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Hello and welcome to episode 498 of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. If you're new, welcome. You're a longtime listener, welcome back. What you are about to hear is two episodes of the Creator's Corner Podcast. The Creator's Corner podcast is a quick hitting 6 to 10 minute audio episode that I release to our Patreon supporters and the folks who are part of our Creators Corner Mastermind group. If you want to hear these every Friday, you can click the link in the show notes. It's five, ten bucks a month. You get access to this, plus our monthly Mastermind calls and just overall a great place to interact with other creators. Without further ado, don't forget to subscribe to the show. Check out the other offerings we have for creators down below and we'll see you guys next week. We're gonna be talking about how to use end screens cards and pinned comments specific to your channel and your niche to drive more watch time, more session length, more channel growth without adding too much on the production side of things. So it's gonna be very efficient. So we spend hours, sometimes 8, 10, 20. I mean, I've had coaching clients tell me they're working 30 to 50 hours per video now, depending on the revenue generation and outcome you're getting. That's fine. The, the final 20 seconds of a video, you know, you handed your viewer off to the YouTube algorithm once again. Right. Instead of to your next for your premium product or whatever it may be. Right. So most creators will treat end screens cards and one I want to focus on today as well, pinned comments like checkboxes, right? You'll have a notion dashboard and you'll just be like, okay, let's check that box off. We did a card, we did this, we pinned some comments. I think that if we are more intentional, that's kind of like my word of 2026 is intentional. With what we're doing with these, we're not going to waste our time and waste the real estate that these things take up. Right? So the next few minutes I'm going to talk about exactly how to use this trio of tools that YouTube provides us. So the next video that you publish keeps your viewers on your channel and more importantly in your ecosystem. Uh, and I'll share some mistakes, a couple of mistakes that I've made for almost a couple of years that were costing me thousands of views and retention and, you know, repeat viewers and viewers that are going to watch for a long amount of of time. So the core framework is this. These are an underrated trio of tools or assets that YouTube provides us for free that can just in general extend the session or session on your circle. Not necessarily get a new subscriber, you're not really pitching your freebie, but extend the session. Now extending a session on your influence circle of influence within your channel will eventually do the things that I just mentioned. It will eventually lead them to your website. It will eventually lead them to purchase your premium thing. It will lead them to give you more ad revenue because they're watching longer. Right? So the element that I'm going to talk about first is end screens, right? We want to stop asking and start rerouting. So think of it that way. Most end screens are a wall of subscribe, watch this, check out my playlist. And viewers will freeze. And they're so automated to seeing these things that they just click nothing and automatically go back to their browse feed or let YouTube take them where it may. The fix to this is treat the end screen like a one question decision. You give them two video options max. Subscribe button is optional, but never the focus. The three rules that I've been going by is this. I use best for viewer plus a manually chosen video. So I just recently did a full user's guide on the Mac, like how to if you're a new Mac user, It's a big 48 minute video I used at the end screen. I used best for viewer. And then if you're in the Mac ecosystem, there's a pretty high chance you're in the iOS or iPhone ecosystem. I have an iPhone beginners user guide. That was the one I manually chose. So I had those two working for me. And I've noticed that one of the biggest drivers to my iPhone video is now the Mac video. Never let the algorithm pick both. You pick one, give up control on the other. Rule number two, verbally tell them what to click and why. So as the video's ending, if you like this, the next video goes deeper on this. Specifically this, uh, will beat the subscription begging. Every time you wonder why people pause like a minute in to their video. Have you ever heard a creator do this? They'll pause like a minute or two into the video and they'll say, hey, you know what? YouTube tells me 78% of you are not. Look, look, I get it. That was a thing that worked and maybe it still does. But again, do what I'm talking about and I think you're going to see big results. And the final rule under this section is start the end screen at 15 to 20 seconds before the end, not 5. So give it some room to breathe. That way, viewers are not actually trying to still see the tutorial or trying to enjoy your content, but they're actually knowing. This is concluding the video and it allows them to actually read and then click, knowing where they're going. The next element is cards. YouTube cards. The mid roll save is what I've come to call them. The problem is this. Cards get dumped at the start of the video where they do nothing, right? Or scattered randomly throughout. It's like my grandmother used to say, to know that a spaghetti noodle is done and we just throw it at the cat counter or a cabinet and see if it sticks. That's what we're doing. We're just randomly throwing cards everywhere to see if that works. But the fix is this. You place one again, intentional card at the exact moment a viewer is most likely to drop off right after a section ends, before the next section earns their attention back. Now, how do you find that moment? What I like to do is go into the YouTube studio, go to analytics, go to the retention curve of a similar past video, find where that dip is, the spot