you come from my YouTube video or will they be forth giving with that information and say, hey, I just watched your video on Done it in Florida is perfect for you and I'm thinking about living there or I just got a job, I'm getting relocated. Are these people informing you that they're coming from the channel?

[Sam Cottle]

Oh, yeah. And oftentimes they're saying, I've been watching your videos for three years as they're.

[Dusty Porter]

In preparation for moving.

[Sam Cottle]

Absolutely. Actually, it's almost 30% of my views are from the TV YouTube app.

[Dusty Porter]

So it's a, it's probably a husband and wife.

[Sam Cottle]

It is, yeah.

[Dusty Porter]

At home they're like, hey, let's watch some of this stuff here. People are watching YouTube like television anyways now. So it's, it's cool to hear you say that.

[Sam Cottle]

And especially if they're thinking like, we need to figure out where we're going to move and live forever. Like it's a big thing. If you can provide a lot of education and a little bit of entertainment around that, like you can really solve a problem.

[Dusty Porter]

I know a lot of people in the real estate industry, not just here locally here in Gainesville, close to Atlanta, Georgia where I live, but just that I've spoken with, I've chatted with a lot of very large real estate creators on the podcast. And one of the things that they often tell me is that you don't have to have a ton of views for this to be fruitful. Yeah, because you just need the right views. And I think that is so pertinent to a lot of YouTube nowadays. If you know your target audience and your niche, you could have a video with a few thousand views. And you know this, Sam, you could make three sales from that video and that's very lucrative. Can you speak on just the numbers and trying not to get too far ahead of yourself and setting realistic expectations of what you're trying to accomplish on the. On the YouTube channel?

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah. I teach a lot of agents how to build these channels and I honestly think the sweet spot is between like 4,000 and 6,000 subscribers. If you're getting 10 to 12,000 views a month, like, you can build a pretty productive business off of that. Now we're 13,000 subscribers. We average about 20,000 views a month. We publish four videos a month. We don't publish a whole lot of content. But you're just converting them to a very high ticket item that they're actually looking for. You're not trying to sell them on it, you're trying to sell them on you. And then they happen to want this very high ticket item that you can help them get.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah. And I think that's the power of YouTube is that it's visual. Obviously they can see the locations. They can also get a good view of who you are and your personality as you're portraying yourself on camera. Obviously. Let's talk about the technical side of YouTube then. What were. What is something that you wish you would have known sooner now that you've done this since 2020. We're now late 2024, going into the new year here in 2025. So you're about five years in. What is something that you look back thinking, man, Sam, if I just could have done that sooner or I wish I would have known this sooner, the channel could have taken off and been even better producing.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah, I think filling some of that gap of local content both on YouTube and Instagram. I know some of my friends that have both of those going around very similar topics and they have this one, two punch. Like my friend Kyle Talbot in Kansas City. I was moving to Kansas City on YouTube and Instagram. He's posting a ton on Instagram and it creates this easier way for people to reach you. Yeah, Somebody might not want to write down your phone number and then text you and. Or people send long emails. People will tell me, yes, their salary, their story, everything in an email. That's a big task for them to do. But if they just go follow you on Instagram and then they could just send you a DM after they've liked a couple things, it's a little. It's an easier entry point. So looking back, I wish I would have done both.

[Dusty Porter]

And so you're basically saying that with the YouTube channel in tandem with Instagram or X or Twitter, whatever you decide to use, it could be TikTok and whatever you want to use.

[Sam Cottle]

Right.

[Dusty Porter]

I think that for your industry, I believe that Instagram and YouTube are probably the top two because of just how, just the nature of those platforms. But giving them that button of just. It feels also a lot more personal than an email that's very formal, where you're just emailing. Like you said, you're probably stating a lot of the facts and things you think that your real estate agent needs to know. Whereas if you're on Instagram, they just shoot you a DM and say, hey Sam, my name is Bob and Sandra. We're looking for a house in Tampa and just saw your video on. It's very like you said, it's a good conversation starter and you probably get more people in the door quicker.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah. And they could also comment on posts before. And I'm commenting back like that kind of engagement and people just are a little more comfortable sending that dm. Probably different age categories than just sending a long email to an info email address or just texting some random number and be like, is this Sam from YouTube?

[Dusty Porter]

Are there any tips you can give about shooting video? Because I have watched a handful of your videos in preparation for this and they're very well done, very high quality. What's the process of your video shooting? Because you are shooting video a lot of times on location, not necessarily in your studio. So talk about the whole process of how you record and film your videos, even from all the way up to like publishing and what you do after you publish.

