Business For Musicians

E3: 5 Reasons To Start a Youtube Channel

• Warren McPherson • Episode 3

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Ready to tap into the unexplored potential of a powerful platform like YouTube? Our latest conversation unravels the dynamics of starting a YouTube channel, promising to unlock opportunities with an audience of 8.5 billion daily searches. From the magic of discoverability to the thrill of audience building and monetization, YouTube holds the key to a game-changing move for you. As a strategic entrepreneur, brace yourself for priceless insights into the world of YouTube.

I share five compelling reasons for starting a YouTube channel in this episode. 

  1. YouTube is a search engine owned by Google, with 8.5/billion daily searches.
  2. The best platform for targeted reach 
  3. Longevity of your content
  4. YouTube shared revenue system
  5. Brand Deals 

Learn more about YouTube amortization at https://influencermarketinghub.com/how-much-do-youtubers-make/

If you have questions you'd like me to answer, let's keep the conversation going in my free Facebook here>> Business For Musicians. <<

Speaker 1:

On average, a YouTuber earns around $0.018 for each view, which is way less than a dollar right, and that sounds like man. That's insignificant, but again, which amounts to about $18 per thousand views. I have been receiving a check from YouTube since I got money, guys, like I said, 2016. Every month, like clockwork, I get a check from YouTube. My channel has over 212,000 subscribers. My channel overall generates about close to 300,000 views per month, so you can do the math and see that you know I'm able to make some real money on YouTube. Six years ago, I took my teaching skills online and now I make multiple six figures in annual revenue, teaching piano to students worldwide while working less than eight hours a day. My name is Warren McPherson, the founder and CEO of PNLessonWithWarrencom, and if you want to learn how I broke free from the nine to five piano studio teaching, the late nights and weekend gigging schedule, you came to the right place. At the Business for Musicians podcast, I'll share tips, strategies and tools to help you break free from the trading time for money hamster wheel, so you, too, can build a profitable online business while working fewer hours and from the comfort of your home.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Business for Musicians podcast, welcome back. This is episode three. I'm excited you're here and I look forward to these weekly episodes. This week, in episode two, we took a look at six steps or six ways or six methods to get you starting online. Things to keep in mind, things to make sure that you hit the ground running the right way, because growing the social media online requires you to be doing a lot of the right things over and over and over for a period of time to see quick growth. Things I wish I knew. So if you didn't see, if you didn't get a chance to listen to episode two, check that out, it will be awesome.

Speaker 1:

This week, we're going to talk about five reasons to start a YouTube channel. In episode two, I talked about the importance of being visible on our platforms, which is through True Today. If you want to start any form of online business, you first have to start building an audience, and the four main platforms to really focus on is YouTube, instagram, tiktok and Facebook. You need to be visible in all four, but if I were to rank them in some sort of a hierarchy process, youtube would be at the top for me, and that's what we're going to talk about today, because I was able to build my business a multi-six figure online teaching business purely on YouTube. I really got into the Facebook and Instagram and the TikTok game later. I wish I'd started those channels earlier, but for the most part, I was already making well over six figure online before I even had a TikTok or a YouTube, a TikTok or an Instagram account. So that's why I want to talk to you about YouTube today, because I was able to really build a solid business on just YouTube alone, and so I'm going to give you five steps why you should start a YouTube channel today.

Speaker 1:

Like, if you haven't started a YouTube channel yet, just pull out your phone, shoot a video talking about something and post that. That's going to be the challenge for you for this podcast, because YouTube, in my experience and in my opinion, is still one of the most powerful platform, because it has the element of social media, but also element of search engine. That leads me to my sort of reason number one for starting a YouTube channel, and that is YouTube is a search engine that is owned by Google. We think of Google as sort of like the text search engine. You want to find something on Google. You type in your text your word your phrases as to what you want and YouTube will give you results. Youtube is the video versions of that. You want to find your answer, whatever you're looking for in video format, you go to YouTube and, like I said, youtube is owned by Google, which means you're getting the power of Google on YouTube. So right now, for testing purposes, if you pull out your phone or your laptop desktop and you just type something into Google, I guarantee you you will see videos coming up in the search results and that's one of Google's way of really pushing YouTube. They make sure that videos become a part of search results on Google.

Speaker 1:

Now, I looked this up before I jumped on this podcast because I was curious about how many search does YouTube get per day. 8.5 billion search per day. That's an insane amount of searches we're talking about worldwide. That's amount of search hitting YouTube every day 8.5 billion. So when you start YouTube videos talking about something helping people to solve a problem, you become a part of that search result as an option that someone can find you, because when we're trying to build a business online, we're trying to build and grow an audience. Discoverability is super important and, as a small channel just getting started, it can be a little bit of an uphill battle trying to get viewership and get people to like and subscribe, and so this is why YouTube is powerful. Because there's 8.5 billion searches happening per day.

