Small YouTubers, it is time to stop uploading videos, stop uploading shorts, and crank out live streams, exactly what I am doing right here, right now. This is the most effective thing I have found on YouTube. I know because I have done the most brutal experiment I have ever heard of a YouTuber doing. I started on YouTube in 2011. I deleted 15 channels. I had over a billion views. I deleted all of my platforms online, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, deleted all of them with over a billion views. I got that burned out. I started from scratch this year. I only started up on YouTube again because it is the best platform.
I started six new channels 104 days ago. I have got four and a half million impressions on my videos, almost all of it through organic traffic. I tested Google ads and in my experience it is garbage. I would not do that. And I am now making, from zero 104 days ago, over $1,000 a month now. The single best way I have found to monetize is to have a Skool community where you help people like I do at Skool. And all I have to do is 30 minutes of live stream a day on my channels.
Now, I have six channels. You do not need six channels. These are results from six channels. Nothing. I had no email list. I had nothing to get anybody to watch my videos at all. And these are the results I have got, because I have tested. I have tested shorts, which in my experience are worthless and do not work unless you do certain viral things and copy other people's clips, or you do just a ton of them over time. If you started two years ago, shorts might have worked, but in my experience shorts are worthless for most people most of the time. Uploading videos certainly can work, but the absolute best thing that works for me is live streaming. And I am going to walk you through a bunch of data to support that so you can see exactly the real metrics from my channels, literally 104 days on YouTube from scratch, nothing before this.
The data from six brand-new channels
I have six channels. The top channel, Jerry Banfield ICP. This one is a very niche channel just talking about ICP every day. That is all it talks about. And this one has two and a half million impressions, 1.3 million minutes watched, on a channel that is 104 days old. And the number one most effective thing I have done is live stream. Now, I did get a lot of these impressions from videos, but when I tested videos against live streams, live streams crush it.
Next channel, I did a crypto reviews channel calling out all these garbage altcoin scams. 1.1 million impressions on this channel. 7,800 watch hours monetized. Both these channels are monetized, but I am actually making much more money through my Skool than I am through YouTube ad revenue. And this is great, because you can monetize from day one on YouTube if you make a community. And in my experience the best thing to do is go see my community, message me, and have a call with me about all of this stuff at Skool.
So this channel is monetized on YouTube. Right now I am getting $500 plus a month in ad revenue from these channels that are just over three months old, because live streams clean up on watch hours, are super easy to monetize, and live streams really get people to connect with you as a person on a deep level. If you are not good at editing, live streams work, because people expect live streams to be unedited, and I hate editing, which is why I have learned to live stream. If you are not good at live streaming yet, just keep doing it, and you will get better, I promise you.
I have made channels across all different niches though. I have a dating channel that I made now that I am single again and just got divorced. 195,000 impressions on my new dating channel, 25,000 minutes watched, 400 and some watch hours, making progress toward monetization. But again, with all these impressions, I do not have to be monetized. People are going straight to my Skool and joining. I just launched my Skool two or three weeks ago. People have instantly been paying for memberships. And this is the formula right now.
What it actually takes to make money on YouTube
Because what you need in order to make money on YouTube is this. You need to get people to trust you. You need to get people to feel a deep connection with you. And in my experience the easiest way to do that is to do a live stream that is about 20 or 30 minutes long. Most of the time you figure live streams, well, they are too long, nobody is going to watch them. No. You basically do your live stream like it is a video on demand. I am literally leading by the exact example that I am teaching. There is no difference between what I am teaching and what I am doing.
What size PC am I running for my live videos? Check out my Jerry Banfield equipment video, so it is Jerry Banfield YouTube equipment, and I go through all of that, my PC specs and all of that, in that video. Why live streams are so important is because you build a real connection with viewers. You can talk back and forth. Then if you make multiple channels, you can make a channel for one niche audience and bring them over to other channels, and they all promote each other. You can pick six different niches if you want to. When one of them gets traction, they start filling and going over. I have a Jerry Banfield channel, just a main channel where I do whatever I want on there without a specific niche. That channel has 310,000 impressions, 1,600 watch hours, already halfway to getting monetized, lots of watch time minutes. But I am going to walk you through even more detailed metrics that will matter further for why live streams are so good.
