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YouTube Creators Hub
Mastering YouTube with AI & Short Form Content With Austin Armstrong
00:46:08
In this episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast, host Dusty Porter sits down with digital marketer and content creator Austin Armstrong. They discuss strategies for growing a YouTube channel, leveraging short form and vertical video, and the...
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- [00:02]
A
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 everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where I sit down with a content creator each and every week and I chat with them about their journey as a content creator. We break down what's made their channel successful. We talk about specific, specific things that they do and specific tactics and tools that they may use to grow their channel. So if you're looking for a place where you can listen to other creators talk about their struggles, talk about their journey, this is the show for you. We're brought to you by the fine folks over At TubeBuddy, the one tool and browser plugin that I'd recommend everyone try if you want. You can get 30 days free of using the tool if you use our link in the show notes of this podcast. Also, we have one of the fastest growing YouTube creator communities over on our Discord server. Five bucks a month gets you access to that. Check that out in the show notes if you haven't already. And then if you want to take it to the next level, you can hire me as your YouTube coach. All of those links will be down below, but 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 where I have on a wonderful creator each and every Friday and I talk with them about their channels, whether it be YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, a combination of all of them as it is today. We're joined today by Austin Armstrong. I about mispronounced his name there. He is a lifelong digital marketer, public speaker, two times seven figure entrepreneur, co founder of AI Marketing World. He is also is an AI conference in Dallas, Texas, CEO of Syllabi, an AI startup that helps content creators create. But at the end of the day, Austin started as a creator himself. And so we're going to talk about how he grew his YouTube channel to almost 600,000 subscribers as of date of this recording, how he feels about AI, how he feels about vertical video, and so much more. So if you're interested in any of those things and just growing your channel in general, stick around. I really think you're going to enjoy the conversation.
- [02:09]
B
Yeah, yeah, sounds good man. I'm so happy to just be back as I think we were chatting a little bit before this, I think it was three, about three years ago that I was first on the show. But yeah, I stumbled into content creation. 14 years old. I was fortunate enough to find what I love doing at such an early age and it's changed my life. I'm a business owner, I'm an entrepreneur, but I really build businesses so that I can create content and lean into that. I got started on MySpace when I was 14 years old, growing large followings. I had hundreds of thousands of followers on MySpace. 14, 15, 16. Monetized that in quite a few ways and really stuck with it ever since. Fast forward to about 11 years ago is where I really started my professional career in video marketing. And when I got started on YouTube I moved out to California and took an internship at a video marketing company that did YouTube for therapists and addiction treatment centers. And we really did some cool stuff. Interviewing therapists, creating how to educational content and learning about YouTube SEO really early on. And then fast forward to about six years ago is where I really started to build my personal brand online as a content creator, as a YouTuber when I started my first agency, which was called Socialty Pro and that's still the handle that I typically use for all of my channels. Stumbled into TikTok about four and a half years ago and that's where everything really changed. That's where. That's when my life changed because I just became really good at short form video and it's where the market went and I'm very fortunate. I have about 3 million followers across the board. It's largely thanks to short form video. And I just love creating content every day. Man, it's been fun.
- [04:04]
A
I'll have to be honest with you, Austin. I haven't always been the biggest fan of short form and vertical video for a number of reasons. I think just to give a backstory and I've never really mentioned this here on the podcast. I feel that and have felt but I am changing my opinions on it. By the way. It's not something that I'm completely. I've never been one of those people who's just like off my lawn, you can't do this is not the way to do it. But with short form video I just noticed with consumption, I noticed what it does to us as people for just that quick dopamine hit of just man, our attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. But I've noticed Something and TikTok and YouTube are all doing this. They're transitioning over to letting you upload longer vertical videos which I believe is going to be powerful, especially someone like me, Austin, who does tutorial videos on my YouTube channel. I do about five to seven tutorial videos on technology every single week and have been doing so for almost 13 years now. And I work with companies all the time and if I could branch out, if there were better ways to monetize, and there are becoming better ways to monetize. I want to step back for a minute and you mentioned building brands is something I think you're probably one of your best attributes is you're so good at building your personal and your just brands for your companies. What would you say creators ask me all the time on coaching calls, on our mastermind calls, Dusty, how do I build my brand? How do I build a community? Let's start there. What are your tips and pointers for people wanting to grow a community? Whether it be on YouTube, which is the main thing we focus on here, but just across the Internet. Because as you mentioned, I was listening to a show you were on, I believe it was a Think Media podcast. And you were telling Sean, you said, hey listen, one of the things that changed my world was putting that link in my TikTok bio to the YouTube channel and that brought so much traffic to the YouTube channel. So just talk about building a brand and a community and how you've done that.