[Sam Cottle]

Sure. I first of all keep a big list of video ideas and kind of basic outlines so that I.

[Dusty Porter]

Where do you keep that? Where do you keep your list?

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah, all that's in notion and it's Kanban board style, like a trello board, based on how developed the idea is. Sometimes I'm writing stuff on a note card. If I'm like going out real quick, I'm like, oh, I had this idea. Let's write down five points. I want to say I'm very comfortable filling it in with stories, filling it in with details that I know or know, and also qualifying those kind of things. I'm very comfortable with that. But I'm often using a full frame camera. That one right back there, It's a Sony A7C and I'm putting it on a tripod. Usually using a shotgun mic. The bugs are too loud outside right now. So I've been using a lapel mic. I just started using a camera operator and we use a gimbal for that. It creates a lot more of a dynamic video where we can have multiple locations and movement and some of those things, but it's still just not. It's not a cinematic video. I want enough behind me to where they can see, they can tell where I am, but I also want enough behind me to where I can interact with what's behind me and because that shows what I'm like and it shows how I'm going to act with them. If there's been times where I was filming in a neighborhood and somebody stops and they're like, what are you doing?

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah.

[Sam Cottle]

And I leave a lot of that in the video because I want my potential clients to see I'm nice to strangers.

[Dusty Porter]

I love that. Are you doing this all by yourself? I know you said you have camera operator things like that. People think when they. I'm sure he's got like a professional videographer someone helping him with his audio. Do you do this basically? Is it a one man show or is your family. How does that work?

[Sam Cottle]

So I've shot about 300 videos and four of those have been with the help of a camera operator. So that's very recent. I've done it all myself. I edited my first hundred before I hired an editor.

[Dusty Porter]

So you have hired an editor.

[Sam Cottle]

Yes.

[Dusty Porter]

Okay, so talk about pros and cons there, how you found the editor pricing all that good stuff.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah, my editor sent me a cold email.

[Dusty Porter]

Love it.

[Sam Cottle]

Obviously Indian. And she wrote a little something about herself in the email. I grew up in a family of artists. My mom's a poet and this is. These are the kind of things I like to do. And I just sent her my calendly link and she scheduled a call. Then once I got on the call I'm like, oh, this is like a pretty easy connection. Also she like really flattered me. She's I like that you do some Casey Neistat like stuff. And I'm like, oh man, words to my heart. I love it. She knew the button to push. Initially I was paying her $100 a video. I'm paying her a little bit more now. I think we're at 125 a video and we've moved to a little bit more of a retainer model because my videos aren't predictable lengths. So I pay her 850amonth for four videos. But some they're between 10 minutes and 35 minutes now, instead of between 8 and 12 minutes.

[Dusty Porter]

And how do you manage the media between you and her?

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah, so that's also in Notion, a mix of Notion and Dropbox. So I'll upload all the A roll into Dropbox and I'll copy that Dropbox link and then create a card on our content calendar in Notion. Then that tags her. It sets a deadline. There's a place for me to add any notes about other B roll. And then we have a big B roll catalog of everything I've captured. And it's very well organized and she knows it pretty well at this point. She's been. She's edited over 100 videos for me.

[Dusty Porter]

So you go shoot yourself. You have the camera operator now, but that was a recent addition. You get all the footage, you put it on a hard drive, you then upload it, send it to your editor, and then once she sends you, you go back and forth, I assume. And once she sends you and you land on the final video, how does everything happen from here? When you upload, are you doing anything as far as are you cutting it up into YouTube shorts? Are you then repurposing on Instagram? What are your next steps of the process?

[Sam Cottle]

Sure. After she's done with version one, she sends me, you know, frame IO link to review. I review that. And we've worked together long enough now to where after that, she uploads it to YouTube for me as unlisted. So she makes the changes I request and she uploads it. Then I go in and make the thumbnail and write the description. Then it's up.

[Dusty Porter]

How do you make your thumbnails? What's your strategy?

[Sam Cottle]

Right now my strategy is very face prominent and recognizable, background prominent. I'm fans. I'm a fan of specific youtubers and I'm a fan of the way that they've built their brands, especially someone like Marques Brownlee. Yeah, his thumbnails and titles are just never clickbait. Hey, this is what the video is. And I like that for my content as well, because I wanted to have a really long shelf life. I don't want to have to go back and change everything. Hey, no, this. The question that this video is answering. Is Dunedin the right place for you? It's gonna. It's answering that question today. And it's answering that question two years from now. So I don't want to feel like I don't want to make those so dynamic.

