On this episode of Art of Online Business, we are back for part two of my conversation with my good friend, Pat Flynn. We are chatting about YouTube and how you can grow your channel quickly, even if you’re just getting started.
We discussed a lot of important stuff in the first part of this interview. We covered how to get started, the YouTube algorithm, finding content inspiration, choosing titles, and so much more. This week we are going even deeper.
Pat has tried multiple different strategies for growing his YouTube channels, and you may be surprised about what is working and what doesn’t. He continues to focus primarily on community building and retention with long-form videos and he shares tons of tips with us today.
Pat Flynn is a father, husband, and entrepreneur who lives and works in San Diego, CA. He owns several successful online businesses and is a professional blogger, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and host of the Smart Passive Income and AskPat podcasts, which have earned a combined total of over 80 million downloads, multiple awards, and features in publications such as The New York Times and Forbes. He is also an advisor to ConvertKit, Circle, and several other companies in the digital marketing arena.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- What you need to know about YouTube Shorts
- The type of editing you need for your channel
- Tips for increasing retention
- How Pat grew his Pokemon YouTube channel
- Making space to be creative with your channel
- Tips for using live streams
- The benefits of batch recording
- What to look at when it comes to Creator Studio
- Monetization strategies
Links & Resources:
- Check out YouTube from Scratch
- The Art of Online Business website
- DM me on Instagram
- Visit my YouTube channel
- The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
- Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
- The Art of Online Business Podcast website
- Check out my Accelerator coaching program
*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.
Pat Flynn’s Links:
- Visit Pat’s website
- Check out Smart Passive Income
- Follow Pat on Twitter
- Follow Pat on Instagram
- Subscribe to Pat’s YouTube channel
- Check out Pat’s Deep Pocket Monster channel
- Check out Pat’s Speaker Reel
Got A Question You Want Answered On the Podcast?
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If I Were Starting a YouTube Channel Today, with Pat Flynn (Part I)
My friend. Welcome to the Art of Online Business Podcast. My name is Rick Mullaney and I'm an online business coach. I'm an ad's expert, and most importantly, I'm a dad. And this show is where we help established online course creators and coaches create more profit, more impact with less hustle. All right, let's get into it. Hey. Hey, what's up, my friends? Welcome to episode 636 year on the show. And we're back for part two with my good friend Pat Flynn talking all about YouTube. And today we dive into everything from YouTube shorts. Should you be doing YouTube shorts if you've got a YouTube channel? We talk about editing the types of really small editing tricks, if you will, that can really improve how long somebody watches your video, which is really key to YouTube's algorithm. We talk about how to get your first 1000 subscribers on your podcast, on your podcast, on your YouTube channel. As I'm podcasting here, we talk about how Pat has built his Pokemon YouTube channel called Deep Pocket Monster to over a quarter of a million subscribers in just over a year and a half. We talk about analytics today and the importance of analytics and really simplifying how you look at and use analytics for your YouTube channel. And then also at the end of the episode here today, we talk about all the monetization opportunities.
So definitely stick around for this conversation here before we dive into it. As I mentioned in part one last week, I really want to encourage you to go check out Pat's YouTube from scratch online course. This is all about teaching you step by step. He actually builds a YouTube channel right in the course. How to get your first thousand subscribers. That's what YouTube from scratch is all about. I am a proud affiliate for that course because I've gone through it myself. And I'm not just saying this because Pat is a bestie over here. It is the best YouTube course I've gone through and I've bought three other programs and by far this is the least expensive and the best one. And so I want to encourage you to go check it out when you go through my link. Rick Military.com, forward slash Pat. I've got a couple of bonuses there for you that you can only get through that link. And then also you can jump in to the program and get your YouTube channel off and running. All right. So without further ado, let's get dive into part two here with Pat Flynn talking some YouTube. All right, my man, as we jump back into part two of our conversation around YouTube, we got into it in part one. We covered a lot of different stuff.
We did. We went deep. And that's why we're back for part two, because we're going to go even deeper.
I originally told you like, all right, let's do one one hour and we'll cut that into two and it'll be a two parter that way. But I was like, No, this is so good. We're getting deep into stuff here that and there's so much I want to cover in this part two here. I think one of the biggest takeaways for me from part one was, well, there's a couple of different things. Number one, like the importance of the title and thumbnail. Oh yeah. And you're actually working backwards. So it's title first coming up with those like ideas for titles. And that is what informs the video, right?
That way the.
Experience for the.
Viewer is, is, is coherent, right? From title to what you shoot to the promise. All that, all that. Yeah.
And so that is just a big mind shift. And you and I have talked about that a lot. But like, because I've always been that way, it's like, Oh, I'm going to do the video or this is the topic, but then like headline after that. And so we flipped that on its head. And the other thing too was just the opportunity that exists with YouTube and the ability to be found really quickly, like no guarantees. But you know, you use the analogy of from a fishing perspective having you're not going to catch fish, we don't have lines in the water. Right? Whereas we're if we are not creating videos and putting videos out, we're not giving ourselves the opportunity for the YouTube algorithm to like, you know, pick up on something and for something to just really run. That's a big shift. And it's like, hey, just keep putting stuff out. Keep putting stuff.
