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The YouTube Strategy Selling Mansions, Castles & Penthouses | Phil Wells
00:43:27
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- [00:00]
A
You always want to end. You always want to be focusing on what the person is, you know, is, is looking at because that's, that's important. That's like your set, if you're in theater, you know, it's like you don't want it to just be black curtain behind you. You want it to be something really cool because they can listen to you and they can also kind of take a look at that. And if there's motion too, it's very helpful.
- [00:19]
B
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast where each and every week we talk with a content creator about their journey on YouTube. I interview the creators every Friday morning and we break down what makes them, their failures on the platform and the things that they would do differently if they started over today. There are no sponsors on this show, no ad reads. It's all about what we offer to creators. I'll do a rundown of those things now. I offer one on one YouTube coaching. I do YouTube channel audits where I review a screencast video of your channel and tell you where I think you could be making changes and where your time would be most best spent on your channel. As well as a creator Mastermind group where you get access to creator forums. You get Mastermind calls every month, plus exclusive podcast recordings from me released every Friday on that feed. We also have two other things. We have the running list of links that basically anything mentioned on the show is on a Google spreadsheet that's called the Entrepreneur's Toolbox. And then I run something called the Entrepreneur's Minute, which is just an email newsletter. Never spammy. I'm not going to send it to you daily. It's every Friday I talk about something going on in my life, the tools I'm using, things that I'm finding interesting. So if you're looking for a behind the scenes look of my business, that's probably the best place to do that. So with that said, let's go ahead and jump into this week's conversation. Welcome to this week's conversation conversation on the Creators Hub podcast. I'm so excited today to be joined by Phil from Philip Wells Real estate over on YouTube. Through his YouTube channel, which is less than two years old by the way, he's grown to over 150,000 long form organic views every month. Phil has expanded his real estate practice from Manhattan and Brooklyn into a truly global business. His cinematic tours, which I believe that's probably where he stands. Him, you know, is where he sets himself apart of Castles a states and architecturally significant homes now generate inquiries from buyers and sellers from all around the world, leading to successful transactions both in the US and internationally. Phil, how you doing today?
- [02:21]
A
I'm doing well, thanks, Dusty.
- [02:23]
B
So you've taken a unique approach as far as I've had many realtors on the show talking about real estate and growing their business on YouTube and we'll definitely dive into that stuff. But your approach to this and just kind of give the audience a perspective of what you do because you on your YouTube channel, which I'm on right now, you do these just cinematic, these beautiful videos showcasing these amazing properties, houses, villas, castles. Explain why you went that route and what you think it has kind of attributed to your success so far.
- [02:58]
A
So before I started doing kind of the form that I'm doing now, I was doing the more traditional standing in front of property saying, Hi, welcome to 1605, you know, Lemon Avenue. This three bed, two bath home is 1600 square feet. And I think right at that point people were just tuning out and kind of saying, okay, another real estate tour. Two to three minutes, the same cheesy music, the agent standing outside of the home, and then it just goes over some B roll shots of the home. And that wasn't really getting any traction. And I kind of realized that when I watch YouTube, that's not really what I'm watching for. I'm watching for something that is really, you know, interesting right from the get go that makes me want to stay and watch more of it. And so I thought, you know, what would really grab me, what would like, what interests me, what makes me like, whoa, I just need to see that. And as I'm on social media for real estate, I saw castles and I said, wow, you could buy a castle, that's pretty cool. And then I started thinking, you know, how could I, how could I get into a castle? How could I help that agent promote a castle internationally? And that's kind of, you know, what sent me down the rabbit hole, so to speak.
- [04:10]
B
So these videos, what experience did you have? Like, what part of it are you hiring this out? Are you doing it yourself? Explain kind of how you got into the YouTube space and decided to start the YouTube channel. As far as like your experience with videography, you know, where, where are you in the spectrum of, hey, novice to expert?
- [04:32]
A
I would say when I started, I was very novice. I mean, I had done stuff with my phone, I'd done stuff with a little bit of, you know, webcam kind of recording, sort of doing like green Screen type of stuff where I'd talk about listings, but that was basically it. I didn't have any experience delivering in front of the camera and I didn't really have any experience shooting. So I had a friend who did, who lived in Chicago, who's Tommy Lukrich and he, I called him up and I said, hey Tommy, if I can get us into a castle in Scotland or France, if I can, you know, if I can get us into some of these places, would you go on me with this, you know, do this trip and go on me in this crazy adventure Basically as a friend, you know, all expense paid trip, you would, I'd buy all the equipment, I'd do everything and let's see what we can do. And he said, yeah, as long as I'm not working at the time, if I can take the time off, I'll do it. So that was basically, you know, he had done, he had a theater degree, he'd done some film work, but not, not too much. So it was a real learning experience right from the get go.
