My Least-Viewed Video Made the Most Money — Transcript

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1. 0:00Has anyone seen that I started something
2. 0:01called highlights channel on YouTube?
3. 0:03Yeah, so that channel is run by one guy
4. 0:07and a bunch of AI workflows and we post
5. 0:10about 20 times a day there and they're
6. 0:12all like I call them mids. So they're
7. 0:16call it more than a short and less than
8. 0:19a long so we call them mids.
9. 0:21So it could be 4 minutes, it could be 8
10. 0:22minutes, you know, it's just like it's
11. 0:23kind of in that range. Sometimes it's
12. 0:25longer but it's they're typically videos
13. 0:27that are very valuable to a very small
14. 0:30percentage of people. And so it's like
15. 0:31if you happen to be a plumber, this
16. 0:33video will be really valuable for you.
17. 0:35Um, but if you have a school community
18. 0:36you're struggling to get leads, me
19. 0:37talking about like local PPC is probably
20. 0:40not going to be as relevant. Now if I'm
21. 0:41talking to a, you know, music school
22. 0:44community owner, if you're an AI school
23. 0:46community owner, then a lot of that
24. 0:47stuff is probably going to be relevant.
25. 0:49Um, and so it's kind of degrees of
26. 0:50separation,
27. 0:51um
28. 0:53based on the size of
29. 0:55people that that video would be relevant
30. 0:56for is more correlated with the view
31. 0:59count than the quote quality of the
32. 1:01video. Now if we obviously if you have
33. 1:02[ __ ] video, nothing matters. But
34. 1:05if you've seen the highlights channel,
35. 1:07you've seen that it has like
36. 1:09800 view videos, 1,000 view videos, you
37. 1:11know, there's some 20s, some hundreds,
38. 1:13whatever. But we're posting 20 plus
39. 1:16times a day and this is the point that I
40. 1:17want to make, that channel has more
41. 1:19attributed revenue to ACQ than my main
42. 1:21channel.
43. 1:23Many of you guys have seen micro
44. 1:24accounts, the accounts, you know, 5,000,
45. 1:2610,000, 20,000. Many of you guys may
46. 1:28have some of those types of accounts. If
47. 1:29you're making valuable content
48. 1:33for a specific niche, just like do not
49. 1:35beat yourself up about not getting that
50. 1:36many views. That was like if I could
51. 1:37have one Vegas headlights of what I'm
52. 1:40even more doubling down on is giving
53. 1:42zero [ __ ] about views.
54. 1:45Now if you are a media business and you
55. 1:47sell number of impressions, then you
56. 1:49have to care about views. But the vast
57. 1:51majority people conflate or they look at
58. 1:55media influencers, entertainers and say,
59. 1:58"Oh, I'm going to use this strategy to
60. 1:59grow my business." Whatever your
61. 2:01business is, whether you're a local
62. 2:02plumber or you're a school committee, it
63. 2:03doesn't matter. Um
64. 2:05and that's not I don't think that's the
65. 2:06right strategy. Um and so it really
66. 2:08should be, more than ever, a value per
67. 2:10second, and then with an extra slice of
68. 2:13avatar. And so, Andromeda, some of you
69. 2:15guys might have known that that came out
70. 2:17as an object from Meta. And what
71. 2:18Andromeda did was amazing and terrible
72. 2:20at the same time. So, it was amazing for
73. 2:23consumers, it was amazing for
74. 2:24advertisers, but it's a double-edged
75. 2:25sword. And so, what Andromeda basically
76. 2:27did was, how can we make the newsfeed as
77. 2:30viable as possible, which is always what
78. 2:32Meta's going to try and optimize for,
79. 2:33right?
80. 2:34And so,
81. 2:36you'll notice that more and more ads are
82. 2:38niche specific in general, right? And
83. 2:40so, it's like it's sub-segmented down.
84. 2:43So, if you have a plumber who's, you
85. 2:45know, wearing his plumber stuff, doing
86. 2:46plumber things, and you're talking about
87. 2:47plumbing stuff, it's going to get shown
88. 2:48to plumbers, right?
89. 2:50Now, the upside is, because the
90. 2:52targeting gotten so much better, your
91. 2:54cost per result is going down.
92. 2:57But, and this is the massive but, when
93. 2:59you have significantly more specialized
94. 3:01targeting, the pool or the pond of
95. 3:03people that are actually that niche is
96. 3:05way smaller than when you're running
97. 3:07general ads. And so,
98. 3:09when you have a general ad back in the
99. 3:10called back in the day, right? You could
100. 3:12run an ad that was a quote national
101. 3:13campaign,
102. 3:15and based on kind of the blended CPM of
103. 3:17all different people, you'd get that
104. 3:18plumber every so often, cuz you would
105. 3:20hit some some part of that puddle that
106. 3:22was the really high-intent puddle,
107. 3:24right?