Every impression communicates value
Here is my YouTube coach channel. Now, on the surface, people would look at my YouTube coach channel and be like, this is such a bad channel, you hardly get any views on your videos, you get like 50 or 100 views on a lot of your videos. 338,000 impressions. People have seen me and my opinions on YouTube. A thumbnail like this will more than likely go out, even if the video itself only gets 100 views. I will generally get 1,000 to 5,000 impressions. I will communicate with my title and my thumbnail to 5,000 people, or if one person sees it five times, maybe 1,000 people five times. Impressions are what you need to start building a connection with people.
When you focus on giving people a message that is fantastically helpful, this message is so helpful, now join my program. I am not hiding this from you. I am telling you out here, right in the open, exactly what I did. I am modeling it fully. What I am saying is what I am doing. There is no hiding. And just from looking at my thumbnail and my title, I am telling you exactly what to do. That way every single impression I make is communicating valuable information.
Most of these YouTube fake gurus who know way less than I do are just making clickbait that tricks you into watching the video, but you do not sign up for their programs, do you? Because I sure do not. I am like, this beginner YouTuber does not have anything to teach me, because all they did is make some clickbait with useless information in it, and they just happened to finally make one clickbait video that got lucky. What they are doing, they are not communicating any valuable information in their title and in their thumbnail. All they are doing is tricking you into watching a video that does not have information that everybody else is not already saying in their video too. And that is what I do differently. I have said, hey, all you need to do is go live 30 minutes a day. I have sent that idea out and, based on the last videos I have seen, thousands of people are practically guaranteed to receive this idea successfully.
That is how you really crush it on YouTube, because you make every one of your impressions count. If you can laser in on who your audience is, YouTube appears to have shown my videos to the same people five or 10 times very often on this channel. And when you communicate very clear value five or 10 times to somebody, that 10th time they will watch, and then you know what will happen? They will go straight into the Skool community, especially if you are live streaming. When they see you live, and they did not even watch any of your other videos, they just saw your thumbnail, they think, that was helpful. And this is often subconscious.
Somebody may see this post. This is almost certain to happen based on what I have seen already. There are probably five or 10 people who will see this and not even watch it, but the subconscious mind will internalize, Jerry Banfield, YouTube coach, gave me some valuable information. They will think about, maybe I should start live streaming, maybe that is a good idea, this worked for him, it is different from what I have heard before. Then the next time they may see me live, having never watched a video from me, but saw this thumbnail, then see me live, hop in the live stream, and say, hey Jerry, here is my question. I answer a question, or I give an actual human shout-out. And the person thinks, that is so nice, he gave me this helpful information, then he acknowledged me and saw me in the live chat. I am going straight to his Skool and joining right now so I can DM him and get on his weekly group calls. This is the mindset you will crush YouTube with.
This is a mindset. I have got four and a half million impressions, at least four million of these impressions totally organic, totally for free, all of them absolutely on the crypto channels because I cannot advertise that. So these impressions are laying a foundation for me to get up to 10 plus thousand a month within the next few months. I have literally shown you how I started from zero. I am showing you the most effective thing I am doing right now, and it works.
Here is my gaming channel. On my gaming channel, 243,000 impressions on a brand new gaming channel. And what you will notice, the gaming channel has the highest ratio of total watch time to total impressions, because I have done some three-hour live streams. People are going through and watching my live streams after I am live for three hours. I want to know what I can live stream to get you to watch three hours of a game after I am live. So this is a very high ratio of watch time to total impressions.
But look at this. You are asking, well, why am I saying live streams? First off, live streams, as I have said, insanely better conversion, insanely better conversion. Almost every person who has joined my Skool has joined after being on a live stream and after I have shouted them out. Almost everybody has joined that way. And I have got enough data. I know almost everybody who has joined. I personally talk to them and direct message them.
So I know exactly how they got in and why they got in. Almost all of them watch my live streams, talk to me on my live streams, then join from there. Just putting up videos, people are not generally going to give you $49 a month or $390 a year because they watched one video from you. I know, because I have watched a whole bunch of other people and I do not give them anything, because they have not shouted me out. They have not acknowledged me. There has been no two-way interaction. So live streams crush it because of two-way interaction. That is what you need. You need as much two-way interaction as possible if you really want to make sales.
