 Hello and welcome to the live stream today. We're going to be talking about YouTube channel growth and in particular Things that I think that have helped me with growing my channel now I'm not really comparing myself to anyone else in terms of you know, whether I've done this quickly or slowly or anything like that But there are certain things as I was sort of reflecting on the the YouTube journey so far Thinking about things that had had a positive impact on on this process So I'll be talking about that. I'll talk about some different sort of stages of my channel that I've been through since Starting out and then also what's what's to come for for next year really This is why I've been Reflecting on this over the past couple of weeks or so just thinking about the you know plans for the future and So this is where this is all come from. Hey, Neil. Great to see you here by the way Thanks for for stopping by I can't wait to see what's coming with your channel now that you're in full steam ahead with everything So we're looking forward to watching your growth to Let's start then with Talking about you know when I started my channel what I think sort of Helped to to sort of grow it from from from zero You know, I was starting with zero and I did have an existing sort of database of you know potential contacts Who may well have found you know my channel Interesting and I've always thought about YouTube has been sort of an inbound marketing tool from that point of view However, I was very particular about not actually Telling anyone about the channel or not actually promoting it in any other way except You know the things that was doing with the channel itself because it was also an experiment in sort of channel growth itself So every week I would do my weekly live stream at this same time However in the sort of beginning my weekly live stream was really more of the way that I saw it was more of a sort of Check-in to sort of update people on you know How the channel was growing progress and that sort of thing because in the beginning and this is one of the first things I think sort of helped with the growth is that I set myself this challenge of doing a hundred videos in a hundred days And why did I do that? Well, it was Doc Rock who mentioned that you shouldn't really take a look at your analytics before You've got a hundred videos under your belt because you know, you don't have any sort of meaningful data So that's why I set that as a as a target Then I extended that out to 365 videos in a year and That didn't quite go to plan fell a little bit short of that But nevertheless it was having that sort of goal in mind that sort of drove me to to sort of be creating content on a regular basis So as I say the weekly live streams were always a sort of more of a sort of check-in I did have a sort of topic cut to cover as well but the beginning of them was always sort of checking in with that with progress and In some ways, you know bringing people along on that journey with me as well So the first thing then that I think that has actually influenced the the sort of channel growth Then it would have been that initial burst of putting in the reps putting in a lot of time To well say a lot of time It was two hours a day basically was the time that I'd allotted for it But putting you know putting out a lot of content and that's not to say that you've got to put out a video a day and but I was quite a Particular about sticking to that so having a specific goal and setting a goal and trying to stick to it is something It's going to help whatever that is whether it's a video a week a couple of videos a week or whatever But just having that regular Posting what I'm doing right now at the moment. I consider it not consistent I am doing this regular weekly live stream Most weeks there are some weeks that are that I miss it But I'm not doing my long-form content on my channel as I used to do But I'll get back to that a little bit later But certainly giving myself that sort of head start with with getting a lot of videos out there meant that there was You know obviously more things on my channel. It wasn't just a case of you know one video every week or every month or so on So then you know obviously it's going to take a while for people to start Watching your other videos and for the sort of momentum to grow So the first thing would be just being consistent and then you know putting out as much content as you can you can actually get Get the time to do the other thing though That was a massive massive driver and I'd argue really the not that I'm arguing with anyone But I would argue that this is probably the main thing was that I was really active in a particular community And it was the e-cam live community Of course anybody who's followed my channel will know that the majority of my content in the beginning was actually e-cam live content Now it wasn't intended to be that way actually when I started my channel It was a test bed for me to practice this process of making all of my videos in one take with no edits Sort of life to tape as it were and I was originally going to cover the sort of tech tools that I use in my day-to-day in my You know other works so the sort of productivity tools and things like that that I use on my computer as it happens the tool that I Found to make these videos with e-cam live and also the stream deck the hardware that I was using in conjunction with that I was just absolutely Fascinated and blown away by their capabilities and really became very quickly a super fanboy of these two things And so that's why the videos all ended up or a large proportion of the videos ended up being about e-cam and stream deck just because it is still to this day something that I'm so enthusiastic about And so that's what I was you know was top of my mind And so that was the content I was making but a side benefit of that was that as I say because also Active in the e-cam community as as a learner You know being in there to figure out how to do things Then it meant that it was also giving sort of input to me in terms of you know questions other people were asking And so I was only really sharing you know things that I just discovered it wasn't like you know when I was making So many e-cam videos. I haven't made one for a while I tend to do the the major updates now, but I haven't made a sort of dedicated specific e-cam video for a while But it wasn't like I'd got years of experience of doing that And was then suddenly you know just sharing these years of wisdom e-cam was You know relatively new to me at the time and I was sort of sharing things that I'd discovered as I'd gone along So I mean this is a kind of side thing Don't think that you need to be you know the world's greatest expert in something to make videos about it You're always just sort of sharing whatever bits of knowledge you've gleaned and there'll be always someone who will benefit from that But coming back to the community side of things though It's a great place for ideation because you know you're getting all of these different things from you know seeing different comments seeing different Questions that people are posing and so often what would happen is somebody would ask a question And I would just go and make the video to answer the question And then I'd post that to my channel and obviously you know post it as a reply into the the group as well So that community side of things though it meant that you know, I became somewhat of you know one of the Many group experts there that could could answer questions And so that drove people to the channel obviously and I'm sure you know that that drove the the channel growth quite a lot So yeah being an active member of a community is a great way to you know and to be there to be helpful to you know Want to help people and you know take take the help yourself as well and be open to that Is it certainly a great way whatever field it's in You know, whatever field your channel is in looking to be active to sort of get to know people and for people to get to know You like that is is always a great thing Another thing that Definitely really helped me and I'll have to mention this I did a whole live stream about this last week TubeBuddy I really have used TubeBuddy since the very first day that I was on YouTube In fact, you know, I signed up to it before then To to help me with the setup of my channel and it really did help with you know The process of uploading the you know find and replace and various other different things These