Are you ready to know about how I got 286K Youtube subscribers? I get about 165 views per average video that I didn't create myself but paid somebody else to make.
This blog will help you massively in your online efforts to learn from my mistakes, especially for your YouTube channel.
I'll walk you through the mistakes I've made on my YouTube channel, the things I've learned from them and then talk about my plans. I've got enough data to show me exactly what to do right on my channel because I've tried everything that is not worth doing.
One of the major things I did not do with my YouTube channel for many years is that I did not respond to the comments. I often ignored the comments as well. I have been asked this question so many times. It was hurting my feelings and I got sick of it. I even started hiding everybody who even mentioned it.
Now, if this comment comes up, I will just simply reply with this post.
Everyone's got a fresh start. However, one of the things I messed up with my channel is not applying comment moderation. I let people go through and say whatever they wanted all over my channel. This often dragged the discussion of my videos into the negative side.
Understand this. My Youtube channel is a house where I allowed everybody to come in to throw around whatever they wanted to and leave. That caused the place to stink for the people who wanted to hang out there, look at the videos and participate in the discussion.
Therefore, I am making heavy comments in moderation now. If I don't like what you have to say, I will generally hide all of your comments from the entire YouTube channel and you won't even realize it. YouTube will simply not show your comments to anyone else even though you'll still be able to post them.
However, I have forgiven everybody today and you've got another chance to participate kindly and respectfully in the discussion. I highly encourage you to comment on moderation on your channel. Don't allow the haters and the trolls to aggravate other viewers who wouldn't have already been aggravated.
I've learned this the hard way so many times because someone who just wants to cause trouble will post “You do stupid videos and I hate them”. Someone else who is enjoying the video gets aggravated by reading that comment. They don't come back.
All they remember is, “I didn't like how I felt when I looked at the videos on that channel and this channel doesn't look like it's going in a very good direction because of the comments”.
So moderate comments or haters will take over.
Cleaning the community is a big step I've finally taken going forward. No more of letting people come by and say things that are purely hateful like “Your voice is terrible and I hate what you have to say”. You don't need to even leave that comment.
What happens when your YouTube subscribers don't see what they originally subscribed for?
I've done videos on so many different topics that have got me subscribers and then I've stopped making videos on those topics. Therefore, subscribers are consistently seeing videos that are not related to what they originally subscribed for. This gives YouTube negative feedback as people unsubscribe and hide my videos.
YouTube then says, “Oh! This video is not very good” and then as that keeps happening on every single video, it consistently limits the reach. If you're not making your subscribers happy then you're probably not going to make anybody else happy either.
I have advertised a lot of the videos that I'm about to show you via Google ads. As you can see, I've spent $171,808.99 on Google ads and $85,149.45 specifically on video ads.
The video ads helped me rank a lot of videos high. Here's the problem with the video ads I did. If you find anything helpful, will you please subscribe on YouTube and help us reach 500k subscribers & leave a comment? Help others find it by giving a like. Your contribution means a lot.
I did a lot of remarketing ads which showed people who'd already watched my channel and something they didn't want to see in the first place which equals to a negative experience. People were like, “I don't want to watch this guy's videos anymore”.
I also spent a lot of money on ads on videos I no longer upload which worked to get my videos ranked to get me, subscribers. Now, every single video I put out, somebody's disappointed, which of course is inevitable as you get bigger.
I've been a disappointment to the fans for years and I finally got a system down that will give you consistent quality content.
I advertised 25 Reasons Steem Can Replace Bitcoin as #1 Cryptocurrency by 2021 a lot, especially to people who’d already watched my channel. I got paid to do it. it was a sponsored video and then guess what?
A lot of people stopped watching my channel after seeing an ad for something they didn't want to see in the first place. Therefore, this video turned off a lot of people who were subscribing on my channel from watching any additional videos with me.
People were just ignoring my videos instead of unsubscribing and not coming back.
Edwin Q Waters: No more gaming streams?
Yes, another example of something I did that people subscribed for and then I stopped doing. Now, I don't recommend just doing things and continuing to do them just to get views and I'm not suggesting that at all.
If you don't want to do something or don't like doing something anymore, please quit doing it. However, I did a lot of gaming streams and people subscribed for gaming videos.
As you can see, I got 783K views on this gaming video. This one did not go viral because of ads. It’s one of the only videos I've had that's gotten close to a million views without the help of ads and this has brought in tens of thousands of subscribers.
This has brought in a significant number of Youtube subscribers on my entire channel. I didn't even like League of Legends. I just literally hired a coach to help me make videos and then I wasn't planning to play anymore but the video went viral.