Yeah, I mean, just like fishing. There's different ways to fish, right? But if we're in the world of wanting to get results a little faster, if we're in the world of wanting to see sales come in, all that kind of stuff, that's like bass fishing, right, where it's a little bit more. You got to be a little bit more. You've got to cast more often to the different spots because they might be here, they might be there, they might be in the top surface water column, they might be on the bottom. You don't know. And you can change techniques and experiment to see what the pattern is. And then like YouTube, it'll tell you, Hey, we like this video. Great. You found a bait that works. Keep doing that. But there's other kinds of fishing that many people use in the equivalent would be like podcasting, where it's not necessarily as cast a whole bunch of things and see what works, but it's more like trout fishing. Trout fishing. You put something out there and you leave it be and you wait and you wait. But you know, it's good bait and eventually a fish will come and find it. And while you're waiting, you're doing these other things. You're chatting with your friends or having a beer or something on the on the shore or what have you. It's just a different kind of thing. But I think for your clients and everybody listening, I mean, we're bass fishing here. We need to consciously create things that we know or at least have a better chance of getting found. And again, the cool thing is your next video might be the one, right? Just like your next cast might be the personal best.
Right along those same lines, doing different things to be found. Everyone's talking about YouTube shorts, the micro content. You have one, I believe, for for Deep Pocket Monster, which we're going to talk about here in a couple of minutes. The last I looked, you had like 12 million views or something like that.
1/62 video now has 15 million views.
15 million.
Views. And here's the big kicker. I wish I didn't film that video. I wish I didn't film it.
Go on.
Go on. You're like, Well, that's 15 million views. Like, isn't that great? Okay, we got some subscribers from it, but it's a completely different engine inside of the world of YouTube. It is their way to compete with the likes of Instagram reels and Tik Tok, right? So they're creating this platform that essentially is like those short form platforms, but built within the ecosystem of YouTube. And the reason why I say I wish we didn't do it is because for a very long time and YouTube's trying to fix this and they are actively fixing it. But people were seeing our shorts and it was essentially sabotaging our longer form videos, which were more relevant and deeper and establish a better relationship. We know this to be true with the millions of views because most of the comments on that video now are not people who are interested in Pokemon or subscribe to my channel percentagewise. That's very small. If you look at that video, it's based on a car that a fan sent me that was obviously a fake, and then I kind of ripped it open and saw there was another card behind it that somebody had pasted, pasted the big expensive card on. And the comments are, this person deserved it, or I can't believe adults are playing with children's toys.
Anybody who spends that much money on a Pokemon card deserves to have their money taken away. Like, ugh, like nasty, toxic stuff because it's reaching a general audience, right? Yeah. And what would happen was and we continue to see this in ways our really good long form videos which tell a story or provide information. Sometimes the analytics for those go down, the views go down, the reach goes down, and then the shorts essentially take its place as far as what people are seeing and what's being recommended to them. So in many ways, even though we got a lot of views, I wish those videos didn't exist because they've been sabotaging the growth from enrich from our other videos and 50 million views. The shorts revenue engine is separate from the AdSense revenue engine on the long form videos on regular YouTube videos. So although that video has 15 million views, it's only accounted for like $900 total on the short side of of generating an income. Whereas we have one video that's 50,000 views that has earned 2000. Right. And many, many more examples of videos like that.
So I'm hearing. No, go on.
No, I didn't. For my channel and our focus on growth with the storytelling we're doing in the information and the fact that we want people to just see those videos.
Yeah.
No shorts for us. There are other channels, however, where they're treating YouTube like Instagram reels or Tik Tok, where they're their strategy is, let's create these short form videos because we want to reach people who are interested in this. And then it leads into something else, just like it would on Tik Tok or Instagram reels. And there are some cases, very few cases that I've found so far where a person is doing both long form video and doing a really good job with short form. And I think when that works well, there's an example, Colin and Samir, there are podcasters who have a video podcast on YouTube, but they also take clips from their video podcast and play 30, 62nd little clips that are very, very interesting. So interesting, in fact, that they make you want to go and watch the rest of that video in and go find the long form version of that. And in that case, that's working. You might be familiar with Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan clips. You might have seen some of his clips on a lot of shorts where he's talking to, I don't know, Neil deGrasse Tyson about the fact that we're all made up of stars or something. And it's just a 62nd clip, but that is a micro moment in a much larger episode. And either way, it's still getting Joe in front of people, which is his goal. So it really depends. It really depends, and it's worth experimenting with. But the truth is, if you are focusing on long form videos and you want to build a loyal audience that way, I wouldn't at this time use shorts. If you're going to do short form, I would actually do it on Tik Tok or Instagram reels.
Yeah. So I guess that's what I was saying. So no, go on shorts in that. So that also brings up another important point where I think that holds a lot of people back from creating. And you and I have talked about this for like one thing that's held me back. No, I'm not making an excuse is editing. Right. So in part one, we talked about like just like answering people's frequently ask questions as one of the easiest ways to get started getting your videos out there, it doesn't have to be fancy or anything like that. What are we looking for? From. In an editing experience, if you will, for the type of viewing that people do with YouTube videos.