[Dusty Porter]

You mentioned shelf life, and I think it's one of the best things that YouTube has going for it is the evergreen nature of the content of that. You made a video over three years ago that's titled Most Recommended Areas to Live in Tampa, Florida. And I was looking just through some tools that I have last night that's still gaining you a good bit of views and traction. And I want people to understand that this is not just for real estate. This is for any business model and for just growing a brand on YouTube in general, that if you put out that piece of content, that it will work for you for a long time if you do it properly. So speak on things that you may do to make sure that you're optimizing and understanding as you upload that this video is going to be seen in 2025, 2026, possibly, and you don't need a lot of views for you. It could be just that one view two years from now that gets you that big client that's buying that beach property in Tampa. So explain that to us.

[Sam Cottle]

It's just answering the question, like people have questions, and then presenting that kind of question in the video. Hey, we get asked about this area a lot. Let me show you why people love this area. It's just not going to change. Like, it's a basic question. It's not, what can you get for $400,000? Like, when we include numbers, when we include prices, population, popularity, like, those kind of things are just going to change. And so there's ways to be vague about it. I mean, even in that video about Dunedin I mentioned, our clients that are shopping here are usually looking for a house like this in this price range. Yeah, there's going to be elements of it that are not going to be evergreen. And people will comment two years later, you need to update this video. And that's fine. I want that engagement. But it's the way I think of it is building a library of videos. I want somebody to go into the library and pull a book off, still get some useful information out of it. I don't want to just be handing out the newspapers at the door.

[Dusty Porter]

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[Sam Cottle]

Sure. So, yeah, through AdSense, I've made about 300amonth for the past three years.

[Dusty Porter]

Consistent.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah, yeah. Now, most people pay for marketing, so it's nice to get paid for your marketing. And I have partners that offset all of my expenses related to this as well, that pay for my editor, that pay for other things, and those are typically tangential partners, lenders, title companies, things like that. Then this year so far, in 2024, so this is year 3.5 to 4.5, essentially of the YouTube channel, because we started odd time, but we're looking at about half a million in revenue so far this year.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah.

[Sam Cottle]

And it's just me and one partner.

[Dusty Porter]

Right. And when you say revenue, you mean just as far as. Not necessarily like, the amount of money you're moving, like in real estate. But that's revenue.

[Sam Cottle]

That's. Yeah, there's.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah, yeah. And that's just what I want.

[Sam Cottle]

It's pretty close to profit because of. We're at about a 93. 7, like ratio.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah.

[Sam Cottle]

A lot of profit.

[Dusty Porter]

And that is. What would you say the percentage of that is coming from the YouTube channel or the marketing that you're doing through the channel?

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah. So if that's $500,000, probably 20,000 of it didn't come through YouTube.

[Dusty Porter]

So the majority of it is what you're saying.

[Sam Cottle]

But Even when it's more traditional. Say we call an expired listing. We're leveraging the YouTube channel, right? Hey, we know your listing just expired. You're probably getting a ton of calls. Can we Send over our YouTube channel? You can just get to know us a little bit.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah.

[Sam Cottle]

Then we're calling back the next day. Hey, did you watch the videos? Maybe they didn't, but they like that we didn't just ask for their business right away. And we obviously have some kind of brand presence and they can look into a little bit more.

[Dusty Porter]

It gives you that entry point where you're not having to be bombarding them and using those stupid text messaging apps where you're trying. You're basically getting paid just a little bit of money to market your business that's actually making you the income. Right. So you're using this free platform to do all of this and build your catalog, per se, of all of the information that you have that people don't even have to really discover. They can contact you via another outlet. And then you do what you just said. You say, hey, yeah, if you're interested in that, I've got a 30 minute, like monologue in my video about this. Just watch it. You don't have to talk to me. And then get back to me if you're interested.

