206: YouTube for Food Influencers with Tim Schmoyer

In this episode, I talk about hashtag recommendations for Pinterest and then Bjork interviews Tim Schmoyer about creating, delivering and capturing value on YouTube. Hey hey, Wonderful listener Alexa here and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. How are you doing? It's been a few weeks since I've done the intro to the podcast. I took a break while we were publishing our project series and I've missed you. It feels so good to be back and I'm thrilled to ring in this new episode with you. But before we hop into the interview, I'd like to thank our sponsors for this episode. WP Tasty WP Tasty is our sister site for WordPress plugins and food bloggers. If you're on the hunt for SEO friendly, lightweight plugins, head on over to wptasty.com to learn more. And for today's Tasty tip, that is a helpful, actionable piece of advice we like to share. At the beginning of a podcast episode, I'd like to Chat about Hashtags on Pinterest as you probably know by now, hashtags are acceptable and searchable on Pinterest, but do you know how you can incorporate their use into your overall Pinterest strategy? Well, some of the questions you may be asking yourself are how do Pinterest hashtags actually work? Do they work the same way as they do on other social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter? How broad or specific should my hashtags be? Should it be just food or more like breadedchickensalad? How many hashtags should I actually use on each pin? And should I update my old pins to use hashtags? Luckily, all those questions and more are answered in WP Tasty's newest blog post titled Pinterest Hashtags in 2019 Best Practices and Simple Tips. You can get there by going to wptasty.com hashtag that's the actual word hashtag, not the icon. And as a little teaser, here's a little takeaway. So while you can use up to 20 hashtags on each pin, it's recommended that you actually use three or four. This is to ensure that your hashtags stay relevant, concise and non spammy. Again, you can get there by going to wptc.com hashtag to learn more. And now the episode. We are so excited to welcome Tim Schmoyer back on the Food Blogger Pro podcast to chat about the state of YouTube for food creators in 2019. It's an awesome conversation. If you're A content creator in the food space. In this interview, Tim shares why YouTube should be treated as a unique social platform. How YouTube prioritizes videos, how to deal with haters, how to monetize, and so much more. If you're making food and recipe videos, you'll love hearing about how you can create, deliver and Capture value on YouTube in this interview. So without any further ado, Bjork, take it away.

Tim, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you.

It's been a little while. It's good to be back here.

It has. And believe it or not, some things have changed with YouTube. You find it hard to believe, but after a couple years there's some things that are different. So we're going to talk about what some of those things are. Kind of the state of YouTube. But before we get into that, I want to let people know. Number one, we've done an interview before, so we'll link to that in the show notes. People can check that out. And number two, gonna let people know that we're talking all about YouTube today. But before we do that, why YouTube? Why is it an important thing? I think we should really start at the base level and discuss the power and the significance of YouTube for creators. So I'll start with that and then we can, we can go from there.

Yeah, there's a lot we could talk about there. I started on YouTube back in 2006 and I was a full time blogger at the time for a few years. And so I loved the blogging world. I loved being able to sit down, write out content, publish it and you know, take me, I don't know, like a solid afternoon to write a 600 word post. And I really liked it because I could see that what I was doing was like making a difference. And it was in family space and it was impacting a lot of people. Well, this thing called YouTube came along shortly thereafter and that was back in 2005 by the way. That was. I started on WordPress 1.5.

Nice.

OG totally. I remember those days were fond memories of trying to figure out how to make it work.

Yeah, that was like, that was WordPress before it was cool. Like it was what, 33% of the web now and it was probably like 3.3 or 0.3% of the web at that point.

Yeah, back then it was like BB press or not BB Press.

It was Word type was a popular one and I'm trying to think some of the others.

Yeah, evolution or something like that. I kept going back and forth between. Anyway, I settled on WordPress. Turned out it made the right choice, but so I was using WordPress to just kind of talk about things I was passionate about. And then around that time, I started. I was in graduate school halfway across the country, and I started dating this girl, and I wanted to introduce her to my family back home across the country. And I just started putting little videos of us up on YouTube. First one was March 2, 2006. So way. And YouTube started in 2005, September 2005. So it's like, really back in the beginning and started growing, and people are like, hey, how is this working? And I'm like, I don't really know. Like, this is my space. Days where you don't use your real name on the Internet, and if people find out who you are, they'll hunt you down and kill you.

For some reason, I was a little.

