Why I Think I'm the YouTube Coach You're Actually Looking For
Are you looking for a YouTube coach? If so, I think you've come to the right place, and it's me. How do I know, and what kind of coaching is actually appropriate? Let me walk you through my channels and a bit about what I've learned on YouTube over the years.
Here's the thing: I started out just looking for a YouTube coach myself. The basic options I kept finding were either to pay somebody thousands and thousands of dollars, which is the level a lot of the top coaches operate at, or to pay some person on Upwork a couple hundred dollars where I couldn't even see their channels. I see myself as the really nice mid-range option, where you can actually look at my channel and judge for yourself. I also tried some of the others, like vidIQ coaching, and in my experience that's too generic. It's not effective to have somebody just tell you, "look at your thumbnails and titles, and yeah man, keep going."
What I was looking for was simple: can anyone actually look at my channel, really look at it, and then show me their channel, and let's just talk YouTube? Give me very specific feedback that isn't generic, that isn't based on the same old "oh yeah, work on your titles and thumbnails." That's what I couldn't find, and it's exactly what I try to offer now, because I've built up deep, deep experience on YouTube. If I were you, that's what I'd want to see, so let me show you some of it.
I'm a Full-Time YouTuber Doing All of This Myself
What's really cool is I'm filming this live in my studio. I've got four different monitors and I'm up here recording this live in OBS. I am a serious full-time YouTuber. YouTube is what I do full-time, nothing else. YouTube is my full-time income. A minority of that income is AdSense, but I make thousands of dollars a month on average from AdSense alone.
I've started more than 10 YouTube channels, and I've actually deleted almost all of them. So I've done a tremendous amount on YouTube. And the difference between working with me and just listening to what MrBeast and some of the other huge YouTubers say is that I've developed strategies that work for regular people. What I've noticed, and what frustrates me, is that what the very highest-viewed YouTubers say often will not work for an average creator. There's only so much room at the top for videos that are clickbait, sensational, and built for absolutely everybody. A lot of the value really needs to be delivered more on the ground, like straight-up tutorials that help somebody fix a very clear problem. And the monetization for that is often very simple.
That's basically what I'm doing with coaching. I have a super easy setup to work with me. You can schedule a call and we'll talk for an hour, and we can even film some videos together that I'll publish on my channel. That live feedback is part of what makes it valuable. What matters most to me is that I've been doing this myself. I don't have anyone that works for me. I upload all my own videos. I'm in the middle of doing this right now. I don't have collaborations with other big creators pushing my channel. I do everything myself, and I get traffic, especially from search results, that's very scalable.
The Numbers Behind My Channels
To give you a sense of scale: these are my analytics from before I deleted the videos on my original channel, and then there are my analytics for one of the new crypto channels I started in 2022. One made great ad revenue, but the other made at least $100,000 more in revenue, coming from people scheduling calls about crypto with me. I'm actually about to delete that channel, because I've been on YouTube since 2011, and the number one thing that has burned me out is niching, trying to make just one kind of content like gaming videos.
What's different about me is that I've been successful making so many different kinds of content. I've been a professional gamer. I've been successful on multiple platforms like Facebook, where I made over $100,000 in 2021 gaming on Facebook. I sold online courses on my YouTube channel. I did hacking tutorials, where I paid somebody to make them but I did the marketing for it. I've been a crypto YouTuber for most of the last couple of years. I also make music. I do inspirational videos. I talk about AA and spirituality. What's amazing to me is all that well-rounded experience is personal. It's not that I've watched somebody else do it. I've personally done all of it.
Stop Niching, and Take Inventory of Your Own Skills
One of the clearest calls to action I've come to believe in is this: stop niching. You really need to take inventory of yourself and your special skills. What I see way too much of in YouTube advice is generic stuff like "come up with better ideas" and "put more time into researching your video ideas." In my experience, that actually doesn't work. I've tried it. I've spent a week making a crypto video, only to have one I spent 10 minutes making outperform it by multipliers. I've tried so many of these things firsthand.
What I do really well is publish six videos a day, every single day, because I can grind out content. And on YouTube, the majority of the views actually come from people grinding out content. The outliers, the MrBeast-style advice to make sensational pink elephant videos, those are unusual. They're not that easy to replicate, and they won't work for most YouTubers. The majority of YouTube is just a grind. The faster you can make your grind, the more efficient, the more joyful, and the more fun it is, the better you're going to do.
A Decade of Experience to Draw From
Here's some old context: from 2013 to 2014, I had 1.3 million views on my channel over a decade ago, with all kinds of likes and comments. That was me teaching how to do Facebook ads, but I also had a video about playing Wolfenstein. So I've got a lot of experience on YouTube personally, and I've helped other YouTubers with their channels too.
Let me tell you about one I helped. His channel was brand new, with maybe one or two videos on it. I said, "Joe, you just have to grind videos out." I suggested he publish one video every single day and just do that for years. And I told him, if you want to monetize it, sell a course. He's since published hundreds of videos and he's selling a course, and that channel has made Joe millions of dollars. He came to me to set that up.