Can a pro coach help me get out of bronze in League of Legends is a perfect example of why I've got so many YouTube subscribers and views?
This one video got 2,000+ subscribers and a thousand dollars in revenue. I then made a bunch of more League of Legends videos which brought in more subscribers. I stopped making League of Legends videos and then guess what?
YouTube stopped showing most of my videos to the people who subscribed for League of Legends. The odds of YouTube showing a subscriber in the home feed became much lower. This one video and the other League of Legends videos account for thousands of subscribers who subscribe and then I get nothing else for them.
I focused relentlessly on my channel. How do I get more Youtube subscribers? How do I make money? As long as you ask questions that are based on how do I get what I want, you may get what you want as I've wanted a lot of Youtube subscribers and I've got a lot of subscribers now.
I was focused on results a lot of the time, not all the time. There were videos I made like the gaming Livestream was focused on genuinely making great content and the videos I made were focused on helping people with good information. However, that wasn't the primary focus.
What was my primary focus to get Youtube subscribers?
My primary focus was how do I make money selling courses and a bunch of the videos on my channel that have got me a lot of YouTube subscribers were all geared toward making money and selling courses which worked.
I've made millions of dollars selling video courses online and I used YouTube to do that. Almost all of the top videos on my channel with over a hundred thousand views sell courses. It worked well. I made videos just trying to sell video courses, sold a lot of hacking courses and still sell hacking courses even though the videos were removed.
The videos were made with the intent to sell courses and when made, they got a lot of Youtube subscribers out of the videos but I didn't care about the Youtube subscribers. I was only using the videos to make sales and wasn't thinking much about how this would impact my YouTube channel because I was focused on selling video courses.
I've got to the point where I don't want to make video courses anymore. I'd rather just give you all the information for free instead of trying to sell you on something.
What I'm doing going forward is releasing one video a day in a format that people have loved or on a subject that I’m passionate about. A video that includes the most helpful information packed in the shortest amount of time in a Livestream or a pre-recorded video.
Another thing I did, I did AFK Livestreams where I played my music in the background like a radio station and that got a lot of people to turn the notifications off on my channel and stop seeing new videos. This is another thing you do not want to do.
I’m focusing on how do I give viewers something that has the most help in an efficient format which means something like a “Top 10 video”. What I’ve been doing is cranking out 3 videos a day. At one point, I was putting out 7 videos a day. I've made every mistake in the book.
With 7 videos a day, a couple of people started turning the notifications off. If you're getting 7 notifications a day, it's a good incentive to just turn it off and say, “Man, this is too many. I'm not going to get this guy's notifications any more”.
Thus, I did that earlier this year which drastically dropped the number of people getting notifications and seeing every single new video. My notification percentage is significantly lower than average.
I've done so many different things that it only takes a single thing to put somebody off to create a negative experience. YouTube's algorithm is optimized for channels that deliver a very predictable and consistent viewing experience.
This suggests you consistently pick a specific topic or approach for your channel and stick with it because the algorithm appears to weigh negative feedback significantly.
One of the worst things you can do is to put something out that is very aggravating to your subscribers because YouTube says, “Oh, your subscribers don't like this, we won't show this to anybody else”. The downside is when you just do a lot of different things that only takes one thing to aggravate a subscriber and to trigger one of those negative signals.
Therefore, when you are experimenting endlessly and never just sticking to one thing or you do one thing well in one video but you don't do those anymore, the Youtube subscribers consistently get disappointed and leave negative feedback.
Thus, I'm hoping that people who don't want to watch my videos anymore will go away and that's why I'm not interacting with anybody in the comments anymore who don't seem to enjoy watching my videos because I've also fed a lot of negative energy on my channel.
In other words, I've given fuel to the haters. Someone that says your videos aren't very good, I go through and argue with them about why they are not good? I try and put out a video to prove why they are good and you get into that cycle with things.
I put out a video of a girl dancing to promote my music. This is an example of the things I do on my channel which caused a lot of problems in the algorithm. I am now giving up uploading such videos. It was a good experiment. I've tried it 4 different times now and one of the worst things you can do is put videos that your enthusiastic Youtube subscribers get aggravated with.
Now, I'm not talking about someone who you might call a hater that just comes along and dislikes every video regardless but things that people who are normally watching and enjoying videos get put off or offended by.
The way I've done my videos, I've found a lot of different ways to put off a lot of different people, for example, girls dancing videos and inconsistency.
