Dusty Porter (0:00)

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the YouTube Creators Hub podcast. Dusty here. As always. Thank you again for joining me. Don't forget to check out all that we have to offer. I do offer one on one coaching for YouTube creators just in individuals looking to grow their brand. I work with them on a weekly basis. So you want to take it to the next level? Definitely. Check that out. We have something called the Creators Corner or our creators group where we have a mastermind call. You get exclusive podcast episodes and interviews, plus just the ability to rub elbows with other creators. Five bucks get you in that group. It's one of the best bangs for your buck in the whole YouTube space, in my honest opinion, obviously. And then lastly, we do have an email newsletter called the Entrepreneurs Minute where you get a behind the scenes look of what I'm doing each and every week. So this week we're doing a Q and a. I get Q&As and questions submitted to my email@dustydustyporter.com through our creators group. Those kind of get filtered to the top. Those people who message me from that group get first come, first serve. But there's a lot of questions sprinkled throughout this of people asking me questions over on X through my email through that group. And it's a great way for me to answer some of the relevant questions that creators are going through in the current state of where YouTube and the content or creator economy is. So we're going to just dive right into it. Don't forget to subscribe to the show if you haven't already. It's absolutely free of charge and I would appreciate you leaving a review if you've gotten anything out of the show. All right, first question is from Carl S over on X. He says how do I know if my YouTube niche or space is too narrow or too broad? So I've taken a bunch of notes under all of these questions and so I'm going to go off the bullet points of these that I've written down and then I'll expand upon them. So for me, a niche or a space in YouTube is too broad when your viewers have no idea what to expect. And it's way too narrow when there's not large enough of an audience demand to sustain consistent content or growth. And by content or growth, I mean you being able to upload weekly content like a once a week video. So a healthy niche in my opinion, and you can call niche whatever you want to call it. Listen, I'm not going to be picky here. This is Just how I've always said it, so please don't crucify me. So a healthy niche has enough audience interest, so it has enough search volume, active forums. I would look over on Reddit, look for Facebook groups in other places, just regular old timey forums. So enough audience interest to where there's outside collaboration and communication about said topic. Next would be a clear monetization potential. So can you already think of products, services, affiliate offers? Are there brands that are already working with similar creators? Maybe not exactly in the niche that you're in? I have a coaching client that at the time was creating content about being over the age of 55 and becoming a pilot. So there's a ton of pilot content on YouTube, but he took it down even a step further in regards to his age. So is there people doing it with monetization strategies already out there? It's probably a good idea. So a good test to do when it comes to is your YouTube niche too narrow or too broad? Is ask yourself, can I come up with 50 video ideas right now? So open up Apple Notes app or open up just the old school pen and paper. Write down as many video ideas as you can. If you stop at say 11, maybe you need to rethink the space that you're going into. It's one of the things to understand that also if your recent videos are pulling in completely different audiences, it may be too broad. Now obviously if you're a search based channel and you don't care about any of this, that's mute. But for the 99% of channels out there, they're going to want to focus in on their niche and their target audience. And so that's how I would determine whether it's too narrow or too broad. Next question coming in from Carly did not give me a last name. So it's just Carly. Today. She says, I'm having a real hard time with knowing the frequency for my YouTube channel. Should I post daily? Weekly, just when I can? Okay, so my answer to this is number one, it's never just when you can. It's always going to be something. That consistency, in my opinion, is much greater of an asset than frequency. So posting weekly with intention beats out daily burnout. So you're trying to upload daily or you're trying to do three a week? Here's a rule that I followed before. I recommended this rule to clients as well. Whatever pace you can sustain for the next six months in the season of your life that you're in without resenting the process that's your schedule. So if you can do a Monday Friday upload for the next six months and still love what you're doing and not experience a burnout or you're already thinking in your mind, oh no, if I have to do two a week for the next six months, I'm going to dread this come month three then you probably need to step it back. I have clients that I work with, my coaching clients that literally post twice a month. So it's a bi weekly, it's every other week. So it's every other Monday or every other Friday. And maybe they do a live stream in the off weeks there because it's a little easier to make maintain as far as the back end work. But once you find your rhythm you need to treat it like an old school TV show. Same time, same day. Predictability plus the consistency aspect of it will build trust and it just signals