Dusty Porter (0:02)

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 episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. This is session 427. My name's Dusty Porter, the host of the show. Welcome back. For all of you who listen each and every week, I'm so thankful for you. And if you are a new listener just discovered the podcast, each and every Friday I release a new interview or a new podcast episode talking about YouTube, getting deep into the strategy and picking apart what successful people do as creators in hopes of bringing you a behind the scenes look of what that means as a creator. We're brought to you by the fine folks over at Tubebuddy. You can use our link in the show notes of this podcast to check them out. I promise you will not regret that. And then a couple of other ways you can connect with me. I do offer one on one creator coaching. So if you're looking for someone to go along with you, help you answer your questions, we get on a Zoom call for about 30 to 40 minutes. All that will be in the show notes as well. And then probably one of the best bangs for your buck is going to be five bucks a month supporting the show. Over on Patreon, you get access to our Discord server. We are growing faster than ever over there. And then each month I host a monthly Mastermind call on Zoom where we pick apart a specific creator, we talk about what's going on in our creator journey, and it's just a great way to rub elbows with wonderful like minded individuals. We've got some really amazing programming coming up here. Towards the end of the year going into 2025, we have our annual state of YouTube that I record with Nick Nimmin and his brother D, and we talk about where YouTube is going into the new year, the things that we saw happening in 2024 and what we believe to happen in 2025. So if you're a creator, it is a must. Listen, we did last year has over 30,000 downloads as of the recording of this episode, which for a podcast is really good. So obviously there's some good nuggets in there and people go back and listen to those shows. We've been doing them since 2021 and we don't plan on stopping anytime soon. So that's just something to look forward to. We Have a couple of really great interviews to finish the year. And then this week we're doing our annual Q and A where I basically give you a state of the union of what's going on with me, my business, my YouTube channel, and and I answer questions that were submitted to me over the past couple of months over on X or Twitter, whatever you want to call it. It's at DustyPorter YT over there. Or people who are part of the Discord server have sent me dms and asked me specific questions there. All right, so we're just going to dive right into it. What happened this year on my channel, my YouTube business as a creator? The end of last year I started offering the one on one coaching for YouTube content creators. That part of my business really grew quickly. I was not expecting the response and it really proved to me the power of podcasting. I've been doing this podcast now for almost a decade, depending on how you look at it over a decade. And the trust that I've built with my audience is like none other. It's something you can't even get with YouTube videos. So if you're considering doing a podcast and you're thinking about it, you're on the fence. I would highly encourage you to at least try and launch a podcast and be consistent for a year and see what it might can do for your business. Because I found that when I did decide to go and do some one on one coaching with creators, the podcast was the main launching point for that. And I launched the service with like $50 per 30 minute type deal and quickly sold out of all my spots and realized that I should have priced it much higher. Right now I'm sitting at $100 or 99 bucks for the 30 minute session and I do as many of those as I want a week. And I'm very thankful for that and I'm thankful for you guys. I feel I've never had one where I only do one session, so that's to me, I take that as a good sign. People normally do a session and they normally ask me before it's over, hey, where can we set up or how can we set up the next one? Got some really amazing creators on my roster and it's just been a really big boon, not necessarily monetarily because I've capped it at a very small amount per week just for time's sake, but it's been a very big, not really confidence booster, but a very validating thing for me. As far as the podcast, the podcast itself took A little bit of a dip in numbers coming out of COVID into last year even we saw a really high download mark compared to the years previous. We were averaging anywhere from 12 to 15,000 per episode in the first 14 to 30 days. Now we're down to around 8 to 10 to 12 depending on the guest and that kind of thing. Hopefully you guys enjoy this stuff. The behind the scenes of what it takes to run a business and be a YouTube creator and also do other things as well. So hopefully this is interesting to you. I know I love listening to this. And so with that the sponsorship revenue, Tubebuddy being the primary sponsor, they've changed a little bit of their business model. We've also brought on a few different things. I launched the newsletter this year which is up over the 3,000 subscriber mark. I've got to do a better job of being consistent with releasing that. I'll go a couple of weeks releasing it and there's even like some tech issues that I got to iron out there. But it's something that I would say if there's anything this year that I did that I'm most proud of, that I'm thankful I did, it's that it took a long time, a lot of convincing. A couple