94% of Channels Fail: Here's Why

Key Takeaways

94% of YouTube channels never get monetized so why is that well it became obvious when we did some research and estimated that the average YouTube channel needed 134 videos before they reached monetization that is hundreds of hours of work so if the odds are ever not in your favor then how do you get to that 6% oh uh hit the like button right yeah okay I'm just kidding there's a whole entire process that you need to go through and it all starts with establishing your Baseline all right you need to reach somewhere around that 13 or video Mark even if you reach modation sooner you need to be prepared that it might take that long so the first question to ask is what is your Baseline and there's a way to pretty accurately figure this out and that is to just look at how often you've been able to publish in the past and how much time it's taking you to be able to make those videos establishing your Baseline means figuring out how often you able to publish in the past and not overestimating yourself we always do this with goals we say well I want to do more or I don't want it to take 3 years to reach 134 videos so I'll just publish more but if you haven't been doing that consistently in the past it's very unlikely you will and the most accurate way to figure out what you can do in the future with any goal is to look out what you've been able to do in the past of course I don't want you just say stagnant so let's take how many videos you've been able to make and publish consistently in the past and try to increase it by just 10% if you're able to do that then great increase it by another 10% but to start with don't think that you can suddenly go from 0 to 60 and stay consistent all right so you've been honest with yourself on your Baseline in the past you've added 10% as your goal hopefully put it in your YouTube banner and now it's time to stop publishing that's a shocking thing to say it's like probably not what any of you expected to hear on the channel today don't publish any YouTube videos but don't worry there's like a very specific reason why we're telling you to stop it's so that you can take the time to actually make a plan so that as you plan your 10% increase increase on what you've been doing that you can actually be successful like Julia said there are so many people who establish a goal but they just never follow through with it because they don't take the time to actually plan it out so obviously step one of the plans stop publishing step two is to figure out exactly how many times you're going to be publishing is it every other week is it once a week is it twice a week once you figure that out you're going to know how many videos you need to create so that you can get ahead we want you to be able to get ahead with your video so that you never run into a position where you just can't publish because there's nothing to publish so on my channel I publish once a week so I will probably set my new publishing start date Out 3 weeks what that's going to allow me to do is create three more videos within that time frame videos one and two will be the videos that will be my extra videos that will kind of be my buffer and then that third video is going to be the video that I publish on the new start date so on the start date I'll have a video to publish and then I have two extra videos which will keep me from ever running into a position where I just don't have something to publish because consistency is key and the first step if you don't already have a million good ideas is well 50 let's go with 50 but with those 50 ideas you're gonna have a few that are good and I think a good way to pick from that huge list is to think about which one looks the most fun to you which one seems the easiest and which one do you think would be the most helpful for the audience once you have that list of 50 ideas with a few of them being easy fun and just super helpful for the audience I want you to take the list and just put it to the side put it somewhere safe you're going to use that list later to come up with what we call the secret weapon video and don't worry we'll explain it later okay now this is also another point where you might roadblock because now instead of ideas it's time to put them into action and you might get stuck and that's a good time to ask yourself what is stopping you from creating I asked myself this and I found that for most people it ends up being either time energy or resources and the way that actually plays out is different for everyone so Nathan what's this look like for you okay yeah this is something I'm going through right now I'm on my personal Channel there's a video I'm supposed to publish literally tomorrow and I've just been putting it off for weeks and so I think it falls into the energy category I think that I have time at home that I could actually film and edit but when I get home I just don't want to do it I'd rather be doing other things spending time with family and so I just been putting it off so what I ended up having to do is stay up late last night and then I got up really early this morning so that I could knock out the edit and so basically for me it was an it was an energy thing and then it turned into a time thing but I had to solve it by just waking up really early but I think that's something that a lot of people could probably connect with like you get home from work your day job and you just don't want to film or edit that's probably something you've experienced as well I would imagine absolutely I think one of the biggest mistakes people make with time management is actually getting confused between when they literally don't have time and when they just don't have energy so they want to spend that time on other things in a way it's arguable that you don't have time you need some time for yourself but make sure you're clear on if it's time or energy for me I've identified that I am just too tired when I get done with work here to go home and work more on videos what I've been doing all day here so I am trying to really put aside more time on the weekends especially for the heavier more creative parts of my video production process like outlining videos for the weekends because I