- [05:38]
B
What impact did this have immediately to your real estate business? Like when you posted the first video, how quickly did it kind of take off? Because now, you know, I go to YouTube channels and work with creators every week. And when I look at your channel and I go to your most recent videos, it's interesting because all of your videos are what we call outliers. They're performing above what YouTube or this tool believes your median should be for views. Like, I mean, all of these videos that you did that your past four videos are right at 70,000 views, 200,000 views, another 200,000 almost view video. And so these videos are really taking off. So what impact did it have with it, with the business in the right.
- [06:21]
A
At the beginning, right when I, the first couple I did, I think got maybe 25,000 views pretty quick and then sort of plateaued at about 50 maybe. And then the first one I had that got over a hundred thousand views. It was, it was interesting to see, you know, the comments rolling in, some emails coming in and that was obviously exciting. It didn't immediately have a big impact in terms of, you know, commissions generated. It was more starting to build the pipeline and starting to build an email list and that sort of thing. It took some time obviously to create the videos, to go on the trips to script and plan. And you know, if anything I would say it was sort of a one step back, two steps forward kind of thing because there's a lot you have to put out to get these things out, and it didn't lead to immediate impacts. But what did really help was when I started posting even just a few shorts, and my clients would say, wait, what are you doing? You're selling and you're selling chateaus in France. You're, you know, that's pretty cool. When did you start doing that? What's going on? And everything I posted, even though it was advertising other agents listings, they all thought, immediately everyone thought that it was mine. And so that helped elevate my profile. And they started saying, oh, okay. Instantly they'd say, you're selling this, you're selling this, this is yours, this is yours. And I'd have to sort of convince them otherwise. And then I realized, what am I doing here? If they're saying, you're selling this and they have a friend who's interested in, you know, x, Y, Z, great, introduce me to the friend. You know, I'm, I am, I'm selling this together with the, you know, with the listing agent over in, in Europe. And, you know, that's kind of how deals started to happen is once I started to take ownership and say, yeah, it may not be my direct listing, but I am selling it.
- [08:12]
B
So let's take that a bit farther then. What is the business model as far as, obviously YouTube is a big cog in this wheel because this is where you're getting your face out there, your voice out there. You're featuring these really luxurious properties. So what is end to end? The business model of now, you're not just doing things in Manhattan and Brooklyn, you're expanding internationally. And you're basically, are you reaching out to the listing agents and saying, hey, listen, here's what I do. I can give you a super high quality cinematic video of the property, help you sell it, get it marketed worldwide. Explain that to us. Like, what's the full business model?
- [08:55]
A
So real estate agents all over do referral agreements where if you send them a client, then you can get usually 20, 25% of the commission generated from that client. And that's just pretty standard if you have any, you know, people often, you know, their brother will be buying a place in Florida or something. So they connect them with a local agent and they say, you know, if and when he buys, I expect, say 25% in exchange. So my initial thought was, let me just do referral agreements with these agents. If someone comes off YouTube, I can send them over, refer the client, and I can get a referral agreement. And that's. And that's been fine. And that's, that's worked pretty well. But where it really started to change was when property owners started to reach out to me and say, you know, I have a hotel in Italy and I'm interested in you promoting it and helping me sell it. Because I've. I watch your videos, I see what you do. The local agents here in Italy aren't really. They're not going to do something similar for me. You know, I know that they, frankly they, the quality just isn't quite the same. They just can't. So would you come over here and shoot one of your videos and then essentially I'll give you the listing and then you can hire out the local showings when people, you know, because I can't be going back and forth to Italy the whole time. So taking on my own listings has been, you know, kind of a game changer in terms of instead of just getting a small referral, I can sort of flip it and I can pay a referral to someone who's doing the local showings. So that's been helpful. But it's all just getting started. I mean, this is really. I've been so focused on getting more content out there and taking these trips and it's been quite a bit of travel, planning events and I'm just starting to see the, you know, the reversal of that. There's a quote that I like in the Bible and I think it's Ecclesiastes and it says, cast your bread upon the waters and it shall return to you after many days. That bread is, it's a little soggy, but it's starting to come back.
- [10:58]
B
I love that. That's an amazing verse. I also was going to ask you, I guess it really, you can't really tell at this point, but I mean, how much does one of these trips cost you? On average?