of guests talked to me after we recorded and said, you've got to do the email newsletter. And I knew they were right and I'm so thankful that I did. The email newsletter is called the Entrepreneurs Minute where I basically talk about my week, what I got going on, what I'm doing in my business, the interviews that I've done. And so if you like this podcast episode, go check that out if you haven't already. So that was a big thing that happened and now I want to Talk about the YouTube channel. For those of you who don't know, I run a YouTube channel. It's just my name, Dusty Porter. It's a search based channel where I do technology tutorials, I cover software, I do screencasting. I've been doing this now for over 13 years and some change. This has been one of the bigger years for the channel. I take out 2020 because it was the COVID year and my channel exploded because everyone was at home, they were looking how to use zoom, how to live stream and my channel was perfectly fit for that. And so there were months and weeks and days where I would just, the numbers are just skewed. I would make a crazy, not really crazy amount of money. I wasn't getting rich, but comparison to what I would be Doing let's say if I make a few hundred bucks a day normally during that year I would make, we're talking thousands at times. That's really an anomaly. And so this year I've really put my head down and said I want to upload 20 to 30 tutorials every single month. And what normally happens is a lot of those videos don't take off until month two, three, four, six, even year one or two. And so having those kind of getting that snowball rolling down the hill has really helped me and I'm starting to see the reap the benefits of the consistency of uploading that many tutorials. And my strategy has changed a bit because YouTube has changed a bit. I'm doing more of the long form videos of say the 20 to 30 minute long tutorials of let's just say how to master Apple Notes, a full guide on that. And then I'll do the breakdown videos either in YouTube short format or a 2 to 3 minute breakout video that I'll link down below. Something I've also started doing that I've seen a big benefit of is instead of pinning a comment about hey, like the video or ask your questions below, I've actually started asking ChatGPT to give me the most frequently asked questions about the software that I'm covering. And sometimes it'll be five questions, sometimes it'll be 20 and I will include those in the pinned comments. And I've seen a huge positive response on that. So if you're doing educational content, you might want to consider asking ChatGPT or going to Google and finding what the most frequently asked questions are. Because what I found over the years is that when I do a tutorial on a bit of software or something I'm trying to teach, there's going to be more oftentimes than not people asking one of the same frequently asked questions. And if I go ahead and beat that and go ahead and get ahead of that, it not only keeps people on my video longer because they're actually in this is important. They're actually going down scrolling in the comments, seeing that and people are responding to that very positively. It's one of the things to where I would encourage you to look into if you're not doing it already. So just a different technique that I've tried. So the YouTube channel last year, I'll give you a little bit of statistics averaged around 28 to 42,000 views a day. Again that varies widely depending on like January this year there was a video game that released and it was Very popular. And I did a full tutorial showing people how to set up servers for that. You don't really have to know anything about all that tech jargon, but what you do need to know is that kind of skewed my numbers a little bit because that video popped off big. Sites like IGN and other gaming sites picked up that video, embedded it in their articles and neogaf, sites like that. So that video really did well. I have another couple of videos that have done very well, a bunch of them about AI, how to set up AI, how to cancel AI subscriptions, things like that. So, again, the channel this year, I'm very proud of what I've done. I'm very proud of where it is. We're getting closer to that 400,000 subscriber mark, which, honestly, I'm more proud of the consistency of the podcast than I am the YouTube channel, because the YouTube channel I've been doing for so long, and I enjoy it, doing it so much that I get into a rhythm and I know what I got to do there. But I feel like this year I made some changes and pivots that in years past, I've just rested on my laurels. I've really tried new things this year, and they've really reaped some benefits for me. And so I want to encourage you that if you've been thinking about leaning into something new or a different bit of programming for your channel, do it. Because, yes, it's scary, but I found that I don't really find much success or the needle doesn't move too much unless I'm actually in a little bit of discomfort or I'm doing something that I'm afraid of. And that's a very powerful thing. So I think that I want to encourage you to do that with your channel. So overall, the business itself is a little bit better than where it was going out of 2023. Now, the elephant in the room for me and my business is voice acting. For those of you who don't know. Briefly, I've been a voice actor going on 13, 14 years now. I started on Fiverr. It came from going on YouTube and people saying, oh, my gosh, you got a really good voice. Can you voice my videos? Can you do this? Can you do that? I love voice acting. Love it. It is one of the most fun things