Great question, because you could just turn on the camera, speak into it, and it's already done. You could publish it and that could suffice. That could work. But we are now living in an age where we're going to have to do a little bit more to keep that retention going on those videos. And the way that I like to do that is, again, we want to try to make this as simple as possible. I mean, you could hire an editing team that could masterfully compose your video in a way that just has all these cuts and music and swipes and B-roll and all that kind of stuff. Those are things that anybody could do, and you can slowly add them over time, which is what my recommendation would be. But from a high level, I think that especially if you're answering questions at the moment, you have a punch line or something really important to say where it's like the moment in a conversation where you kind of lean in and you might slow down a little and you have this really important point to say. That's a moment in your video where you can insert some sort of pattern, interrupt to emphasize that point. This is a very easy way to begin to start keeping retention during a video. Is that during those moments? Right, maybe you're telling a story and then there's something that happens in that story and that's when you can edit something into that video at that time. So what could you edit? Well, you could simply just at that moment. Zoom in on your face.
It's just that's called a quick cut. So you see, like your chest up. And then at that moment during the punch line, it just zooms right into just your faces there and your chest is gone. So you're zoomed in and that emphasizes that point. And then when you get back and reset, you're zoomed out. And now that's a nice like reset. It's some sort of movement that's happening in the video to keep people going in and reset for the next part. Another thing you can do is you can add text on the screen during those points. So most editing platforms I use, I actually use screen flow to edit my videos because it's just so easy. Screen flow is a mac tool. There is a PC equivalent called Camtasia Studio, but it's mainly used as a screen recording or screen capture software. That's actually how I did my first videos was recording what I was doing on my computer because I was too afraid to put my face on camera. And so that's a neat way to to get started if you if you don't want to put your face on camera. But that tool has some really quick, easy ways to edit videos and put text in and zoom in, zoom out those kinds of things. But adding text to support the things you're saying at those times, especially if you're doing like a list or something like that, you'll see that that's very common in a lot of videos. One step further with the text is, as you are saying, the thing, for example, you might say like Facebook retargeting.
Then when you say Facebook, Facebook comes on the screen and when you say retargeting, targeting, retargeting comes on the screen. And that again, just emphasizes the point as you're saying it. And to edit that, you just add the text and just drag it to the point at which you say that and you can have it stay on the screen longer or shorter or whatever, whatever, and then you can play around with the transition tools in there if you want to make it even more fancy. Another thing you could do is you can simply add in an image of a thing, right? You might be talking about Facebook retargeting. Okay. When you say Facebook retargeting, share an image, a screen capture or screen even just a screenshot. It doesn't even need to be video. Just insert a picture of the Facebook dashboard and where it says retargeting on it. Boom. Now it's a visual that goes along with the thing that you're saying one step further beyond that, maybe it's not just a still image, maybe it is a video, but it's a it's it's called B B-roll. That's background video. As you still talk, there's a video playing underneath that's something different that's not your face. And so that, again, just adds more movement to the story that you're telling or the information that you're providing. And there's very simple ways to do that. My favorite I mean, this is a big tip that we talk about a lot is if especially if you're sharing a product like, say you're talking about, I don't know, the your desk set up and everything that you have on your desk, which is a fun video to do.
People are really interested in that kind of stuff. You could take your phone and open up the slo mo feature on your phone. And let's say I'm talking about this microphone here. I'm just going to like fill my microphone and go around it. In slo mo. And now I have this beautiful, like, cinematic slo mo of my microphone that I can just insert into the edit, just drag and drop it. I can cut the parts out that I don't want. And now as I'm talking about the high PR for the microphone, it cuts to that view, the slo mo view, panoramic view going around. It's just a really neat way to begin to add some color to the video that you have and just start simple over time. You can get a little fancier with the edits and stuff, and there's a lot of people on YouTube who teach this kind of stuff for free, but just get the videos out there. I mean, like I said the last time in part one, it's like you want to imagine that your first 100 videos are going to be for your first hundred subscribers. So you have a lot of room for error, you have a lot of room to experiment with and see what the audience and YouTube is excited with. And you'll probably have a lot more than 100 subscribers after your first hundred videos by just executing and constantly learning.
Do you go into this deep, more deeply in YouTube from scratch?
Yeah. So our course YouTube from scratch, which you may have heard of the first time, we do go deeper. In fact, Caleb takes a video that I filmed. So one of the one of the modules is I film a YouTube video and I show you from start to finish how I came up with the idea, starting with the title and how I went outside and took shots of the thing. The subject matter is an expensive strawberry that I grew because it's a gardening channel. And so I go through all the different ways that I film that, the different styles of filming. And Caleb shows you exactly how to edit that video or how he's editing that video. So you can see exactly how he's putting the story together and adding the text and all that kind of stuff. So yeah.
We.
We don't just tell you what to do, we show you what to do. So yeah.
I love it. By the way, as I talked about in part one you all it's Rick Mulwray for Pat and that is a special bonus and for Pat's YouTube from scratch program online course I have it, I've gone through it. It's awesome and it's giving me the kick in the butt to get going.
We're very proud of it. You know, there's a lot of YouTube courses out there. Many are great, but they're too long and they're too overwhelming and too confusing. Youtube is a confusing platform and we wanted to distill just like, okay, if we're going to teach this and only teach what a person needed to know and nothing more, what can we put in here? And that's exactly what YouTube from scratch is. And then over time you can begin to start getting a little bit more into the weeds and the advanced parts of it. But we just want to get you started. And the truth is, when you get the results faster, you're going to be more excited about it and then want to keep going with it, right?