Speaker 1:

The chance of you coming up in one of those search results is pretty high. No other social platform has that ability. When was the last time you pull out Facebook and search for something specific? I can't remember ever doing that. When was the last time you did that on Instagram or TikTok? Unless you're searching for, like a friend from your school days or someone you recently met in public and you're trying to look up their Instagram account, you may search their name. Outside of that, you're not going to go to like TikTok and say how to screwing a light bulb right? You don't search how tos on those platforms. Those platforms are more heavily social media based, and so that's why YouTube is one of the biggest reason, the biggest search platform, and one of my reasons for you to start a YouTube channel today if you haven't started.

Speaker 1:

My second reason for starting a YouTube channel is that YouTube gives you targeted reach. What does that mean? There are millions and millions and millions of people online every day, searching, scrolling. Not every eyeball is important for you and your business that you're trying to build. You're not trying to reach everybody. Youtube give you a more targeted reach.

Speaker 1:

For example, every time I find myself on YouTube when I'm not creating and posting videos, it's usually because I'm researching how to do something. So when I search how to I don't know replace the battery in my MacBook Pro, for an example, you're gonna see a bunch of videos come up in that search results. That is specific to what you are looking for targeted result and so when you find yourself watching a video, it's you didn't just wander there. You're there mostly because you search for something and then you're looking for which of these videos has the results that you have to offer. Likewise, my channel is piano lesson. People don't just wander onto my channel unless they have some level of interest in music and piano. Likewise, I don't know anything about surfing. I don't care about surfing. It's not my thing. You'll never find me watching a surfing video on YouTube. That's not something that ever comes up in my search criteria. It's not something I'm interested in learning in. So chances of me watching a surfing video on YouTube is zero. However, people who are interested in that stuff will search for that stuff and they'll find themselves liking, subscribing and following and sharing videos relating to surfing. And so that's what I mean by targeted reach and that's what YouTube provides, which is what helps us to grow our channel with people who we can then eventually monetize. People we can then begin to sell our products and services to, because you know, these aren't just random people. When you see views coming in and likes and subscribers, those are people who are interested in what you have to say. We call those warm leads right In the marketing, in our online marketing sphere, warm leads.

Speaker 1:

Now, if we look at the flip side, on places like TikTok, a Facebook and Instagram, you might wonder on random channels and random profiles, because usually people are on those platforms just surfing. You know, if I have a few minutes to spare, I might pull up TikTok and just browse the for you section for entertainment purposes mostly, or to just kill time, right? So I'm just flipping through videos, not looking for anything specific. I'm not looking to solve a problem at that time. I'm certainly not looking to buy anything. It's just to kill time for entertainment purposes. Now I may come across a few videos that I like or videos that align with something that I'm interested in. I may click a subscribe or like, make a comment and so on, and then I move on. So you can still get discovered on Instagram, tiktok, facebook and, like I said, I recommend you be present on those platforms. However, the chance of you getting targeted people to follow you there is a little lower than YouTube.

Speaker 1:

Youtube is going to be highly concentrated, highly targeted, because people go to YouTube when they need to solve a specific problem, when they need information on a specific topic. Very few people just pull up YouTube and scroll for scrolls' sake, right? We tend to do that mostly on places like Facebook, instagram and TikTok. So that's reason number two to join, to create a YouTube channel. Targeted reach that's what we're looking for, right. So we can quickly grow and build our audience with a very high concentration of people who will most likely be willing to pay for our services.

Speaker 1:

Reason number three for starting a YouTube channel is the longevity of your content. Now, again, because YouTube is a search engine. When someone search for a topic, youtube doesn't serve them results only based on the most recent video that is related to the topic. No, youtube serve videos that are 10 years old, eight years old, five years old Doesn't matter, right? Youtube tends to serve the more popular videos higher in views, but it doesn't factor in when the video was posted, which is great, which means if you create a video eight years ago that is blowing up and is doing well, people will continue to find that video because YouTube continue to serve it in search results. So that's the longevity. Videos that I created when I just started my YouTube channel in 2014 still get a lot of views today, still get comments, still get shares, still gets liked and all of that. You can see it in the analytics, right? And we're talking about eight years ago almost, and those videos are still sending me subscribers, sending people to my websites to become members.

Speaker 1:

Longevity. That doesn't really happen. On other platforms Instagram and TikTok, facebook you post something. You may get some traction, likes, views, interaction for a couple days and then it disappears. Very rarely do I get people commenting and liking on videos that are even three years old on places like Instagram, tiktok and Facebook. It just doesn't happen for me. I don't see it in the analytics. And so to be and stay relevant on platforms like YouTube, instagram and TikTok, you got to be constantly feeding that monster of posting, posting, posting because your post disappears within a week and the engagement drastically decreases after that. Not with YouTube. The longevity is years and years and years, and we're going to talk about how that plays into your monetization.