- [05:54]
B
Yeah, that's such a detailed question that we could probably talk about. We could do a whole college course about brand building. But I think at a high level it's giving back to giving to the community, paying it forward. You want to focus on what are your core values, who do you want your community to be? Really outline exactly who those people are. Are they content creators, are they new content creators, are they long term content creators, are they business owners, what type of business owners, what do they offer around your channel and then figure out how to regularly communicate with them, open that dialogue up. Community is not a one way street. It is very much a community. So some of the things that we've done, I'm going to take it over to Facebook because we're growing a very large Facebook community. For my company Syllabi right now we just hit 22,000 people in there, but it's very active and some of the ways that we did this is that one, since day one that I started building my software, it's always been built in public and it's been built for content creators. And so there's always been that open dialogue of share what you like, share what features that you want to see Whether you are a subscriber or not, let us know. And if it makes sense, we're going to incorporate that and lifting other people up, celebrating all of their wins and their successes with whatever that you want them to get out of your channel or your community. We do weekly webinars. Sometimes I host them, sometimes team members host them. I bring in guest experts to just teach for free. There's no strings attached. It's just a free webinar. And we've been doing that. We've done, I think, 40 or more of those webinars every single week now. It's been awesome. It's a great way to just share value because at the end of the day, video marketing and social media has changed my life and it's just become a personal mission to help change other people's lives as well. And one of the best marketing lessons I ever learned was to give your best information away for free to increase know trust. And that's really at its core value, how you build a community and just sticking with those principles every single day, staying consistent with it, responding to as many comments as you can with detailed, meaningful information, allowing people to know that they have a voice and their opinion matters in your content creation, whether it's on YouTube or any other community that you're trying to build. Just show up, help one another, and continue to provide as much value and get value from them.
- [08:38]
A
Yeah, I love that. I mentioned many times before that live streaming on a YouTube channel is a big way to build a community, the podcasting side of things, and being able to interact. But I believe what you said at the beginning of that answer about knowing who they are, knowing who they are and where they live and what I mean by where they live, not their house, but where they live on the Internet or where. What forums are they a part of? What other YouTube channels do they watch? What other TikTok creators do they follow? These things are important. And you mentioned your Facebook page and just going outside of YouTube. I think that's a powerful thing of you have YouTube, but then outside of YouTube, where are you? Where are you on your email newsletter? Where are you on the Facebook page? And we'll definitely dive into that. So now let's talk just for a minute. You mentioned vertical video. I want to combine two topics, two hot topics at times, Vertical video and faceless content. It's if someone wants to go look at what you have going on over at Syllabi IO. We'll talk about it briefly here through the conversation. But Syllabi is A great tool. It's an AI tool that helps you basically provide you the tools to create social Media Ready or YouTube Ready videos with very little experience and people are trying to cut through the AI noise as you and I talked about off air before we hit record. So can you just tell me just briefly, what's your top level opinions and thoughts on vertical video, faceless channels, things like that. Just give me the full spiel because I want to know where, because I know just looking at your content, where you're sitting, but I just want to know where and how can people leverage these two things. Vertical, short form as well as the faceless.