are the different tools that I've had that have helped I think with with the channel growth in many respects because you know, the channel grows when you have got you know good Well-crafted descriptions titles and all of that and I'm not saying that mine are perfect by any stretch And I'm sure there are far greater experts that on this subject of me but TubeBuddy and certainly in the beginning did help me with all of that stuff and Since has helped me with a whole load of other things that no doubt have you know helped with the channel growth for example talking about the Yeah, you know split testing for example I talked about this last last week I won't go into the whole TubeBuddy thing but split testing thumbnails to find out which are getting the better click-through rates All of these things are going to really sort of help to impact You know the the number of people that are clicking through onto your videos and the channel growth and so on There is our thanks rich. I've just noticed rich has dropped the link down in the the chat And it's also in the description as well, but TubeBuddy at the moment I've got a sale 40% off through Black Friday All you need to do is click that link and you'll see that there's a big coupon code right at the top There's two levels now there used to be three I think but there is basically a starter and legend level I highly recommend the legend because that's the one that I use and it gives you access to basically all of the features So the find and replace So the split testing and all of that kind of stuff. However, if you're just starting out what I did was I started on the The starter one because that's going to give you all the stuff that you need when you're just starting your channel So I do definitely attribute my my growth to TubeBuddy The other thing I like about TubeBuddy is the little Milestone things that you get when you hit a particular milestone That you get this nice little thing to post on social media and it's always nice to get those And I don't post them as regularly, you know, I used to be posting every ten subscribers So now I don't do quite that much, but it's nice to it's nice to see that growth and to sort of track it So the next thing then that had a massive impact would definitely be mentoring and support So being part of a mentoring group being part of a coaching group you know really help because When we're doing these things, you know It's often something that might feel a little bit lonely when you are creating your YouTube content You know, if you're just doing it in isolation isolation on your own and having to figure everything out Whereas being part of a mentoring group or a you know, some sort of structured support group can be a really great thing because Obviously you then have the you know, you can ask the questions You can get your questions answered from people who have been and done that You know trodden that path before but you also get to learn sort of vicariously through all the questions Other people are asking as well. So very often there might be questions that you might not have even thought to ask And yet, you know, it comes up in one of the sessions and then suddenly you're getting to learn from all of that knowledge So being part of a supportive group is is a great way to sort of accelerate growth in whatever it is You're doing. I mean, that's part of the reason why I set up the take one tech academy as well Is because I wanted to be able to provide that to other people and so, you know with all the resources that I've in there So I've got my e-cam live masterclass stream deck roadcaster keynote masterclasses as well also added in my YouTube beginner's guide and Discord beginner's guide and there's more to come as well. So I should mention that if you're interested go and check out take one tech slash academy and In there as I say, you'll find a link to to all the different things that that includes But the point is as well as obviously all the courses and more courses being added soon All of the masterclasses that you get access to there is also monthly workshops So these are sort of deep dives on specific topics So there's a number of those in their past workshops and there's more to come So those are every month just for Academy members and then there's also sort of accelerator courses, which are the Cohort-based courses these this is something for next year that I'm going to be doing a lot more of these I've only actually done the the kajabi one earlier on this year And that will be rerunning again in January followed by these other ones throughout the year throughout the year as well The other thing though is the group coaching and that is really where I see the biggest value is where you've got a group of people coming together You can get their questions answered But also as I say learn from the questions of other people are asking but again It's not just about you know asking me questions It's about all of the shared knowledge and wisdom that we've got like among us as well So yeah being a part of a structured group like that is something that I can highly recommend I should mention as well that I've got a cyber weekend or Black Friday Deal going on at the moment and I thought I'd just mention it right now because it is technically there the coupon code I haven't sort of put out any social media stuff about this But it is there technically so for you to take advantage of so the coupon code is Friday 23 Actually, no space in that Friday 23 and that will give you 30% off all the courses and also all of my icon packs With the Academy what I've done with that is it's 30% off the sort of first First payment whether that is on a monthly plan or an annual plan Just so that yeah There's always this thing with software as a service or subscriptions where you need to be conscious about the the existing members and so That's how that works basically it's 30% off all of my courses or 30% off the initial payment for either a subscription of a annual or monthly plan for the Academy Incidentally, I should just mention as well coming back to the Academy that the way that this works is There are two different tiers Basically, well, there's actually three the professional and premium The professional gives you access to all of those online courses and also the monthly workshops The premium is the one that's going to include those weekly Q&A's and some of those other in-person or rather live workshops and live courses I Should say are in there if you're interested in sort of one-to-one coaching though on an ongoing basis Including all of those other things then you can also look at the elite coaching level So that's where we have sort of dedicated one-to-one time each week And that is the flexible depending on how much how much time and An attention that you you need so anyway, you can check those out and as I say Friday 23 is the code to get 30% off there But yeah, certainly being a part of a mentoring group or having a support group is something that really you know Just rocketed my my journey along and that was at the time So that was with doc rock as well when I was looking to start my YouTube channel I came across doc rock and he always ended his videos with I'm doc you rock your content creation coach And I I believed him and he certainly did did a great job and lived up to that expectation So I joined his let's get live group and yeah It was it was fantastic to have those weekly weekly meetings to just sort of learn from all of the other great great folks in that group as well So I should say definitely check out doc rocks stuff as well if anybody's at that that point So that is the mentoring and support side of things another thing that played a sort of role in this though was Collaborations so collaborations and guest appearances. So I was on a number of different Podcasts number of different people's live streams and what that does is it obviously gets you out in front of an extended audience So it's you know putting yourself out getting yourself known Outside of you know, whoever happens to have found you organically through YouTube So that's the first thing but it works the other way as well By inviting guests onto your live stream because then rather than you sort of being you know having a an appearance on somebody else's show Someone else's live stream where you know, their audience get to know you Then if you're inviting people onto a live stream on your show on your channel Then you know, there's the potential for them to be bringing