professionalism. It's one of the reasons I released this episode or released my podcast episodes at 6am on Friday mornings. I've been doing it for half a decade now. I hate the thought of having to miss a Friday. It just gives me anxiety like you do not understand because I've done this for so long. Maybe there's some issues there as well, but we're not going to touch on that today. Consistency beats frequency. Try to be predictable for your audience so they know when to expect you. Next question is from Larry. He says, how do I grow if I'm doing everything right but still getting no views? This one's a tough one. This is a question I get a lot. And here's the truth. It's the hard truth. Doing everything right often means you're doing the visible stuff right. So you're editing your videos, you're doing thumbnails the way all the YouTube gurus say you should do. You're doing things you need to do to optimize your titles and your tags. But you're possibly missing some kind of deeper things. So let's talk about those. Are you doing a good job hooking the audience in the first few seconds may say 7 to 10 seconds of your video? Does the beginning emotionally validate the viewers? Click. I wrote that down and I really like that. Because if they're clicking on a video and your CTR is good during the first 24 to 48 hours of a video being uploaded, that's wonderful. But is it validating that when they get in there, or are you maybe leading them astray? Next is topic selection. Are you choosing topics that people actually search for have you done research beforehand or are they clicking out of curiosity? Right, those are two. Two things that people need to understand when choosing a topic. Next would be retention drop off. So using your YouTube analytics and data, your audience retention, see where you're losing them. Is it early on that we need to go back to the audience hook that I talked about? That's where you really need to focus your time. So rebuild your intros accordingly to understand where they're dropping off. So growth you really. There is no mathematical algorithm that I can say, hey, growth is 60 topic 25 packaging. It really doesn't matter. And a lot of different niches are different. Right? Once a group of people in a certain niche discover you, they're going to stick with you forever because maybe that niche is barren and there's not many creators. Maybe you're in a very crowded space like video games or whatever it is. You've really got to stand out and know what makes you different and put that out there. And lastly, I'll say this about how do I grow? I'm doing everything right. Still getting no views unless you're willing to chop wood. And by chopping wood, I mean being consistent every for months, if not years, probably multiple years. You're probably not going to succeed on YouTube. There will be people that blow up and they go viral. But for the most part you've got to stick with it and eventually, subscriber by subscriber, view by view, you will see your channel grow if you're being consistent. Next this. I've categorized these. The next few are into the mindset and motivation of a creator. This one is from Julie. She says what keeps you motivated to create when numbers are down? And I'm assuming she's meaning me because she asked me the question over on a dm. Actually on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram. Very few people do. It's more of a personal outlet for me. But some people do. So what keeps me motivated? So I've trained my mind to not chase, just performance. I celebrate when I hit my uploads consistently. I celebrate a year in this podcast when I've done 50 out of 52 weeks now there's two weeks in there. I give myself a little bit of grace, but I really celebrate those milestones alongside just the progress of growing views wise. I always have a consistent desire to do and make my stuff better, whether it be a video tutorial, normal video, a podcast episode. I just want to get better with everyone. And I go back and I look at the ones I've done previously. I take a couple of mental notes, sometimes even write those notes down and try to be better. And then just leveling up the areas. At the end of every year, I do a little kind of a column. And in the left hand column I say doing these exceptional. And in the other column, needs work is what I do. When I do this kind of looking and audit of my channel and my brand and anything in the needs improvement column column, I figure out what are things that I can do in the following year or following quarter that will level them up. So let's say you want to level up your audio quality. What are the things that you can do? Number one, you can't just go out and throw a bunch of money at it. But maybe you can improve where you record your audio. Maybe you can practice how you present your voice and how you project it. There's a lot of things that you can do to level up these little many areas of your brand and your channel that when it compounds over time with each other, will really improve your YouTube channel. So getting those quick wins like I talked about earlier, and then leveling up the areas where, you know, you need to level up, that really helps me from stop getting discouraged, because I'm not all the time. And let me just say this. If you're all the time opening up the YouTube Studio app and you are just lost in it, and every time you're refreshing it and you're swiping down on your phone and you're trying to get those views to come in, you're really going to put yourself in a very bad mental space. That's a really harsh thing to do for yourself. And then lastly, I track messages from real people that actually reach