- [11:09]
A
They cost about, I was looking at that and I think they're about $10,000 when I. And that's including if I, you know, you got to buy a new lens, maybe I just had to buy a new drone. You know, there's different things. You have to always be. What do they call it? G A S Gear acquisition syndrome. But you know, there's definitely a lot of buy in of of stuff. But then there's paying for the, the videographer. And now we just brought in a production assistant as well who kind of helps with the actual shoot days and is trying to make it a little bit of a shorter shooting cycle for us. But yeah, in general, flights, renting a car, you know, hotel. And then I, that's not really factoring the time that I'm taking away from my real estate in New York, which, you know, again, that might be, you know, $500 a day or something in lost. It's hard to quantify. But there's lost income and then there's also the actual cost. I'd say about $10,000, though, in, in real hard costs per video.
- [12:08]
B
And people hear that number and think that's rather high. And it is. But if you're selling a $17 million penthouse, I mean, the commission on that is, is amazing. I mean, depending on kind of what your rates are. And in real estate, it, it all differs as far as the stuff you're doing in New York, you know, you're still, you're still obviously working there. It's just your time away is to hopefully. I tell people this all the time. Look for the big ticket. The big ticket items are the ones that, you know, and for you, if you can sell, you know, four to six or seven of these really big deals a year, I mean, your income is dramatically higher than what it would be if you're just a Manhattan or New York City realtor. Right. Like, you're getting a increased revenue. I mean, is that, would you agree with that?
- [12:54]
A
Yeah, if the one thing is, the real estate commissions in the United States are quite a bit higher than they are elsewhere. So, you know, there might be only a 1 to 2% commission rate for some of these big ones. You'd think, you know, a U.S. agent thinks 5 or 6%. It is quite a bit lower internationally. But also it kind of means that their level of, of service, they kind of treat it more like a 9 to 5 job and kind of, you know, it's not as. I don't mean to say anything disparaging because I actually really like, I kind of like their approach to real estate over there. But it is, it's a lot different. It's kind of in the US we, and not to get too off topic, but in the US we sort of say it's my listing. I feel responsible if it doesn't sell. I'm like, we were mentioning off, off air that your, your parents were real estate agents and that I'm sure, you know, that we feel like it's our little baby, it's our responsibility if it doesn't sell. And out there it's like, oh, well, we've listed it, we've posted it. It's not doing well. So it must be something's wrong with the property, Something's wrong with the price. That's it. You know, Whereas here, like, tonight, I'm throwing a party with, like, 40 agents in the city, trying to sell a penthouse here in the city. And it's like, I'm bringing people in. I'm supplying gifts for a white elephant exchange. I'm, you know, bartender, you know, food. All this bringing everyone from the area, like, you know, we're really trying to promote this thing and sell it. And it's just a difference in approach to, you know, oh, I can't. You get an email. I can't show it tomorrow. I can't show it. You know, maybe I can show it next week. And it's like, come on, man. Like, you know, you know, we. You. We gotta be a little more on the ball here if we're trying to sell this, you know, this private island or something. It's like, come on, someone wants to see it. Let's go. Let's get out there, you know? Yeah. So there's a little bit of a difference in. But to get back to the question, yes, one of these can pay for a lot of videos. And not only that, it also helps me get listings, even in. In New York, because I can show them and say, hey, look, here's what I can do for you in New York. And that's been really good to increase my business here, too.
- [15:04]
B
You know, Phil, I think that one of the beauties in regards to YouTube is that it becomes a catalog. And a buddy of mine, Roberto Blake, who's also a YouTube educator in the space, he and I oftentimes talk about, joke around and say, hey, it's kind of like, you know, every video is a business card, and it's a business card that'll work for you forever. I mean, it's all. I mean, I have videos that are. I had a comment on a video that was 13 years old. I do tutorials for technology on my main channel, and someone commented, they were like, oh, this video helped me in 2025. And I think I posted it back in, like, 2013 or 2012. I mean, I was. It was in. I was just out of college. And so for me, going back, watching that video, I was cringing. But that's what the power of YouTube is, is that we can upload now and it can produce even if you're in the entertainment space, you know, years down the line. So let's now shift focus away from kind of the real estate side of things and go to the YouTube side of things. You're obviously doing something right. These videos on your channel, as I mentioned previously, all of them seem to really take off. How important do you think the niching down of, okay, you're not just going to do these normal video tours of real estate, you're niching down into luxury. How important do you think that decision was?
- [16:19]
A
I think it was pretty darn important because when I was, you know, when I was originally thinking about it, I was thinking, oh, I want to do, you know, the, I've seen people do like the tiny, tiny homes and interesting things like that.