I get to do. And I was making, on average, going in from 2021, 2022, and even last year, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7000amonth just on VO. But because of the rise of you guys probably know where I'm going with this. Because of the rise of artificial intelligence and AI voices that has taken a tumble dramatically. And I'm very thankful for things like the Discord Group, where I have support over there. Podcast sponsorship has been a bit up this year, the coaching program, the newsletter, other ways that I'm able to monetize. That's why I always tell you to diversify. And I never mention the ad revenue because I'm so thankful for it from YouTube and I never want to just count on that either. And so that's been a very big change for me and so I've had to figure out ways to supplement. Still, doing voice acting is just at a much less of a pace and much less income, which is fine. But I am seeing a bit of a reversal. And I'll tell you briefly, people who have gone to AI. I've had some really big clients, real estate agents, other YouTube channels that I used to voice. You'd be surprised at some of the larger faceless channels that I'm actually the voice of or have been before. And with that being the case, they went to AI and a lot of them over the past quarter, the past three months are coming back to me and they're saying my audience doesn't like the AI voices. It's not good enough yet. And I do believe it will be eventually, but I do feel there's a ways to go. So that's a little update on what's going on with me and my business. Hopefully you got some enjoyment or took some notes on that and where you can apply it to your business and channel. All right, let's talk about the Q and A. You can submit your questions for these Quarterly Q&As either over on Discord, if you support me and you're a part of that, or over on Twitter or X@dustyporteryt over there. We'd love to connect with you and you can even send me a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn, Dusty Porter on all of those services. Alright, question number one coming in from Dominic. I believe that's how he pronounces his name. He says, how do I grow my channel in a competitive niche? This one's a very common question. People who are in the gaming space or spaces that are very crowded, which is a lot of niches on YouTube right now. I wrote down some notes for all of these, so I'm going to read them and then expound upon them. Focus on unique value and consistent content. So unique value is important. What makes you different? What is the unique value that you offer that other people in your niche do? Not Narrow down your niche to stand out. Engage with your audience through comments and leverage the data from YouTube analytics to refine your strategy. So always be tweaking things like I was mentioning a couple of minutes ago, and possibly collaborating with other creators in your space for cross promotion. This is something that people fail to do often because they're either afraid of it or think people wouldn't be willing to. But honestly, they're going to be willing to. You can't ask someone with a million subscribers if you have 10 subscribers. Obviously that's not going to happen, but go and find someone in the same realm as you and see if they'd be willing to collaborate. So how do you grow your channel in a competitive niche? Focusing on your unique value and what makes you different is probably the biggest key there. Number two, coming in from Sandra. Her last name starts with an L. It's very long. I'm not going to butcher it here. Sandra over on X ask how often should I be uploading videos? This one comes to me very frequently and I'll say this first and foremost, quality always beats quantity. Almost always. There's some exceptions and some outliers like the type of channel that I have. There's young guys doing tutorials, what I'm doing and they're taking my model and where I'm doing 20 to 30 videos a month, they're doing 230 videos a month. And so it is a numbers game for that type of thing. But 99% of the time quality will always be quantity. So find what a realistic schedule is for you. Weekly biweekly that ensures that you can create and produce high quality videos, knowing that consistency matters more than frequency. So just choose a schedule that you can sustain long term. Something that you know you can stick to long term. That's it. Next. This one comes from Romero I believe is his name Brazil. They got a Brazil icon in his little icon there. He says what's the best way to come up with video ideas? Another common question. Common theme in these Number one, have a list somewhere like a spreadsheet or a Google Doc in research trending topics in your niche using tools like Tubebuddy or whatever tool you want to use. Google Trends, even check your comments section and community post if you're not using them for audience suggestions. These are some of the better ideas that you can have utilizing the people who are already active in your space. And then analyze this one is Something people fail to do. When I coach people, it's one of the things that we do on the first call or two is we analyze what's performing well on a competitor's channel and put your own unique spin on it. So let's say you're in the crafting niche. I always use that one as an example. Not sure why. Anyways, analyze what other crafters are doing, what programming types or video types are working for them, and put your unique spin on it. It's a big deal. Try it. See if it can make a difference. Next question coming in from Hoyt. Oh, my grandfather's name was Hoyt. That's a good name. How can I increase watch time and audience