- [10:14]
B
Okay, great question. So I still think and have thought this for the last, for almost five years that short form video is the fastest and frankly easiest way to get your message out there and to grow on all channels on YouTube. Long form views take a lot of time, as I'm sure he does, to get that following and get that watch time and take so long to edit all of them. Short form content is easier to crank out. It's hard to master, I would say, but it's just, it's just easier because it's shorter time. The videos work well still on every single platform I repurpose because my, my short form content across Facebook reels, Instagram reels, TikTok YouTube shorts, I post them on LinkedIn, I post them on threads, Pinterest, I still post on X you can post them on. Now every platform supports these videos and so you can use a scheduler if you need or you can manually post to all of these platforms. I anecdotally think for a little bit better of a boost you can have a VA do that work or assistant for you to get them across the board. But it's the easiest, fastest way to stay consistent for growth. It comes in waves. I've been doing this for a long time, man. I think 2018 is when I got started on TikTok, which was pretty early all things considered. And there were vertical video before, before that like IGTV was failed and I loved Vine, I was even on, on Vine. I, I didn't have a whole lot of success there. But vertical video is, is just such a huge opportunity still. But not everybody likes to be on camera and that's the transition over to faceless. Here is as an agency owner, we, we produced thousands of videos with clients in all sorts of niche niches and different industries. And one of the big problems over and over again, even after somebody hired us, is that they just don't like being on camera. There's so many people that don't feel confident. They don't like their appearance that day. They don't like how they don't have the energy levels to create content. And I don't want anyone to feel limited by any of those circumstances. If you just can't be on camera for whatever reason, that should not mean that you cannot be a content creator. That should not mean that you can't have success on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or any of these platforms. And that's the opportunity of Faceless right now. And a quick overview of what Faceless is. As the name implies, it's a video without a face. It could be B roll style content. More recently AI generated images or AI generated animations or video scenes that are stitched together to create stories or to create educational content. They work very well in short form content and in long form videos as well on pretty much any topic that you can think of. And so it's a huge opportunity I think, both in leveraging Faceless in short form, leveraging faceless videos in general. We can talk more about it. Adding to the noise of course, because that's going to be a natural conclusion of a lot of people in this space. I just want to empower creators wherever they're at. If there are so many people that just either literally can't, maybe they're in a regulated industry or whatever reason, or they just don't feel like it because they can't get out of their own way, I still think that they should be empowered to be content creators.
- [13:55]
A
Man, I got a lot of places I want to go. So I took a couple of notes here. As you were answering that question you mentioned at the top of that answer. I agree with this point a hundred percent. Vertical video and short form stuff, even Faceless to to a certain extent is easy to easier to put out as far as just just grabbing your phone or downloading an app like Cap Cut or whatever you're using on your device and do it very quickly as opposed to doing the research and. And all that involves a long form video. But it's very hard to master. You use the word master. I worry with short form that people are getting bad habits in storytelling. They're not able to get their full story across and what they're trying to get across. What is good as far as to master short form, what have you learned over the decade plus and over the seven or eight years that you've really been in this creating vertical video? What are some things that people can take away from. Okay, if there's only a few things that I can do to optimize my time when I'm doing vertical and short form video, what are these things and what are these tactics that I can put into motion?
- [15:03]
B
Yeah, there's a very repeatable structure that you can follow. I'm going to mostly talk about educational oriented content here. We were teasing beforehand, by the way, that all these platforms are extending their length time. YouTube shorts is now up to three minutes. TikTok is up to 10 minutes and 30 minutes. I think for some people it's so funny. I've made so many videos at the under 60 second mark, I don't even know how to make a three minute vertical tutorial anymore. I don't know how to extend because I've shrunk it down so much.
- [15:35]
A
But it's interesting that you say that. Not to interrupt you, I'm completely the opposite. Like when I'm thinking about cutting it down. I'll be honest with you. I've spent the past decade, a lot of my videos are 20, 25, 30 minutes. I work with companies that want me to do 45 minute tutorials and break them down into different parts. So for me I have the struggle of doing the opposite. So it's fun to hear you say that you're the reverse of that. So I didn't mean to interrupt you, but that's just kind of.
- [16:00]
B
No, no, no, I hear you. It is funny. But yeah, in general, a good structure that I found to be very repeatable is a strong opening hook leading into talking about a problem that they are dealing with, followed by building rapport and then slowly providing value or an answer to that pain point, providing some sort of actionable takeaways and then a closing call to action. If you just follow that structure in your content, you will very likely stack the odds in your favor of increasing your retention on all of your videos, stopping that scroll and getting them to actually convert for whatever you want them to do. I can go a little bit more into detail if you want, but at a high level. That's really the structure that, that I followed.