- [16:32]
B
I just to interrupt you, I have a friend of mine, friend of the show. I've had her on a couple times. Her name is Christina Smallhorn, I believe is her name. She's on YouTube and that's. She took a couple YouTube courses. She was doing real estate stuff, not finding, you know, getting traction here and there. But then she started niching down into tiny homes and she's now one of the biggest authorities on YouTube. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but it's funny that you brought that up.
- [16:55]
A
Yeah, no, well, there's so much, I mean, real estate is so big and there's so many different things you can do within real estate. So it's what I found. Is it. The property has to excite me. I have to be really excited about it because even I used to think, oh, it's the price. You know, people want to see a high, high price. But then we, we did this one we went to. I guess it wasn't, it still did pretty well, but it did like 75,000 views. Ish. And I thought this one was going to be like, you know, sometimes you think, I usually don't fall into this trap. But usually, you know, when I was looking at, you know, watching the video, going over the edit, I was like, this one is so cool and so good and it just, it did okay. And it was the highest priced one I'd ever, I'd ever toured before. So then I started to think, you know, it might not be so much the price. I know that as important as packaging is for me, it's really retention and it's really keeping people. I've noticed the ones that I can keep people for as long as possible and it stays interesting throughout. There's a, it's not just beautiful room, beautiful room, beautiful room. But you know, I don't know, there's a, there's a waterfall and there's a, you know, there's a secret room, there's a secret passage. There's a, you know, those kind of things really, where the, you know, people who are watching the video, they can see in a chapter and they see a big spike and they say, oh, what's that? And they keep watching. And so if I could keep the retention really strong, then I know the video is going to do well. And of course it has to. We think a lot about the thumbnail before, you know, and that's one thing that really changed for us is where we thought if this doesn't have at least a decent thumbnail, we really maybe shouldn't shoot it because it's, you know, that's so it's so important to have a good thumbnail. So that's kind of like table stakes for us. It's like, all right, what, what's that? What's that thumbnail? What's that thumbnail? You know, and in. Then can we keep people interested for longer than 10 minutes?
- [18:48]
B
I interrupt the show just briefly to tell you about two things that we offer creators. One is our YouTube channel review service. For just a small fee, you can get access to this service where I go take a look at your channel, record a screencast video and tell you where I think you should be spending your time and where I think you could be improving your channel. And then lastly, we have a Mastermind group. Five to ten dollars get you in you to the creator forums where you can talk with hundreds of creators all throughout the week. We have Mastermind calls monthly. We do exclusive podcasts on that feed every Friday. So if you're looking for a place to connect with other creators, definitely check out the creators corner. All of these links will be down below in the show notes. And now back to the show. I want to talk about both of those things. So let's start with the retention and then we'll go to packaging. Your packaging is really good, by the way. And I've kind of seen how you're not a channel of quantity. And what I mean by that is that you're not going to upload a long form video every week. You are more on quality and you're really targeting in and honing in on who your audience is in the evergreen nature of your videos.
- [19:52]
A
Right?
- [19:52]
B
People forever will go back just watch these videos for entertainment of like, man, this is a cool villa. This is a really interesting place in Italy that I want to just watch. And eventually in the back of their mind they'll know, oh, that's, that's a Phil Wells video. And they might could use you down the line, which is kind of the beauty of what you're doing. But as far as retention goes, what are the tricks of the trade? Phil, give me. Give me the things that you've learned. You mentioned, like, hey, they're not just going to sit through a boring walkthrough of room after room after room. It's these interesting landmarks or maybe the history of the build. Like, what are. What have you learned and what has worked well for you on the videos that have had really good retention.
- [20:31]
A
So I think that often the larger. I don't know how this is exactly going to help everyone who's not in the real estate space, but for me, places with various interesting things that are on different areas of the property really helps it out. So if it can be, you know, let's head down to the coast and let's take a look at the beach. You know, this has a private beach. Here's where your boat would pull in. You know, let's go to the underground parking. Let's go to the rooftop. You know, those things not keeping, you know, keeping the relative sections only a couple of minutes long and not, you know, not just rambling on in the living room for far too long, trying to kind of keep it moving. Walking shots where you're, you know, you're. You're talking, you're explaining something, but you're backing up and revealing something as you do it. Always keeping in mind what's behind you when you're sitting and talking. This is something that I was bad at, but my videographer was like, no, no, no, don't. Don't talk about that. Here. There's just a wall behind you. Like, move over here and look. All right, now there's a, you know, there's a waterfall behind you, or there's this beautiful tree or whatever it is, what's behind you, because if. And right now, I have a dying plant. But.