So you're really teaching that how to get your first thousand subscribers?
Exactly right. That's that's the punch line or the tagline essentially. And even if you have over 1000 and you know that you just would like to go back to some really good basics on what's working right now and then and then also the accountability and the drive then. Yeah, this would be a good a good buy if you have, you know, 5 to 10000 subscribers already and you kind of know what's working with your channel and you want to get into more advanced stuff. And this course is not for you. I mean, there's there's other more advanced courses and but the beginner who's starting from from the top like we're here for you.
And I can attest to it. I'm not just saying this again. I mentioned this in part one. I'm not just saying this because Pat's right here. Like I have bought three other YouTube courses.
I can confirm this. Yes.
And they're great, but they are all so overwhelmingly confusing. I was just like, okay, I'm out of here. Yeah. And then I went through Pat's course and it's like step by step. And if any, you know, for those of you who know Pat it, he's all about simplicity and how he presents things and teaches it really breaks it down really well. This course is no different. So talking about getting to that first 1000 subscribers, now you have another channel besides your own personal channel. We've been we've been mentioning it throughout this so far in this episode and last episode. But you created a Pokemon channel. It did during the pandemic called Deep Pocket Monster. And we are recording this on a Wednesday morning, you and I and KOAT or somewhere out fishing on Sunday morning, just a few days ago. And you said I believe you said I'm six subscribers away from 250,000 subscribers.
Yes. And at the time of this.
This is a year and a half. Yeah. Where are we right now?
Where are you? We're at 250,800 subscribers. So what, we're at a quarter million subs. And sorry to interrupt you, but I think you were going to say no, this is less than two years of work.
This is like just over a year and a half. Yeah. You've reached a quarter of a million subscribers. How how have you done that?
I mean, we lay everything out in the course, but I've been talking about it the whole time here between part one in part two. As far as like the approach that we're taking in the diving into the analytics, you could ask me at the end of part one, like, what are the most important things that a person should understand? And it's those very basic analytics that are essentially You Tube telling you what to do or what's not working right, your attention graphs. And you can use that for your benefit on your podcast or on your blog with the page and time on site. But as far as the channel is concerned, the other part of it is I'm just having a ton of fun with it. And I think if you're having fun with it, your audience is going to also have a lot of fun with it too. I've also been very strategic with Well, what's my lane here? Right, because there's a lot of other people who discuss and talk about Pokemon, but I'm not an expert in certain areas of it. I never claim to be. I don't have the best cards, so what can I bring to the table? We talked about that in part one, but what is really working now like today is.
Putting a little bit of extra time and attention into the video as far as the storytelling or what's at stake. And the more that we focus on that, like, why should a person stick around to the end here? The videos have always just done so much better. Right. So we are working on a video right now like right after this call, I'm going to be finishing filming this next video that's coming out this weekend where so the story is I was looking at my binders and I have a binder that was I had a binder that was missing 28 cards from completing this set. The set includes over 200 cards. And I was so close and Dan was like, Oh, why don't you just go buy those cards? And I was like, Well, that's not fun. And he's like, Well, let's make it fun. How, how do we make finishing this binder fun and let's film it? And I was like, Oh.
This is Dan's your editor?
Dan's my editor. Yeah. And we talk about ideas like this all the time. That's another important thing. And takeaway is like, we give ourselves space to get creative. Trying to fit creativity in the middle of all the other busy work you're doing is very difficult. But putting a 30 minute block of time, an hour block of time in your day or in your week to literally sit down and brainstorm and just have fun and be creative has been so rewarding, right? Because it's a different part of your brain. So this is in one of those moments, Dana and I were talking and I bring up this binder idea and he's like, Why don't we make it fun? So okay. 24 hour. Pokemon. Binder challenge or something. We, we, I don't I don't have the title right in front of me, but essentially I have only 24 hours to do this. So how am I within 24 hours started yesterday. Today is the last day and I'm going around San Diego to different card shops to find these individual cards that I need for the binder. And I was at a comic store yesterday called T C's Rockets down kind of by Lake Murray. In fact.
That's what your Instagram stories were. Yes. Because I was like, where are where is he? Yeah.
So I was I was there and I called him ahead of time. I was like, guys, I'm I'm a I'm a YouTube, which is very hard for me to do. I'm actually really shy and get very nervous doing things like this. But knowing that I had this video to do, it got me encouraged and knowing that it would be fun and also give them some love. I called up two rockets yesterday and said, Hey, I am a YouTuber and I'd love to come in and film. Here's my idea. Would you be down? And they're like, Let's do it. We'll see you here. So I went in and I filmed some B-roll stuff, and then I and then I sat down with a guy named Brad there, and we opened the cards together trying to find the missing cards. And when we did, we were like high five each other. And I just filmed the whole thing and that's all going to get put into a pile later that will be sifted through to turn this into a story. But we found nine out of the 28 cards. So I'm still 19 short and I'm going to go to a mall today where there's a comics and stuff to try to find more singles.