where 10, 15, 30% of your viewers will leave. Place the card five seconds before that dip. Linking to a video that delivers on the topic they're about to lose interest in or directing them to your website because you just talked about something. The pro move is you want to match the card to the title of the current video. If your video is about lighting, then the card should be a deeper cut lighting video. I did a 38 minute video on DaVinci Resolve. I also have a more segmented 6 to 8 video series of videos about specific things and intricacies within that software. I will link them to those as I'm talking about those things, getting those people who are going to dip off because I'm not talking about what they're wanting to learn anymore. You get where I'm going, right? These are intentional big things that can keep people in your ecosystem. Now this one is the last element that I'm going to talk about is pin comments. This is the most wasted real estate on YouTube. So I'm going to give you a personal example of what I'm doing and then we'll talk about it more generalized. I do technology tutorial videos. I was leaving that blank. Or I was just copy and pasting, like, oh, here's the affiliate links and here's where you can find me. But what I did is I found what the problem was, right? I Wanted to drive people to engage with the video or drive them to stay longer on said video. And I wanted them to have such a great experience that they thought to themselves, this tutorial, the combination of the video product plus what I'm getting through the cards and end screens and these pinned comments, this is like my go to for tech guides and tutorials now. So what I did is I have AI generate 6 to 10 frequently asked questions about the specific tutorial that I'm doing and I paste those in the pinned comment. And I have seen a huge increase in not only watch time, but that leads to more revenue. I'm telling you guys, if you're not using the pinned comment for something like this, it's really important. So you want your pinned comment to do one of three jobs and you pick which one fits your content better. Job A will be to drive session, which means link the next logical video. Want the follow up? Here it is. Want the next thing? Here it is. Job B, spark engagement, which is what I'm doing. I'm asking specific or providing specific frequently asked questions. But you may want to provide easy to answer question that becomes a comment magnet or a comment starter, which is what I like to call more comments will always equal more reach. Big deal. And lastly, job C is to save the video, add the missing piece, the correction or update viewers. Where going. Let's say I did a tutorial and the software has been recently updated. I'm still getting thousands of views generating to that video. I can say in a pinned comment, hey, they've recently changed this and that's like letting them know instead of going down and typing an angry comment. This tutorial sucks. No, it saved the video. And a bonus is pinned comments will show up in notifications when someone replies. That's a free retention loop that most creators never use. Guys, listen, don't just use end screens to push your newsletter sign up, right? That sounds strategic, but it was killing session time when I switched to recommending the next video. The next thing in that series, the average views per video jumped because YouTube started recommending my channel more. That's another benefit of doing this. The challenge this week is this. Pick your last three uploads, update all of the end screens, the cards, the pinned comments, and then check back in seven days. Check back in three months once you're getting into a rhythm of doing this every single time. I'm talking about sponsorships and even if you're not, or sponsors in general, even if you're not at the place where you are having People pay you to sponsor a specific individual video. This is great if you're pitching a service that is even just yours, like an email newsletter or a digital piece of content that's behind a paywall. Or like this, which is kind of a premium version of the group. If you've noticed a transition over the past two or three months on the podcast, I've tried to do a better job of not just talking for three minutes about our services and then getting into the meat of the episode. I've tried to do a much better job of incorporating it throughout the show. Now I'm making some mistakes and I'm learning as I go go, but I have learned a lot and I want to share it. So there's a 15 to 30 second window in every sponsored read where you either keep your audience's trust or you lose it. Now, you've gained the trust before that with, you know, every upload up until that point, but most creators will just blow right past it and you don't even know that it's happening. Right. This matters because sponsor reads are the single most visible trust transaction that you have with your audience. If you nail them and you begin to compound that credibility and it will then turn into compound revenue. Right. Both of them are important. So let's talk about it. Number one, why sell out Is the wrong fear. So we need to reframe the problem. And that's what I've kind of done on the podcast. And I'm still evolving what I'm doing. Your audience doesn't necessarily hate sponsors. They hate a few specific things. They hate feeling tricked when the ad is disguised as content or sprung on them with no signal. They don't want that. They don't like feeling talked down to. When the read sounds nothing like you, it sounds scripted, salesy, robotic. This is probably my least favorite. It's one of the things to wear on my main podcast. I do kind of a mid roll where I say I'm going to interrupt the show and it, it is a bit jarring. And so I'm trying to incorporate it more. I'm still going to do the mid roll, but I'm still figuring out how I'm going to implement it. And then lastly, feeling that they're sold something that you would never use. Right? So that would be like me pitching something outside or not related to content. Or maybe it is, but you guys have been