[Sam Cottle]

And then we can develop evergreen assets like about a specific neighborhood, and then we can market more traditionally to that neighborhood and then enhance that marketing with this specific evergreen video that we have on the YouTube channel.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah, I just want people to understand the power of this and just how relevant it is in 2024 that it's not real estate alone, it's any business. I was talking to a construction person a couple of months ago. He hired me to do some coaching for him on the YouTube channel. And he told me, he said, hey, is this something that I can do? We got him set up. He's now landed like four huge projects, one of them a government project, and it came from the YouTube channel. And he's just blown away. He'll email me, he'll send me a text message. He'll say, dusty, I don't understand why haven't I been doing. He's like in his mid-50s. And I told him, I'm like, listen in. The thing about his business is that he's not even in front of the camera. He hired someone to basically be in front of the camera for him because he's. I don't want to get in front of the camera. He's some old school Construction guy. And so it's the end of the end of the day. You got to understand the power and how to utilize all this. So let's package this up a little bit. What are Some just general YouTube tips and pointers that you've learned from either failure or successes that you can just give and you can just rattle them off and then we can talk about them one by one of just people listening to this that can help them with their channels.

[Sam Cottle]

I listened to your interview with Tyler Cobble and I've been following him for a few years and a lot of it was similar to him. It's like you just gotta start. You can build your list of your first few videos really easily and you need to make those and not really look up for a while. You gotta get a head start on your library.

[Dusty Porter]

When you say don't look up, what do you mean by that? Explain.

[Sam Cottle]

Not really question what you're doing. Not really giving analytics that much of a vote in anything yet. Not really giving reach outs that much of a vote in any of it either. Just not looking for the outcome yet. It's all about the input at that point.

[Dusty Porter]

That's what people don't understand though, Sam, is that so many people have and I've seen it, there's so many dead channels on YouTube that are very similar to living in Tampa, Florida. What you did different, the difference is that you persevered through what I call, I mean, you can call it Dead Zone, whatever you want to call it, give it some unique name, but like you said, focus on the input and the output's going to come. Right? I do tutorial videos on technology and I could give a rip how many views my videos get when I upload them. I'm optimizing for that video, helping people out for the next five, seven, ten years, as long as that software doesn't change. And it's going to be bringing me value in multiple different ways. So I love that you mentioned that. I mean to interrupt you. I just think it's important to understand that the input is the important thing starting off and then if you can get through that, the doldrums there, it's powerful.

[Sam Cottle]

That's the only important part and that's in life in general. Like you have kids, I have little kids. Like you can't make them be a certain way. You have these inputs you get to put in and you choose how consistent those inputs are, how consistent those inputs are, often leads to a certain kind of outcome.

[Dusty Porter]

How were you able to not try to get the dopamine hit of the analytic app or. Man, I've uploaded four videos and crickets. There's no one calling. What helped you persevere through that?

[Sam Cottle]

I've read back through some old journals recently, and I journaled a lot back then because I didn't have a lot of business, so I was processing.

[Dusty Porter]

So you had time to journal. That's fantastic.

[Sam Cottle]

It was scary. It was hard. Like, it's not. Everybody's jealous of the outcome. Nobody's jealous of the journey because they.

[Dusty Porter]

Don'T want to do it.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah. The journey is not easy. That's the misconception. Is it? Yeah. I closed a couple of deals, but I also. There were times where I did get that dopamine hit. Honestly, when I uploaded my first video and it got a view, I was like, what in the world? A stranger watched my video. I didn't even tell anybody about it. Yeah, that felt so satisfying.

[Dusty Porter]

It's important to break it down into small milestones.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah.

[Dusty Porter]

That. My dad and I were talking just a couple of days ago. We were traveling on a family trip this past weekend for fall break for my kids. And we were in a location, and he told me. He was like, man, he's like, I remember when you called me and I did. I called him and I told him, I said, I just made. It was like, I don't know, over double digits in that day on my YouTube channel. So it's in dollars and a few cents. And he said, he remembers the conversation. He said, I told him. I said, and I didn't do anything today. I didn't do a YouTube video today. It was something that I had uploaded and made money today. And it's interesting that you're gonna get those little, small, incremental things. I have a family now. I couldn't live off $10 a day. That's not how this works. But knowing that I can look at these milestones of, oh, I got a view on my video. Oh, I now have 100 subscribers. Oh, I now have 125 for everyone's journey. It's gonna take a different duration to get there. It's just, are you willing to put in the work when no one's there, no one's watching, and you're uploading people all the time. I had a guy tell me the other day, he's like, I started a newsletter, and then two months later, I quit it. And then I started back. You're never going to grow a YouTube channel by uploading four videos in January. And then don't upload again until April. You've got to be consistent. Can you speak on the consistency aspect of it and just how almost, like, monotonous it has to be?

