 Are you a marketer, a youtuber or just active on social media and you're wondering how to start your videos or your presentations? Well, if you are, you know that the first 5 to 10 seconds of any video you do whether it's online or whether it's a presentation that's offline are the most important part of your entire video or presentation. I'm going to walk you through 7 proven ways that I've used in my career as a marketer and a youtuber to start presentations. And I'm going to show you examples on my computer of what's worked and how I've gained millions and millions and millions of views using these tactics. I'm also going to go over a couple different no-nos ways not that just completely do not work to get any engagement on your videos. Things to stay away from so that you can sell more stuff online, get more subscribers, get more engagement. And in general, just be a better online marketing youtuber whatever you are. Let's get right into the content. Whoo! So for those of you who don't know me, I'm John Crestani and I've gotten tens of millions of dollars on selling stuff online. And I've also gotten tens of millions of views of my videos and my webinars and my content all across the internet. Even on TV. I've been on TV every night this last year. And I'm going to show you what is proven to work on video presentations so that you can get engagement and sell stuff. So the number one proven tactic to starting presentation is actually asking a question. And the more specific your question is, the better. It should be a question that maybe the audience has thought about but they've never actually verbalized before. And it could even be a completely ridiculous questions. So let's run this first clip of a video that has gotten me over a hundred thousand views on my channel. So is it really possible to make over a thousand dollars from one single click on your affiliate link? It's a pretty good question, right? And that's a question that many folks really haven't actually expressed before. But it's a really interesting question that folks would love the answer to. Is it really possible to make over a thousand dollars with one click? Right? It's a great premise and it teases a really bold promise that's we're kind of getting into extra credit land. I'll go into that later. But this question leads people to wanting to know the answer to it. And the assumption is that you have the answer to this great bold question. So you're going to keep folks watching at least a little bit longer in your video. Now, some examples for other niches are maybe if you're talking about animal trapping niche. Is it really possible to trap 2 raccoons with one trap? I'm going to show you how I built a trap, you know, that blah, blah, blah, blah. Another niche is did you ever wonder whether it's possible to spend less than $20 on makeup and look like a supermodel? It's a great question and it teases a very bold promise in there that, presumably, you will show them how to spend less than $20 on makeup and look like a supermodel. The second way to start a presentation is to make an extremely bold offer. Now, I'm going to run a clip of a video of mine that's gotten over 1.4 million views. It went very viral on YouTube and it's worked out really well. Let's check out this. In this video, I'm going to show you how to make quick money in one day online and by quick money, it's going to be big money. I'm not going to show you some way to make 5 or 10 or $20 in a day online. I'm going to show you how to make big money and I'm going to walk you through step by step right here on my computer exactly what you need to do to get it. Very bold promise there and it works very well. Now, a quick disclaimer about making incredibly bold promises like I did in this video is if you want to actually get your video to go viral on YouTube and get recommended and really build your audience and subscriber base, you have to be able to back up your promise or whatever premise that you are making. Now, in my case, I go on to show folks how they can do high-ticket affiliate marketing in that video and I go through exactly on my computer exactly how it's done you know the Facebook posting and what text to write etc etc etc. So, I do back up the promise in that video but the premise the initial 5 to 10 seconds was a good enough it was a bold enough offer and it kept people watching past that point. So, I could actually get into the meat and potatoes of really what it is I do for a living online which is affiliate marketing. The third way to start a presentation is to be completely ridiculous. Right? So, let's run these 2 clips and then I'm going to comment on why these videos worked like crazy. You make it rain again people because we're talking about Craigslist money today. This is $10,000 in my hand right here. This is the amount of money that I make every single day with my online business. Now, as you saw in those videos, they're completely ridiculous. I mean, I'm playing around with the money gun shooting myself in the face or I am just flashing around big amounts of money. Folks don't see that every day. Folks don't see stacks of money every day and being able to put those in my videos has gotten me tens of millions of views actually. And it's actually become just sort of a part of my videos. People come back to see because it's so ridiculous. But it's exciting because seeing money and seeing lots of money is has a really positive connotation for folks. You can do the same thing if you're on a yacht in a private jet, if you're in a fancy car, if you're overlooking a beautiful ocean. And if you're doing other niches such as a travel blog, yeah, you might maybe show that beautiful view overlooking you know the ocean somewhere. Or if you are running a fitness type of blog, you're talking about you know how to how to get stronger or something. If you start a video off just lifting up a thousand pounds or something like that, that's great content. People want to see stuff they don't see in their regular day to day lives when they're watching YouTube or when they're seeing a presentation or anything. That it just sets a great stage and it's exciting and it keeps people wanting to watch more because you're going to learn about that place. You're going to learn how to make money. You're going to learn how to lift a thousand pounds and really build your muscle fast. Okay? So