So again, I'm making an adventure out of it because that's fun and different. And here's the thing if I don't complete this, I have to give the whole binder to my son. So now there's like a reason to stick around to the end. Is he going to lose and give this give these cards away or is he going to get it? And hopefully I get it. And so, again, these things these things come in. And then what happens is we film everything and then the editor will take a pass, or I might take a pass and then I go, Hey, like, there's something missing here in the middle that needs to happen. Okay, let me let me film something that I'm going to insert in here of me in the car. Like I need something comedic. So I'm going to be in the car singing Pokemon for like 2 seconds. So even after everything, I'm going to pretend like I'm on my way to the place and I'm just going to get in the car. Edit that little thing of me singing Pokémon and then we'll just insert it in there. Did it actually happen at that time where I was driving? No, but it helps the story.
Along and.
Nobody is going to be like, Hey, you filmed that part like a nobody is going to know. Well, you all know now. But I mean, this is how movies are filmed. It's to make the story flow and keep it going better. So again, the approach of how do we go a little extra? Because the audience notices that they know they could feel that you took a little bit of extra time to make this thing even a little bit better for them. Yeah. And I think that's what's really been helping us right now. So we're about to do a big live stream now because we've had the community actually a lot of a lot of people sent me stuff to give away to other community members. That's become a thing on the channel now too.
Which is cool and so cool.
So we'll have what we call the 250 K Live Polka Party on September 21st or September. I don't know exactly the date, but it should be fun. It should be fun.
I've been on one of your livestreams before, and I don't know Pokémon at all. Well, I know.
They know some Pokemon like Pikachu or whatever.
Pikachu. Isn't it like Charmaine or Charmander? Charmaine. This is how much I know about fucking. Well, I happened to be on YouTube, and, like, I noticed that you were alive, and I was like, Oh. And I went on there, and you're like, there was like 800 people on there. And it was just the comments were like. Like, like it was. I was like, holy cow. Yeah. This is this is a this is a community here.
Those are events, you know. And the live streaming aspect of YouTube is like another separate thing that you can add on to your channel to bring the community together. The live streams always get way less views than my other videos, but it brings people together in real time and you can have some fun. So what I do is I open packs, we see what we get. I give away some stuff, we, we answer questions and we just have a good time. But yeah, sometimes there's up to I think the most that we've had at one time was like 1800 people watching live and there's so many fun things you can do as a creator. When you have that many people on All in one room, you can just say, Hey, Chad, I need some luck on the next pack. I want to see everybody put the four leaf clover emoji in the chat. Right now, it's like and now everybody feels like they're a part of something. And what happens is, yeah, maybe we do strike gold on that pack, and then everybody now feels like they had something to do with it, right? Just like at a baseball game or at a football game when the crowd goes wild to try to interrupt the other team or something like crowd control is really fun.
You need moderators, though. That's that's the one thing I learned really quickly up front is as your channel continues to grow, if you do go live, you need some people that help control the chat. And I recruited 9 to 10 people right now who were just viewers before who I always saw show up. I wanted to give them some recognition and they were more than happy to step up and become moderators, which essentially means they can kick people out or block messages that are bad. One thing I did was when we hit 100,000 subscribers, you get a silver play button from YouTube, which is really awesome. This is my second one from Deep Pocket Monster. I ordered another one. They give you one for free, but you can order more if you want. And I ordered an extra one and I sent it to almost all of my moderators now to spend a couple of days with it and sign it and then send it to the next person. So they I really want them to feel like they're a part of it. And they are they like they've they've helped out so much.
You're creating you're so good at creating community. And this is proof that you can create community on a platform like YouTube, on.
A platform like YouTube with a topic that you before knew nothing about. And as a reminder, I didn't know anything about Pokémon until 2020 when I just got into it because my kids and they've since stopped or have slowed down and I've just kept going.
You keep going. Yeah, I love it. So just want to jump in here for a minute. And as I did last week, by the way, this is sort of a new thing. I'm trying let me know what you think of me coming in here in the middle and recapping and pulling out the bullet points for you from the first half and letting you also know what's coming up in the second half. Shoot me a DM over on Instagram at Rick already. Let me know if you like this little segment here. So basically I want to pull out the points from from the first part of the interview here with Pat. And we talked about YouTube shorts. Everybody everybody's talking about do YouTube shorts, do YouTube shorts. And Pat was like, well, wait a minute, hold on a second. Do YouTube shorts, depending on what the goal is for your channel. And he said that some people are doing a great job with both types of videos, meaning YouTube shorts and the longer form YouTube videos. He's done some shorts in the past, but actually one of his most viewed shorts, and it's been viewed millions and millions of times. It actually sabotaged his longer form video and he explained why that was the case. Right. And so if you were focusing on long form videos on your YouTube channel and you want to build an audience, Pat actually recommended not using shorts instead using Tik Tok or Instagram reels for those types of videos. But as with everything and as you mentioned, it's about testing, right? Testing to see.
All right, try some shorts out. How does it affect the rest of your channel? We also talked about editing. And I think the big takeaway here is when you're first getting going on your YouTube videos, don't overcomplicate it. Don't try to get fancy with your with your editing. Keep it simple. And then as you as you learn more and as you get more consistent, put out more videos, then you can start to add in stuff. And he did talk about different ways that you can emphasize things and put some some cooler editing into your videos like Quick Cuts and adding texts on the screen and having specific words flash in the screen to emphasize things and adding and B roll and images and slow motion, if it makes sense and all that fun stuff. And so all this stuff, by the way, he goes into way more deeply inside his YouTube from scratch course, which is all about helping you get the first thousand subscribers. I think I've mentioned several times now. I bought three other YouTube courses last year and Pat's course is the simplest to go through and the most effective and by far was the least expensive. And between September 22nd, depending on when you're listening to this, which is tomorrow through September 27th, he's offering a $50 off coupon for all of you. It's a $497 course. Then you get $50 off when you enroll during those dates. I've also put some bonuses together for you, so if you want to check that out, Rick already radio.com for Pat, you can go over there and get $50 off the course, which is already very inexpensive for what you're getting in that program.