their audience to you in that way So with the live streamer backstage podcast that will be resurrected in the new year This was I've only done 25 episodes of that But obviously each one was an individual person where they came on and I interviewed them all about sort of live streaming and their live streaming setup But in doing that, you know them promoting their their appearance out to their social media Following then you know potentially that was a way to also bring in new folks to to see you know the show and then You know presumably if they were interested in the show with the person that they already followed then Presumably there was the opportunity then for them to to subscribe to follow along with that with the other folks So those sorts of collaborations and guest appearances I think also impacted the the sort of growth there to a certain extent And you're basically getting to leverage, you know other people's audiences as well And there's different ways you can do that, you know Some people reached out to me wanting to be on the on the wanting me to be on their show I should say and then obviously I was sending out invites to people to come along and be on my my podcast as well But you can also, you know be very active about, you know requesting, you know Reach out to people who you would like to be on their show and send out requests in that respect I'm going to be doing a lot more of that actually Next year with the launch of my book which should be out by the end of the year We'll see should be out by December really but anyway So, you know to promote that I'll be looking for opportunities opportunities there So those things though were, you know very much sort of in the the first phase of my channel I kind of think of it in two phases so far the first phase where I was very active about You know creating my content and as I say I was aiming for that target of 365 videos in the year and all these things that I've talked about were happening, you know through that period And that was basically from sort of May 20 21 through to about May 20 22 so the first sort of year effectively But then I went through a stage where I wasn't really posting as much to my my channel for a number of different reasons But one of the reasons was I sort of shifted focus to look at instead of The the channel being the primary focus and everything else being in support of that I was very much then thinking about it more as take one take as the business with YouTube being you know an inbound marketing tool I've talked about this on a previous live stream all about You know building out a content ecosystem where YouTube is just a part of that But I did have this distinct shift and at that point I started thinking about you know the other content that was creating So my courses, yeah, I've just mentioned many of those and incidentally that coupon code does apply to to all of those courses Individually as well. So Friday 23 that applies if you go to take one take I o slash courses You'll see here my discord in YouTube beginners guides the ecamm Zoom Roadcaster streamed at keynote master classes and so on those are all live at 30% of those with Friday 23 as well And then the accelerator courses so you can still sign up for the January version of the kajabi accelerator as well But all of this content here and I made the ecamm course last Sort of April 22 the zoom one came out about June 22 the roadcaster was about September October 22 or maybe November 22 And then the stream deck and keynote ones have come out today this year rather as well as the discord and YouTube guide And I'm kind of working on these other ones in the background as well So I did have this sort of shift of focus To be creating all of this other content when I had more than just a couple of courses Then I was looking to to create the academy to offer this on a subscription model some people you know go down the the route of Doing just standalone courses for a long time and then they regret not having a subscription model and other people that maybe Stop the standalone courses and go purely with subscription And arguably from a financial point of view from my point of view that is probably the best solution you know to just have everything subscription based And maximize the the sort of the long-term revenue. However, I'm not doing that I'm just offering still both because I think that some people don't want to be tied into a subscription They just want to buy you know one course or whatever And so I don't want to sort of withhold the information from people who just don't want to take on a subscription There's lots of reasons why people wouldn't want to do that So that's why I'm still allowing you know, I mean I'm offering both options Hopefully with the subscription though. I'm offering enough additional value to make that a you know Available value proposition then you know with the one-to-ones side of stuff all the you know The group coaching and all that kind of stuff. So that's where I'm coming from with this But in any case this last sort of 12 months or since sort of May last year I should say has been this sort of shift of focus and so that's why I'm thinking about this as a sort of second phase Of the channel because I have been really Largely just doing this one weekly live stream rather than you know, also another six videos every week I am looking to return to doing more videos, but the interesting thing is that even though my my sort of content output has Significantly dropped since that that first 12 months on YouTube The channel growth sort of stopped So it's not it doesn't mean that now that I'm not sort of putting out as much content That the the channel growth has tailed off. In fact, I'm still getting you know Increased views across all of those at those early videos to put that into context for the first For the first Just noticed e-camp Let's just stop my recording. Never mind as long as we're still live for my first Sort of seven months on YouTube May to December of 2021 I actually hit the 1000 subscriber mark at Bang on New Year It was literally half past 11 at night on New Year's Eve So that was a thousand subscribers in that time then in 2022 It I added another 3,000 so I was up to 4,000 by the end of 2022 right now I'm on around about 8,500 and I can kind of see the rate It's a fairly consistent rate of how many get added every day give or take, you know a few here or there And so I'm expecting to be on about 9,000 by the end of this year So year one basically a thousand subscribers year two it added on 3,000 and this one being the sort of the second full year third year though is An additional 5,000 subscribers So not only is the number of subscribers going up, but the sort of rate of increase of subscribers is going up as well I'll talk about Sort of plans for the future a little bit later But that's just what I've sort of experienced So very much this year has been about sort of building out the content ecosystem putting in The foundations of the Academy putting in the foundations of everything That you know the YouTube channel is sort of an inbound marketing tool for obviously I'm not holding back any of the information I've talked about this many times before but I don't ever put a thing on where I'm You know, I'm only going to tell you part of the thing on YouTube That's so that you've got to come and do a course to find out that the truth or the full story That's not how it works. It's the case of you know, you put out all the free content You know, sometimes your best content out on YouTube But then the idea of the courses is that you have You know a cohesive Structured program that people can follow so information is free, but people are paying for the organization They're paying for the other resources that they're getting So so that's the thing with that. But yeah, very much this year was focused on putting in all the sort of foundation And I've got a couple more additional courses to add before I see that that Foundational layer is complete. I'll be adding lots more as it as we go forward But for that foundation layer, there's just a couple more things to add in The other thing this year that was a slight shift Not really related to YouTube growth as such but to do with business growth was that when I started I wasn't really focused on You know growing my email email list from the YouTube stuff So I rarely had a sort of lead magnet associated with it I was rarely sort of promoting anything else because I didn't really have much to promote