- [21:41]
Keeping that in mind, it was actually a trick that I had heard from a top real estate agent in New York. And she said that when she's doing the tour, she'll always end in the most important, cool place, you know, where there's a beautiful view or there's, you know, maybe in the kitchen or. You always want to end. You always want to be focusing on what the person is, you know, is. Is looking at, because that's. That's important. That's like your set, if you're in theater, you know, it's like, you don't want it to just be, you know, this black curtain behind you. You want it to be something really cool because they can listen to you and they can also kind of take a look at that. And if there's motion too, it's very helpful.
- [22:22]
B
How about the hooks? The initial 12 to 30 to 45 seconds. What have you learned over time about. You know, I oftentimes use the analogy in the example of a kids creator that my children watch, Adley knows Best. And the way they do it, they do this thing called Best Day Ever. It's the vlogs they do every day of their family and the hijinks they get up to. But the first 30 to 45 seconds is kind of like a movie trailer. It's really quick, a lot of cuts, all the most interesting highlights of that whole video. And it gets you enthralled with, oh, they're doing that, they're doing that. I want to stick around. So what have you found about the initial, maybe opening minute of these long form videos? Because I would say the average duration of one of your videos is around 20 minutes. I mean some of them are upwards of 37, 40 minutes. And so what have you learned about the opening little bit of the videos?
- [23:18]
A
Yeah, you want to show off enough things to keep people excited and interested. So if you are going to, you know, tease something, that's the time to do it. I've found that big drone shots, you know, are good because it helps establish. Just like any establishing shot helps people know kind of where they are. But I also find it's important to show me in there doing something, opening a door or, you know, something like that. Because then it shows. Not only is the person gonna see the property, they're gonna see someone showing them the property. Because there's so much real estate out there where it's not, it's not an interactive kind of live chore. It's the agent standing and delivering something. And then it's just B roll, B roll, B roll, B roll. Which is okay, but they want to know that they're going to be act like actively led through the property and kind of see every like nook and cranny that's usually our audience kind of wants to see. Like if I don't show a closet, I'll hear about it. You know, it's like he didn't show the closet. Oh, there must be a dead body in there. It must be locked. There's not enough closets. That's why that's the problem with these places. There's not enough closets. And all of a sudden there's 10 people commenting about the closets, because I didn't show, you know, a closet. So, you know, people want to know kind of what they're going to get. And then you also want to keep the intro kind of quick because you want to be able to get into it. I notice certain. My people cutting through the intro and just getting to the. The video. So that's been interesting too. I've tried to make it sort of too cinematic before and I think you almost don't want to overthink it where you're launching into a story or something. I don't know. It's. It's a learning process. The intro is very hard and we think about it a lot because it's the most watched thing. Right. A lot of people dip after a minute or two, but everyone watches the intro. So you really have to think more about your editing quality when it comes to the first half of the video as opposed to usually if it's in the second half. And I have this rule like, get to 85% and then call it. Because we can spend forever editing these things. Yeah, but the intro has to be perfect.
- [25:17]
B
The intro, you mean as far as the project as a whole? Like if you tried to perfect this thing, you wouldn't release any videos?
- [25:24]
A
That's. Yeah. So we have to. Yeah. Get to 85% perfect. Like get it. Because I'm. I can. I. We could be perfectionists where we're on the sixth round of edits and we're editing two months after we shot and it's like, we look, we just gotta get this out. So that's where I came up with that 85% good is. It's like 85% is 100%. Let's publish. Because otherwise, you know, it's. You can just keep going on and on about how many times you used a certain word. And can we find a cut and can we take from. From take one in this area and take four in this area and take three. You know, like we'll do three or four takes of each thing. So you could just drive yourself crazy with the edit.