And then lastly, in this first part, we talked about Pat's Pokemon YouTube channel. He's gotten to over 250,000 subscribers in about a year and a half. And he shared what's made the biggest difference in his approach to making the videos, spending extra time storytelling, getting people to watch all of the video, making an adventure out of it, and then really diving into the analytics. Those are those are a few things that have really helped this channel take off so quickly. So make sure that you are using your analytics to help you make decisions about what types of videos to make and really focus on story. Have some fun with it. What is the story you're telling in the video as you begin to create your videos? Right. And so in the second half year of the interview, we talk about batching videos, analytics, we go a lot deeper into analytics. We also talk about monetization, give you some monetization ideas for your YouTube channel. So let's go back into it. Let's go back and hang out with Pat. You mentioned that you are like still recording right now it's Wednesday. To go to for a video to come out this weekend. I would imagine that if someone is added like we've been talking about between these last two episodes here, if someone's adding YouTube to their business, probably batching videos batching here, what are your thoughts?
Batching is always a good idea. I do that with my podcast and do that with my writing. I have my writing days Monday. My recording day is Tuesday. My video day is Wednesday. That's just how I've done it with my schedule and it's always worked out really well. But the reason or a. The way that I'm able to have time to go and shoot this video for this new channel is because I batch process all my
other stuff. So that's how I've gotten this time. We just haven't yet gotten a head on Deep Pocket Monster because we just finished summer and I didn't have a lot of extra time to get ahead on these videos. Our plan is to get three weeks ahead on deep pocket monster stuff, but we haven't gotten there yet. So I will be getting into batch processing for this channel as well. But all that to say like it's best processing, that allowed me to now add this additional YouTube channel. So if you have a podcast or blog post or other things, there might be ways for you to get some time back to be able to dedicate to, to YouTube. And you don't need to dedicate a ton of time either. I mean, again, if you're starting simple, like we talked about in part one and you're recording answers to questions and you're doing just a little bit of editing, I would imagine that if you had 2 hours a week, you could do it for one video per week to publish. That is good enough and that's all you need. You just need good enough for right now and you can improve it. Perfect later.
Yeah. And you're not saying to be what you're doing on Deep Pocket Monster right now in terms of like going out to shoot video at different locations and all the. Yeah. So I am very, very curious whether you get 19 more cards. Don't tell me this week whether you do or not. I want to watch the video. I mean, I don't even know yet either because it's so I'm like my brain is like just no way you could find 19 more cards. Between in the next 24 hours. We'll see. But that's the story.
See, again, it's, it's it's it forces me to figure it out, too, right? Like, I'm going to go to these card shops and drive there. And I have, like, my hero cam with me on my chest so I can use my hands. But you don't need that. You can just use your phone also and a switch pot or something. Wink, wink. Yeah, you could. I could go to Facebook Marketplace and put in an inquiry or see who's selling these cards from this particular set. And now I have a community as well, who they might be local, and I can reach out to them as sort of a last ditch effort, which it may have to come down to that. But yeah, I'm excited to see where, where it goes and because I'm excited to see where it goes, I think the audience is going to be excited to see where it goes to and hopefully YouTube shares it with more people.
You've been mentioning analytics a lot as we start to wrap up this conversation and it's. The the the the data that YouTube gives you. What is it? Youtube data. What is it?
Youtube creator studio.
Creator studio. Thank you is like you learn a lot about like as you we've been talking about what's working what's not working okay create more of this content. How should we be using what are we looking at when we go into creator studio?
So when you sign into creator studio, often you'll see a little dashboard with some highlights. And right up front you're going to see the latest video that was published. And essentially it's ranking. And by ranking it's, it's, it's ranking compared to the previous ten videos and how it's performing, you're going to see click through rate, you're going to see watch time and you can click into it to just dive into a little bit more. You'll be able to then see, for example, where that traffic is coming from, suggested or browse or is it coming from search. And that can give you some insights. But in addition to that, I also look for the retention graphs. So where are people dropping off in the videos and where are people sticking around? And the more that I can make that graph flat as people watch the video, meaning more people who watch the video stick around to the end, the better and the more likely YouTube's going to push it out to more people. So those are those are really important. I also use the creator dashboard to see what comments are coming in. That's a great place to see how people are responding. What questions do people have? What do they like? Do more of that? What do they not like? Don't do that. I heart a lot of comments. It's impossible for me to heart every comment now, but when you heart a comment, that person who commented gets a notification that you saw their comment and that you hearted it.
