 Welcome back to my channel. I'm so excited to talk about YouTube today. I have been on YouTube for three years and I'm absolutely loving it. Also, my clients keep telling me, Hey, I'm going to move abroad. I want to start a YouTube channel. How do I do this? And can you help me? And then I was like, Oh, I should probably do a video on that. And as I'm thinking through what we're going to talk about, it's going to be so good because not only do I do YouTube, I'm also a digital marketing professional. And so there's a lot of insight that I can give you on how to make your YouTube channel successful and where to start. So here we go. If you don't know us, we are a family of six have moved from the US to New Zealand and have been here since 2013 and we share the journey on this channel. If you're considering a move to New Zealand, definitely check out the link in my description for the free 50 minute class on everything you need to know to move to New Zealand specifically. Also next year, I am running a bootcamp to answer all your questions about the possibility of moving abroad. You're not going to want to miss that either. Also, the link is in the description. Here we go. I have been teaching marketing communication at the university level for over 20 years and I'm a digital marketing professional. I consult helping other businesses on all their social media, including YouTube. And so I really understand the backend and understand what it takes to be successful on YouTube, not just create videos. And so this is why I'm so excited to share this video because I think that all of all the platforms, YouTube is one of the best. Not only do they pay their creators, but they also just, it's just such a, it's a search engine. People find you easy. It's just in the communities are great. I mean, my comments section is so great. I wish I had more time to spend in talking with everybody on there and all their comments and you just meet such great people. It's just an overall great experience. Now, in addition to just being good experience, it is a really good tool to start a business online. And or if you have a business to expand your business online, YouTube is honestly my favorite platform. And I'm kind of doubling down on it this year. And so I'm so excited to share what you need to know to start your YouTube channel. So obviously to start, you need to think about what you're going to talk about. Now, I don't want you. This is the best advice I can give you. Don't decide exactly what you're going to talk about. Don't decide on your logo. Don't decide on your name. Don't don't do all of that. All of that is a waste of time because as you kind of are getting into it and you're getting your feet wet and you're figuring out what's comfortable for you, what you're actually passionate about, you know, because not everything that you're good at is what you're passionate about. And you shouldn't always talk about just your passion because you're maybe not that good. OK, and so my recommendation is for you to just get out there and start making videos because your eyes will start opening to what actually is working, what topics there's an actual audience for. All of these things matter. Unless you want to just do YouTube as a hobby and you just want to make videos and you don't care if you have 10 views, then that's fine. Then totally use it like that. But if you want to create a business around it, if you want to actually eventually make money with it, if you want to maybe quit your job and work and work YouTube full time, it's an actual career option. In fact, if you ask anybody like 12 years old and younger, that's like their number one goal is to become a YouTuber because they could see it. They can see that the virtual world, the online world is nothing but growing and is never going. It's not going away, you guys. So it's a great opportunity for you to explore different ways of, you know, getting an online community or making some money. I'm just like so excited about this. What I want to talk about is like your mindset. Your mindset matters. So so many people come and approach YouTube as with selfish motives. I want to sell my product. I want to promote my business. I want to don't do that. Okay, nobody wants sales on YouTube. Okay, it's okay to give a lot of free information and then mention that you have a resource that's useful that actually serves your audience. Well, that's fine. But like so many people approach YouTube with I'm going to go on YouTube because I want to sell my business and that's not the right approach. Okay, the right approach is to get in the mindset of your ideal customer or your ideal person that you want to talk to. Like my ideal person was I really wanted to reach the people that were moving to New Zealand and share my experience because I knew nobody. I had no support and I wanted to be that for somebody else. And so that was my motivation. I had no intention of actually making a business around it, but being the entrepreneur that I am, I couldn't help myself. So that's the first thing you need to consider is to think with your mind what the other person would want to know about. Okay, and that's really hard to do. Okay, so whenever you create a video, think is this useful for my ideal audience? Or is this useful for the person I'm trying to reach? Or is this just information I feel like sharing, which is going to be like 80% of the channels out there, if you notice. Okay, so try to add value, try to be educational. So all social media is educational. It either educates, inspires or entertains. Okay, so decide which of those you're going to be. Okay, and think of your audience when you create. So since we're not going to totally decide what you're going