Concerned about why different people were commenting. Why did they keep coming, why were they coming back and how are they finding me? And other people are apparently asking that question, too. And so from the very beginning, I kind of ended up as that guy on YouTube. Like, this is the person he asked when you want to know how YouTube works. But what I really loved about it was that, like, so my girlfriend and I, we got married and started having kids and moved to our first house, moved job, and we kept putting those videos up on YouTube. And within a few years, we were reaching a million people a month. And we were. And so to answer your question, like, why YouTube? One of the first things I saw that was different between what I was doing as a blogger than what I was experiencing on YouTube is that, like, when we were reaching about a million people a month, it was great. But what I really loved about it was that we were, like, giving these people a window into our lives and having far more impact than I anticipated. And I'm not saying, like, because we're awesome or anything. It was just, like, people were just experiencing these stories, and their lives are being changed by, like, people who weren't committing suicide because of videos we made and marriages that were, like, about to go through a divorce and, like, were turned around and healed because of, you know, videos of conversations my wife and I had publicly on our. On our videos. Just all sorts of stuff. And I loved it. I'm like, oh, man. Like, so this is, like, I saw as an opportunity to reach people and change their lives. And it was faster for me than writing a blog post because, you know, take a whole afternoon to do that, whereas I could just sit down and say this same Thing I was going to write, but it only take two minutes and I'd be done. And so I love that. But I just felt like one of the main things with video is that I could actually make people feel something with video. Like, I like, kind of quote, unquote, make eye contact with them and not just tell them about something, but make them feel like they were actually experiencing that moment with us and that they were hanging out with us and that there was this relationship. I know really good writers can do that with blogging, too. I just guess I wasn't one of them. And I just really liked, like, the human connection that we were able to build by not just telling people stuff, but showing them. Like, that was one of the biggest reasons why I was like, all right, I want to kind of go in, for me, go more in on. On YouTube because of that impact. So there's a couple other things.

The first thing that makes sense, it's one of the things that we talk about a lot on this podcast. And I actually use the podcast as an example where it's easier for me to do this podcast than it is for me to write blog posts just because of what the medium that I naturally go to, which is asking people questions and having conversations. And that feels like a really comfortable space for me, and I really enjoy it. And for Lindsay, she loves writing, and she's one of those people like you talked about, where she loves the process of sitting down, writing and communicating thoughts and emotions and experiences through writing. And she does a really good job of that and isn't super excited about being behind the camera and recording a video. And the point is the. That there are lots of different options in the world. And just because somebody has success in a certain area, they're a good writer, they're a good photographer, they're a good podcaster. Doesn't mean that you need to then try and replicate that if it's not a good fit for who you are. So it's finding the medium that works really well for you. And it sounds like for you, Tim, that was video, and you went all in on that. You double down on that and say, okay, I'm not going to try and do all these other things. I'm going to go in on video and go really deep with that experience and get really good at that. So at what point in publishing those videos did you say, hey, this YouTube thing could maybe be something that I build a career around? And now you have a business and a team. We were talking about that a little bit before we press record. But if you zoom back, at what point did you say, oh, wait, like, I can create videos and this can be a job?

Yeah, there's a couple of things that happened, actually, along. Along the way. One, and then make it all really. I basically had a job, lost it, and then got another job and lost it. And I was like. And the first one was doing, like, youth and family work, and that one ended pretty poorly. And then the next one, there's a company here in Cincinnati hired me to come out, and they were making explainer videos for their clients. And then their clients wanted to know, how do I make this video perform better on YouTube? So they hired me to help start doing strategy with their. With their clients, which is one great. But then after about a year, they're like, hey, Tim, you've done awesome. Like, we love you, but, you know, our company's going a different direction now, and six months from now, we won't be supporting our clients in this way anymore. I was like, okay, so. But they said, you think. We think you should start a business doing for other people what you've done for us. And so we're going to keep paying you full time for six months. You use this as kind of like seed money and come use our office, come use our wifi and help us out with things as we need it. But. But take this next six months to get your own thing going. And so, like, all right, I'm going to start doing for myself what I've taught other people to do. And along the way, you know, kind of going back a little bit to your. Your question about why YouTube? A couple of things I experienced along that, which wasn't a surprise to me, but it's always a little bit different when you're experiencing it for yourself rather than something you're teaching for to someone else. One was like, man, the conversions through my YouTube channel were way higher than they ever were on my blog. And I don't know exactly what to attribute that to, but it eclipsed my blog revenue pretty quickly. And so now, like clients we work with, I know several bloggers who actually use the YouTube channel to compliment their blog. And then they ended up selling the blog and just keeping the channel because of. Because of that, too. I found that, like, I was ranking, like, way higher. Like, making a YouTube video about a topic was, at that time, 52 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google than an equivalent blog post would just because there was so much competition. And then I realized, like, at that time, I was tapping in and still is today the second, the world's largest, second largest search engine on the platform. So if I was YouTube, I was missing out on like an entire audience of people who are searching for something that weren't searching for it on Google. And so that really helped my business get started at the beginning. And so I had this aha moment when I was, when I was trying to deliver really good value through my channel, but then also trying to sell that value through different ways and it actually worked. And so that was kind of like when I'm like, okay, this could work. And so I had six months to get this to be my full time gig. And I started the channel in January 2, 2013. My last day of work was June 15, 2013. And so in that period I went from literally starting it from nothing to generating. It was by the time I left my old job and that was over, it was generating $10,000 a month in revenue. So now it wasn't my first. The blog and other experiences too, but I was pretty happy about that.