in the in the early days in any case But I had this sort of change where I was a lot more conscious about Making sure that YouTube was driving the growth of the business rather than the other way around So in the beginning if you went to take one tech I oh, it was very much a YouTube website so it was the website to support the channel You know upcoming live stream upcoming videos, you know recent videos all of that sort of stuff where it's now if you go to my home page I don't really actually mention YouTube on the home page at all It's very much the you know the take one tech business YouTube is just a sort of path into that Another thing then that I've done this year, which is definitely helped with the channel growth is And last year actually to a to an extent as well is you know doing events and online events So for example on the e-cam channel Pretty much pretty much all e-cam at the moment But there was the e-cam zoom workshop that I did in 2022 that was a series of over five days Five different speakers and then we all sort of talked about some particular aspect of zoom But that was a way to you know Build exposure or get some exposure and also sort of build the email list by being able to contact folks after the fact as well I've also done two further workshops on e-cams channel this year So I did the e-cam advanced in February and then I did the e-cam tools and tech workshop earlier on this year as well So again this idea of sort of leveraging You know another audience or another company another person's audience is is something that definitely helps with that It got me the opportunity to be in front of the e-cam YouTube audience and you know positioned as the expert there You know obviously they are giving me the the stage as it were so there's sort of an implied trust and respect there So so that was definitely a way that I know that I got new sort of subscribers from that because I see every time I do one of those there's a distinct sort of spike in subscribers, but then also You know people sign up to my courses off the back of that as well So from a business point of view it was good from that that perspective as well Then there is also another thing that is kind of similar to that is Giveaways and I've done a couple of giveaways. I need to do more of those I think that when you are doing these you need to be very conscious about exactly what it is You're giving away it needs to be relevant to your content relevant to your audience. There would be no point me you know Running some sort of gardening supplies giveaway that is absolutely nothing to do with my my my channel However, you know, I did a roadcaster giveaway earlier on this year I did a stream deck giveaway the the December before that's a just 12 months ago And the part of the the process with this is if you use a service like King sumo is the one that I use Just because it's part of the app sumo subscription But that one enables you to do something where you know somebody enters their email address To enter the giveaway But then there are ways that they can get sort of additional tickets additional entries if you like by Performing certain actions so things like go and subscribe to my YouTube channel Go and check out my website go and subscribe or follow me on Instagram or whatever So you can set a whole series of different tasks for them to do if they want to do that to get additional entries And you can also assign, you know different Numbers of entries to different things so it means that you can kind of make things seem, you know more important So, you know go and subscribe to my channel five more entries go and follow me on Amazon five more entries You know, you can make them like that's where as maybe go and check out You know my podcast or something might be lowered down the list When I did the roadcaster duo giveaway there were I forget now 18,000 entries and 18,000 participants I should say in that giveaway So that's 18,000 email addresses But then there were also when you look at those multiple different things that they could do they were actually 970,000 entries so What started out for me as you know a roadcaster duo giveaway because I already knew when I saw it that this was the ideal device for me Yes, so I wanted to give somebody else one of them as well Yeah, that that's turned into 17,000 contacts effectively for my email database and also as I say there were so many people then went through to Subscribe on YouTube now as I say it's important that the content is relevant So with all of those new subscribers, I was doing roadcaster content So I knew that if somebody was interested in winning a roadcaster duo giveaway And I've got a load of roadcaster duo content on my channel Those were people who would likely be you know stick around as well not just subscribe for the giveaway and then unsubscribe Obviously some of them might not have liked my face and subscribed afterwards. There's always that possibility or certainty But anyway, so it did to have a definite sort of spike up at that that point Back to the events as well though. This is something that I'm going to do for for other companies as well So I've got one coming up. I'm going to share this in the next sort of week or so But just as I did the Ecamm workshops, then I'm doing this for a couple of other companies coming up as well I also did obviously ecams in person event the ecamm creator camp So I was running one of the workshops there with Daniel as well And we were talking all about zoom and an ecamm and so on and once again Oh, sorry using advanced presentations with ecamm into into zoom So again a workshop that was was relevant But yeah, these are all ways to just sort of increase your reach and get other people Into into your your orbit as it were The other thing then is working with brands. So this is something that's happened Fairly sort of organically over the over the period and it didn't happen at all in the beginning And then there was a point at which, you know brands started reaching out to me And it's worth talking about this because I think it's something that you know when you see people saying, you know Oh, this company sent me this or sent me that, you know How how do you get to the point where that is happening and I can't say specifically, you know Oh, you need to be at this level because it's going to be different for in terms of subscribers should say for every For every manufacturer and so on but what I will say is that's what brands are looking for in my experience is They're looking for people with an existing audience Often they're looking for people who are already using their products, you know that they can see that they're already, you know fans of their products and And yeah, they've got an audience that is relevant to the the product or service that they have to offer Now that isn't always the case. I do get people reaching out to me asking me if I want to try this or try that And I've rejected far more things than I've, you know, accepted. So for example, you know, road reached out to me After I'd been using the roadcast to pro to for, you know, a year I'd made a load of content on it and made the course about it And then I covered their new announcement of the road streamer X and the roadcaster duo and they just reached out to me to say Hey, you know, we've seen all the content you're creating and we really like it We'd like to you know, send you this thing to check it out So so that sort of happened sort of organically that way. It was the same with Algato They had seen, you know, I'd been making predominantly, you know, ecamp and Algato content on my on my channel And so they reached out to me and, you know, sent me the stream deck plus, for example, when it first came out And a number of other different things that we've had conversations back and forth about, you know, future collaborations and so on So those kind of things happened sort of organically I also get companies, though, that I haven't necessarily worked with that are contact to me like one of them would be You can see one of them just behind me there, the OBSBOT tail air So they reached out because they'd seen that I was doing a lot of live streaming stuff and asked, you know If I'd be interested to try out their the tail air and how that would look, you know What sort of how I would like to sort of cover that Now I'm only gonna accept These kind of things from companies that, you know I have a great interest in their product or I believe in their product or, you know It's