out to me on email. Got one just this week about an email newsletter that I did. And he said that through this podcast and some stuff that I've put out there over the past few years, he's grown his channel to over 250,000 subscribers. This is a real person, did not have a YouTube channel before a few years ago, has grown to almost a quarter of a million subscribers. And he told me that my podcast, my content, was a real game changer for him. And so for me, what keeps me motivated are the people's lives that I'm changing. So who is your audience? How are you impacting them? It's very important. All right, this next one kind of goes into this. This is from Carlos. He says, how do you deal with negative comments or hate? This one's real easy. For me, I never have a hard time with this. I haven't forever because my wife tells me nothing bothers me. So maybe I have just a mental barricade up, I don't know. But let's just go into it. My mindset is if they're not paying me or feeding me or giving me anything, like monetarily, their opinion only matters if it's constructive. And by constructive, I don't always mean positive. This is a big thing. People think that any negative comment is meant to troll or meant to be hate. That is not true. You need to separate feedback, which helps you grow both negative and positive. Okay. And then projection. Projection is just them revealing their issues through their comments, right? That's not your problem. Let them do their thing. I'm reading a book right now by Mel Robbins called Let Them, and it's about just letting people do their thing and then you let yourself respond to things that actually matter. And sometimes I've mentioned this before, I'll respond with kindness. Sometimes being overly kind and it really messes with their mind. It's fantastic. And then other times I just delete them, block them and move on. That's okay too. Next, let's get into the monetization and business side of YouTube. This question comes in from. I believe it's. I don't want to say the name. It's Xander or Xavier. I'm not quite sure because the way they mistyped it a couple times. Anyways, he says when is the right time to start monetizing a small channel or a channel in general? So for me, the right times yesterday. And I don't mean monetizing it as soon as you can thinking about it. Right? You got to have the right expectations and understand that monetization isn't just Google AdSense and the partner program. Here's the kind of tiered model that I've gently jotted down here. Zero to 1,000 subscribers. Focus on affiliate marketing and building your email list. It's a very important thing to do. It's a good base to build your business off of. Then 1 to 10,000 subscribers start offering digital products. You should be working on these now if you're not to those kind of metrics yet, templates or maybe even coaching in the thing that you're really good at. Right? And then 10k subscribers and above, you'll want to layer in sponsors, maybe some physical merch if that fits. Premium communities like what done over in the creators corner group, things like that. You want to build your creator infrastructure from day One, so when the traffic does hit, you're ready. So think about monetization from the get go, but never use it as the thing or the metric that pushes you forward, because that will never work. You're going to be accepted that partner program and you're going to go call your family and you're going to be like, I'm going to hit it big. I got accepted to the partner program. And then you're going to go into the YouTube data two days later when it finally clears and you're going to see you made 67 cents. And you're going to be discouraged as all get out. Have realistic expectations. Start now and figure out what other creators in your niche are doing next. Same question. Same person, by the way, asked this question. So I gave them two here. I said, how do I get sponsorships if I have a small channel? I've listened to a lot of your interviews and a lot of these creators are starting out very quickly. So sponsors don't just want views. They want the right audience with the right message from the right creator. That's big. When I wrote that down, I was like, oh, that's pretty good. So you need to start by making something like a media kit. You can use a free canva template, screenshots of your analytics, couple of comments, whatever your niche is, Overview that. And then you can pitch smaller tools and services that you actually use. Look at things that you utilize. Never promote, especially early on. Actually, never, never promote things you don't use or you don't believe in. Even if it's something you never heard of. Use it for a while. Don't. It's never worth the dollar to ruin the trust. That's important. Okay? And don't wait to be discovered. Reach out with something like this. Say, hey, I'm a creator in whatever space, helping this audience. Explain them briefly. And I have a very engaged group of however many, and I'd love to explore a creative way that we could partner on content. Here's a few things that I have in mind. Focus on delivering value for the brand and company, not just charging a fee. When you stop worrying about the fee you're going to get and you then start thinking about the value you're going to provide to them, you're going to get the bigger fee. Always. This one right here comes in from Juliana and she says, how important are thumbnails really? And she capitalize all caps. Really? I love that. Oh, man, this one's big. I always talk about packaging thumbnails. Title description Things like That these are things like people are going to judge a book by its cover, they're