to talk about, we need to come up with a name. Now, my advice to you is to either use your name, like your first name or your first and last name or some variation of your name, because you need to think when you start your YouTube channel long term. Okay, if you build a personal brand from the beginning, and we can probably do a whole different video on why you should do a personal brand or what is a personal brand, it just enables your business, your content to grow as you grow and change as you grow and as you will. And as a content creator for the last three and a half years, I can tell you, you cannot talk about that same subject over and over and over before you're going to die. Okay, so you need to create content around you because nobody else is you. So your, you yourself is your own unique brand. Okay. And so I don't want to go too much into personal brand, but if you're not comfortable using your name, pick a name that's very broad that can cover multiple things. Don't just be like, you know, Jen the gardener. Okay, so then all you talk about is gardening. Okay, unless it's definitely what you want to do, but like, we can go more, my advice to you is to just be broad. Also, if you are going to pick a name, think about it in terms of search. So you have to look at YouTube as a search engine. What are people typing in? Okay. So if you're only going to talk about SEO, if you're only going to talk about gardening, then maybe consider that in your name, but be generic. I mean, it would be better to be like, I love plants or I love the outdoors, and then you can kind of talk about everything outdoors. You don't, you're not limited to whatever, but like, that's just my, that's my advice to you. It's just to be as broad as possible. Also, the benefit of being broad is that you could pivot. So as all of a sudden, this is what's going to happen. And this happens to so many people is there's going to be a video that does really well, or you're going to be doing YouTube for years, and you're going to organize your analytics to show you what are your best watched videos. And then you're going to learn from that and you're going to say, Oh, actually, I normally talk about this, but these two videos really pop off. Oh, maybe this is what my audience is actually interested in. And so the more that you're always looking at your analytics and fine tuning what you're talking about, based on what people are actually watching and what people are actually interested in, because they'll tell you, they'll tell you in the comments, they'll tell you by how many views you have and how long they watch the video. We won't get into that. But like, just if you're broad in your name, then you can pivot and then you could change and then you haven't wasted all of your time under this very small niche topic. Okay, so that's my advice to you. Don't just talk about whatever the heck you feel like talking about, okay, you have to do YouTube SEO. What's YouTube SEO? YouTube SEO is search engine optimization. You have to do keyword research. You have to figure out what words to use, what your title is going to be, what's going to be in your thumbnail. These are very key components before you even consider writing your video, writing your topic, anything. You need to do the keyword research first. And I recommend TubeBuddy. That's what I've been using for three years. I'll put a link in the description if you want to check them out. They make it so easy. Now, if you are in marketing or you've done a lot of Google SEO, just know that YouTube SEO is totally different. So while YouTube's will show up in Google search many times, it is different and the words at rank will be different. And so what people are searching on YouTube can be quite different because they're looking for a video format, obviously, on YouTube. And so do those two SEOs differently. So don't just write your topic. Oh, I think this would be good. I think that this is what people would like. This is what the biggest mistake people make and they have like 10 views, 200 views at the most, because they're not using the key words. They're not putting the most important things in the video. So what's the most important thing to put in your video? Your thumbnail is your most important thing. If nobody is the motivated to click on the video, then it doesn't matter how good the video is. OK, your thumbnail is the most important. Your first 10, 20 thumbnails will not be very good. OK, there's A, B testing where you can test out different thumbnails. You know, I mean, there's the stat that's always going around where Mr. V spends $100,000 on every thumbnail because it matters. Because he just went through and made this huge video, spent all his money, he spends a lot of money, right? And makes this whole video. Like if nobody clicks on a thumbnail, then it was a complete waste of time. So do your research, Google thumbnails, talk to me. I'm happy to help you. I've changed a lot. I've grown a lot. I've learned you can even go through mine and see how bad they used to be. So yeah, so your thumbnail is important. And then the second most important thing is your title. So very key that you pick the right title. Keyword research. That's all I'm going to dive into that. And then the first part of your description also very important. Make sure that your keyword is in there. All of this is very important to show up and search, which if nobody finds your video, it doesn't matter how good it is, right? And so this is why all of this matters. So a lot of people just create videos and they think, oh, my video is good and people will watch it. That is not the case. That could be so much farther from the truth. And so you need to number one, talk about