listening to me for 10 years now and you know that's something that I would never use myself. Right? Trust isn't lost because you have a sponsor or an ad read. It's lost because of how you handle it and how you do the sponsorship for the ad read. So the four part sponsor read framework that I've kind of put into a notion page here and I want to read you exactly kind of my, my North Star when it comes to this. Right? So this is the core teaching and I want to walk you through kind of each part. Right? Number one, the signal. The first few seconds, tell them quickly that it is a sponsor read directly. No bait and switch. It can be something like quick word from today's sponsor, then we'll be right back into it or before we keep going. This episode is brought to you by. I mean, guys, it's simple, right? It works because you're respecting their time. The audience will relax because they know what they're hearing and they know it's an ad read. They know you're getting, you know, money for this and they want to support you. And so they'll either buy into what you're talking about, which gives you better buy into the affiliate, if that's what it is, or a premium group like this one, that's important. Number two, the bridge. This is the problem that you or they actually have, right? Start with a real problem, yours or your audience's, not the product. Right. Example might be being a content creator is extremely lonely, so I've created a place for content creators to hang out. You get it, right? If the problem isn't real to you, then pick a different sponsor or a different angle. Right? Number three, the proof, your actual experience. The bad example of this is it's the industry's leading solution for creators for AI repurposing. That's a bad one. A good one is I used it last Tuesday to cut 45 minutes off of my edit. If you can't name a specific moment or talk about a specific instance, you haven't used it enough to read for it. If you listen to the big podcasters, let's just say Tim Ferriss with what he's doing with his podcast. He has seven or eight minutes of ad reads at the beginning of each show. But the reason why websites go down when he mentions a product is because he's built that long lasting trust. He mentions a mattress. He talks about how he's put it in specific rooms in his house and how people who come visit him have such raving reviews. Right? So I mean, he's really putting into the proof, which is what I'm talking about today. And then lastly, number four, the Handoff, a clean return to the regularly scheduled content in the read with the call to action. Then snap back to the video, right? With a phrase that'll rehook them, right? Like links in the description. All right, back to what I was saying about this works because the listener doesn't feel stranded. They know there is a beginning and an end point of this ad read. You close the loop and return them to the free value. That's important, right? The one mistake that can absolutely tank credibility is reading for a product or a service that you haven't actually used. The reason why I had TubeBuddy or Vidiq or, you know, these tools here on this pod, you know, my main podcast is because I've used them. I used TubeBuddy four to five years before they ever started paying me, right? The audience can tell it's why I don't have a mainline sponsor on the show right now. I have a bunch of companies that are talking to me, but none that I've, I've given the reins to because I want to make sure that if, if I wouldn't recommend it to a creator friend for free without getting paid, I'm not going to take the check. And then like placement as far as where it should be in the video, mid roll after a value moment will probably convert best because that's probably where the high retention is. A pre roll works if the signal and the read is quick and fast. You never want to end an episode on a sponsor. It's not good for the sponsor, it's not good for you, it hurts. Watch time. It's just a bad all around thing to do. So the challenge this week is this. Pull up your last sponsor read or your last time you've talked about something with a, with a ctr, right? Run it through this four part framework. The signal, the bridge, the proof and then eventually the handoff. Find what your weak link is and then just rewrite or redo that part for your next video. Record it in your normal voice. Don't give me this. And today we are brought to you. No, no advertiser tone. If you talk to me and you met me on the streets, this is what I would sound like. This is my voice. Now, obviously I'm cleaning up the audio. I want it to sound as clear and crisp as possible. But this is me. I'm not trying to put on for you guys. This tone is who I am. Don't overhaul everything. Just fix one or two parts that are broken and where you see the most room for improvement. All Right. So just to recap, the four parts of this are signal, bridge proof and handoff. Remember, don't read for something or talk about something you don't actually use. And that's a wrap on this week's episode. We'll be back to regularly scheduled interviews next Friday. I've got a lot of great ones lined up. I would like to let you guys know that you can connect with me in a number of ways. I offer one on one coaching. I do YouTube channel reviews and audits. And as I mentioned before, if you want to hear these kind of one off, kind of really topical monologue episodes, then go ahead and join our Mastermind group. Five, ten bucks get you in. And even if it's just to listen to these that are released every Friday alongside the main show, it'll be well worth your time and your money. Also, if you know someone who would be a great fit for the show and you have connections with them, a creator that you think would benefit this community, let me know. Shoot me an email or fill out the form in the show notes of this podcast. With that said, subscribe to the show. Whether you listen on your audio player or watch over on YouTube or or Spotify, just subscribe. It's free. That way you'll know when we release a new episode. And with that said, I'll talk to you guys later.