👋 How to YouTube - We're back!

How to YouTube #30

Hey YouTuber,

We’re back! It’s been three months since I last appeared in your inbox sharing YouTube wisdoms (if you’re totally new here or don’t remember who I am, then hi 👋 my name is Tintin, I love YouTube, and it’s a pleasure to meet you).

I hope you’ve been well, but more importantly, I hope you’ve been busy making videos and growing your channel and business.

I’ve been hustling away over the summer on a thumbnail course, but I want to get back to sharing insightful, actionable YouTube lessons each week for you.

And I’ve learned an important YouTube lesson over the last couple months.

The reason I decided to pause writing this newsletter and make a thumbnail course was because I realised I had my priorities confused.

I thought the main goal was to grow this newsletter as much as possible to reach more people. I wanted to hit 50,000 subscribers.

But after interrogating my pea-sized monkey brain a bit more, I realised I didn’t know what would happen once I hit that goal.

I’d certainly be able to monetise better than having ~3,000 subscribers, but why not monetise efficiently as I grew as well?

Well there was one major problem. I didn’t have anything to sell except my time. And because I have a full time job, I didn’t want to do any 1:1 consulting (as much as I love it).

And this scenario is a classic trap for content creators in general but particularly YouTubers.

It’s so easy to dream of the views and subscribers, and you assume that the money will look after itself. But really it’s a trap.

There are four ways to make money as a YouTuber:

1. Adsense

2. Affiliates

3. Sponsorships

4. Your own products

The first three can be great, but the fourth is the best.

With the first three, you’re selling stuff that other companies own. You have to rely on them for payment terms, contracts and you only get a fraction of the upside that you’re generating for them.

But with the fourth, you have control.

Now, you don’t want to let overthinking your monetisation strategy overwhelm you to the point of not posting any videos at all, or not starting your channel in the first place.

But as you get clearer on your channel direction and you start to get a bit of traction, it’s sensible to start thinking about what product or service your audience might want.

Most of you reading have educational, information based channels where you solve your audience’s problems for free. But some of them might want more help, and be willing to pay for that help.

The reason I made a thumbnail course was because I kept speaking to educational YouTubers who were struggling with thumbnails.

And there didn’t seem to be a comprehensive course about making thumbnails only for educational channels (with no MrBeast examples), that didn’t require you to already be an expert designer.

It’s one thing if you’re an entertainment channel and you can make a thumbnail of a water slide you’ve built in your house, but what if your channel is about cooking, fashion or personal development?

It can be really challenging.

When I discovered YouTube three years ago, I loved it. But I hated making thumbnails, and I didn’t understand how to improve them. It felt like it should be so simple, but I couldn’t seem to make them look good.

So I’ve spent 100s of hours compiling all the lesson I’ve learned into a 9 module course to help YouTubers like you make better thumbnails.

Last week, 36 YouTubers who bought Thumbnail Masterclass at the early bird discount started making their way through the course. They’re loving it.

So I’m really excited to release it to the rest of you.

I’m confident it’ll be one of the best resources for your channel this year.

The launch is 1st October, you can join the waitlist here.

As ever, have an epic week making videos!

Tintin 🧑‍💻