At the same time, not everybody wants to make a crypto video every single day, and there are different ways to be successful. Some of you will do better publishing one video a week. For me, what I've done best with is grinding out long-form videos.
I Focus on Long-Form, Real Attention
These are my live analytics from my crypto channel. I deleted all the videos on it because I'm tired of making crypto content, and I rebranded it and plan to delete the channel, but the views are there for you to see. I do long format, so these aren't short views. The average view duration is around 10 minutes. These are people spending a lot of time on my channel. So if you want to do shorts, I'm not the coach for shorts. I focus on real attention, long-form content. That said, a video around nine minutes is kind of the sweet spot, because people like to finish what they start.
On that crypto channel, my live streams alone got 10 million impressions and almost a million views. My regular videos got 50 million impressions and 4.3 million views, with an average watch time rounding to five minutes per video, across probably about 500 videos. And that's just one of my crypto channels. I made two others and deleted both of those, but I've had at least three YouTube channels monetized, and I've tested a bunch more small channels recently. So I've got that experience to draw from. I've tried starting new channels, successfully monetized them, and gotten multiple channels over 10,000 subscribers.
I've Lived Through Creator Burnout
I've also struggled a lot with creator burnout. I've quit YouTube several times, including last year when I quit for a month. I have an artist channel, and my main channel now is actually an artist channel, because I deleted all my videos on it two years ago to try to niche it into just music. Then I had seven other channels for all my other topics. In the short term, that works fine. Some days I don't want to film any crypto videos. I just want to do gaming or talk videos, or videos for YouTube creators.
Here's the newest thing I've experimented with on my channel, because I'm always trying things. If you look at my original channel analytics doing just music, it basically did almost nothing for about a year. Then I decided I'm going back to just one channel. I started uploading four videos a day, and now up to six videos a day, on this channel. I put all my crypto videos on it, and I'm not even promoting them heavily on the other channel. In the last three weeks, I took my original channel from a few hundred views a day to a few thousand views a day, almost right away. That was awesome.
I've also gotten really down on myself as a creator by reading nasty, critical comments: "your channel's dead," "you're shadow banned," "you suck," "you should quit." But what I love about myself is that consistency is integrity. I keep showing up and I keep trying. Yes, I've quit several times. Last year I quit for a month because I was so burnt out doing just crypto videos and a music video. I got so burnt out I quit for about a month, but I came back, because honestly I don't have any better ideas. And now this channel that was basically dead got almost 10,000 views in the last 48 hours.
So I've got some awesome experience on YouTube, and I'm in a great position to help you. I'd also love to film some videos together. As I'm publishing all these different videos every day, what I think would be fun is to get some of you involved. I've got a music video, a crypto video, in-real-life videos, all of it. I'm giving up Twitch too. I've streamed on Twitch for nine years off and on, and I'm finally quitting Twitch. YouTube is my main thing.
Why the side projects became distractions
At a certain point, I realized the side pieces were distracting from the main thing. I do all kinds of videos: gaming videos, different crypto videos, inspirational videos, and interviews with others. What I think is really cool about my coaching is that you could get a video with me on my channel, where my viewers get to discover you, and that would also be useful for other people who are watching.
I even did a video addressed to the president. That is the sort of thing I have been doing on my channel recently to instantaneously get my views back up. My destination is clear: this channel had thousands of videos on it before, and I want to get back to thousands of videos as soon as possible.
Where I stand on live streaming
I have also done some live streams here. I go back and forth on live streaming, and I am currently pretty down on it, because of the amount of time and energy you put into a live stream versus the amount of minutes people actually watch. With my crypto channel, most of the views were on regular videos, even though I put a lot of effort into the live streams. That said, live streams are valuable for bringing together your most engaged viewers and building a community around your channel, so I do still enjoy doing them.
What coaching with me actually looks like
If you would like to work with me, it is super easy. We will hop on Zoom. We can film some videos together if you want to, or it can just be a private session where you tell me what you are doing on YouTube. To me, a good coach should spend the majority of the time listening. For roughly 50 minutes, I will be listening, because that is the difference between coaching and advice.
You can go on YouTube and get all kinds of advice. Plenty of people will tell you exactly what to do with your channel. But what you really need is someone who can process what you are doing from an outside point of view, someone who has been there and done that, who can give you a better way of seeing what you are doing or taking honest inventory of yourself.
In my experience, I currently do not see any better option than the coaching I offer, and if there is one, I genuinely want to hear about it. I do not want to pay somebody $3,000, $5,000, or $10,000 to try to turn my channel into an outlier by putting out one video a week with a clickbait title and thumbnail. That is simply not where I am at. So if you know of someone you think could help coach me, or if you would like to schedule a call so we could help each other, I am happy to take advice from you and even record a video of you giving me advice on my channel. You can see more of how I work through my YouTube Coaching playlist. I am looking forward to getting to know you.