Here's a message to new YouTubers that I think will be extremely helpful for you, based on my own experience. I've been on YouTube since 2011, and I've uploaded thousands and thousands of videos. I have a friend in real life who was just telling me about a fight he had with his girlfriend because he really wanted to do YouTube, and she said no, you should do something else. He asked me for advice, so I'm going to give you the same advice here that I gave him, and that I have for all of you who are new on YouTube.
Publish one video a day
The key thing I'd start with is this: publish one video a day. I publish six videos a day, so don't tell me you can't do one. I publish six videos a day on YouTube because what I've seen in 14 years on YouTube is that it's a grind. If you want to be a full-time YouTuber, if you want to make money and have YouTube be your main thing, then act like it.
Yes, there are channels like MrBeast that do a video a week, and there are these YouTube gurus out there who, in my opinion, generally don't have very good advice. They'll try to make the perfect title and the perfect thumbnail and spend all this time researching. That doesn't work for the masses, and it doesn't help the majority of people on YouTube. Now, that approach will get you views and sell you online courses. But I can tell you what really works on YouTube, as someone who's made a lot of money doing this for a long time. You need to make videos that really change people's lives. You need to make videos that are fun for you to make. And you do all of that on one channel, and you do something every single day.
Even MrBeast gives this advice. If you want to be a YouTuber, make a hundred videos, then we'll talk. That's how I look at it too. You want to do YouTube? Prove it. Do a video every single day. And what happens when you do a video every day is that you're going to get better and better, faster and faster. What you'll see is the necessity of making your videos quickly.
My friend sent me a video yesterday to watch. He spent all week making it and editing it. If that's your path, if you love video editing, then by all means, don't let me stop you. But if you don't love video editing, then in my experience, doing the kind of videos I'm doing right now is what's worked for me on YouTube. Just literally making a video off the top of my head and uploading it. That has worked for me.
The live stream that went viral
Doing live streams worked too. I had a live stream go viral. It got 800,000-plus views and millions and millions of impressions on YouTube. Those would have been called views on another platform like TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook. I got that off of just a quick idea. I thought, I'm going to pay this pro League of Legends coach 30 pounds or euros to coach me while I have him on a Skype call. It was literally super easy to do. I did a live stream for an hour. The first two minutes were awkward, getting to know this guy who didn't even start the game, and it went viral. YouTube just pushed it out to the whole League of Legends community.
Again, it took about an hour of real time. I live streamed it and nobody even watched while I was live. There may have been one, two, three viewers, a maximum of about five viewers while I was live. But that live stream went out there and got me hundreds of people watching my League of Legends streams after that, concurrently. Many of my other videos got hundreds of thousands of views after that, literally off of that one video. It was a simple idea that was easy to execute.
The easiest way to pay the bills
Today, I do a lot of crypto videos. And here's something you need to think about: if you want to do YouTube, you need to think about paying the bills. The easiest way to pay the bills on YouTube is not ad revenue. In my experience, the easiest way to pay the bills on YouTube is coaching, or one-on-one Zoom calls. This is super easy to set up. All you need to do is get Acuity Scheduling, A-C-U-I-T-Y, Acuity Scheduling. Get a simple Linktree-style website. You can even literally start with Linktree to begin. Or I'll have a video up soon showing how to get a website on the blockchain, which would be even better. But you can just use a Linktree, put it in your bio, or put a link directly to schedule a call with you on Acuity.
Then you charge whatever you're sure people will pay. You can start smaller, and as people start paying for calls, you can raise the price up. I charge $345 for a one-hour call with me, and people consistently pay it, especially when the crypto market hits. My calls will fill up all week. That's the main way I make money, and I can make tens of thousands of dollars a month doing one-on-one calls. Not only does it not take that much time, but it also gives me great ideas for videos. I get so many great ideas when people do paid calls with me. I think, oh, I need to talk about this in a video, I need to talk about that in a video. I get so many video ideas.
What people really need online is somebody who has experience to listen to them and then process what they've said. People don't need video courses. In my opinion, if you're selling a video course to me, you're just ripping people off, because you should put your content on YouTube, put it all out there for free, and then directly sell the coaching aspect of it. That's what I often did not do, and I regret it. The areas where I did do that, like Alcoholics Anonymous, where I went to AA 11 years ago and actually got a sponsor, were so much easier. But in my business, with YouTube, I did it the hard way. I just wouldn't ask anybody for help.
Peer coaching and accountability
Now I talk to other YouTubers and we do peer coaching. We'll both look at each other's channels and give each other feedback. We've both been on YouTube for a long time and made a ton of videos. Me and other YouTubers will meet up and have one-on-one calls and we'll coach each other. We'll say, hey, this thing you're doing on your channel is not working, why are you doing this? And the other person says, okay. Well, this thing I'm doing is working really well, take a look at it.
Then there's accountability too. I talked to my friend who has this idea in his head that he's going to be a YouTuber and make millions and millions of dollars. I told him, you'll be lucky if you can even pay your part of the bills living with your girlfriend after you've been doing videos for a year, every day, a year from now. Yes, I've made millions of dollars doing this. But at the same time, I've been doing this for over a decade, and there were years where I barely made any money and I blew whatever money I did make trying to build business ideas, like an online course platform. So I've made money most years. The only year I've actually taken a loss in the last decade is 2019.
Think long-term, and don't niche
Yes, there's great money to be made on YouTube, but what you really want to think about is long-term viability. Generally, where most people go wrong on YouTube is that they do their YouTube in a way they can't keep doing for a decade. If you can't keep doing your YouTube channel for a decade, then I don't think it's worth doing. And the way to keep doing your channel for a decade is: do not niche. Make videos about anything you feel like. You want to make a gaming video? Make it. I make crypto ICP-style hype videos. I make crypto reviews. I make inspirational in-real-life videos. I make vlogs. I make guided meditations. Whatever I feel like doing, I do it.
I've tried the other way. I've deleted more than 10 YouTube channels. I've tried all these niches. I've grown multiple monetized channels besides this one. What I can tell you is that for the long term as a creator, especially if you realize you have a little ADHD like me, you never want to niche. You don't want to lock yourself into being just one thing. Yes, in the short term that can grow a channel faster. But in the long term, you're likely to quit that channel. And the worst thing you can do on YouTube is put a whole bunch of effort into making a channel you quit, or one that, like me, you delete. I've deleted thousands of videos off this channel, and thousands more off other channels. That's because I just grinded these videos out. I was trying to get as much money and as many views as possible, and I wasn't thinking long term.
With YouTube, you really want to think long term. So if you want to go long term, you need a consistent business model like coaching, where people can sign up, and you need consistent content creation, whatever it is. It doesn't matter what it is. I watch so many people stop putting out videos, or take two or three months without making one. If you can't be consistent over time on YouTube, what happens? People stop watching you. The algorithm stops putting you out. People forget you. Then you get distracted and go do other things.
So if you really want to do YouTube, I would do a minimum of one video every day. And whatever you're most excited about, whatever you feel like you have to make a video about that day, make it. What you'll notice is that you constantly get video ideas. I just dropped the kids off at school, I'm about to do yoga, and I constantly get video ideas. I can film six videos a day and I've still only done half or less of the video ideas I've gotten that day. So if you really get into this, you will love it. If you want to go deeper on this, I share a lot more of what's worked for me in my YouTube Coaching playlist.