something that I think would be relevant the tail air in particular was something that in One of my ongoing coaching clients that I've been working with for a long time now They have a very particular use case where I could see that this could well be The thing for them. So that was the my sort of thought process when they're trying this out You know, not to mention, you know, it had great reviews from other people So I was really interested to try it out myself, but I could see a very direct application Another example would be YOLO life. So they reached out and asked if I would like to test their YOLO Instream, which is their vertical streaming device for live streaming from this mobile device to You know vertical platforms like Instagram and TikTok and so on They actually contacted me to ask if I would like to test one of their other devices And I said, you know what? There's one particular device of yours that I'm really intrigued by Because it solves a problem that I know some of my audience have got and that was vertical streaming to Instagram because Instagram said a year ago that they were going to start rolling out Livestreaming to Instagram from a desktop app like Ecamm They started doing it, but it's been a very very slow rollout and the majority of people still don't have that ability The in-stream device though allows you to stream from this standalone device However, if you are using something like Ecamm, you can literally just plug an HDMI cable into the in-stream Have your output from Ecamm going down that HDMI cable and then you've effectively got a standalone Bridge between Ecamm and Instagram to be able to to do that Not to mention just being able to stream from the field as it were and incidentally in stream and three of those Obspot cameras is a great combination too So so yeah That was a case where they reached out to me and I had a specific product of theirs That I'd already heard about and was really intrigued about I'm creating some content right now for a company called Veed.io. They make an online Editing platform that I've been using to create my short form content They contacted me to ask if I'd like to you know Look at doing a sort of paid collaboration with them where I created the content And again, it wasn't a service that I used but I said well Let me try it and then you know if it's something that I'm comfortable with and comfortable with recommending Then I will I will recommend it. So that's just a little bit about the sort of sort of collaborations that I've had And there's been a number of other companies sent me stuff that I've just I've not liked I've not made the content about it There've been other companies that have reached out to me and it's just not something that you know I'm interested in you know one of them made an alternative for the Fethead or the Cloudlifter And I'm sure it what which is by the way a Sorry a sort of booster for a microphone To you know give you that booster in game So if you're using an SM7B for example with some mixers people will say the gain is quite low So you need some sort of booster in there and they said would you like to test this out? And I thought well, I can't really test it out because I don't need one So so it was a kind of thing of I didn't have a microphone to test it with necessarily I could put it in here But I didn't feel that it was going to be right for me to be testing that so sometimes I sort of reject things on Quality basis like I've just I don't want to be associated with a particular brand other times I reject things just on the point of view that I don't think I'm positioned Correctly whether or not it's a great thing or not to be the one to to talk about it So there's lots of reasons why I reject though So I'd say that you know I've rejected far far far more of these potential opportunities Then then I've accepted I also reject ones that say hi First name we really like your content. We've been watching you with interest. It's like oh dear You've had an email failure and you haven't actually been watching my content at all So there are those ones as well So in terms of let me just check in with the chat actually before I talk about sort of future plans as well Hey Parker, great to see you here. Thank you for stopping by and hello to you too Rich Thanks for all the links that you've been dropping in Neil I found communities and networking has helped me so much in the last few months to slowly grow my channel a lot of it's that Oh, thank you. I didn't read until the end and then I've just read it But thank you very much Neil. That's that's great It's yeah really looking forward to seeing you know now I know that you've had a change of a change of pace to focus more on the content So I'm watching eagerly to see Where this where this all goes because I know it'll go to great levels with you because It's just such a nice and knowledgeable person on all of this as well. So great stuff Neil Richard hey to you too There is Jeremy Leveraging the knowledge of the group and contribute back often that is exactly it I mean, we are lucky really with the ecum live community To to have a community that is so sort of supportive of one another as well Yeah, it's I feel really really lucky to have found ecum and found the other community Ryan. Hey, hello. I'm great to see you here as well. I Couldn't just say the word. Hello. I'll try that again. Hello Ryan What are your thoughts on doing a podcast? Do you have one or is it worth it? For example a video YouTube podcast or just an audio podcast. Um, so I did start my livestreamer backstage podcast last December and I did 25 episodes of it over was it December It was probably earlier than that October November. I did 25 episodes of it and I'm gonna start it up for another season The beginning of of next year and that was all about interviewing live streamers about their their sort of journeys and specifically How they were using live streaming as a tool in their business because that's kind of my whole thing really is, you know I've got the YouTube channel here where I talk about You know the tech, you know, there's the stream decks the roadcasters and all that kind of stuff But I'm very much focused on you know in the academy in my take one tech Academy on helping people You know use this stuff in their business and so the the purpose of the live streamer backstage podcast was therefore, you know for me relevant to To my my sort of core audience There'll be people who watch my videos who only want to know how to do something on stream deck or Only want to know how to do something on a roadcaster or whatever and the video hopefully solves some problem there But my core audience I always think of being you know business folks who are looking to use all of this tech in their business And so live streamer backstage podcast interviewing people about how they they use live streaming As an inbound marketing tool as a tool in their business and then also looking at their Their setups now the way that I actually ran that was I streamed it live to LinkedIn and also simultaneously to amazon live Because on amazon live You have the carousel where you can put in products and so on so every at the end of the the show the last 15 minutes Was always focused on my guest live streaming setup So I'd have all of the products that they use in there So from an amazon point of view it was great as an amazon show from from that respect Something a little bit different. You know people were on their shopping On amazon weren't you know rather than it just being a regular sort of Shopping show as it were just with product after product They could actually see a real world use case and see people talking about how they're using this tech in real life So that's why I thought it worked quite well on on amazon obviously on LinkedIn It was there for you know people were talking about using live streaming as a tool in their business And I think a lot more people could actually use live video As a tool as an inbound marketing tool as a promotion tool Whatever it you want to think of it as for their business So that's why I did it on LinkedIn what I then did though was I took that live show And I added it as a recorded video up onto youtube So you can find all of those on my on my channel As I say it was something that I thought was relevant to my audience. I did sort of have a debate When I was thinking about whether to post it on my regular youtube channel or not You know should I set up a different channel? But yeah, it was my my