- [16:53]
A
So we have the hook followed by the problem. Then you start building that trust, provide the value and then you close it with your cta. That's the full, kind of like you said, top down level look of kind of what makes a successful short form, by the way, for those listening, similar to a long form, similar to a podcast. Maybe your hooks are a little longer in certain formats, but it's about the same. It's very similar now. There are some changes and things that I would include, but it's very same. Now let's just do this. Walk me through an example of okay, we're going to do a short form video of how to grow a YouTube channel in 2025 and beyond. We're doing a series of shorts. Maybe not even a series. Maybe we're just doing one or two around this topic. Can you just break it down of what the hook is the problem and then how you would go about creating and curating that so the people listening can make it applicable to whatever their niche is?
- [17:48]
B
Yeah, let's go off the cuff here. First thing that comes to mind. So I would start really powerful jaw jarring hook. So something like these three secret YouTube tips will help you skyrocket your channel in 2025. If you've ever been struggling to be a content creator, your views are just flatlined. These secret tips are going to help you grow faster. Tip number one is to focus on SEO. Tip number two is to have micro hooks throughout. Tips number three is to do something like this. And if you follow me right now, I'm going to share with you a long form tutorial which you can see right here. That's right here, that's linked in the related video area, something like that. I would refine that a little bit.
- [18:30]
A
But let's talk about related videos because I think it's an important thing. It's something that I didn't do until recently and I found the power in it. I've repurposed some of my podcast content as vertical videos. I'll cut it with a AI tool or I'll do it myself or have a person who's working with me do it for me and then I'll post them as short form video. And I've noticed that I'm getting a lot more traction on my my regular podcast episodes that are coming from these shorts and these kind of bite sized kind of bit of content. So how important is it that you're linking from the short to something else? Because that can get into other conversations about monetization and getting people to stay on your platform and things like that. So discuss that for a minute.
- [19:09]
B
Yeah, I think there's pros and cons from my experience. So one is it's just free extra views. You're just naturally going to statistically get additional views by linking to a long form video from a short that's doing well. There's some natural retention issues. There as a short and YouTube will dispute this all day. But based on my anecdotal evidence from thousands of videos when you were primarily a shorts channel, when you put out a long form video, your retention on average is going to be lower because the audience that you're attracting is used to shorts. They are very separate audiences that are watching short form content than long form content. So that's a potential hurting factor is that if you have a short, that that's a clip from your podcast and it goes viral and you have that related video on there and they're vertically on their phone swiping through the YouTube shorts feed and they click that related video link, are they likely to watch a 45 minute podcast episode on their phone in that minute? Probably not. Probably not. That's probably not the viewing session intention. Right. They're probably going to your long form content in a, in another way, in a separate way. Now if you, if you have a shorter tutorial, there's some real power there. So if you do a 60 second YouTube short overview and you have a real strong call to action to check out this quick 5 minute tutorial where I walk you through step by step, that's much more likely to happen because you can, you're much more likely on your phone to watch a five minute video than you are to sit there, watch an hour long, 40 or 45 minute podcast episode as you're scrolling through. But it can drive monetization revenue. Long form content makes a lot more money on rpms than shorts do. Shorts are still terrible pretty much on every platform to be frank. But yeah, it's pros and cons. It depends what you're looking for. If you're just hunting for longer average view duration on your videos, you might be shooting yourself in the foot a little bit. Just anecdotal evidence.
- [21:25]
A
Let's talk about that. I think you brought up some excellent points there. If you're a YouTube channel and you're growing, let's step away from the education space. And just in general, whether you're in entertainment education, whatever it may be, and you're growing a YouTube channel, is there a place for, for every channel to sprinkle in YouTube shorts? Because as a coach that's working with 10, 15 clients almost on a weekly basis, it's changed, I believe. And a lot of the points that you just brought up are very relevant. So talk about that. If I have a YouTube channel right now and it's not a short space channel, it's based on long form or that's what I thought it would be. How would you integrate YouTube shorts into it? Or would you just do it in a different way, like the different type of formatting because they are different audiences. So maybe if you are a podcaster, you do the little bite sized clips, you give those people who want those quick dopamine hits right off you give them their little quick hits of the podcast, they know who you are, brand awareness. But then for the people who want to watch the longs and listen to the podcast on their walks or runs or whatever, you give them the long form video. Speak on that for a minute. How would you structure that as a YouTube creator?
