🎁 A Special Announcement

How to YouTube #29

Hey YouTubers,

Today’s email is a bit different. I want to tell you about my plans for this newsletter and share a surprise for you at the end.

It will involve some highly relevant lessons for YouTubers wanting to make more money (all of you I hope!).

So at the start of this year, I was laying out my goals and thinking about what I wanted from my side projects (I have a full time job as a YouTube Producer).

The first thing that came to mind was that I wanted to grow this newsletter to 50,000 subscribers. It was a big hairy goal, but it felt possible if I focused on it. And one of the things I wanted to do to help grow it was make videos on my YouTube channel and grow that alongside at the same time.

It all really excited me.

And it started working. After less than two months, I had 3,000 subscribers here, and some great signals of interest on YouTube.

But I realised I was falling victim to a classic trap for YouTubers.

I was dreaming of the views and subscribers, without a plan for monetisation.

Not all YouTubers need to think this far ahead, it depends on your stage of the journey and your goals. But most YouTubers are making videos at least partly for the money, and it’s good to have a plan. It goes without saying, you need to make money to run a profitable business long term.

So I brainstormed all the different ways I could monetise:

1. Sponsors for this newsletter and the videos.

2. Promote affiliates.

3. Adsense from the videos.

4. Substack subscriptions.

5. Sell something myself.

I embraced an experimental mindset and tested a few things out (maybe you’ve noticed things happening at the bottom of this newsletter) but I slowly came to the realisation that I had to create something of my own.

Sponsors and adsense can work well, but they are less efficient monetisation methods because you’re selling something someone else owns, rather than something you own.

And despite the fact that I live and breathe building creator businesses, and I’m part of one that is scaling beyond $5m+ in revenue, when it comes to my own stuff it’s sometimes hard to see the path ahead. And there’s all sorts of emotional and psychological barriers that can slow you down as well.

But a few months ago, I realised that my true goal was not 50,000 subscribers on this newsletter. It was actually a revenue goal.

I imagined myself in December this year having either 1) 50,000 subscribers but no revenue, or 2) ~10,000 subscribers, $10,000s in revenue and a much greater impact. I realised I’d rather be in position two, especially considering I could also grow the newsletter faster (and make it much more valuable) after generating some revenue and having a scalable monetisation strategy.

In the back of my mind I’ve been thinking about creating a thumbnail course for the best part of a year. But I’ve always felt nervous to take on the project. Who am I to make a course? Why would anyone listen to me? Does anyone want another course?

But it’s easily the biggest problem that I see YouTubers struggling with today. And unfortunately, they’re also the most costly thing to not be good at.

If people don’t click, they don’t watch. And if you can’t make good titles and thumbnails, then it doesn’t matter how good your videos are. I see so many YouTubers held back by bad thumbnails, and I’ve been one myself.

They can be a strange and confusing part of YouTube, and you can figure it out on your own, but sometimes it helps to know the lay of the land from the beginning. I certainly wish I’d had more information on the entire thumbnail process when I started my channel in 2021.

And a while back I asked some of you in a survey if you’d be interested in a thumbnail course, and 50% of you said yes.

So, I listened to the signals and for the past couple months I’ve been working on it in the background. And I’m now confident enough that it’s going to be very helpful for some of you to let you know about it.

The feelings of doubt have started to fade because now I’ve put part of it together I can feel the value. The amount of learnings and experience in it would have been so helpful to my former self.

So in the meantime whilst I finish it, I’m opening the course for pre-orders. This will also help me validate demand before I continue spending time building it.

But before I share a link to pre-order, let me quickly tell you a bit about it.

I want to make this course as good as possible. I want it to be fun to watch, digestible and actionable. So you or someone in your team can consume it in a couple hours, then you can go off and work on your channel with significantly more knowledge.

It will contain modules on:

• Why thumbnails are so important

• What makes a good thumbnail

• The different types of thumbnail

• Thumbnail design principles

• The step by step process to make thumbnails

• How to make thumbnails in Canva (I’m using Canva to keep this beginner friendly, but everything can be done in Photoshop as well)

• How to A/B test

• How to outsource your thumbnails

After this, you’ll hopefully have saved yourself months, if not years, of learning. I’m making it because it’s the course I wish I had when I was getting started on YouTube, and I want to help you avoid the pain I went through.

And this course is designed specifically for educational YouTubers. It’ll of course be relevant to any YouTuber, but all the examples I’ll be using will be from educational channels. You’ll find no MrBeast thumbnails in this course.

It will cost $199, but for the first 100 people who pre-order it will be $99 (50% discount).

I’m capping the number of discounts because a) I’m not sure more than 100 people will buy this 😆 and b) I’d love to interact with the early customers and make the course better before launching it properly (hopefully in a couple months).

This is the lowest the price will ever be, and of course, if you don’t like it and want your money back for whatever reason, you’ll get a 100% refund no questions asked.

I want this to be a no-brainer for you.

So if you’d like to pre-order The Thumbnail Masterclass, you can do so for $99 using the discount code EARLYBIRD50 here.

As always, have a great week making videos, and I’ll speak to you again soon!

Tintin 🧑‍💻

P.s. Making this course takes time, which with a full time job is hard to come by.

If there is sufficient demand for it, then as much as it pains me to say, I’ll likely pause sending this newsletter for a short while.

Focus is everything, and unfortunately while I’ve been working on the course the quality of these newsletters has dropped. I want this to be the best newsletter for educational YouTubers in the world, and write more in depth and more actionable articles about YouTube, but I can’t do that whilst also building something else.

🧑‍🎨 The YouTube Tin

Here are a few more we can connect:

1. 🍿 My YouTube Channel: Join a whopping 600 other subscribers following my YouTube channel where I share unfiltered content about how to build a YouTube based business (I’m currently pausing uploads whilst working on another project).

2. 🐦 I also write on X posting more tips and behind the scenes content.

3. 🎙️Watch my podcast episode with my boss on Ali Abdaal where I talk about my journey into YouTube.

☕️ Popular How to YouTube Posts

To be read with love, care and retention.

1. How to Make a Great Thumbnail

2. Let’s Talk About Retention

3. All The Tools You Need as a YouTuber

4. 10 Beliefs You Need to Succeed on YouTube

5. How to Write a Great Hook

6. 4 YouTube Mistakes Beginners Make

7. The Hidden Benefits of Being a YouTuber

8. The New Thumbnail A/B Testing Tool

9. A Breakdown of a Viral Video