Live streams convert; videos struggle
But even further, let us go to my monetized channels. Here is my ICP channel. Total revenue on eight live streams, $161. Now, this is just on YouTube. Remember, all the Skool revenue, all the Skool revenue comes from live streams. Did they watch some videos first? Yes. But all the people who joined have been on live streams with me before they joined. So all the Skool revenue, but even just on YouTube revenue itself, I did eight live streams for $161 and 15 YouTube video uploads for $192. Average revenue per upload or live stream, $20 for a live stream, $12 for a video. And that is because on live streams, people throw out super chats and jewels. What a jewel is, I do not fully know. Are they trying to copy TikTok with that? Why do we need super chats and jewels and memberships? But my revenue is going to continue going up too, because what I am noticing is the live streams get people to become a member.
Doing videos, it is difficult to convert someone to being a member on a video, because how many channels do you join as a member? So these people join as memberships, and that recurring revenue is absolute gold. Whereas on videos, almost no one. I have seen other people doing this exact thing. I have talked to YouTubers who schedule calls with me, and they said, dude, nobody has joined my membership. I say, that is because you are uploading videos. Why would I join a channel? I do not think I have ever been a member on a channel that just does videos, but I have joined several channels and thrown a lot of money at them, super chats, $100 super chats, gotten their memberships. I have thrown a bunch of money at channels that do live streams where I hang out in the chat and they talk to me.
Now, if you have got a smaller channel, you would be like, well, that is nice that you are monetized, but I am not monetized and I am not doing a live stream to nobody in the chat. Look, you should be able to just film it like a video. If you have nobody in your chat, it actually makes it easier, because I do not have to answer questions. I can literally just talk about what I want to talk about the whole time on the live stream and record it like a video. Now, if you are saying, well, I need to edit it, no, you do not. I am seeing a bunch of people that upload unedited videos and get lots of views off of them. And those people, like one creator I will call out in particular, this guy is getting lots of views, thousands of views on his videos, just talking about whatever he is talking about. And he should be doing live streams instead. He would be making so much more money if he was doing live streams, because his videos are unedited, and he would build a community so much faster.
The community effect
So this is the tip of the iceberg about how much more money you make, especially when you look into super tips. It is like super chat, but you keep more of a percentage. Super tip. They just keep adding one thing after another, and that is great. What you get into even further is the community, where people in the live streams start to come together and recognize each other in the live streams as well. And then that makes a great sales pitch. It is like, hey, you have already got these people that you already know in the Skool community. So then you can DM them. You can build a relationship with them. You can talk to the other people that are in the community. When they all start seeing each other in the live streams, then it brings people who are not in the community in there.
The community, even if you do not have a Skool. Skool, to me, is one of the best ways to monetize, because you can build a community around anything. People recognize it. They already have their payment in there. And it is so much easier to just get them to go over there. So live streams will build so much more revenue, so much more community, so much more back and forth. And if you do not have anybody watching, great. Just do it like it is a video. Just record it like a video. Talk off the top of your head. And then when one person shows up, pay attention to them.
Because it makes, I love, I like attention. Obviously, because I am a YouTuber, I like attention, right? Well, when I am watching other people's videos, I like attention too. But when I am watching a video, it is hard for somebody to give me attention. I still watch ICP videos. I am pretty big in the ICP community now, so people actually do shout me out in their videos. But I want to watch live streams where I can get some attention. I want the actual content creator to shout me out, because I will give money for that. So even if you are not monetized, you are going to get monetized way faster.
Live streams win on watch time
Because the average minutes watched, here is another key data point you really need. Look at this. Live streams are heavy hitters for watch time. If you want to get monetized, what is the hardest barrier? It is not subs. Almost anyone can get a few hundred subs to get monetized. It is the minutes watched that tend to be difficult. Look at this. My live streams get two and a half or so times as much watch time per live stream. And that is because when I am actually live, people will sometimes drop what they are doing and jump in so that they can get in the chat. Whereas what kind of video am I going to put out that is going to have that effect, where somebody is just going to drop what they are doing and watch my video?