going to judge a video by its thumbnail. They're a big part of the game because if you can't get people to click, they're never going to watch your stuff. So it's a pretty big deal. Open up your home feed right now. Just do this test. Open up your home feed, refresh and a quick test. Would you click on your thumbnail? Look at it, look at it in comparison to what's on your home feed and would you click it? Does it evoke curiosity, the emotion, urgency? What does it evoke to the viewer? You don't want to explain with your thumbnail. You want to intrigue, right? So oftentimes we see something like a thumbnail that says how to grow a small YouTube channel. But then what people really click is that YouTube shocked face, right? Plus a text that says this actually worked. There's a reason why in my feed, because there's a lot of YouTube education in my home feed that says, you won't believe what YouTube paid me for. Six months at 5,000 subscribers. They're getting very detailed and people click on those and those videos get a lot of views. So yes, thumbnails really are important. Are they everything? No. But they are something that you should devote time and research to because going forward it's going to mean and matter a lot for you and that skill set. Whether you hire someone that does it in the way that's going to be successful or you do it yourself, you need to really hone your game. All right, the next one is coming from this one here says, I don't know if you're. I'm not going to say your name because I will butcher it, but it's over on X and he sent me a DM and he said, how long should a YouTube video be in 2025? In my opinion, as long as it needs to be to keep attention. The average successful video length in most niches today is around that, I don't know, 7 to 12 minute mark. But if it needs to be quicker and you need to cut the fluff, that's fine. But here's a little bit of a nuance, right? There's a different brackets of content. Now shorts might affect your channel by a lot of people discovering you. The longs, which is what I call the 7 to 15 minute in depth, trust building videos. Those need to be as long as they need to be, but around say 7 to 12 to 15 minutes and then you have like your YouTube lives and podcasts, things that I do over on my podcast channel. These can be upwards of 30 minutes. All the way up to. I've listened to podcasts on YouTube that were upwards of four hours. This is where you build relationships. Think of the different lengths of videos as doing and doing different things. Right. Every second has to count. Cut the fluff layer storytelling in between there. And that's the real length strategy is understanding what works and what we're trying to target. This one is from Francisco. He says, what do you wish that you knew when you first started on YouTube? He's reversing this on me. I asked this a lot in my interviews. Here's a couple of things I jotted down. Take them as you will. Number one, it's a marathon. It's normal to post 50 plus videos before seeing any traction. I wish I would have known how long it would have taken. I wanted it now as opposed to putting in the work now. So understanding it's a marathon. Next. I wish I understood early on that you don't have to go viral. You really only need five hundred, maybe a hundred to a thousand true fans to build a business. Understanding that now has really changed my perspective and has helped the way that I coach my clients. And then lastly, creating the right audience is way better than creating. Let me rephrase that. Creating for the right audience is better than creating for the most people. Now, if you look at Mr. Beast, you're like, oh, no, I want to be creating for a billion people every day. Whatever. His numbers are crazy. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but you're probably not going to do that. But what you could do is grow a channel in the next few years that has 88,000 subscribers. You have enough sponsors and affiliate revenue to make 10k a month, and you're supporting your family. You could do that. So understanding what's realistic really helped me understand that I want to create for the right audience and not worry about the big numbers. Yeah, I want the big numbers, but those will come if I keep doing what I'm doing. And don't judge your journey by someone else's highlight reel. We do this in our personal life. People all the time scroll through Facebook, scroll through Instagram, reels and stories. And we do it on YouTube too. We go through there and we see the person in our niche. They've been on YouTube for nine years. We just started or we've been doing it for a few years and we think we need to be or should be where they are. That's the quickest way to burn out. It's the quickest way of you quitting. Just don't do that to yourself. It's not healthy for your mental health and it's just not a good thing to do. All right, that's my 10 questions that I picked for this week's Q and A episode. Really enjoyed doing these. You can always email me your questions. I put those in a spreadsheet for when I do these episodes. Dustyustyporter.com don't forget, if you'd like to work with me beyond just listening to me on a podcast, you can do. I offer YouTube coaching. Would love to work with you and if anything, just five bucks. It helps support what we do here. The time we put in get you access to our Creator corner group. You get exclusive podcast episodes. You get hundreds of people to chat with about YouTube stuff. It's a great forum to be a part of and many really good friendships have been built there and without any thing really else to say. I appreciate you guys and we'll talk to you next week.