YouTube Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video Influencer

by Sean Cannell

but the YouTube Creator Blog3 just revealed that the number of channels making over six figures is up 40 percent, year over year.

there are now tens of thousands of channels making six-figure incomes from ad revenue alone,

ad revenue is only one of the ways YouTube creators are monetizing their content. Later in this book, we’ll share nine other ways you can make money through online video.

sponsorship opportunities

people are taking their passions and hobbies and using them to create communities, connect with like-minded people, and make some money for themselves and their families.

talent is not the number one requirement on YouTube. Things like passion, excitement, fun, information, education, and answering people’s questions are far more important.

Successful influencers on YouTube are just average, everyday folks who care about something and have developed some skill or knowledge about a subject,

Through video, it’s much easier for an audience to get to know and trust you. The most successful YouTubers have regular viewers who feel like they have developed a friendship with them. Only video engages people on that level.

55 percent of people watch videos online every day.

over 1 billion hours of content are being watched on YouTube every day.

Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat aren’t search engines, so YouTube provides a distinct advantage in getting discovered and building your influence.

Susan Wojcicki,10 YouTube’s CEO, recently said that the platform has over 1.5 billion logged-in monthly users who spend over an hour a day watching YouTube videos.

Think about how much harder it was to get a message out to a worldwide audience twenty years ago. Back then, you probably would have had to buy television air time, which would have cost a fortune.

Brand sponsorship, in fact, is one of your channel’s biggest monetary opportunities.

In 2010, YouTube’s fifth birthday,11 there were only five channels that had one million subscribers. Fast-forward to today, and there are thousands.

According to a recent stat from Think with Google,12 there are 75 percent more channels with over a million subscribers this year compared to last year.

Benji has been able to raise a million dollars for charity through live broadcast video and built an income off Google AdSense and brand sponsorships through vlogging.

We managed to grow Video Influencers to over 10 million views and 250,000 subscribers before publishing our book.

Our success didn’t come from being super-talented. It came from sharing basic principles that anybody can follow to build influence, income, and impact with online videos.

In this section, we’re going to share the essential building blocks for creating a successful YouTube channel. We call them The Seven C’s: Courage, Clarity, Channel, Content, Community, Cash, and Consistency.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

His confidence comes from the sheer repetition of creating content.

when it comes to hate comments, there’s not a lot of truth in them. In fact, when she responds to hate comments, she often gets an apology or a confession in return.

the hate stems from something they’re going through in their own lives.

What matters most on YouTube is creating value for an audience with authenticity.

If you’re struggling to find an identity or purpose for your YouTube channel, we recommend building it at the intersection of your passion, your proficiency, and your profit.

but he has also developed his expertise on the subject over time. He has studied and learned all about it.

John’s YouTube channel is not about making money directly. Instead, he creates YouTube content to boost the buying audience for his juicing company.

You don’t have to be a world-renowned expert or have a degree in the subject matter. Just share what you know, what you want other people to know, from your own authentic perspective, and grow from there.

We recognized that in order to impact people with our message, we needed to generate attention, awareness, and interest in this topic, so we set a goal of acquiring 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and 25,000 signed up for our email newsletter before we released the actual book. That way, when we launched this book, we would already have a community that had been impacted.

When you have a clear focus like that, all of your actions drive you toward your end goal.

Now, she profits through YouTube advertising and selling her own digital products. The products she sells relate directly to her channel. Due to her clear focus, her end goal, and the intersection of the three P’s, Melanie is now earning a significant income for her family from YouTube.

Target a specific group of people who share your interests, because they will engage with your content.

success on YouTube comes from a narrow focus. In fact, the smaller your target audience in the beginning, the faster you’ll grow.

If you had twenty seconds on an elevator to pitch your YouTube channel to a stranger, how would you pitch it? Tell them what they can expect, who the channel is for, why they should be interested, how it will add value to their life, and why it matters.

Many YouTube channels never grow because their creators never take the time to define a target audience and come up with a clear purpose, value, or reason why people should care about their content.

Picture the person on the other side of your video. They go onto YouTube, open up a search query, and type something in. What are they looking for? What piece of content do they seek? What problem might they have that your YouTube channel could answer? Don’t forget, YouTube is a search engine, first and foremost. You need t...

It’s not all about making money. You never know what opportunities, relationships, or experiences will come your way as a result of building your influence on YouTube.

you should have clarity for the kind of lifestyle you want to create.

Because Benji was both passionate and proficient, brands wanted to align with him to promote their products.

We encourage you to think of your videos as the shows on your channel.

Each video should give people a good idea of what the whole channel has to offer.

Your cover art must grab their attention and create the right impression. Make sure it communicates who the channel is for, what it’s about, and why it should matter to the viewer.

We recommend not only introducing who you are and what the channel is about, but also clearly articulating what people can expect from it, why it will help them, and what value it provides.

building your channel is about building your brand.

Value should be your focus when creating any content, on YouTube or any other platform.

you can inspire and motivate.

‘What kind of value are the viewers getting?’

Education This content helps viewers solve a problem, become better at something, or learn a skill.

They get people to think bigger or feel better about themselves. They add a boost to the viewer’s week.