little Mentoring support group Well, sorry mastermind support group. I should say the creators pod and they sort went like the He says of course it should go on your regular channel because it's all relevant to all the other stuff So, um, yeah, I think that that is a great thing to do Obviously the the podcast side of things is a video podcast podcast on the channel But I did also of course release it as an audio podcast And so yeah that that again was something that was You know a potential to bring people into the youtube channel And with the podcast being relevant to the content on the youtube channel You know a great sort of bit of cross promotion there So I always used to say, you know in the the audio of the podcast Obviously people were talking through the gear that they'd got And at that point I would always say, you know, if you want to check out the the pictures or the video of The guest studio setup then go and check out the video and it would be linked in the podcast podcast description. So yeah, definitely definitely a good thing to do there Hey, james great to see you here and thank you very much james. I've got to say You know, you were certainly one of the Early champions of my my channel and my content as well And I was the guest on your show was one of the first shows that I was a guest on so Always appreciated your your support and advocacy as well james of I remember with I remember well the time in the let's get live facebook group Actually, you called out one of my videos and just said you've got to go and check this guy out So yeah, I definitely have not forgotten that Uh, hey dan great to see you Uh, maybe a little bit late because of the time change. So the times never change in in thailand apart from obviously incrementally a minute at a time, but um Yeah, the times don't change So my live stream is at a different time depending on whether your clocks have changed and all of my other things are So there's always this two weeks of craziness around the time the clocks change. Why everyone can't just stay the same I don't know Want to join the academy just don't have funds right now. I want to make sure I zero in on how to make the best use of it No problem at all fully under understand that that's that's quite uh Quite all right. Thank you Rich, but if you have your if you ever need anything, you know, you can always reach out So if ever the uh, you need anything that I can help with then yeah I don't put stuff behind a paywall You know, if anyone's got any questions or anything or just come and ask in the uh in the Take one tech discord server as well. That's a great place to Get questions answered. So maybe I should probably pop that up here as well So if you want to join the take one tech community go to take one tech.io slash family That will give you a link through to the the discord and then anyone can go in there and just ask questions It's free to join It's free to join that Are you late because of your kids? Yes, that's that's always that's always an issue But uh, great to great to see you here. Anyway, hey dan great to see you as well And yes, everyone's back to normal had uh, I won't go into it here, but uh, yeah had a Quite the week of it this week since the last livestream, but anyway, it's all all better now. So Right, so let's just then go into I talked about these sort of two distinct phases as I see for my My channel and I already talked about how uh, yeah, the youtube channel growth has been You know consistent in terms of, you know steady steady growth the rate of increase has increased If you drill down into, you know specific Months or weeks or days or whatever You will see that there are certain spikes and these are definitely attributable to some things So, you know when I start posting regular content guess what I get a spike up in my My views subscribers and things like that When I sort of go quiet for a couple of weeks because I've missed out on a weekly live stream or two Then yeah those numbers drop because I'm not getting the returning people of my existing subscriber base potentially And also there's not that sort of new Content coming out. So when I say that the growth has been steady There is always these little peaks and troughs and things like that But this is probably a good thing to say a good point to say, you know Whilst it's good to sort of check your stats and take a note of what is happening It's definitely not good to sort of overly analyze these things To the point where you know, you have a down day And then you're suddenly suddenly wondering why and trying to look to change everything So always try and have a little bit of perspective on these things I'm just looking away because I'm going to grab my youtube stats It probably since we're talking about youtube growth, it'd be worth at least Having a look at at least a chart or two to sort of show What I'm talking about with all this So I'm just going to go over to my analytics and then what I'm going to do is talk about That sort of plans for next year and how I want to grow things because I will be shifting focus Back to the channel again to a certain extent So while this just opens, I might as well just go straight into that because Yeah The foundations for the academy is what I've been focused on this This year, you know, as I say building out those other courses putting all the infrastructure in place There's been a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes That isn't talked about that isn't you know on public display And so I've just been getting all of those different things in in place Let me go in here a different way And next year though That will be in place and I'll be focused more on actually driving people into it So let me just come to this one though. I'll show you where we are with the stats So this is the chart for the last 28 days. So you can see that Views steadily sort of going up and I haven't really been putting out videos here You can see there's a video gone out there and there's a video gone out there But this is pretty typical really if you look at this span over a month You're going to see that it just goes up like that I know some people have these like hockey stick growth where they have some particular bit of content that just suddenly takes off And then that's it. They're on a different trajectory. I've never really had that I've had certain times when I've had peaks so if I go to my lifetime And we're still looking at the views by the way But you can see that you know, you could basically draw a line of best fit through here And it's going to be a pretty sort of straight line going up But it obviously if you drill down into any one of these particular points here You know, you can see that there's the the lines going sort of up and down up and down up and down So when you look at it, you know on a you know over three months or whatever You might see these sort of spikes But as I say, don't pay too much attention to Those except to just notice what might be causing them. I mentioned that giveaway that I ran earlier These spikes here so where I had this massive jump up That was when I was running the giveaway and that caused this spike up now What I've noticed is although this area down here Looked really tiny by comparison at the time, obviously, you know without this future data to to reference You know, this was looking, you know, the same kind of shape just with lower numbers on the the sidebar there But what I will point out is that there were these distinct points where there was something that happened that caused a leap in my You know my views or whatever So here we were going along at this particular level and then just about here There was this sudden jump up where everything was in this sort of low You know below 50 and then suddenly there was a jump up to 198 on this one day And then it kind of settled down a little bit, but it never really settled down to where it was before So I've had these consistent things and then there was another one here We stayed the same just sort of steady growth and then there was a jump up around here And then there was steady growth again and then there was another jump up around here And so it's been this series for me. It's been a series of sort of step-ups Like that and you know in a year's time These ones here that look massive in terms of the you know, the change These will just appear like little blips like they are down here So that's been the way that I've experienced it as I say some people get these maybe I'm doing