108. 3:25Now,
109. 3:26Meta knows exactly where the puddle is,
110. 3:27and knows exactly what your ad's about,
111. 3:28and then just just drains the puddle,
112. 3:31and then all of a sudden, your cost just
113. 3:33skyrockets again. And so, the end result
114. 3:35of this is that you have to make a
115. 3:36shitload more creative.
116. 3:38Cuz otherwise, you burn through the
117. 3:39audiences faster.
118. 3:41And so, I see this as kind of a
119. 3:43dual-sided effect on both the ad side
120. 3:44and also the creative side, which is
121. 3:45like, you have to completely do away
122. 3:47with the idea of like, I'm fatiguing my
123. 3:48audience.
124. 3:50Your audience isn't even
125. 3:51your follower number is just literally
126. 3:53irrelevant. Like it is taking the
127. 3:55content, AI figures out what the content
128. 3:57is about, and then it serves it to the
129. 3:58people that it believes it will have the
130. 3:59most relevance for, period.
131. 4:02And so, just do not worry about one
132. 4:05video getting 1,000 views and then
133. 4:06another video getting 10,000 if your
134. 4:08average [clears throat] is 100,000. So,
135. 4:09I'll give you second kind of data point
136. 4:10that we looked at. So, for the last
137. 4:11quarter, so just literally this one, uh
138. 4:14Q1,
139. 4:15we looked at my my YouTube channel, my
140. 4:17main channel, not my highlight channel.
141. 4:19On the main channel, my top six most
142. 4:22viewed videos,
143. 4:24if we ranked
144. 4:25uh revenue generated from the video.
145. 4:27Now, again, is it perfect? No. Do I
146. 4:29think it's directional? Yes.
147. 4:31Um
148. 4:32of the top six, what percentage of them
149. 4:34by views do you think was the highest,
150. 4:36or rather which of the six do you think
151. 4:38was the highest revenue-generating video
152. 4:40of the six?
153. 4:43I'll give you it's a rhetorical
154. 4:43question. It was none of them.
155. 4:46When I ranked my videos by highest
156. 4:48revenue-producing, none of the top six
157. 4:50videos were the videos that actually
158. 4:51produced the most revenue.
159. 4:54Right. The number one video that I had
160. 4:55was actually my favorite video that I
161. 4:57made for the whole uh the whole quarter,
162. 4:59which it's I think it's called like the
163. 5:005111 rule. They'd made some thumbnail
164. 5:02about it, but it's basically about the
165. 5:04fractal nature of customers, which is
166. 5:06that if you map 100 people to represent
167. 5:08the United States or really any country
168. 5:10from a poverty level perspective, I use
169. 5:12the US as the as the example, and you
170. 5:14put 100 circles on a piece of paper, and
171. 5:16then you take $100 to represent all of
172. 5:18the wealth scattered across this 100
173. 5:20people. If you draw a line at the
174. 5:2250-yard line, and you've got 50 people
175. 5:24on this side, they've got about two or
176. 5:25three dollars.
177. 5:27And over the next 40, you've got like
178. 5:2930-ish dollar, 20-something dollars. And
179. 5:32then the next 10% has like 36 dollars.
180. 5:35And then the top 1% has 32 dollars.
181. 5:38And so, when you're trying to figure out
182. 5:39like, man, why can't I make my thing
183. 5:41make more money? It's like, well, of all
184. 5:43these dots on this map, where are you
185. 5:45trying to go?
186. 5:47And so, that was that's the nature of
187. 5:48that video which I loved and you're
188. 5:49like, okay, what does this have to do
189. 5:50with anything? Well, that video
190. 5:51generated more revenue than any video I
191. 5:53made, but you would imagine that that
192. 5:54might be a higher level concept um for
193. 5:57people to consume, but the higher level
194. 5:59people are my primary customers. And so
195. 6:02I make this to say, I mean I I just want
196. 6:04to hit this
197. 6:05like head-on for everyone is that you
198. 6:07need to completely divorce your ego and
199. 6:09I know it's really hard.
200. 6:10You have to not think, oh man, I'm
201. 6:11changing my content strategy. We're
202. 6:13we're sucking, you know, our our content
203. 6:15is sucking, our views are down. Our
204. 6:17views are down should mean nothing to
205. 6:18you.
206. 6:19And also, conversely, our views are up
207. 6:22should also mean nothing to you.
208. 6:24If you are making more content and it's
209. 6:26serving a specific avatar, then it will
210. 6:28get shown to them and if it's good, they
211. 6:30will buy.