Speaker 1:

But that's reason number three for starting a YouTube channel the longevity of your content. No other social platforms can provide that. So that's another reason to make sure you got a YouTube channel. And I would say, depending on the content you're creating, youtube should become your primary platform. Especially if you're doing anything teaching related that requires a visual component, where it's important for people to see what you're doing, youtube is going to be your best bet to make your primary channel. And then you have the other channels the Facebooks, the, the TikTok, the Instagram are supporting channel, feeding people to that YouTube channel. That's how I use it, because those other platforms sort of favors more short form content anyway, particularly Instagram and TikTok. You can't really post a full 15, 20 minute tutorial there, so you post that on YouTube and then you cut up that videos into shorts and reels and all of that post on those other platforms. That then redirects people to the longer form content and we'll talk more about content strategies and posting and all of that stuff in future podcast episodes.

Speaker 1:

Reason number four for starting a YouTube channel is the shared revenue platform that YouTube offers. No other platform has that Well, facebook kind of have a little monetization thing going, but it's a lot harder to get monetized on Facebook than a YouTube. I started my channel in 2014, did a few videos, disappeared from the platform, never looked at it, never created another video until 2016. And I think it was either late 2016 or yeah, I think it was late 2016. I got monetized on YouTube. Now, how does one get monetized on YouTube?

Speaker 1:

Youtube requirement is that you need at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time, or 4000 minutes of watch time, something like that, which is not really a very high bar. It sounds like a high bar to climb, but it's not. If you're posting consistently, there's a strong chance. By the time you hit 25, 50 videos, you may get monetized. You may hit 1000 subscribers. It varies and it all depends also on if you're doing the best tips and practices to grow your reach, and we'll talk more about that in future podcast episodes. But I got monetized about late 2016 on YouTube, which means I started making money in ad revenues from my YouTube videos. I didn't get monetized on Facebook until, I think, 2022. Now I had a Facebook account. At the same time, I had a YouTube account. Even though YouTube was my main platform, I was still posting videos on Facebook, and that's how long it took to get monetized on Facebook. It was a higher bar, significantly higher bar, and so this is one of the reasons why you should start a YouTube channel. In no time you can start earning money on YouTube.

Speaker 1:

Now how does YouTube sort of work out their monetization? How do you know how much you're going to get paid on average? So right here it says on average, a YouTuber earned around $0.018. For each view, which is way less than a dollar, right, and that sounds like man, that's insignificant, but again, which amounts to about $18 per thousand views. So every time you get a thousand views on a video that's monetized, you can make approximately $18. Now, I said approximately because YouTube has different types of ad formats that can be shown on your videos and each of them sort of have a little different costs associated with them. Some's higher and some's lower, but on average, we're talking about $15 to $18 per thousand views.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you do the math on a video, if you have a video that has 50,000 views. Do the math right. You can start earning real money. I have been receiving a check from YouTube since I got monetized in, like I said, 2016. Every month, like clockwork, I got a check from YouTube. My channel has over 212,000 subscribers. My channel overall generates about close to 300,000 views per month. So you can do the math and see that. You know I'm able to make some real money on YouTube.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you wanna read more on the article that I am citing right here, it was taken from the influencer, influencermarketinghubcom, and I'll link to that in the show notes, and it covers a lot more about monetization on YouTube and how to calculate it and a lot more interesting metrics that you can look at if you're interested which you should be in starting a YouTube channel. But there you go 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 minutes of watch time and boom, monetization's on. You can start earning for your work, right, all that work you're gonna put into the videos, even though you're doing this to build your own audience, just so you can sell them your own products. But it's a nice little side hustle also getting paid for that. You don't get that on TikTok, you don't get that on Instagram and, like I said, on YouTube it is very hard to get monetization, and even though I have been monetized on Facebook, I still make a lot more in ad revenue on YouTube than I do on Facebook. So, again, that's reason number four for starting a YouTube channel is the monetization. That's a game changer.

Speaker 1:

Now the last one we're gonna talk about. Reason number five for starting a YouTube channel is brand deals. Now, this one will come a lot later in the game, right? You're not gonna just start a YouTube channel and get brand deals. And what do I call brand deals? Companies starts to reach out to you to promote their products and they pay you for that.

Speaker 1:

For me, my niche is piano lessons. I teach piano. What are the brand deals that I get? Companies send me keyboards. It's amazing. Right there in the corner of my room there's three keyboards sitting there that companies ship to me for free to promote, and basically what they want me to do is just to do a review of the keyboard, where I just turn on my camera and just go through the different features of the keyboard. Boom, they pay me hundreds of dollars to do what we call a dedicated video, promoting those videos, and then I'm left with the keyboard. It's free, it was given to me. So then I turn around and I sell that keyboard to my students online doesn't matter. So it's kind of like double dipping I get paid to promote the keyboard, then I get paid again when I sell the keyboards online. Now we're talking about a keyboard that's worth $600, $700, $800 keyboard. So it's a great way to monetize again your audience and your YouTube channel through branding deals.