something wrong I haven't got that sudden trajectory change, but I don't really worry about it And one of the things then that has driven those is where I've been reacting to some specific news or whatever in my in my My you know content field or whatever you want to call it. So like when there wasn't a new The new roadcaster came out the roadcaster pro 2 I made a load of videos all about it And that caused a sudden spike up and got me a different sort of maybe a new audience As before I wasn't covering roadcaster stuff with Algato stream deck I was always trying to be you know at the forefront when there was a new update People used to talk about me living in the future because I'm a few hours ahead But the timing of it worked out really well for me in some respects because I would see that there was an update come out for stream deck For example, I'd make the video about it immediately And for me it might be I've been in the evening But it meant that when everyone else was waking up in the rest of the world My video was already out there and it was kind of one of the first when people were searching for this kind of stuff So trying to be a little bit reactive to stuff that's going on in your In your orbit in your you know your field Is also something that I think has helped me I've sort of forgot to mention that one earlier, but it definitely It definitely helped with with that so Hey rich, I've just noticed that myself Now that you said it Richard just said wow almost a million views. I hadn't kind of noticed that sort of creeping up But yeah, there it is if lifetime of the channel we're up to 908,000 Views now that is pretty pretty pretty nice It's kind of mind boggling if I stop to think about it. So so I won't I'll just move on The what's worth talking about here though. So subscribers as well What you can see here is whilst the views have been sort of taking those steps up Here is my Subscribers pretty consistent every day. I guess I'm getting around about Between 10 and 20 a day is is kind of what I'm getting a few less on a couple of these days Actually between five and 20 let's say whatever So that is still pretty consistent This one here look this one where I got and that's what's sort of skewing this graph is this one little reading here 168 in one day that would have been when I was doing my rocaster duo giveaway So that's kind of skewed all of this this graph actually But the the point to notice here though is if I go back to just like a 90 day Let's give this a bit better perspective if I go down to back to a 90 day That's what my subscribers look like on an on a you know an average day Sort of increasing by that much each day But if you go to the views as well It will show you on this timeline where your videos are here is where I posted a short Here are a series of videos And so it is directly related to you know when I'm posting I definitely get spikes Don't you know I can see that I've posted a series of three videos I got more views because people were returning to watch my videos So so yeah, I it's clear if I've posted more content Then the views increase the the watch time increases and all of that kind of stuff as well So I said that I was going to talk about my plans for for next year Because this was part of the reason that sort of drove the idea for this live stream was I've just been reflecting on you know where I am with the youtube channel and the growth that I've experienced However good that is I like I say I don't compare myself to anyone else. It is what it is But I was thinking about 2024 and Very much this year as I say has been putting in the foundations with all the the content ecosystem Creating all the courses and stuff like that and as I say a lot going on behind the scenes 2024 is really the time when I'm looking to sort of capitalize on that By you know promoting the courses in the academy a lot more than I have done Because apart from talking about it in my live streams every so often and mentioning it Did I mention the tape one tech academy today? I think I did But apart from doing it here. I don't really promote it as such But next year is definitely going to be the time for me to to get into promoting that a lot more But I will be getting back to more youtube content because as I say I've been really only doing my weekly live stream and a few extra long form videos here and there So so yeah, we'll be getting back to a lot more long form Content actually over the next few weeks as well. I've got a lot of videos to to make and put out But I mentioned that the growth had had so far. I wrote those figures down somewhere Let me just get this because I did write them down. So yeah, May to December 2021 zero to a thousand subs 2022 added 3,000 subs to get up to 4,000 2023 based on my sort of the incremental increase every day I will probably have added 5,000 this year to get up to 9,000 I never set a subscriber number as a as a goal because I'm not in control of it You know, it's not something that I can actually control, you know targets need to be and goals need to be You know measurable and attainable and all this sort of stuff But it needs to be something I'm in control of and I'm not really in control of that as such However, you know, I always do have an idea in my mind of you know, where I'd like the channel to be And it would be nice to get to the 20,000 or 15,000 by the end of next year So that's adding in a considerably larger number of subs, you know, it would be 5,000 this year, you know, that would be You know, 11,000, you know over the course of next year. Is that doable? I don't know That's why I'm not saying it as a goal. It's just sort of an idea I've got in my mind But I do think that actually if I get back to the regular content that I was posting before Starting from the level I am now, it seems to me to be something that would be attainable So yes, that's that's kind of the idea that I've got in my head And I'm just putting it out there so that we can revisit this Revisit revisit this next year In order to deliver on this and some of the other things I'm looking to do because I am going to be doing more content on other platforms as well More short form content, but also more Livestreams as well. So I'm going to get back to doing my live streamer backstage podcast That is a live stream in itself But then I'm also going to do a sort of weekly Tech news style Program as well and that will likely be on LinkedIn rather than YouTube I'm still debating where to do that. So I might well do it on YouTube as well I'm not sure or instead of we'll have to see but I want to focus more on I want to focus on on growing on LinkedIn as well from a live video point of view So I may well do that do that there Incidentally, I did a live stream on this channel I want to say about a month and a half ago something like that about You know, creating a news style green screen scene And that was basically me building out the thing or showing the thing that I'm going to use for that Tech news update style show and incidentally, the point of doing that is to also then Clip out short form content from that to then to then post to short form platforms as well Then also next next year, what I'm looking to do is more of my my sort of events So I did my digital stage revolution event Which was intended to be a live in person event in Dallas and also streamed on YouTube or done on YouTube It ended up just being purely virtual just because things came up I couldn't actually travel for the extent that I was intending to So it was a purely a zoom event in the end However, that's something that I'll be refining and delivering in multiple different times Next next year as well In person as well. So actually a live event in person as well as as online as well I mentioned rebooting my live streamer backstage or coming back for a second season of that I've also got another podcast that I want to do Which is more just a sort of solo podcast of me talking about all the things that I talk about In the Academy in the the digital stage revolution event in my book Which is also due to be coming out So all of the things that I talk about on my channel all the things that I talk about in the book In the Academy in the event It's all the same stuff. It's just in different formats and in different, you know to different depths basically So the podcast would just be another sort of Sort of Avenue for talking about all of that same sort of stuff But that would be something that I would record live and then do and then post