I have creators I love, like Bobby. Every new video he puts out, I am a member of his channel, even though he does not do live streams. He makes all his videos members only. I have been watching his videos for years. Every time he makes a new upload, I am excited to watch it. But I do not drop what I am doing to watch his video. That is what is special when you do live streams. You will get the maximum click-through when you are live. And that helps get your live streams out there, and that helps get people in.
And it is so nice to interact with your viewers, because on YouTube you can get a lot of toxic and negative and hate comments. But on live streams, you will tend to get a lot of love, and your supporters and your people will show up to give you love and support you and talk to you. And it means something live. When you go live, you will tend to attract a lot of people who want positive attention from you, especially when you are smaller. It is the best experience. Often when you get in bigger live streams, it is all just toxic stuff and people getting banned. And then all the positive stuff kind of gets lost, because you just get so many chats going and so many messages at once, it can be hard to stand out, and then I will pay like $20 to get my super chat so everybody sees it.
Unedited content and the AI test
And also YouTube's algorithm is geared to figure out what kind of content and what kind of viewer fit together. And live streams, if you do unedited videos, you might as well do live streams. Because what happens when people go to watch videos? There are a lot of people that expect videos should be edited. And I am glad I finally learned, after all these years on YouTube, that I hate editing my videos, so I should only live stream. Because when you see that Jerry Banfield YouTube coach was live, you do not expect a perfectly polished video. You know that I am going to ramble on and go on tangents and do 85 sales pitches for my Skool and just put a thumbnail up and talk.
And that is what happens. You get the most random stuff. So many people's edited videos, to me, are just boring. Especially in YouTube coaching, I am going to sleep two minutes into your video, because I have watched so many YouTube videos. I know so much about this. If you are not going to give me some real stuff that actually gives me something better than just the same thing everybody else is saying that AI could tell you, then I am not watching.
And I go through and I use Gemini on these YouTube coach videos. I am like, I guarantee you that this does not have anything useful in it. And I will just put it in Gemini, like, give me something useful. And it is like, no, that 20-minute video had zero value in it, zero, 100% useless. So when I make my content, it is entertaining. It is an experience. You are not just getting information that you could pull out of Gemini. You need to be thinking about your videos. And if you have not been doing that, you should be, because Gemini can turn somebody's 20 or 30 minute sales pitch into a summary. You can just pull the information out of it instantaneously. And you can see from that, if you are not giving information that is so powerful that it is really going to make somebody want to watch the video, they are going to look at the summary and be like, okay, optimize my thumbnails, join a community, rethink my titles, use AI to check my titles.
Shorts are working, but you have to do them just right. What you need to give in your videos is an experience that you cannot get just from summarizing. And that is what I do with my videos. My live streams are entertaining. Now, yes, if you do not know the community guidelines, you have got to watch what you talk about. I know the community guidelines. And that is why I have lots of channels too. If I mess up on one channel, well, it is just on that channel. That does not affect the rest of them. So the best thing you can craft yourself to do on YouTube is to get good at live streaming. Get good at live streaming, and you do that by practicing. And then when people see you were live, they have an accurate expectation, if you are not editing your videos.
Being live creates desire
And the beauty is that most views on this will probably come after I am live. I hope so, because we have got two or three views on this right now. So we are probably going to have hundreds of views on this after I am live. Most people will watch this after I am live. Well, what happens when you watch this, when I did this live and you missed it? What does that create within you? It creates desire. When you watch this after I am live, what you will have is this desire, like, I want to catch this dude next time he is live. Look at this, talking crazy stuff, answering a question about how do I get a side chick. It is fun. And that is what is missing, especially these days.
There is so much AI slop coming onto the platform, and it is not AI slop you would immediately spot either. I did this big dating video that took like 10 hours, and I recommend you go to the Jerry Banfield dating channel and watch that, because there is tons of incredible research. I am going to go live on there next. The video is called "I Studied 100 Dating Videos So You Can Skip the Nonsense." So I did this massive research with AI, put in like 10 hours. I did a four-hour live stream on that video. And then it is there indefinitely. And the idea with doing these videos is it creates the desire to show up there live if you missed me being live. It is like, I want to catch this guy live so I can get answers to questions, so I can talk to him, so I can get a shout-out, whereas videos do not create that result. When somebody is just uploading videos, it does not create that result. So you want to set yourself up so that you can give that.