- [26:03]
B
I'm the same way with podcast. Last week I did it. I released. I do these state of YouTube podcasts that are hour, hour and a half long recordings. And I sent it to the editor, he sent it back. I didn't like what he did, so I started from scratch. And it's nine o' clock at night, my kids are finally asleep and I'm in here trying to kind of edit the thing the way I want it. Done. And still, funnily enough, I got a comment. I tried something new. Where I brought up. This is kind of inside baseball. But I'll tell you guys, I brought up. I decided to do my podcast a little different, where I would bring up all of us as people were talking, and I would kind of let it. Let it breathe a little bit. And then I got this comment from this guy, and he goes, go back to doing it the old way, where you're just showing the speaker. And I was like. But I thought it was new and interesting. So I spent all this time on nothing. So to prove your point, sometimes we can overdo things. And let's be real, one of these videos, let's say your last video, the $17.75 million penthouse in New York City. That video now has thousands of views. It's only two weeks old. That video is not working for you when it's still in the edit. It's only working for you when you've uploaded. And so Phil knows this. It's important to get to a point and cut it off, because, man, as creators, we can really overanalyze things that probably shouldn't be analyzed. And speaking of that, let's talk about packaging. So your thumbnails. If I were to coach you as the creator, this is exactly what I would tell you to do. You're putting what, the most beautiful picture of the property. High contrast, high color, bold, very audacious, very curiosity driving of. Oh, I want to. What is that? Like, that $32 million villa in Tucson. That's a beautiful picture. And then the only text you put, depending on kind of what it is, is the price. So 32 million with the dollar sign. And then you put kind of where it is, like new estate in Scotland or west coast Barbados. Explain your strategy here and what you've learned overall about packaging. And by packaging, I mean thumbnail title description.
- [28:11]
A
So there's a whole real estate niche of, like, luxury property. There's like, Innis Yelmazer is probably the biggest YouTube creator for real estate tours, and he kind of established this price on top. Beautiful photo of the place. And I wish it wasn't the case that that was what I had to do, because I'd like to. I've tried interesting other things. And when I, you know, when I do it a B on it, it's usually people want to know. You know, there's an established format, and I think that I'm swimming upstream if I'm trying to go against it. But I have, you know, I Have sort of played around on the edges of it a little bit. And I guess that as of now I will usually try a couple of different angles of the property, a couple of different things. And I usually kind of know which one's going to do the best. And it, my intuition is pretty good, but I've still been testing a little bit. One thing that's tricky is like I'm headed to Dubai in January. We're doing, we're doing like, we're doing like penthouses and they're mostly apartments. Right. And when it's not like a real property, like a villa or something, you. And when you also have trouble. Sorry, let me. When you're, when you're shooting an apartment, you kind of have to either do a really wide shot of the building, in which case you have to highlight where it is and hopefully it's an impressive spot in the building, or you have to do an interior thumbnail where you're just standing next to a window, usually showcasing the view, or you're standing next to something. Those for me haven't done very well, the interior thumbnails. Which makes it really hard to think how can I do one of these penthouses, you know, even if I'm standing on a terrace or something like that. So I don't know, I agonize over it. I test different things and it does have a huge impact on the performance. So it makes me want to do more ones that are. Have a really impressive lead shot where you know, I can stand outside of it and I can showcase it like that because otherwise it could just be, it could be tough to crack the code of how to do an interior versus, you know, an exterior.
- [30:29]
B
How much do you look at click through rate and how much does that impact whether or not you change or test a thumbnail?
- [30:36]
A
Yeah, I'm looking at it from the second it's uploaded, you know, to how my audience is doing with it. Because first it serves it up to my audience and then it sort of sends it out to the wide world and you know, sometimes my audience will, it'll be a relatively high click through rate. Cause they'll say, oh, I want to see another video, great. But then once it hits the wider audience, they're going to say I don't really care about that. So then, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm mixing it up, I'm changing things up. I'm, you know, you mentioned the, the text in there. I've tried it without the price before. That usually doesn't do Very well. People like to see a high price and then where it is. That one has been interesting because sometimes it does better without explaining where it is. And sometimes it does better when people say, oh, this is in, you know, in Italy. I want to check that out. This is in Scotland. That's cool. But if it's in, like, New Jersey or something, I might not say where it, you know, because, you know, it's. I don't know. That's. Might people be, ah, whatever. I don't really care about this chateau. So I might say, where is it? You know, it's like, hey, like the. We had one in.
- [31:39]
A castle where the hook was kind of. This is like a European castle. But where is it? And you know, it was out in. Where was it? Bedford. In Wyoming. In Bedford, Wyoming. That one was. And that one did really well. So that's cool.
- [31:56]
B
I want to ask you now about, you know, you mentioned how much you're spending on these trips mentioned. We joked about kind of seeing the. The fruits of your labor just now starting to trickle in. Let's talk about monetization. Obviously, your channel's large enough to be monetized with the partner program. So can you talk about just the business model as far as how you make money and all the different buckets that you do.
- [32:19]
A
So.
- [32:19]
B
And maybe even towards the end of that answer, give us like, hey, I have seen some fruits of my labor and, you know, you don't have to talk about a monetary number exactly, but maybe give us like a Transactions closed that you can directly relate to YouTube and kind of maybe even relationships or listings. You kind of get the premise of the question of kind of where and how it's affecting you monetarily.