that on to the the channel as well So more content there as well And then also looking at other ways to Sort of work with and collaborate with Other creators, but also other brands as well and incidentally one thing that's been Really really interesting for me because I'm a total geek and I love this sort of stuff I mean the reason why I might sound, you know, like a little bit of a surprise The reason why I might sound, you know, like a little Excited puppy about things is because I am, you know all the new tech I really just love digging into it and one of the opportunities that's come about which has just been really For me, you know, I've really enjoyed it. It's actually working with some of Tech companies and tech brands on the development side So people have reached out to me to ask me for product software and services On the development side to help them with that side of things and that is just really a Really something I just relish the opportunity to do So I've really enjoyed being a part of, you know conversations with different brands About that sort of stuff as well, and I'm looking to do more of that just from a personal Satisfaction perspective. I really love love doing that. So those are my sort of plans for for next year Um, let me just check in. Hey, uh, marcio. Am I pronouncing that right? I'm never sure. Great to see you here as well Hey, David. Great to you too Uh, don't give away your brilliance for free. You see, I would kind of disagree with that actually because as I say I think that um, I I'm not a fan of somebody Uh, I'm not a fan of a marketing technique where people kind of Just give you a little flavor of something and then like everything else You're not given the full picture Especially I know that this is not what you're suggesting But especially when it is in like a sort of sales funnel scenario where someone says download this guide and you're Watch a free video and then you think say download this guide and it'll tell you all you need to know And then you download the guide and then they say oh But if you really want to know everything you've got to do this course and then if you get into that course And if you really want to know everything you've got to go on to the next level Having everything always behind a paywall. I'm not so so keen of keen on and I'm also a big proponent of Actually, just give it all away because there are people that want to learn in different ways There are people who book calls with me if you would like to book a consultation anybody You are always welcome to do that take one tech.io slash consultation. I only mention this now though because invariably somebody will book a call with me and I will respond with You know, hey, I've actually already made a video about this and it explains this particular thing that you've got this issue that you've got in detail and Always the person says oh, I know I've already seen that video I just want you to tell me how to do it for my particular use case So so yeah, I'm all about actually just giving everything away for free Knowing that there are people who want the additional support knowing that they want the structure of a course Knowing that they want the up-to-date information. You know, I've got a You know two and a half years worth of e-cam videos on my channel A lot of them are out of date now because e-cams moved on since then so So yeah, I I appreciate the the comments and I know that that isn't quite what you meant, but I do I do always I am always aware of my The value that I have though as well Um, so that is just a little bit of a sort of insight into You know my sort of journey to get here and sort of my plans for for next year As well in terms of the the growth and of the channel and where I sort of see things growing But I do have to say I never really judged myself based on anyone else I know that there are people who have had faster growth rates slower growth rates different Experiences and whatever. I'm just trying to do things, you know and and get to the Next step the best way that I can and just try to improve on myself over that time So I don't necessarily be disheartened by By anybody who's doing things faster or slower. I do certainly Look at what other people are doing though because there's always things you can learn So it's not like I've just got the blinkers on and not looking at anybody else's content I found that when I became a youtuber myself Then suddenly everybody else's video became about so much more than The thing that I was watching it for so now when I'm watching people Reviewing gear or you know watching tutorials. I'm always looking and noticing The the good things that I can take from those in terms of you know The techniques that people have got and things like that So it's not that I'm completely blind to everyone else But I certainly don't sort of compare myself in that way. Um, so There we go. Neil, I think it's important to give free advice It helps build credibility and provides value and drives people to ask For paid future help exactly it is you're basically just You know, I'm using youtube as a way to demonstrate my expertise And if you think about the the client journey You know, if you were looking to get attract clients normally people are paying a lot for advertising And when they are paying for advertising, they've got to grab someone's attention Then they've got to take them on this entire journey where they You know are evaluating you Deciding if you're the right person for the job And so on and then and then they get to the point where they maybe have a call with you to you know establish If you're you know, you you can help or whatever and you've got to go through this sort of sales process Um, actually youtube is just an amazing Inbound marketing tool because you have this way of people potentially being able to see You know watch hours of you and have this feeling that they've got to know you And as long as you're being your true authentic self in your videos Then then yeah, it's it's a great way to to sort of cover off a huge proportion Of that initial steps that people need to take so that when people do come through to Either look at buying one of your courses or book a call with you or you know Take you up on your product or service or whatever They've already gone through that you know the majority of that client journey And so it's just a case of of almost You know the transaction then when it comes to to that point I mean, I have discovery calls on my channel on my website rather So people book like a 20 minute call to have a chat with me figure out if i'm the right person to help them out Um, but most people don't bother with that They just go straight into a paid call or they go straight into to buying a course off the website because Presumably they've already had the experience of me. Uh, you know through the through the channel. So, um, yeah It's it's definitely yeah, it's definitely there um and uh, yeah this so That the It's it's not it's not about giving everything away obviously. Um, but yeah, we're having the having the paid stuff there It's it's just a different format really. Um, there'll be some people who will buy my book for You know $15 or whatever it is And that gives them, you know a huge amount of this stuff that i've covered for free on the channel But it also covers a huge amount of stuff that i delivered in a you know thousand dollar four day event So, um, it's just it's just different formats for me. That's the way I think of it different formats of the same content and I think people people know that so With that said, um, that is that is all I want to cover in this session If you've got any particular questions or comments or feedback that come up if you're watching in the replay though Do feel free to either drop them in the in the chat here or in the sorry the the comments I will say One thing that I find at the nearly a million views mark is that I do get behind on my comments It's hard to keep up with them or the best place to do it is definitely in the discord server So that's a much better place where you're likely to get a much more immediate answer to to things So definitely check out that for those watching on the replay I will go back at some point and leave a link to some other youtube channel growth style content over here And I want to say a big thank you to my channel members I've got a couple more to add onto that. I've just realized I'll get out onto that today or tomorrow Thanks so much. I'll see you all next time