just have to do it that way but try to look at what is really holding you back for each step of the process so that you can find a solution and not have to be fighting your willpower every single week cuz that's not sustainable yeah okay I love that there's an example that I just have to share so that's something that I've run into a lot I'm filming on an iPhone I have luckily a lab mic now I started out with just using headphones that had a little microphone on it but those were barriers that I ran into and then the third barrier that I've really run into is just filming space I do have an extra room in the house but it's kind of like a storage room where all the stuff when we moved it just sits there I found this Channel that I came across and we'll put it up on the screen here but I found this channel where this girl had like 800,000 subscribers and her background was literally moving boxes and I was like okay if she can do that then I can do that too I'll also put I'll put a picture of what my filming setup looks like in my most recent video it's also moving boxes in the back but it was just like it's not anything special I don't know if it's even something to be proud of but it's just like if she could grow that channel that large with a background like that where it just didn't look perfect who am I with a small channel to say that it's not possible so it was a little thing that really helped me overcome that barrier it's like yeah if they can do it I can do it and who cares like who cares what people think yeah and some of these things you have to fix and some of them you just have to accept like this is an example of you didn't really have to fix much you just had to accept that it was maybe sort of an excuse or not a big deal whereas other things you might need to tweak a bit all right one more quick thing that I just have to say when it comes to all these different I don't know barriers we could call them uh sometimes they're they just turn into excuses so what I would highly recommend and this is what I try and do and it works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't uh but what I try to do is just lower the barrier a little bit and we mentioned that a little bit earlier but just lower the barrier for whatever it is if it's equipment lower the barrier if it's time lower the barrier if rather than a 10-minute video you need to film a 2-minute video just make something getting something out there is always going to be better than having nothing out there because you can always improve in the future all right now it's time for the thing you don't want to hear because it's in all the hype videos and I hate to tell you but you need to hear it because it is time to commit commit it was good yeah have would say more energy and it gets better more energy than that Nathan what do you know about committing not very much but what I do know is that it's all about the small steps like you need to commit to the plan entirely but something we discussed earlier was that if you're not committed to like the tiny little steps that are going to get you to the end result you're just going to fizzle out what I would recommend honestly is just to do something in the next 24 hours so that you have something to show some work product to show for this commitment that you're doing if you can't even commit to doing one little thing in the next 24 hours that's not good so you have committed to making those initial videos to get ahead and sticking with your publishing schedule after that so what does that that process look like the next thing that you need to do is prepare for launch now what does this mean to me this means having your video completely uploaded on YouTube or at least having it in a folder like completely ready to go edited ready to go I also want to see you have your thumbnails ready your title's ready your descriptions ready your watch next you know cards that might go on the video every little element that goes into having a published YouTube video I want you to have ready for launch and two to four ahead that's not for one video that's being ahead on two 2 to 4 maybe even six depending on how frequently you're planning on publishing once you launch your channel back up again you don't want to have to tell your audience that you're taking another break when you already took one and something to do as you work through the process of creating all these videos is to figure out exactly how much time you're spending on each thing so if it takes you 20 hours to put a video together but you only have 15 hours a week well then you need to reckon that time so if you track your time as you go you're going to figure out what the optimal publishing schedule is for you what's the briefcase this is the a secret weapon secret weapon video is essentially just a video that you have when everything has gone completely wrong and you have to get something out there and publish this is literally going to save your channel uh so you want a video a secret weapon video remember that list of 50 ideas you want to take like the most Evergreen topic off of that list something that's just a really great video idea and then create the video and you're going to want to publish it because it's going to be such a good video but you're going to hold it back and you're not going to publish it you're not going to upload it until you have to until you're in such a desperate situation that if you don't publish you're going to miss the publishing date that's the concept of the secret weapon video it's saved our Channel a couple times from missing a publish date and it's something that can save your channel as well that is the secret to never missing a publishing day if you get that lead and maintain that lead it is so motivating to never miss a publishing day and you'll be to those 134 videos before you know it and you will be in those 6% of videos that actually reach monetization but you can get there faster you don't have to wait for the YouTube Partner program and then your chances of actually reaching a monetized channel are so much higher because you're not waiting around and so watch this video on how to get it with as low as 200 subscribers I'm sinking the Titanic sunk on my birthday