If you're going to do things that are vastly different than what you normally do, it is ideal to set up separate channels. For example, I had set up a Jerry Banfield hacking channel, a Jerry Banfield gaming channel and Jerry Banfield music channel.
If I set all those different channels up and say, “Look, if you want gaming-related videos, go to the gaming channel. If you want music, go to the music channel. If you want hacking-related videos, go to the hacking channel”.
A lot of the tutorials and the hacking ones were all done by other people. For example, Start Developing Android Apps Today is one of the top videos on my channel. It was done by somebody else. All I did was the intro.
Full Linux Tutorial: Go from Beginner to Advanced with RedHat Linux and CentOS is done by somebody else. All I did was an intro.
It would have been appropriate to put those on a separate YouTube channel because a lot of people subscribed to my YouTube channel for videos that I'm not capable of producing by myself at least without taking a couple of years to learn to hack by myself.
Thus, it would have been best to put on a separate channel.
Now, I've got a separate channel for Uthena and for videos like that. If you strictly want those tutorial videos by other instructors then they are available on the Uthena channel. All we're doing on the Uthena channel is long format technical tutorials.
There won't be any dance videos. There won't be anything to aggravate subscribers. There are purely things that are video courses and I intend to start publishing to this channel regularly.
What I've done instead though is I've put a bunch of those kinds of videos in my channel with the other videos. Therefore, you want to focus your channel as much as possible.
I've also been very negative on myself and my youtube channel a lot because I was consistently thinking over the last several years. I wasn't thinking about the viewers on youtube. I was thinking about something else.
I was thinking,
How to make sales on Udemy?
How to pump the price of Steem or Dash?
How can I get more people to listen to my music?
I've been consistently using my Youtube channel to get some results and I have had a balance of “let me help someone” without needing anything in return.
However, the balance has very often tipped in favor of “What do I get out of this?” and when you focus on what you get out of something, even if you get the results, they will tend not to stick or not to be very well.
If you've got a channel like me, my channel is all about me. Therefore, the one thing that should be consistent is me. I'm not doing any more videos like the dancing ones where it's not me as the main part of the video.
I'm also focusing down on 1 video a day because I realized that if I want you to set up notifications, it's a bit unreasonable for me to expect you to watch 3 videos a day, especially when those are often 30-minutes to 60-minutes or more in total time.
Viewers who have notifications on are part of the most influential viewers on the channel. For viewers who have notifications on and watch every single video or see those notifications on their phone, the way viewers respond to notifications is critical for the YouTube algorithm and recommending content.
In my analytics and stats, there is an opportunity for me to improve on my channel. What you'll notice here is that there are only 22% recommendations and this is the lowest percentage it's ever been. It happened after deleting the hacking videos.
Only 22% of my views are from YouTube’s content recommendation and that's low. It means that almost all Youtube subscribers are watching my content. I must do a great job and think about how to give you the most value as a subscriber.
What I have noticed is I have not done very well listening. I was publishing 3 videos a day which was too many, especially when people keep saying, “Jerry, how do you put so many videos?”
Poll: What is your favorite outfit for me to wear in videos?
I've adjusted what I'm wearing based on the feedback. I did a poll on my channel asking about what I was wearing and 61% of people said, “t-shirt”.
What I'm doing going forward is I'm going to consistently do more polls which is in the community tab on the channel and for you that are the most enthusiastic Youtube subscribers, I'm going to keep asking you to help me understand how may I serve you best.
I changed my outfits to t-shirts because of this poll. If the overwhelming majority voted for a t-shirt, then that's the most appropriate thing to wear. I'm not saying you should just be like a robot and do whatever people tell you to do.
Poll: Do you want me to start live streaming again?
About half of the people want live streams either anytime or scheduled in advance. Others are saying to just record videos. My balance is to do some live streams but also to do some pre-recording and I'm very grateful for that feedback.
Poll: How many videos per day do you think I should release?
I've been doing 3 videos a day. Almost no one asked for 3 a day. I am surprised that 16 people selected the 4+ option. I put the “0” option to be funny. 19% of the people voted for 0 which could be less than 1 a day but half of the people said 1 video a day.
From now on, I'm sticking to that. I’ll be consistently uploading 1 new video for you each day and if I do a live stream, that will be the only video for that day. If I don't do a live stream, you'll get a pre-recorded video.
Thus, I should have tried to get to know exactly what you do want from me on YouTube and to adjust my creative process to that. It's not to say that I should just do exactly everything everyone asks for. It's not to say I should violate my boundaries. I am suggesting that I should follow the advice.
I've been foolish that I have not been listening to people. I have just been thinking too much about myself and what I want based on the fear of not having enough. Then take actions that don't help me get my needs met. Therefore, this is foolish.