there's a lot of things implicit in seeing the ridiculous. Or maybe it's just an interesting story, right? You know like a three-legged cat. You know? You see a picture of a three-legged cat. You kind of you're kind of thinking, hey, how does that thing walk? Or how does that thing like get around? You know? How does it jump? You know? So all of that stuff is kind of interesting and will keep people watching your videos at the very least past the first 5 to 10 seconds. The fourth way to start a presentation is by teasing a secret. Let's run this next clip and then I'll explain why this worked so well and got me over a hundred thousand views. With Amazon, if I know how to manipulate their algorithm and get ranked, I'm getting millions of people a day. What's up guys? You're with my bulletproof and Tanner Fox. I'll forget the jig. Now shout out to Tanner Fox. He was awesome in this interview and he just really just opened the full kimono up and went through the path of how to make Amazon work and how to sell products on Amazon. But what was great about this video intro which created over a hundred thousand views and and made a lot of money on both AdSense and just helping me build my audience on YouTube was that he talked about manipulating the Amazon algorithm, right? That's all bold promise. Okay, here we're gonna learn some secrets here folks. We're gonna learn some hacks and right after a couple seconds and you'll see on the whiteboard behind us we actually have four of the ways how to manipulate the Amazon algorithm. So it's shown right there. It's showing that look we have nothing to hide. We're gonna show these four things. We're going to explain them further in the video. So all of that is kind of inferred that we are going to explain the four ways of getting big results and selling lots of products on Amazon which Tanner Fox has done millions and millions and millions of dollars of sales with. So that was a great video. It was a pretty long video and folks really stayed engaged throughout the whole video. Most people watched over half of the entire video there because they wanted to hear everything being backed up and we did. The fifth way to start a presentation is testimonials. So if you've been in business, if you are some sort of expert in your niche showing folks who have had success doing whatever thing it is that you are talking about is going to be incredibly valuable and it's going to just basically prove the point for you so that when you go into the presentation people want to see how did those people achieve that. Before we run this next clip, folks if you are getting a lot of value from this I'd really appreciate if you just spank like button once or three times and also subscribe to my channel. I come out with content every single week and I in fact just love educating folks. So I'd really appreciate to see you around here more and join our communities. We have more links in the resources where you can check out our different communities, my forum and discord and other places that you can engage with us. Without further ado, let's go into this next clip of starting a video off with testimonials. I'm 15 and was it one day I made my first commission. It's been a year since I haven't worked a nine to five and I've been making pretty good money. I am a single mom in Tucson, Arizona and I've been struggling to pay my bills and now I have an internet business and I'm so excited. How about that for some content? I got a 15-year-old to earn his first commission online using my program and he used one of my Amazon methods to earn his first commissions very fast within I think two days of starting one of my training programs. And people want to know how that happened. People want to know how this guy with all these pimples on his face create it. You know, that's not even old enough to have a business has been earning money with affiliate marketing. So that's a great way to start. If you've more... If you're more established, if you've been helping people, whether you're maybe you're a realtor, maybe you are a home designer, maybe you are an animal trap or a travel blogger. If you have folks that write into you and tell you, thank you for your suggestions of where to travel or thank you for your fitness tips or thanks for helping me buy a house of my dreams or unlike any other realtor out there. No matter what sort of business you're in. If you've helped people out, even if you're working a job and you've helped people out in your job, that's valuable information to people. That really backs up the fact that you know what you're talking about. And I've got... I'm fortunate to have hundreds and hundreds of testimonials of folks who have gone through my training programs and earned money using them. If you want to find out more about my training programs, there is a link in the description. It's the number one way to make money online. But let's go on to number 7 or sorry number 6 which is social proof. I'm going to run this clip and then I'll explain it. John Krestani. You've been featured in Forbes magazine. And the best thing is you can work from anywhere no matter where you travel. I've really worked hard to create in my educational programs. Creating a clear plan that people can follow that's proven and can help them become successful and start making their first commissions online and learn business skills. I love it because a lot of people do not know where to start. Not all of you have been featured in the news or anything like that but oftentimes the subjects that you were talking about have been featured in the news. Again if you're a travel blogger and you're talking about say shells, show it in the news. Show a new resort opening in the news or show it just a little clip. You can use clips up to 5 seconds on YouTube without any without any permissions. Again, that's just general repurposing of content. It's all fine. Another thing is if you you know if you're talking to a more kind of business oriented audience, they aren't going to want to they aren't going to want to see camera phone videos of somebody saying oh I you know his fitness tips helped me out or John's you know money-making tips helped me earn commissions. They want to see something a bit more established. So showing news you know news about crypto or news about you know home design or news about whatever the subject is