Speaker 1:

I not only get branding deals, but software. I recently did a brand deal with a company called Lalal AI and it's this amazing AI tool that allows you to separate audio stems so you have a full track. You can separate the vocals, the drums, the bass. It's an amazing AI. They reach out to me and they say, hey, we want you to promote this AI product. Right, I do that, get paid a couple hundred dollars. Take took me less than two hours to get the video done, and so you realize that you can get all these sponge sponsorships and branding deals that can make you thousands of dollars simply because you have a large following, or a concentrated following, because, like I said, you don't really need a large following to get branding deals, but you need a couple thousand people already in your ecosystem. You need at least a couple thousand subscribers before companies see you as an eligible channel to do sponsorships with and branding deals with.

Speaker 1:

So with a channel like mine that has over 200,000 subscribers, I don't have to wait for companies to come to me. I start to pitch companies that I like, products that I'm already using in my studio to shoot videos and stuff. You can reach out to those companies and say you know, like the partnership with you, I love your product. I have this audience of concentrated musicians that I could promote your stuff to, and that is way better for companies than paying ads on radios and TV. They're getting a concentrated audience of thousands of people to put their product in front of, and so there you have it. Those are my five reasons why everybody who aspired to build a business online start with a YouTube channel. Make sure you're on all the other platforms as well, but don't ignore the YouTube thing.

Speaker 1:

Now, the YouTube thing. It takes work right. You can't just shoot two, three, four videos and then sit back and hope for all the things I just mentioned to start to take effect. My channel has over 500 videos, and I would have had over 600 videos if I never took a year off. There was a year that I just kind of never shot much YouTube videos, partly because I was preoccupied with the membership that I built, working in that and creating videos for that. But then also there was a two year, two year period when I just didn't post any video. When I just started my channel, like I said, I started in 2014, shot five videos and then I disappeared for two years. So had I been consistent with since then till now, I would have had probably close to 700 videos, which means my channel subscription would have been larger, much larger than it is today, which means I would have been making a lot more in ad revenue. It's just so much more potential. So this is what I want to leave with you today Consistency is going to be your best friend in building an online business.

Speaker 1:

It's not going to happen overnight. Youtube, in my opinion, is one of the best platforms to start with and be consistent with it. If you post your first five videos and they all have zero views, don't get discouraged. You got to keep going. A lot of the famous YouTubers that I follow say listen, if you're serious about YouTube, you need to crank out at least 100 videos before you start to rethink if it's something worth doing. At least 100 and they're not wrong. Right, it may take at least 100 videos before you even hit that monetization 1000 subscription mark, but I think it is 2023. Youtube is the best platform for content creators, for people looking to build a business online, because the benefits far outweigh just the views and the subscribers to pitch your own product branding deals, ad revenues. I haven't even talked about YouTube membership yet. I'll probably cover that in another podcast.

Speaker 1:

So just to recap five reasons to start the YouTube channel today, and that is that YouTube is a search engine. It's going to give you more potential for reach and views than any other platform. When you reach, people who end up on your channel won't get there based on mistake or just randomly wander there. It mostly going to be because they're interested in what you have to say, why they're on your channel to begin with. Reason number three is the longevity. Your YouTube content don't die. They survive and they thrive year after year after year after year. The YouTube and reason number four, youtube shared revenue platform is a game changer. You start to get paid for producing content, which is amazing. And lastly, reason number five starting a YouTube channel is the opportunity for branding deals with companies that you like, companies that you've been supporting, buying your products for years. Once on your niche, this is going to be a lot of different options here for you to again make real money from the videos you're already putting out there. So that's it. Those are the reasons for starting a YouTube channel.

Speaker 1:

If you haven't start one today, if you can't do it today, try to start one in the coming week. But start a YouTube channel, start cranking out content that you're passionate about. Don't worry about the views and the clicks and the likes yet. It will come, but you got to start today. You got to be consistent, all right.

Speaker 1:

So that's it for episode three of the Business for Musician podcast. Please give me a like and a subscribe in the app stores, leave me a comment, leave me a review. All of those things help the channel and the podcast to grow and to surface in the search results in the iTunes store and wherever else you listen to podcasts, whether you're watching this on YouTube, facebook, instagram, tiktok. I'm on all of these places and your support would mean a lot to me, as I'll continue to share what I have learned that has helped me to build a multi six figure business online. Check out the show notes for the bullet points of everything I talked about the link to the influencer marketing hub so you can read more about YouTube monetization. Until then, have a blessed week and I'll see you next week for episode four of the business for musicians podcast.