something that people are searching for and want to have the answer to. And then you also then need to make a good video. So let's get into that. Think about how you watch YouTube. If you need to change a tire, if you need to check your oil, if you need to fix a plumbing problem or something like that. What do you do? You don't really care. A lot of times people over evaluate, think about, concern themselves about things that don't matter. If you're providing the information that they're looking for, the reason why they're clicking on it, unless you're in the entertainment world, okay, it might be different for that, then it doesn't really matter. Don't overthink everything. Don't feel like you have to have this perfect logo, this perfect design on your channel, nothing like that, none of that matters, okay? All you need to do is to just provide good information. I don't have special equipment. I have a little teeny microphone. I have an iPhone 11 Pro. I have one ring light. That's it. I mean, the total cost, I mean, this is already my phone. And I have been doing this for three years and I still just use a phone because I haven't found that the camera's better. I worked with other YouTubers and I've used all their equipment and I'm not seeing a huge difference. So you may disagree with me, so let me know, maybe I need to upgrade my equipment, but I do things for ease. If this is gonna be a whole thing for me to set up, then I know that the likelihood of me actually recording isn't that good, okay? So if you love tech and you're all into that, then by all means, okay? But you honestly donate, it's an excuse for not starting your channel. My next tip is to make sure that you are honest with yourself how much time you have to put into this. You do not need to do more than one video a week. I have done more videos. I've done lots of shorts. I've gone live. I've done like five videos, including lives and shorts in a week and it helps, but like only when it matters, only if I have time. I don't overthink it. So this is my advice to people, businesses that I talk to all the time, people that are thinking about getting on social media in general. There's so many people telling you, like, you needed this. I mean, consistency is good, especially in YouTube, but at the same time, not at the expense of what you need to do. So don't stress about it. Do what you can. If you miss a week, it's okay, okay? It really doesn't matter that much. People have overblown the importance of exactly the right time of day and exactly how it doesn't matter that much. If your video is good, if people are interested in it and your thumbnail is clickable, people will watch your video. Okay, and the last thing I wanna talk about is can we make money off of this? Well, let's talk about that. So if you are going onto YouTube to get tons of views and viral and, you know, having millions of subscribers, then you'll make money with the ads. Other than that, not too much. It's not totally worth your time. So in order to get monetized, you have to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. And once you have that, then you can apply to the ads, the Google ads, and then they accept you, and then, you know, then there's gonna be ads on your videos. That's the difference. But what's so great about YouTube is that they actually, there is an opportunity to create whatever it is that you want and you can make money with it, even if it's a little bit. It's really nice. There's no other social platform that really does that. There are different creator funds on different platforms, but they're nothing like YouTube, okay? So plan on going into it where you wanna get monetized for sure. Why not? But then also think about products, services that you can offer if you wanna do affiliate marketing, if you don't know what affiliate marketing is, that's a great option. If you're doing a gardening channel, then recommending different gardening tools and gloves and all the different, I don't know, things you wear on your knees. I'm not a gardener. Don't know why I'm using this as an example, to be honest. So you can sell affiliate links. So what that is, it's the link to products that you like and you get a small commission off of that. And so a lot of people make a lot of money on YouTube just doing affiliate things on things that they recommend. Another way to make money is through sponsorships. So once you start getting bigger, the companies will reach out and they really like small YouTubers. I get a lot of sponsorships and they've just gotten better every year because they know that their audience tends to be really real and authentic and they have built a good community with that audience as opposed to people that have gotten big by having a one viral video and those people just like the video, it wasn't that they really buy into their community. So that's kind of the difference. So you can make money by ads, you can make money by sponsorships, you can make money by affiliate marketing, you can make money with your own products or services. And so that's a really nice option. So once you've grown your channel and you're getting good at this and you're comfortable with this and you're understanding your market, then you can just expand. Well, I hope this video was helpful to you. Please comment below with any other questions that you have as I love this whole topic. And I strongly encourage you to start your YouTube channel because it does nothing but show you up. I really don't like this or I actually really love this and it can actually change your life. And that's an actual true statement. YouTube has changed so many people's lives that I know, including mine. So good luck to you. Get out there and get started.