retention? Good one. Good question. Common question. You want to hook the viewers in the first 15 to 20 seconds with a compelling promise or question, utilizing storytelling throughout to keep them engaged. And then I wrote this down. Add patterns like open loops, teasing, future content, future bits they're going to receive in the video, and really good visuals or something in the video that keeps them glued or wanting more. The main couple of words that I would say here is that you want to leave your audience wanting more. Like, what is he trying to say? It's like when you're trying to create a good thumbnail, you almost want the person seeing it in their browse feed or the search results and say to themselves, I've got to know what the heck this thing is like, the thumbnail should make them want to click, obviously, but hook them very quickly. Use storytelling and then have those open loops that you eventually you give the payoff to, but not too soon. And make sure you're not giving too much fluff in the video either. Very important. All right, next one is on monetization. No name on this one here, just a DM on Discord. I don't want to say a Discord username because it's just. I'd rather you just tell me your name if you want me to say it. How do I monetize my channel effectively as a smaller channel? I just got accepted to the partner program. The first thing here is diversify. We talked about that just a minute ago. Diversifying revenue streams beyond the partner program with things like sponsorships, affiliate marketing, merch, and memberships. When you have that enabled on your channel. And this one is the second half of this answer is probably more important. You have to build an engaged audience first. As you heard me saying in my State of the Union or business at the open top of this episode, something that I Learned early on is that when I built trust with an audience, large, small, medium, however big it might be, the trust in the engagement, back and forth is what is. That's where the power is. That's where your leverage is with brands. And when you build an engaged audience, you notice I didn't say build a large audience. Obviously you want to build a large audience, that's great. But build one that's engaged. If an audience is a hundred strong and they're engaged and each of them are willing to give you 50 bucks a month, you can do the math. Again, I've done this before, it's important. And then as you do this and when you do this, brands and higher paying opportunities will automatically follow with audience loyalty. Very important. This one is one I get a lot. This one is from Sally, I believe it says the name is. How do I handle negative comments or trolls? I love the term trolls. Answer for this is very easy. Ignore or delete hateful comments if you don't want to look at them. Don't engage, Never engage. Soon as you engage, you're putting gasoline on that fire. Or respond back professionally to the criticism, to the hate in a way that is with honor and with kindness. And it puts, flips it back to them, puts the ball in their court and normally they'll either just not respond or they'll double down on their thing there. And you can know that and be proud that you didn't engage with the hate. And then just use filters. You can use filters to block specific words. You can use tools to block that if you need to. If it's getting really bad, even disable the comments. I wouldn't encourage that because I love the interaction that comments bring. And so with that being the case, don't respond, don't do it unless you're going to do it in a very positive way to flip it back to them. Next. This one is. I got this question a lot, so I'm not going to say a name. They said, how do I balance YouTube with my personal life? And how do you do it with your family? This one's hard because I don't think I always succeed at this. Um, the, the simple things are batching content, create content on a schedule, upload in your free time, being able to spend a day or two days to batch, record, depending on the channel, it may not work for you. So I don't want to just say that as a blatant or kind of a blanket statement. Set boundaries. I call them guardrails for your work hours. Know when you're gonna be working on YouTube and know when you're gonna be spending time with family. What the hard part about YouTube and editing and things of being a creator is that it's so easy. Especially if your studio is in like a home office. You can very easily go in there, lock yourself in the room and ignore your family. I've done it. I've been there when I've had a deadline or a sponsored video or a podcast, whatever it may be. Setting those guardrails up for your working hours and time blocking of hey from 6 to 8 or no, from like 8 to 10, which is what I did early on at night when my family was asleep or going to bed. I'll put my head down and I'll start grinding the YouTube stuff, but I'm never going to let it interfere with my family. It's something that people, I want people to always know this about me. I will never put this podcast. Just last week, for instance, we didn't have a show. My youngest daughter had the flu. I had to cancel a bunch of things. I realized early on that there's nothing more important to me than my family and what I stand for. And with that being the case, I'll never put that before that. And I found that the benefit of that is a healthy family life with relationships that allow me to be motivated to do the YouTube stuff even better. So set those boundaries and then involve your audience in your journey. Take them behind the scenes of how you what I'm doing today. I did last year for the first