Yeah. And I think that will be something that when people hear that, they'll be really interested in how you made that transition of that $10,000 a month that you were creating from your YouTube channel. Could you do a little pie chart in terms of what that looked like and how that worked? Was that working with clients? Was that ad revenue? What did that look like? And what would your advice be for somebody who wants to do something similar? Go from zero to or like start and in six months or in a year, build up something so that it is their full time gig, it's able to replace their job or whatever their situation is. How could somebody replicate or do a similar thing to what you did in making that transition?

So I think the first thing is that you actually need to fail a lot. And so I have failed previous. Like the blog was full time income and it was supporting our family, but it didn't really like take off. And I made a lot of mistakes with that. So that's like two years of making mistake experience. Right. And I was also working with a lot of YouTube channels before. So like it's easy for me to say, like, yeah, so easy everybody. I just started from zero to $10,000 in six months. You know, here's how you do it. But whenever we hear those types of stories, there's always a backstory that actually made that possible. Right. So I don't know, I don't want to set anyone up with the expectation that going from 0 to 10k is easy or maybe even possible. I don't, I don't know. It might, it's probably possible for someone out there, but for me, it was like all the lessons I learned about how to sell and this and great product and especially in branding and how to remove as like any confusion about who I am and what I'm about and how to communicate and articulate that stuff. Because people only, they only give you a few seconds before they move on to the next link, the next video or something. So being able to communicate, like, those are all mistakes that took me years to get out of my system. And so then when I video creators, it sounds like it went from, you know, zero to 10,000 in six months. But that's because of all, of all the backstory that most people.

Yeah, I think that's so important. Even with our story with starting the blog Pinch of Yum, there is, you know, a couple years that I'd been working at a nonprofit and kind of understanding websites and working on WordPress. And so the same thing is true where, you know, we started the site in 2010, but there was a backstory there of two years of kind of understanding the web and online publishing and listening to podcasts and books and things like that. So, so valuable to have that perspective when anybody says, you know, gives any type of timeline. Because I think naturally what we do is we compare ourselves to those people. And I think it's always important, like you said, to think of that backstory.

So, yeah, go ahead, skip the backstory and go straight to. Straight to like, thinking I should be successful right now. Like, what am I doing wrong? Then you're actually kind of like short circuiting the process because we only look at people when they're at the top of the mountain. Like, but we all had the climb it to get there. Like, no one started at the top. We all started from zero. And I think that the climb, the struggle for years and years and years that no one else sees is actually very, very important.

Got it. So if you were to break up the. At that point when you had made the transition, what did that look like? Like, when you're creating your new job, is that primarily consulting with other companies or what? What did that look like in terms of the revenue breakup?

Yeah, so I'm sure how deep you want to get into this, but. But basically I think just, yeah, high level. Okay. So there was the pie chart was a few different things. A bulk. A lot of it was like, like I put together a thing called 30 days to better YouTube channel. And I hadn't yet finished creating it, but I didn't want to create it if no one was going to buy it. So I did like a crowdfunding campaign basically for it to see if people buy it and kind of get myself in advance, so to speak. And the audience met the goal and I was like, all right, I'm making this thing. And so I launched with something, a product, which is a mistake I made on my blog, where it was all like free content, all advertising supported. And that was a stressful game for me because it was all based on views and impressions and I was always just selling someone else's stuff. So I launched with my own product and set that expectation with my audience from the very beginning that, hey, you can pull out your wallet with me if you want. You don't have to, but if you want to, you can. Here's this.