- [22:32]
B
Yeah, I think it really depends on the individual channel, the niche and your goals. I will say where my mind's going is there are so many content YouTubers that I'm sure listen to this podcast Dusty that have been long form creators for years and they have the 4,000 hours of watch time they're trying to monetize but they're just on that slog to get to a thousand subscribers. And if that, if you're in that category, which is so many content creators, getting to that first thousand is so hard. But you've built a little bit of community, you built the watch time up. Throw some shorts in there, it's going to get you across that subscriber threshold faster.
- [23:17]
A
If you've already just the nature of the bite size form of them and the quickness at which you can get them out there, that's a great point. It can help you get over that threshold if that's what you're trying to attain at the time.
- [23:28]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Now on a longer form channel general, I highly suggest creating original content for shorts rather than repurposing if you are capable of doing it now podcast, it is a great way to drive traffic to your channel to check out your longer episodes. I don't think they're going to be in the same viewing session. Just personally that's not my opinion. Just based on what we were just talking about. If I'm scrolling mindlessly brain rotting myself with short feed because I just want to zone out for a minute, I'm not in the headspace to watch an hour long podcast, but I might come back to your channel later because I've been checking out all of your shorts and I like the little clip and I want to see the general context and when I'm ready, because you've been top of mind from the shorts, I'm going to go in and listen to that episode on my Time on my terms. Yeah. I highly suggest creating unique short form content. Having a you want them to be in the same niche and topic as your long form content. You don't have to be crazy with them. Find what works for you as a content creator. Don't overload yourself with something new just because it's worked for me or it's worked for another shorts content creator. Dabble with it and experiment. That's the other thing is that if you see that you've had a lot of views come in from Shorts and subscribers, but it's really hurting your view duration and retention on your videos and that outweighs the benefits of just your long form content, you don't have to keep doing the shorts. Lean into what works for you. That's what the best YouTubers do is they study the data, they study the audience retention graphs. You look at all of the metrics that YouTube gives us. YouTube has the best analytics from any platform ever. It's insane. There's nothing that even competes with that. Pay attention to the data as well. Test them out if you want and if you enjoy doing them, keep doing it and lean into the uniqueness of your channel and see what your community wants.
- [25:40]
A
I like the point of making the short form unique. Now, if you're a podcaster like myself, I think that there is a place, like you mentioned, to do the repurposing of a lot of what's working for podcasts. And this started years ago with Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss. People like that is they wouldn't, I mean they would do the repurposed vertical video, but they would take shorter bits of the podcast, not one or two minutes, but about seven to 12 minutes and they break those into individual YouTube videos into individual long form videos. That was something that was really working. So if we're talking repurposing, that's something that I'd look into as well.
- [26:16]
B
So yeah, one other, one other quick thing that just came to mind, if you don't mind is if you have a podcast and you want to do that, try to work in segments that are ahead of time will work as short form clips. There's a great podcast that comes to mind. Granted, I've never actually listened to these guys podcasts, but I love their videos because it's so bite sized. But I think it's called makeshift project. It's just these two guys and all of their shorts are. Rank these five foods blindly and it'll be nachos and then they'll go into I love a Good nacho. But there, there might be a hamburger on this. So I'm going to put it at three. And it's, I want to, I just want to see what the rankings are. And they just do that over and over again. Those videos get millions and millions of views for those guys. I see them on every single platform. I'm so engaged in it. I have no idea what their long form podcast is about, but it's just a, it's a, it's probably just a short segment in that episode that's designated specifically because they know that they're going to put that on shorts to drive. Overall podcast listens.
- [27:22]
A
I love that. I love unique things like that. And that goes back to, like you said, going into the show, knowing what's going to create bite size. I even think as a podcaster it might be best to hit stop record after you record your long form stuff and then have the guests stay a few more minutes and go over a couple hard hitting things that, you know, might perform well in vertical format. That just again, might be an idea for some folks. All right, let's get into AI and the noise. When you talk about noise, you could be talking about it from the creator's perspective in a number of ways. You can talk about noise in that I don't believe there's ever been a technology or a sector move as quickly as AI. I think you would agree with me. I think most people would agree with me. We are getting inundated with new tools, new tricks, new models, new this, new that. And for the normal person, it can become overwhelming. And at the end of the day, you just want to know what are the two to three tools that are going to help me in my industry, in my business, take my workflow, move the needle and really help me work more efficiently and just not get in the way. That's what makes a good SaaS or a good software, in my opinion. You've obviously working with your company Syllabi IO, you guys are helping people create these faceless videos, vertical videos, also utilizing AI to do that. So you're obviously in the space. So talk about that. Like, how do we cut through the noise as creators and find the tools that actually work and can help us and not get in the way, man.