time, State of the Union, State of my Business and I got a very positive response. I'd love to hear your response to this episode, by the way, either over on X or wherever you can find me and let me know what you thought about some of these questions and some of the things that I shared with you today about my business. People love this behind the scenes look. Next question. How do I know what's working and what's not? This is a funny question. I want to start by saying just simply Regularly check the YouTube analytics for insights and audience demos. Watch time retention rates of where you may need to be better that can tell you what's working and what's not. A B Testing. So testing thumbnails. You can now do that on natively on YouTube. Testing thumbnails, titles, content, styles and programming to see what resonates most and when you find something that works, doubling down and then paying attention to viewer feedback in the comments section and engagement metrics. I consider a Good tutorial. I look at them normally 9 months to 12 months into their lifespan. How many comments, how many questions did I have? How many times did the guy in the comment section tell me I sucked and I didn't answer his question? Things like that, right? So paying attention to viewer feedback and knowing what's and looking at other channels in your space and seeing what's working for them. And then lastly, I want to answer this one. What trends should I Prepare for in 2025? This is going to lead into our State of YouTube podcast, which we're recording this week to be published week from today with Nick Nimmin and his brother D talked about it last year, but it's going to be a thing again this year. Short form video YouTube shorts is still growing. Leverage it for discoverability, not monetization. So vertical videos being able to be uploaded to three minutes. I think we're going to see some monetization improvements with that, but we're going to see that as a big thing going into the new year. I do believe live streaming is another big thing that's continually to grow. Next AI tools for content creation and editing are game changers. You are going to have to learn and adapt because if you don't, you will be left behind. Doesn't matter what space you're in. Real estate, let's say you're a real estate agent. If you're not leaning into video and virtual tours and things of that nature, you are going to be left in the dust and you're not going to be as successful as someone who's willing to try new things. So AI is coming. I started using a tool called Descript D E S C R I P T. They are not a partner or a sponsor. So I'm just telling you right now, descript is a tool that I'm able to put my videos and podcast episodes in. Get easy transcriptions. I can get translations, I can cut filler words, I can edit via text through those. It's amazing. It has made some of my workflow so much easier. So don't be I'm old. Get off my lawn. Don't be that way. Be someone willing to change and take things that as they come and learn them, don't get left behind. And then prioritizing authentic engagement over chasing trends. I do believe that community connection has never mattered more than it does now. So I believe that knowing who your audience is and where they are, not only in their life, but the type of content they want to watch and where they are is going to be such a powerful thing for creators going forward. Wow. I love this episode. This has been really fun. I was thinking this might be 15 minutes. We're now almost at 30 minutes. Oops. But that's just part of how this happens. I want to encourage you as you hear these next final interviews going into the new year on the show. If you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast absolutely free and you'll get notified every time. I also have a YouTube channel just called YouTube Creators Hub where if you would like to listen there or find us over there, I plan on doing more kind of talking head videos there in the new year. Would really love to grow that channel and see where I could take that. It's a baby channel, just launched it this year, haven't done much on it. I'm actually going to hire someone to help me with some of the programming there and so that's where you can find me over there. And I just. Huge thank you to all of you who listen and all of you who support me. It means a lot and doing what I love for a living is special and it's good stuff. And then in closing, you can go ahead and expect a new podcast launch from me. I've been really passionate about interviewing, getting better as an interviewer and I've felt like I've wanted to launch a business based podcast, an entrepreneur based podcast where I interviewed people who are doing things uniquely to make money and talk about people who run their own businesses and how they succeed. And so if that's something you're interested in, stay tuned, subscribe to the email newsletter, it'll be in all those things. And guys, have a great week and we'll talk to you next time. Hello everyone and thank you for listening to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I really do appreciate it. Don't forget you can subscribe to the show for absolutely free. Free. And your podcast player of choice. Also, there are ways you can connect with us. You can support us by supporting our sponsor TubeBuddy as well as supporting us over on Patreon to get access to our creator Discord community. And I also offer YouTube coaching and consultation, YouTube channel reviews and just overall business coaching if that's something that you are wanting to look into. So make sure you check us out there and we'll see you next week.