Foolish should be the most accurate word. You could call this cryptocurrency video greedy if you want to. To me, this video was foolish as well as a very good learning experience. At the height of my cryptocurrency popularity, I did a video right after I sold my Dash Masternode saying “Where did I invest 10 Bitcoin”.
Now, the whole purpose of this video was to go get people to buy a course for $200 where I revealed what cryptocurrency I was buying and about to pump. Thus, if you bought the course and immediately took action on it and as soon as I started pumping it publicly, it went up 2 or 3 times.
If you bought the course early, you helped contribute to the beginning of the pump. It publicly started to go up. If you sell as soon as it went up, you could have made a good amount of money and I believe some people did exactly that. The video was not very well received.
How did I end up doing this video?
Well, I ended up doing this video because a few months before this, I had bought $11,000 worth Dash and then told everybody how great Dash was and got paid to make videos.
The price went up to $87K and I used my YouTube channel to pump Dash and it worked. Now imagine if you had something you could do where you could take your money and within a few months turn it into 10 times as much money, that's tempting.
It was tempting and I was tempted just based on the money. I'm like, “Wow! I can just put videos up and make money” I did that and I made thousands of dollars doing that off of my Youtube channel.
However, the Karma from that came back around. The karma from that left me feeling like I didn't enjoy what I do, I'm not helping people and feeling not very good about what I'm doing.
Today, what I see is that when you do things like this, there's always some kind of karma to it and some kind of a result for yourself.
I'm grateful I've learned from that today because the better I do, the more things go well for me and the more opportunities will come along for me to do things like that. When you think about other people more then you can avoid temptations like that.
This has been painful enough with Cryptocurrencies and with all the different videos I've done. It's been a painful transition to see a lot of people being disengaged from my YouTube channel that grew like crazy in 2016 and 2017.
It was making me a ton of money from ad revenue, course sales, and to pump currencies but as soon as I switched into thinking what I could get out of this, a lot of people disengaged. A lot of people who were following and who were excited went away.
Therefore, this all comes back to mindset. It's all about my thinking and I'm grateful I've been through and learned this because now I'm in a position to reach the highest levels from what you might say personally by giving you the most valuable content every day.
To reach the highest levels by helping you learn from my experience instead of needing to learn it yourself. A lot of us think that we can't have what we want but I think I can have anything I want and the biggest troubles I've had in life are getting the things I want, especially getting the things I wanted before I was ready to handle them.
Getting things to be like $1,000 a day in income before I was ready to handle and embrace it. Getting an influential opinion where I could post a video on anything and thousands of people are going to watch it and people will buy things based on what I say. That was an amazing thing to be given at 30 years old with the life I've had.
Jinkie: How much do you make a month from YouTube?
This is the lowest my ad revenue has been in a long time. I’ve earned $849 which is good. That's directly in ad revenue. However, I also make sales as people book calls on my website and join my membership program.
This is my ad revenue for the year 2019. I had uploaded hacking videos that were making a lot more and when I took them down, the ad revenue went down.
Here's a really good thing. This is the highest the ad revenues been on my channel with my videos. That doesn't mean hacking videos by somebody else over a long period of time.
If we go look at 2018, you can see the data. Now you'll notice a huge drop because I ran a ton of ads for Cryptocurrency that also put off a lot of viewers. However, there's normally a spike in ad revenue around the holidays.
What's important to mention is I'm focusing on what I've done and what I can learn from that. There is another important consideration though. It's not up to me where YouTube decides to show my videos. It's up to me to do what I create. It's up to you more than me as to where the video is going.
Nightcore Chase: Have you earned $800 a month from your past efforts?
Yes, the majority of the views on my videos are from past efforts and not from things I've done currently which makes my channel significantly different than many of the other channels you've watched.
A lot of the other channels get a lot of their ad revenue from new videos which then don't get watched as much afterward.
A lot of the videos on my channel have been more transactional like, “How to develop an app or how to learn a new skill?” Now, these can get people watching but I have not done that many videos that have been of great quality that are just kind of life updates and videos that I'm a big part of.
If you notice my top videos, there's only 1 video I'm a significant part of and it's been like that for years. I did the intro on all of the other ones but the bulk of the video is somebody else teaching. That has worked for me to make money but it doesn't work for the YouTube channel to get organic views.
Now going forward, all of the new videos I’m uploading are based on what I teach or talk about. The number of people that watch every new video I imagine going right now is about 200.