And so that's just another small, easy way for people to feel like they're being heard, which is not common on creator platforms today. So I like that you can also see your revenue coming in, if any. If you're not at 1000 subscribers yet, you won't see any revenue though that you need 1000 subscribers to unlock AdSense revenue. That's not to say you can't use YouTube even from the start to generate an income. You can do affiliate marketing and mention products, you can do sales pitches and things like that, or talk about your experience coaching and feed people into your software. Whatever it is that you have to offer. You don't need to wait to 1000 people to to recommend those things. And then finally, the other thing that I'm always looking at is just which videos are getting viewed. You can see in the last 24 to 48 hours, it's on the dashboard. It'll show you like real time which videos within the last 60 minutes people are watching and which videos within the last 48 hours people are watching and you'll see like some bar graphs and things going up, things going down. If you see anything in there that looks weird or different or spiky, you want to go in and click into that and do some more research. Because then what happens is you might find that a video that you published six months ago just happens to be going off and you're like, What the heck happened? That happens a lot.
You go in there and what I often do when I when that happens is I try to investigate, okay, where is this coming from? Where is all the search traffic or where is all the traffic coming from within the last 48 hours from this video that popped? Oh, my gosh. It's just for whatever reason, ranked really high in search. Now, that's awesome. If that's the case, cool. There's not much you can do other than just like, keep praying that it stays up there or it gives you a sign to now create another video or a second video, a part to about that same one. Because that means YouTube's like, Hey, you, you are good at talking about this stuff. We're going to share it with more people, create more like that. But in many cases, those spikes happen because another creator created a video. And your video just happens to be a perfect follow up video for those people watching that that video from from another creator. And you can you can you can discover some insights based on that. You can reach out to that creator or you can essentially that tells YouTube, hey, this creator is connected to your audience. And so that can give you some insight, like, let's dig into their channel a little bit and see what else they're talking about and why are people interested in this. And you can begin to determine what you can do in your future videos that that might match up with their audience even more.
Dv You found that, by the way, real quick. You said 1000 subscribers. And is it like 4000 hours.
Or 4000 hours of watch time over the previous year? And if you are doing all the right things and consistent with coming out with a video per week, for example, you're likely going to get to 4000 hours of watch time. No problem. The reason why that's there is because, I mean, imagine a person getting a new account and then asking all their friends to subscribe. Now they got 1000 subscribers without any proof that they create videos that people want to watch. Right. And I've seen it happen before. And I'm not going to say this is going to happen and it's not common. But you could have one video published and get to 1000 subscribers in 4000 hours of watch time because you just hit the nail on the head with with the topic and whatnot. But likely that's not going to happen. So you just keep creating videos and keep having fun with it and keep trying new things and keep improving your skills. And then you'll see it. It'll happen.
I think we would be remiss before we wrap up not to talk about monetization. And you just alluded to it, there's different ways to monetize the ad sense and so forth. We just kind of talked about. But like if you're a coach, you sell courses, got a membership.
Sponsorships, brand deals, all those different. What's that brand deals like?
Brandt Yeah, so. Because that's the reason why most people would consider. Yeah, I want to add YouTube to my business. I don't know if the question is how easy is it to if you're getting if you're being consistent, you're doing all the things that we're talking about here. Is there a type of call to action for the YouTube platform that tends to work the best?
This is a great question because there are some arguments to be had on both sides of the coin. What I mean is YouTube wants people to stay on YouTube, right? The more that you can help people stay on the platform, meaning they want your video and then another video and then another video, or at least watching most of your video all the way through. And they're not leaving the platform. Well, then YouTube is going to help you and serve your video to more people. That being said, as marketers, we all know that we need to somehow, in some way, shape or form, get people from that platform, whatever that platform may be, into our email list in some way. There's a couple of ways to do that. You could take the longer approach of building the community. Getting people to just stay on YouTube as much as possible and then in your community posts area inside of certain videos every once in a while or in a live stream that all your community is now wanting to come to, you drop in a lead magnet of sorts, just like we all know how to do on our blog or on our podcast. So a lead magnet always is the way to do it. Something relevant that's going to be helpful is is best. I know some people, however, who will create a video and in the middle of that video they almost treat it like a quick little mineral ad. It's a little tiny promotion for their lead magnet right in the middle of their video.
And again, I would prefer to do that versus directly pushing people to your coaching offer or your online course. Let's get people to get a little bit more of an interaction with you through your email before the big ask happens. You know, you want to go on a couple of dates before you ask somebody to marry you, or at least a few. If you don't, it can be kind of creepy. So what I would recommend is choose the route that makes sense for the offer that you have, but try to find a lead magnet that might make sense. And if you create a video where that lead manages perfectly, makes sense to show. I would try to show it in an organic way. Right. Step five, you've got to find the right products. Here is the tool that I use. Actually, I created this tool. You can get it yourself. Let me show you how to use it. And if you want access to this tool, go here. Okay. Now, step number six. After that, do this, this and this organically inserting these things and using the power of video to show people how to use that lead magnet or what's inside is going to be really powerful. And it doesn't even take a very strong or aggressive call to action if what you're showing is is of immense value to them to be able to have a person sign up for it.
I really like that. How in this this goes back to one example, like you mentioned before, of like giving yourself that creative time to think through different things. So it's like, all right, I want to promote whatever it might be. How do I organically do that in the video rather than not saying anything's wrong with like having that call to action, but like. How can we organically make it part of that? You did that really well. I remember you did a video and it's got a ton of I don't remember how many views but the script video that you did. Yeah. And it was it, you were, you were promoting that platform but you were doing it in organic way, showing people how to use it to do something very specific that had a ton of value with it. Yeah.