- [32:43]
A
Yeah, sure. So it's all a little hard to say in that.
- [32:49]
B
The.
- [32:51]
A
I've seen an increase in my business this year. This has been a very good year. And I think part of that has been, you know, not all directly correlated, but I think that I've had some clients that I don't think would have worked with me otherwise. That. Because I've been sending these out because they've noticed it have been working with me. And I've been impressed in the. How I've been able to up the ticket, you know, even within New York. So that's been, you know, it's. I would love if I could do an A slash B test on that because it's hard to know, you know, what affects your reputation and how you're viewed and that sort of thing. As far as strictly like AdSense for that. I think the CPMs are a little bit higher for, for real estate and I do have a largely US and UK audience, so that's been good. And then India is my third area, which, you know, have kind of low.
- [33:41]
B
CPMs for 150,000 views in the real estate space on average. What would you make as far as like, on just AdSense alone?
- [33:50]
A
Yeah, I can actually just pull because.
- [33:53]
B
It'S interesting, you know, the US and the European audiences are going to pay more than say, other types of audiences. Like mine is, you know, us. And then I believe, like the Middle east is like third, fourth, and fifth for, for me, and those pay much, significantly lower. So it's interesting to see.
- [34:11]
A
Yeah, so I view it a little bit more on, on monthly, you know, because I get the. Get the checks monthly. And I don't always even put a video out per month. So, you know, I don't always think, oh, what did that video? You know, how much did that video make? I usually think, how much am I making per month? Because it's remarkably steady. Like you said, I'll put a video out and I'll continue to get views on a video even, you know, a couple of years. I'll still get, you know, hundreds a day. A lot of videos, you know, a thousand or two a day on some of these, which is great. So it's really long, you know, it just kind of. They're just really sort of steady, not big spikes, but just kind of steadily up videos. So, you know, I'm at like, in general, I would say one of those videos probably makes about a thousand bucks for something like that.
- [34:57]
B
Yeah.
- [34:58]
A
And you know, maybe some of the videos are at, you know, three or $4,000, but that's been. They've been, you know, Right. Longer and been up for longer. How I'm viewing it in General is like YouTube. I can count on about a thousand bucks a month for the, for the back catalog. And then if I get a, if I release one that has a big spike, I might get a little bit more. But that's kind of what I can. It's kind of nice. Cause that's sort of a steady baseline of, you know.
- [35:25]
B
And as you mentioned, you don't upload every month. And so if you did more of these, and there are other buckets of content that, if I were your YouTube coach, I would say, let's get into these. Like, you could, you could really up the output and that monthly income just from the partner program, not to mention what we could do as sponsorships, which is something, honestly I wouldn't really encourage you to do because you're going to be able to make so much more money by doing these big ticket transactions and so your business model around that. But having that steady income is really interesting. And my audience loves to hear kind of the different niches that you're in and kind of how much money to expect for, you know, you're getting 150, 200,000 views a month, which is fantastic. And it's kind of how I built my channel. You know, I get anywhere from, you know, 60 to 100,000 views every day. You know, I built it on a consistent stream of views, and that's kind of how I built it. And knowing that about a channel and having a designated kind of path of how you want to get there is very important. Let's talk about you, the creator. How do you manage your time between the business you just got married and creating content? What guardrails have you put in place? Talk to the creator out there listening to this saying, I don't have enough time. How do. How are you doing it?
- [36:31]
A
Yeah, gosh, I would say, you know, try to find things to cut, you know, that you can. If one thing that someone once said is look at your screen time on your phone and you know, the. Then you could say, well, look, I'd spent three hours on Instagram or whatever, it's like I could have spent less. You know, it's nice to. It's nice to be a creator that is net creating more than you're consuming. When you look at view times, you know, so if I say every day, you know, I don't know what it's like for your channel, but, you know, I can get 4 or 500 hours of view time, you know, per day. And then I think, well, there's no way I could possibly be consuming that much because there's only 24 hours in a day. So, you know, at least I'm putting out more in the world than I'm soaking up and taking in. But I do feel like, you know, in this world, we. We're spending so much time, particularly in like, it's watching other people's short form, you know, or long form. But, you know, YouTube, Netflix, you know, there's. There's so much that if you can cut out some of that time, great. If you can find the work that you're doing fun, then that really helps. And it's almost like you can't do it otherwise because you have to really be like, all right, great. I got a new video. We're editing it. This is fun. And that's where I drew that 85% rule. It's like, if you can not be, if you can focus on what's fun and try to be producing and enjoying yourself and excited about the videos you're making, that's going to help you spend your discretionary time on it as opposed to like your, you know, your business time. If it feels too much like work, you know, then, or like a grind, then I'm not sure you're going to keep doing it. When you, you know, it's so I like, it's fun for me and I delegate out the things that aren't fun. I don't do my own editing, so that's been very helpful. I focus on finding properties that I'm really excited about and then planning the trips, scripting it out, and then actually going and shooting and basically everything else I.