- [28:54]
B
First of all, it's not even just normal people who can't keep up. It's literally my job and I can't keep up. Every single day there's something new comes out. I've been covering the latest updates from, from Chat, GPT, Jet GPT tasks just came out and operator came out and then now there's deep seek and that's man. And I have, I've only briefly. I always feel behind and I'm in this, even this echo chamber, which is crazy, where I'm connected with all these AI influencers. And if I'm a, if I'm on a busy work day and I can't, I can't get to something within seven hours of its release, I feel regret. I'm like, oh gosh, I missed, I missed the boat. I'm behind. Which is such a fallacy. It's so ridiculous. We're all just doing the best that we can. Remember that at any level, across the board. But to really hone in on what tools can help you, I'd really suggest before you even do that, there's a great book that came out last year called buy back your time by Dan Martell. And one of the best things that I took out of that book is time inventory. And so throughout your, you know, spend a week or two weeks and you can hyper focus on your entire schedule or you can focus on your schedule around content creation. And just when you start a task, mark it down. When you end a task, mark it down and just do that for the entire day or whatever you want to track. And what you'll notice by doing that every single day for whatever time period that you do, you're going to notice things that you can also rate those tasks. That's the other thing too. Do you enjoy this task? Is this task tedious to you? Rate it 1 out of 5 and associate a value with it too. Is this worth your time? Is this the most valuable thing for you? How does that weigh with how much you enjoy that? And so once you have all of that data from your existing content creation process, then you can start to look at the things that you don't enjoy doing and that take you the most amount of time and find a tool for those things. It's not just find a tool for everything to do every single thing. If you hate writing YouTube scripts, find a tool that can help you do exactly that. If you hate creating thumbnails manually, find a tool that can help you specifically do that. If you hate manually publishing and optimization, there's amazing tools, AI and not. There's fantastic tools like TubeBuddy that have been around forever. Vidiq has really gone down the AI rabbit hole. I love all of the, the AI tools that VidIQ has incorporated over the last year and a half, two years and they continue to add more. I would say start with Vidiq. As a content creator and YouTuber to be honest, because they have all the data in the world. I love some of the like the things that YouTube's doing internally. Their AB testing feature is something that we've all wanted for years and years and that I don't know if you've been experimenting with that Dusty but that's fantastic. Some of these things. So while I don't want to specifically name any tools because that's going to depend on you and what you enjoy doing and seek out one to two tools to help you with those things that will free up more of your time, allow you to be more productive, allow you to create more, allow you to be more consistent, allow you to create better thumbnails to increase your click through rates. If you're just not the. The YouTube thumbnail expert, that's where I'd go with that.
- [32:47]
A
Quickly. Is there a place where you would go on the Internet that does a good job of curating and putting these tools in? I used, I've used in the past. I've used producthunt.com oftentimes you can go down rabbit holes. I found that myself. Personally I can't go to YouTube and type in best YouTube script writer because I go down a rabbit hole and I get this whole analysis paralysis thing where I don't know which one I want to use. Which one is the best. This guy says this one is. This guy says this one is. Maybe they're affiliated with them. So is there a place you go a news source or a curator of sort that helps you filter and sift through that?
- [33:24]
B
I'll quickly plug my own directory fastpedia IO that we've indexed about 900 and change different AI tools for different categories sorted by free paid monthly subscriptions, etc. You can just type in YouTube or script or thumbnail and you'll be able to find a tool that you're looking for. On my ongoing basis. I love Product Hunt that you mentioned. I. I do a lot of my content is useful websites or AI tools for content creators and business owners. And so every single day there's a new slew of tools that come out on Product Hunt and you can search there. There's other great directories like futurepedia and Future Tools and there's an AI for that. Dot com is a great one. I think there's.
- [34:13]
A
I like that one.