However, that's with 3 videos a day. When I’ll switch over to doing 1 video a day, I imagine the average views on a video will quickly go from 200 to maybe 300 or 400. I’ve been scattering you all over the place.
It's important on YouTube, especially to focus. As you can see, I've been putting out videos so fast on my channel that I've been getting like 500 views a day for free but they're scattered and all of the comments are scattered across all of these different videos.
This is also a reflection of me just making videos as fast as I can often not thinking about how do I deliver the most value in the lowest amount of time. Instead, I've been thinking about how I can get YouTube organic search traffic but really that's not the ideal approach as I already know.
Power Loop: Happy to help you succeed. All the best for your journey.
Zig Ziglar says: Life is difficult but if you're tough on yourself, it's much easier.
I'm tough on myself. I expect a lot. There's nobody who has stuff on me. At the same time, I live the life of my dreams. I've gone to a see a hypnotherapist to talk about myself, to have active meditation and cry. I had time to help out my wife and went to spend some time with my son and daughter.
I have time to go to the AA meeting. I make money every day even if I don't do anything. I don't have any alarm clock. I haven't had a real job since 2012 when I quit to do this full-time and do my business online.
My life is an absolute dream. That's not to say that it's without challenges. In fact, this has challenged me a lot and it's sneaky. It's not like right in your face. It's like discrete. You've got to think about it and figure some of this stuff out like where did I go wrong and what do I do to make sure I don't do that again?
I'm successful today in the sense that I love my life as it is. To me, true success is to love your life as it is. It was a real success. However, worldly success doesn't really matter because you love your life as it is.
Vape Queen: Any fast advice for new YouTubers?
Think about how you can help other people in your videos a lot. Not how you can get views but how you can make a huge difference in someone's life. Making a huge difference in one person's life will do a lot more for you than helping 4,000 people a little bit.
That's the mindset. The whole lesson from this is I've thought too much about how I get views and Youtube subscribers. Even though I've thought a lot about how I help other people, I've still thought too much about how I get views and Youtube subscribers.
Therefore, think about how you can help people. From there, do a great job for everyone that wants something you create. That means doing a great job for your Youtube subscribers. Give your Youtube subscribers videos that are the best you can do.
I have a playlist which I believe will be helpful for you to grow your Youtube channel.
At the beginning or when you're learning, the best you can do might not be very good compared to what you'll be able to do later but that might mean upgrading your microphone, getting a nice live streaming setup or a nice setup.
Live-streaming is also a really good opportunity to research your videos beforehand. That's a huge tip that's taken me years to apply. Research your videos beforehand.
If you're thinking of helping someone make more money, you can write “How to make more money online” and then look at what people are searching for. See if you can do something that will address what people want. Become aware of what people are looking for and what's missing.
For example, what I see a lot of people do and I've done a lot myself is to just put a similar video like, “Oh, I'll put up the same tutorial which somebody else put but I'll do it better”. Make something that's better and listen.
One thing you can do that will help you also is to do live streams. Live stream whenever it is possible. YouTube will put those out more and use Restream to do your live streams. Restream will allow you to put your live streams out on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, and Dlive.
Power Loop: How to improve communication skills?
Practice your communication all the time as if you are doing it live. When I talk, all of my talking is done as if I'm on video. Now sure sometimes I'll say words like curse words I wouldn't normally say but still, that is a minority.
Almost all the time when I talk, I talk the same way in real life that I do on videos. It’s very helpful.
Saiyan: How do you feel about boosting on Facebook?
Thank you for asking about that. I've done a lot of ads and I can say you are better off without doing ads. One reason I have so many Youtube subscribers on my channel is because I've spent so much money to do ads that have resulted in Youtube subscribers.
I suggest not to spend money on ads. Instead, spend money on creating great content and sharing that with people that might like it. The problem with ads is it's like an addiction. If it works, you're going to want to do a lot more with it and even if it doesn't, you may dump a bunch of time and money into something that was a total waste.
I've spent over $300K in ads online. If I had to start over, I would not do any online ads at all.
If you want to see my videos on Youtube, I trust you will subscribe to my Youtube channel and turn the notifications on. You can also watch my videos on Facebook.
If you want to make money online, the best way is to join a mastermind program full of people who are already making money online and learn from them. I've got that at jerry.tips/scholars or jerry.tips/university.
If you want to make money online, it helps a lot to be a part of a group of people who already are doing that and I'm available for calls almost every day.
You may also love to read this post: $200 YouTube Ad Revenue on Video with Only 8K Views?
I love you. You're awesome. I appreciate the chance to serve you today.
Love,
Jerry Banfield
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