[Sam Cottle]

You have to get obsessed with it. And I did. I. And quickly I stopped learning from Realtors, and I'm, like, consuming everything that Colin and Samir say and buying Ali Abdallah's course. And I'm going, like, how do I build a community? How do I build this thing? Because, like, top of the funnel, I need the views and the engagement to create the bottom of the funnel, to reach out. So I became just more obsessed with how do I tell stories, how do I engage on this platform in a way that, like, people actually enjoy and engage with and not just think I'm making, like, SEO content, Like, clickbait SEO content. That's not what I want to make.

[Dusty Porter]

No, you want to make stuff that relates to people who are trying to move to the area that you're. Yeah.

[Sam Cottle]

So let me add one more thing to the list of, like, things that I want people to take away. Like, you have the stories that you could tell and presenting just a basic story in a video, even if it's the construction video. And I honestly, I think that old guy should be in the videos. People would probably love him.

[Dusty Porter]

They'd love him. He's hilarious.

[Sam Cottle]

Yeah, they would love that. They would build their own little, like, tokens they expect from him. Like, little quirks he has. People love that kind of stuff.

[Dusty Porter]

They do.

[Sam Cottle]

But that video you mentioned, the best places to live or something, which Realtors don't even want to make that video because they think they can't give their opinion. But I just set up a basic premise. Hey, people reach out to us all the time. These are the eight areas they're most interested in. I just said why they might be interested in those eight areas.

[Dusty Porter]

Yeah. And also in your case, if I'm doing this, I'm. You got to be smart about it. You got to talk about what matters to people that you're trying to reach, what matters to your niche, what matters to people. Moving is oftentimes the weather, the education system, the safety aspect. There's be smart about this. And this is just for real estate. If you're in technology, then you do the same thing and you figure out what the things that matter are. For me, I do YouTube education. I help people launch podcasts. I know what matters. I know the things they're trying to get out of launching a podcast. It's important to understand all of the aspects of who your audience is. And as we go into this new age at modern YouTube, whatever you want to call it, target audience, and understanding your niche is going to be more important than ever. Would you not agree?

[Sam Cottle]

Absolutely. And especially if you can target geographically, you have an advantage.

[Dusty Porter]

You do. Whether you're a dentist, a doctor, a real estate agent, retail, it doesn't matter. You're right. Geographically targeting an audience is because you think about it. Whereas If I'm a YouTuber right now, doing technology tutorials like I do, I'm competing against the entire world. And there's these young guys now who basically have copy and pasted my model. I've talked about this before. Before. They can do 20 videos a day. They don't have kids, they can stay up whenever, and they can do all this. Right. For me, I have to figure out some more unique ways of doing it. So being able to be geographically condensed into that area is really interesting. All right, I know we're going to wrap things up, but I want to ask you that if there was one thing that you could leave the creators listening to this just that one final point of as we've been talking, maybe something's come to your mind of man, we really need to touch on this. What would that thing be?

[Sam Cottle]

You build. You. You do find the skills. If you keep doing it like people are, I talked to that are getting started are always so worried about, like, they, they feel uncomfortable or they don't know the camera thing yet. Yeah, but if you were like actually just focused on doing it consistently and focus on getting 1% better every time. Hey, could I just improve my call to action a little bit in this video? I'm not going to worry about improving my audio setup yet. Could I just improve my call to action next time we'll think about audio a little bit more. Like those incremental steps are, they lead to massive progress. They really do. If you keep doing them and just going back to the inputs, that's really what I want people to take away is, yeah, look at where I've gotten in four years. If you want that, then do that weekly input for four years.

[Dusty Porter]

And it's not ever going to equate to exactly what Sam is getting or earning. It could be more, to be honest, it could be more, it could be less. But I think it'll be a positive thing for you. And this is speaking for any YouTube channel, not just for real estate or realtors. It's putting in the inputs and being able to get through those tough times. So it's amazing. Again Sam, this has been an amazing conversation. Again, I've been talking with Sam Cottle from the living in Tampa, Florida YouTube channel. He's got a great thing going. I'll have all of his links down below. If you are interested in chatting with him. It doesn't have to be about real estate, you can just ask him a follow up question. Just knowing Sam like I have for the just a little while that I've known him here, I'll say that I think he would respond to you if you're a creator looking and asking questions. So again those links will be down below. Sam, we'll talk to you next time.

[Sam Cottle]

Thanks Dusty.

[Dusty Porter]

You've been listening to the YouTube Creators Podcast. We want to thank you and invite you to subscribe to the show as well as support us on Patreon for great perks such as having your YouTube channel featured on the show and a link on our website. Until next time, keep uploading those videos.