How to spot the AI slop
So when I was researching this dating video on my Jerry Banfield dating channel, I went through 100 dating creators. And look, I am pitching the Skool membership in there too. That is what is great. I pitch the Skool membership on my dating, my crypto, my gaming, and my regular channel. Crypto, I pitch it everywhere. And you get a nice diverse community in there.
And I was shocked to find so much of the new dating content is AI generated slop. Now, a lot of people might not be able to spot this. But for example, there is this one video of an AI woman with a golden retriever on a couch behind her. And every single video on this channel, the dog is in the same position on his back. I am like, you lazy fuck. The AI generation is kind of limited, so you risk losing the avatar. But there are so many of these AI slop videos today where they are literally just putting a prompt into ChatGPT. They are putting an image generation prompt in and they are having some fake person, an AI person that does not even exist, which I guess would just be an AI avatar. But it looks like a real person until you are like, that skin does not look right, your skin is a little off, isn't it? My skin looks different every day. You can tell that I am a real person.
But especially in the YouTube coaching niche, I have not seen this as much lately, but in certain niches, there is all this AI junk content. And sadly, people are watching this. They are not realizing it. My friend sent me this video, and I am like, that is an AI video. That is a bad video that somebody made for an ad with AI. That is not actual, that is AI sloppy animation. But then people are making videos that look like they are real people doing a podcast, and they have AI narration, but it sounds like the person. And then people are watching that stuff for dating advice. So how do you stand out from that slop, ugly, nasty AI? Well, live streams. AI cannot do live streams like this.
The future of YouTube favors real humans
And on the future of YouTube, YouTube looks like it is pushing hard to feature human content. At no point in human history that I have seen on YouTube, and I started in 2011, I have done over 10,000 videos online, I have had multiple channels with over 50,000 subs, one channel over several hundred thousand subs, I have never seen it this easy to start from zero with a real human face and a real human message and get views. YouTube's AI seems to be smart enough to do a decent job at detecting real human content, and giving these AI slop channels a kick or shoving them off to the side in the algorithm, which is awesome. So live streams, when you are doing a live stream, people can be almost certain that it is a real human behind it too. And again, a lot of these are subconscious signals that people may not even realize they are taking action on.
Here is another statistic showing you, on my crypto reviews channel, average revenue. Now, this is not spectacular or anything, but this is just, again, YouTube ad revenue. This does not include people joining my Skool. On some of my crypto reviews, people have literally seen one single live stream and went straight in and joined from there. Still, if you look at average income and average minutes watched, live streams are crushing it.
Your simple challenge: 30 minutes live a day
So I invite you, all you have to do on YouTube is 30 minutes. If you have one channel, try to do 30 minutes live every day. And for your workflow, I use a ChatGPT-generated thumbnail. I just dictate into ChatGPT. I say, listen, I am thinking about this, I want to do a video about this, tell me what the hook is, give me some title ideas. I look at what it says. I bounce back and forth and try to find the best title. And I always try to get my titles and thumbnails to communicate something genuinely helpful, even if you never watch the video, because most people on YouTube are not actually even going to watch your video. You are just thinking about making repeated impressions over and over. Every thumbnail and title, you are contributing to how people feel about you with that title and thumbnail. If you want to go deeper on all of this, I have put everything into my my YouTube Coaching playlist.
So I hope this has been insanely helpful information for you. If it has, here is where to go. Come join me at Skool. Get in there. Create a life you love. DM me anytime. Post your YouTube channel for feedback, for questions. We have several YouTubers that are in the weekly group calls, and we will be happy to talk to you and help you with your new channel. You get a free call included when you join. And I am excited. At this rate, in my experience, I am on track to be making 10 plus grand a month in a few months, starting with brand new YouTube channels, documenting all of exactly how I did it and showing you how I have done it the entire time. And I am going to go live on my dating channel next.