- [38:28]
I have other people do. Yeah. So that's been really helpful.
- [38:32]
B
That's. That's where I want to get with my podcasts in general in that the thing that I feel like I excel at and I'm best at is are these conversations as far as the communication back and forth pre show, as far as the editing, as far as the post publishing and what we do after the podcast is released. I would like to get to a point to where all of that, I don't even have to look at it and it's X better than what I'm doing currently. So I completely am aligned with you there. My final question for you is this. If you were to think about the journey thus far, two, three years into content creation, what is something that you wish you would have known sooner? And I know this one's hard because having to look back, I would love to know what you, the creator, would think, man, if I would just have known that sooner.
- [39:19]
A
I think that knowing and having the confidence, it's. Well, it's hard to have the confidence before you know that what you're going to do is good. But one thing about real estate in particular is every agent is trying to get more eyes and more promotion on their, on their stuff. So if I'm speaking to any real estate agents right now, you might think, who am I? I got 700 Instagram followers, or, you know, I don't have really any platform. This will be my first YouTube video. You know how it is. Or I never realized how much. Like when you're dealing with a real estate agent who has a $30 million listing. Right. I always thought, oh, they have teams and systems and they have, there's a reason they have this listing. And there is. I mean, they, they, they know the client, they've sold in this price range before, but they're still just like you. You know, they're trying to, they're trying to move this thing however they can. They're trying to give their client an update on the things they've done to help sell it. And if you're willing to go out there and spend, you know, essentially 20, 30, 40 hours to produce a piece of content for someone for free, then they'll likely consider it. And you shouldn't only approach people that, you know, you should be, you know, you're already in sales, go out and make the sale, pitch to them why this is going to help them. And then, you know, I guess just have a little more confidence, which I've never had too big of a problem with. I'm usually kind of someone who gets out in front of my skis and, you know, commits to something and, you know.
- [40:58]
But even for me, I would have said to myself, just reach out. The worst thing that can happen is they say no and have confidence in the product that you're going to produce, because you're not going to produce something crappy. Just go out and do it. And the person that you're approaching is probably a little more open to what you're suggesting than you think they are. So everyone is just a person like me. And you reach out to them, see what they say, and, you know, then make sure just if you know you're going to deliver on what you're offering, then just have the confidence in it and, and then just go and do it. So I think I had thought for too long, I should do this, I should do this, I should do this. And then I finally did it and hey, look, it worked out, you know, it's. I guess it's just, yeah, get out of your head and go do it a little sooner than you feel like you should.
- [41:47]
B
Yeah, most good creators are kind of in front of their skis. I know, I've been there. And being able and willing to try new things, experiment, and everything that you were just speaking on is very much applicable to people beyond the real estate sector in that, hey, you want to get a sponsor for your videos?
- [42:05]
A
Ask.
- [42:05]
B
You want to collaborate with that creator that's a hundred thousand subscribers ahead of you. Just ask. Is it going to turn into a yes every time? No, but there will be those few times that it is. And that's where you see the success and being willing to fail, being willing to pick yourself up and put yourself out there and not have imposter syndrome, all of these things are a really big deal. Phil, you've been an amazing guest. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show, answering all these personal questions and just having fun with me, talking about the creator landscape and kind of where you are in your business and your channel. I know you're going to have continued success. Hope you have fun in Dubai in January. I can't wait to see where you're going. I'm going to put all of Phil's links in the show notes and a couple of things that he talked about down there as well. But we'll, we'll talk to you later, Phil. Thank you again.
- [42:47]
A
Okay, thanks, Dusty.
- [42:48]
B
And that's a wrap on this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. I want to highly encourage you, if you haven't already, to subscribe to the show, whether it be on YouTube, if you're watching the video version or wherever, and however you listen to your podcast, it's absolutely free and you'll be notified every Friday when we go live with a new episode. Also, if you would, if this show has helped you in any way, leave us a review. It really helps the show grow. And don't forget to check the show notes for all the things that we offer creators, the channel review service, the coaching services that I offer, the Creator Mastermind, as well as our email newsletter and the running spreadsheet that has all of the links mentioned here on the show. With that said, we'll talk to you guys next week.