So that video which was, I talked about it last time, I think where I was showing people a particular thing that you can do with the script to have it essentially know your voice and you can type out whatever you want it to say and it says it in your voice. It's kind of scary. It's called Overdub. And I wanted to promote the script in it as well. So I highlighted Overdub. I talked about the pros and cons of something like this. I demonstrate it, but I also just said, You know what? But I don't even use the script so much for overdub. I use it for this, I use it for podcast editing, I use it for videos, and it's really simple to use. In fact, if you want to check it out, just go through my link here and that's it. It just like perfectly tied in to what I was talking about. It wasn't a hey, let me take a break from this real quick to tell you about the special offer. It's just like this is what I use and I don't even use overdub much, but I use this thing instead. And like, if this sounds interesting to you to check it.
Out and it's done really well for you.
It has that video has seen over a million views descriptive reach back out to me to partner with me since that video, we weren't even partners then. I was just an affiliate and that affiliate offer has accounted for over, I think, 14 or $15,000 in earnings from a video that took a day to film less than a day. Just a little bit of thought behind it.
Yeah, I love it. So again, as we talked about before you go into all of these things we've been talking about, we've been talking for a total now of about an hour and 40 minutes between part one and part two. Here. We're just scratching the surface like we literally could talk about this for days and everything that we need to know to get those first 1000 subscribers step by step is in is in the course YouTube from scratch. Anything else that people should know about it?
I mean, it's what I wish existed when I started because nothing existed back then. And it took me nine years to get to 100,000 subscribers and then starting this new channel with all these things in mind. It took me 11 months with Deep Pocket Monster. Mind you, it's a different channel and different audience. But the principles all, all remain the same. We've taken out all the confusing stuff and we've just made it, like you said, step by step. So. Youtube from scratch. My videographer and partner Caleb is co sort of host with me on this course and he's got 7 to 10 years of experience on YouTube plus my ten. I mean, this is like 20 years worth of YouTube experience that you're getting instead of an easy to follow course for a very, very low price, relatively speaking. And in addition to that, if you get in and you're like, Hey, I don't like this, or It's not what I expected. You can ask for your money back. This is a 30 day what I like to call win with Flynn Money Back Guarantee, which means if you get in there and it's like not working for you or you don't see the value in it, ask for your money back, no questions asked.
We'll give it to you. I don't deserve your money if it's not something that's helping. So all the risk is on me. It's just going to take some an investment because that's what it is. This is one of those things that can clearly, especially if you know what your offers are, provide a clearer ROI on the other end. And then what I would recommend doing on top of that specifically for your audience is once you get in there and you start creating videos and you start getting people into your email list and start making sales track, that's one thing that I think would be best for your audience is to track, to see like, really, how well is YouTube actually helping you? Like, yes, you'll get views, yes, you'll get subscribers, but you'll also see direct sales coming in as a result of the relationships you're building there. And I think that's really exciting. So I appreciate you having me on for these two parts and for all of you in your attention. And I hope that we could see you in the course. And I know you have like some special stuff at the link that you mentioned earlier, but bonuses. I just appreciate your support.
Yeah, man. And just real quick, going back to before I. Have purchased other courses. You said it's an investment, but I've purchased other ones that again, like I went in there and I was like, I'm so overwhelmed, I'm out of here. Thousands of dollars.
Going to say like, I know some of those courses. I won't mention any names, but those are thousands of dollars that you invested in. Yeah. Yeah. This is not 1000.
By the way. No, no. So, Rick Widdecombe for Slash Pat, my friends, go get you two from scratch. I've got bonuses there for you as well when you enroll in the course through that link, my friends. Thank you. Thanks, man, for doing two parts here with me. Now go to the card stores real quick. Let's list out all the places that people can connect with you also.
Sure. Yeah. You're cutting into my card shopping time, man.
I know, I know, I know.
Smart passive income dot com is the main site. That's where my team and I, we're there to help you get to where you want to go. We help you get there. That's our motto. And wherever there may be, we can serve you. The YouTube channel YouTube.com slash Pat Flynn or Deep Pocket Monster Pocket Monsters, what Pokémon is actually short for and then App Heflin. On most social media channels, Instagram and Twitter are my most active, and I'm trying to be a little bit more active on LinkedIn recently. So if you want to find me there, you can as well.
Sweet. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Go find your cards. Are there, friend? You're hearing it here right now that I'm committing to getting my YouTube.
Channel.
Going. And what I mean by that is I'm committing to consistency. I'm not I don't necessarily care about number of subscribers. Of course, that's helps the ego. Right. But my only goal here is consistency. For a year I want to be producing and putting out a video per week over the next 12 months. So you're hearing it here right now. And helping me do that is, as you've been talking about here in the podcast between today and then part one last week is Pat's YouTube from scratch course walks you through step by step. I'm a proud affiliate. I put together a couple of bonuses for you when you enroll in Pat's program. It's an investment that is so. I've told badly, dude, you got to raise the price on this. And I'm not just like that's not some scammy kind of thing. Seriously Rick Morcombe for Pat and go check it out, let me know what you think and keep me updated on the file of the progress of your YouTube channel is going. There's a huge opportunity there, as you've heard between today and last week in part one. Thank you, my friends, as always, for tuning in, hanging out with me each and every week. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast here until next week. Be well. I'll talk to you soon. And.