Yep.

So part of it, another part of it was doing the consulting gigs where people just wanted to work with me one on one for like an hour to get some input and ideas and next steps and how to take their channel to the next level. And then. And then another chunk of it was some key partnerships and relationships I had built with some people with agencies who, you know, had like a. Had a big group of clients who wanted to learn how to do YouTube. And so I would. I was subcontracted through a lot of their agencies to kind of work and do their YouTube strategy stuff for them. So, like, if you want to really fast, one of the quickest ways to do that is rather than going after one customer at a time, form a connection or relationship where there's like a whole pool of potential customers and build a connection. There's. It gets you access to like a whole bunch of people rather than just one at a time.

Do you have an example?

Yeah, like, like going after, like, in my case, it was going after the agency. Or like, another example would be like, like, like maybe instead of trying to be on the street selling your. Your cupcakes, you get placement inside of a bakery or something like that. Yeah, got it.

So, point being, if you are in a position where you are looking to work with other people or to partner in some capacity, try and find the hub as opposed to the spoke. Like, try and find the person who has some type of central role and is connected in some way, that might be an agency, that might be an individual who has a Facebook group or is part of a. Is kind of a leader of a community of people. Get connected with those People. Because those people are connected to all the people you want to be connected with.

That's right. Yeah. And it worked out really well for me because those agencies they were representing, like I was doing, I ended up doing YouTube strategy for Disney, for Warner Brothers, for HBO 21, Budweiser, eBay, like, all these big brands. And so that gave me a lot of credibility in the beginning, too, as the guy who was kind of, quote, unquote, they came to me like, tim, thank you so much. You saved this client for us. And they were really, really happy about that. So those are the kind of three chunks. It wasn't you from YouTube or anything like that?

Yep. So this is a question that we get a lot as it relates to blogging and building a following online, social media, things like that. I'm guessing it's a question that you get as well, where you're able to tell your story and say, hey, this is something I built in to a successful business. Here I am today. I have this traction. I have a team. But then there's people who are just starting out today, and they say, did I miss the boat? Like, is this something where I had to have started in 2013 in order for it to work? And it's not 2013, it's 2019, and there's lots of creators online. And what do you say to the person who says, is it even worth it for me to start on YouTube? Is it worth it for me to put in the time and energy when it's such a crowded and noisy place? Or what do you say to that person?

Yeah, well, first of all, before I answer it, I want to hear a little bit more about what their goals are and hear a little bit more about their story and things like that. But the general answer is always, like, it's not too saturated, and you can absolutely get started. In fact, I'd say that starting a blog on 2013 is like starting a YouTube channel in 2019. Like, if now is the time to do it. Right. So in five years from now, you're gonna be like, ah, I started it in 2019. Right. So the best. The best time to plant a tree was 100 years ago. The second best time is today. Right. So. But I don't think that's too saturated, though, because it's easy. Again, kind of going back to our other analogy, all. Most people see, all they see is, like, the people who are at the mountain, on top of the mountain, the people who have climbed it and achieved it. And what they don't see are all the other people that are trying to get there. And so they're like, man, it's not worth it. It's too hard. But what my team and I see is we see people all the time who are growing from nothing to 15 million views a month, 60 million views a month in like, well, that one was about nine months. We took one client to 15 million views a month, about six months. One went from like 400 subscribers, 100,000 subscribers in less than a year. We took one person within a few months from 20,000 subscribers to 1.4 million subscribers. Right. So, like, we get to see the people who are, who are starting small, who are starting at zero and growing and growing. And I know it feels frustrating to do that, but it absolutely is possible. Growth is still reproducible. And it's just like growing a blog. It takes work, but it's absolutely possible. But it's still true that the sooner you get started, the better.