- [34:14]
B
150,000 AI tools on there or something. Absolutely insane. There's all of these Directories. You can follow me. It's part of my content. I share a lot of these tools and do short tutorials and stuff like that. There's so many resources out there. Yeah. If you just find a content Creator that's like AI tools for YouTubers, that's probably a good resource because they're doing all of the work for you.
- [34:39]
A
Let's talk about as we close out today, let's talk about monetization. You mentioned a little while ago that the ad revenue, the RPMs for vertical video, short form video is just not what it is for long form. I know that from experience. I know that from working with coaching clients. So talk about the other ways that you're monetizing your content and maybe some examples that you can give for people listening to this that maybe they don't have that a thousand subscribers or 4,000 hour watch time. But you were telling me just a little while ago that you have a channel that you're building with your tool syllabi that is actually making one to $2,000 a month and you haven't even reached the monetization thresholds that YouTube's put into place. So talk about that for a few minutes.
- [35:22]
B
Yeah, when people get into YouTube and being a content creator, they all just focus on ad revenue. First I gotta get to monetization and then they spend two years getting to that point on YouTube and they apply and it takes four weeks to get approved and then they, they're finally approved and monetized and then they have to wait 24 hours to reflect on their channel and they've earned 67 cents and it's so disheartening. There's so many better ways to monetize and even earlier you're really not going to make a whole lot of money from ad revenue until you're really dialed in. If it's a high RPM niche or there's some peak seasons, ad advertisers are coming in around the holidays and stuff like that. But let ad revenue just be the bonus money that for the hard work that you've done. It's just here's a bonus dusty for all the hard work that you've done for that month. There's so many great ways to do to monetize it on the Social T pro channel. I was interviewed by Vidiq about this years ago about content creators that monetized below 1,000 subscribers. And my agency and I really specialized in addiction treatment marketing. That's where I built my career unrelated to being a YouTuber. Really but I had a video on there that was addiction treatment marketing on social media. And I think that video got 400 views, but it was the right views. And that video actually led, led to a $15,000 three month consulting contract way before I had a thousand subscribers had the watch time. So you can get so many quality leads and product sales, course sales, ebook downloads, anything that you're selling. If you have a YouTube channel around your business that is a gold mine. Don't wait for the ad revenue to come in, start capturing leads because it's going to generate so much more revenue for you to highlight on my, my Faceless video channel. I do affiliate marketing with it essentially and this is what we teach a lot of our users as well because it can take a lot of time to, to hit the that necessary criteria. But what you can do in every video is just link in the description and say you can create videos like this on any topic using syllabi. Here's a link, here's an affiliate link. And that actually drives dozens of of new subscribers every single month from that one YouTube channel, which is sometimes over a thousand a month. Sometimes it's more than that if someone purchases an annual plan upfront. I've had some pretty big months just from doing that. That channel has over a million views, largely from shorts. I haven't hit the 4,000 hours of watch time on that yet, but I am working towards it. Cause everybody just keeps asking that question. Another great thing that you can do is a newer tool for email marketing specific for content creators called Beehive. Have you used or heard of Beehive Dusty?
- [38:36]
A
So it's something that has been in my feeds, in the few newsletters that I do subscribe to. It's big right now. So explain what and how creators can utilize this.
- [38:45]
B
Okay, so I absolutely love what Beehive has done because prior to this there's other. I switched from mailchimp over to to Beehive about a year ago because after mailchimp was acquired by Intuit, they got super greedy to make back their $4 billion investment or whatever. And the prices keep raising like crazy. And so I have a large email list and I was paying Mailchimp, I think 2,500 to $3,000 a month just to manage my email list through, through mailchimp and it got out of control. Expensive. So ridiculous. So I ported that list over to Beehive and started switching. It's 10 times cheaper. I paid $250 a month right now for my list which is like 70,000 people, after I cleaned it and everything. But they have a marketplace in their platform with advertisers and other newsletters that are trying to grow. And this is one of the coolest things that Beehive did. And it's one of the easiest ways to monetize as a content creator right now. So how it works is when you're on a, I believe you have to be on their, on one of their paid plans, which is very affordable to start. But you can apply for these boosts. They're called from other related newsletters. I have a AI newsletter and I apply to other boosts of other AI newsletters. They're, they're paying up to $3. It's typically like $1 to $3 per verified email that you can get to their list because they're paying to grow their list through organic means on you. And so what that means is when I send somebody to my opt in form for my to join my newsletter and someone enters in their email, which is free, a pop up comes up and says, would you also like to subscribe to these other related newsletters? And if they do, which is also free for them, I get paid $2 from that person as long as they get verified. And so for me, it's been about a 20% conversion rate on that just to talk numbers. So for every 100 people that I get to subscribe, 20 of them will be verified users for this other, other newsletter. And you can stack those too. So you can have more than one. You can have up to five boosts active at a time. And so people can select one that they want to opt into, they can select all and opt into all five of those boosts. And so you can make a lot of money that way just driving viewers from YouTube over to your email list. So if you have an Ancient History Faceless YouTube channel, for instance, you can start an Ancient history newsletter and share fun stories and just lean into that audience and monetize that way very quickly by saying, subscribe to my free Ancient History Weekly newsletter. And then you can monetize that newsletter in so many other ways. There's a million different ways that you can monetize newsletters, but just by getting people to sign up for your list, you can, you can earn money as a content creator. And Beehive pays me, I think I earn, I earn 1500 to $2500 a month right now just from this program. And so it's great extra money. And it's a really easy way for content creators to Monetize.