you're talking about is and can be very valuable. So starting off right off the bat with just something really important like that can really help your case and help establish that you are you are working with proven sources that are backing up everything you're going to be explaining in more detail. Now the seventh tip is pretty sneaky and it's called the technical term is called cold reading. It's something I learned from my days in pickup. And a cold read is when you are saying calling out something extremely specific about the person that they'll basically be creeped out that you know. It would be like if I said hey, I noticed you're a Sagittarius and I wanted to give you a piece of advice for the next week. Now if you're a Sagittarius, you might be saying what the heck? How did this guy know I was a Sagittarius? Hey, so I noticed you attended the webinar hopefully you learned a ton but you didn't end up working with me on the program. The video I used I called out a situation I saw that they had started my webinar but they had left the webinar before it was finished. Okay? And when I retargeted folks with the video that I just showed you and folks were creeped out they said oh my gosh you just appeared on my YouTube calling out the fact that I started your webinar and left. Okay? Folks were super creeped out by it but the watch time was off the charts. Most of the videos that I advertise on YouTube get a one to two minute watch time on average. Now this video that I just showed you for instance calling out that specific context that the user was in got a three and a half minute average watch time. Folks, we're not even looking to watch the video. Again, I popped it up. This is one of those ads that shows up and you can click off after 5 seconds. But folks didn't skip off the ad. They watched for 3 and a half minutes on average and that is the power of calling out a super specific context. Now let's go into what doesn't work for videos. I'm going to show you some pretty embarrassing moments from my history and my career as a YouTuber and a marketer of how I started videos. But first I need one thing from you. I need a hurrah in the comment section because just because. So that's an awkward laugh because these videos are so awkward. The first thing not to do on videos is talk about yourself. Okay? Nobody wants to hear about you when they're just browsing around YouTube. So, let's show this clip. This video performed terribly. Let's see it. Hey, John Cristani here. Former ad agency owner and internet marketer. And I'm going to be showing you how to start a marketing business. Now, in that clip I showed you the first 5 seconds are just me talking about me. Hey, I'm John. I did this. I did this. I did this. Nobody cares, okay? Folks only care about what is in it for them. People are permanently turned into one radio station. And that is we FM. What's in it for me? That's a common marketing term. We FM. And you need to talk about what's in it for them. Talk about how that you're watching your video is going to help them. Or just be ridiculous and show them how watching your video is going to be interesting and entertaining or humorous for them to watch. Again, it's about the user. It's about you. I'm conveying information to you. I'm not here to talk about myself. Maybe you'll be interested in hearing about me if I convey information that helps your life. The second thing you absolutely do not want to do is start your video off with an intro sequence. I'm going to run a clip of a video called how to get time freedom. And it started like this. Now, as you see in that video, if you were clicking on the video title to learn about how to get time freedom, the first 8 seconds is just a complete total waste of your time. It doesn't help you in any manner whatsoever. Unfortunately, I see so many new youtubers and folks that are new to just social media content. Try to run their videos in the beginning with a intro sequence. I've seen this so many times. It's laughable. It doesn't work. And if anything, it gets people clicking off. Not even 2,000 people watch that particular video. So, let's... I mean, it's just embarrassing. So, let's move on to the next thing not to do. Don't start your videos off with an interview if your channel or your content, your social media content is not interview based. Let's run this clip. If your Facebook ads account gets shut down and you can never advertise on Facebook again, you're going to find an opportunity over in YouTube. You're going to find another opportunity that's probably far better. That's kind of like the universe saying, well, maybe you don't need that. Now, I had thought that this was going to be insanely interesting to the audience because the person I was interviewing is a highly successful internet marketer, JR Fisher, shout-out man. But nobody else cared. They didn't see any benefit in it for them. For me, I find interviews insanely interesting. But my channel is not based around interviewing folks. It just doesn't fit with my content. So, when I start a video with mid interview, it's not going to appeal to my audience. And if you don't do that, it's not going to appeal to yours either. This fourth video is insanely embarrassing. I'm just going to show you the first couple seconds. Here in this video, I'm going to go over 5 lessons that I learned from making over 10,000 cold calls. And I'm going to be doing so out here in the rainforest. You see, this goes into the mistake of having a story that just doesn't go anywhere. We've all been in social situations where we're stuck just listening to somebody go on a story that has no point, no benefit. It's not even that interesting. It's just a waste of time. And in this case, I not only had that going for me but I just had complete terrible lighting and video quality because I was in the middle of a rainforest and it was just really dark. I thought it looked really cool when I was there in person. But it didn't translate to the internet. And it should have never gone on the internet given the poor quality of just the setting and everything. So, don't do that. Let me know what tip helped you out the most in the comments below. And if I can get a hurrah if you learned something from this video and a like, that would be great. Please subscribe if you'd like to see future content. And otherwise, see you in my next video or ad.