- [42:18]
A
Yeah, I love that. I think that the thing you mentioned that really I took note of there is that you have to find the right views. And you mentioned on that 400 view video that you found the right views that led to the 1500, $15,000 consult. Business consultancy. I think that finding the right views and all goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of this conversation. Knowing your audience, who are they, finding them and then figuring out what platform and how to reach them. Man, we could have so many more conversations and we'll certainly have you back on in years to come. As we continue to discuss and navigate this world that we're in, I would like to recommend everyone go check out what Andrew has going on over at Syllaby. I'll have the link down below. S Y L A B Y. It's right now, it's the number one product of the day on Product Hunt. As we're recording. It is the number three product of the month in the SaaS area on product Hunt, which is very good. They have some really cool stuff. And if you want to see someone who's actually walking the walk, he's using his tool over on a YouTube channel called Ancient History Facts, which is why he used that example just a minute ago. The channel now has 8,000 subscribers, not yet at 300 videos. But he's using the syllabi tool and you can get a look of what a real life example is of what that tool can do, both implementing faceless and vertical video. And so go check out what he's got going on over there. All of those links that he's provided to me will be in the show notes of this episode. You know what, I really appreciate you agreeing to come on the show, Austin. You are just a. Just such a good base of knowledge for all of these things that are happening right now. There's so fast, it's so quick. It can get at times, it can get discourag. And I just want to encourage creators that don't look down at AI or the new technology coming out and think that it's going to take your job or it's going to replace you. It's not. Is it going to replace some? Of course. Just like it is in a lot of industries. But the people who stay ahead of it, the people who are willing to learn it and get into it. Not saying you got to have AI in everything that you do or you got to have a faceless YouTube channel. What I'm saying is that you need to be aware of everything going on and knowledgeable and make use of the things that could help you with the task list that that Austin mentioned about knowing what you hate doing. Maybe that's the thing that you're using AI for. So I want to encourage you today as you're listening to this. I hope that you can have a little bit of a positive mindset if.
- [44:38]
B
If you are interested in integrating AI into your content creation and your overall marketing. We mentioned it at the beginning of this in the bio, but I have a AI marketing conference coming up in Dallas, Texas October 9th through the 11th, 2025. I'm speaking there. I brought in some of the best AI marketing experts and content creators in the world. This is going to be a huge conference. The website is aimarketingworld co. We have discounted early bird tickets right now and I'd love to see you there and network with you.
- [45:07]
A
Definitely nothing better than those in person events to really rub shoulders with the people who are doing it. Well, thanks again. That's a wrap for this episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. If you got value from today's conversation, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a future episode. We're available on all podcast players. Next, I want to mention do you want to take your YouTube growth even further? I offer one on one coaching to help you level up your content strategy and monetization. Just look at the show notes below and you'll find a link to book your session. Also, if you're looking for a community of like minded creators, join our exclusive YouTube Creators Discord community. For just five bucks a month, you get access to our private community. Plus our monthly mastermind calls that I host on Zoom, where we take a deep dive into strategies that help creators win. You can join right now using the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening. Keep creating awesome content and we'll see you next week.