So you have a really interesting look into lots of different businesses and specifically lots of different YouTube accounts. And you had just listed a bunch of different people who had some pretty cool success in a relatively short amount of time. A year, two years, maybe it's three years. And we're getting to a place where for a lot of people, they'd be like, oh my gosh, if I had 500,000 subscribers, that would be so cool. And the amount of impact that you could have is it's such a large group of people and such a huge impact that you can have on those people. What would be if you were to distill it down to some common characteristics that each one of those individuals or channels had in terms of, you know, when you say it's, you can reproduce it. What were some of those things that were common that those people reproduce that you said, hey, this is something you need to do. Here's a strategy you need to implement. If you were to take them all up, boil them down, and then create the average of all of those, what are the success characteristics of those accounts?

Yeah, at the risk of like not serving, doing justice to any of them then, but the high level things are, one is, you know, it really comes down to how clear is your brand and your messaging and how do you communicate that? So on YouTube, people only give you a few seconds. Like they're not going to do their homework and spend a half hour watching your content to figure out if they want to subscribe or not. It's like you get like three seconds and so really figuring out who are we? And who are we not? And how do we communicate that? And how do we answer the fundamental questions of who's our target audience? And then, and then why should they care? So you know, the customer avatar and the value proposition. And then how do we integrate that into the channel and communicate that clearly so that there's like the first thing we're trying to do is reduce and remove, eliminate any type of confusion and ambiguity. Did I say that right?

Word?

Yeah, any of that stuff. So that's number one. Number two then is, and it's also on the branding side is like, well, how do we, what are the. There's certain elements that content needs to have in order to build a human connection with people. So if you just tell people what you do, they'll have, on a cognitive level, they'll be like, okay, I get it, that's nice. Like you and a thousand other people do gaming videos or do food or do, you know, blogs or whatever. It's like, so that, so then it's also, we have to start communicating. Well, why do we do this? Why does this matter? And I've already done that with you guys. I said like this for me. I do this. I help you master YouTube so that you can spread a message that reaches people and changes their life. And I told a little bit about that story. It provides context and meaning to the brand when people know your backstory and so we talk about then how do we integrate. There's seven different things that signals that people really need to really grow. And I will suffice it to say for our time here, like read a book called Primal Branding. The author is, and he goes into all seven of those and it's, it's how brands develop cult like followings. It's, it's why like some YouTube like this actual true story. I did a consultation with a channel that had seven full time people working on this channel. They were pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into their production. They all had studio, like television studio backgrounds using $20,000 Epic cameras and red epics and everything. And they're like, Tim, how come our. We've published one video a week for a year and we put hundreds of thousands of dollars into this and our top video only has 24 views. It was a vegan channel. I'm not vegan. But like it looked amazing. I was like, I would eat that. You know. But their, but their frustration was, but there's this guy in his basement with a webcam getting million, right? What the heck? Why is that? And, and it's all the primal branding stuff like this, like I told this guy's, like, I watch your videos. I don't know. I know your host's name, but I don't know why she's vegan. I don't know what this means to her. I don't know. Like, there's this one video, her daughter was in it, but her daughter didn't say anything. That was kind of weird. Like, are they estranged? Are they talking? You know, it's like all these other questions through your head that had nothing to do with vegan food. But. But the. But the viewer just needs these subliminal questions answered. So anyway, so the primal branding elements is a big feature, big thing. And then probably the next biggest thing is how well can you hold someone's attention? And. And that's a really big metric on YouTube called watch time and session watch time and things like how much time do people actually spend watching your content? Probably like blogging world, you know, you kind of similar with page time and stuff like that. So this is the thing that really comes down to is like, how well can you tell a good, meaningful story that connects with people on a deeper level? And the better the story, the longer they'll spend watching. So it's a combination between branding and storytelling. If I was gonna boil way down to its most basic fundamentals, I mean, there's a lot of strategic things in terms of titles and thumbnails and stuff like that too, but. But the content has the win. It doesn't matter how well you dress it up with titles and thumbnails if people don't watch it.

So point being, like, you could have, in the case of really high production value, something that visually looks really good, but if it's shot with nice cameras, edited really well, but there's no story behind it, it's not going to be engaging for people to watch. And the important point, and I think this is important to point out on YouTube and something that I'm continually learning, is that watch time is one of the important factors that YouTube uses in terms of prioritizing your videos and getting you exposure. So if we think of, you know, Google as a search engine, YouTube is that as well. And they're gonna prioritize content that they know people will watch for a long time because YouTube wants you to stick around, they want you to watch as much content as possible, so they're gonna reward you for that. So one of the questions that I have is what about people that want to repurpose their videos? They have in our Space. It's really common to do what some people would call hands and pans videos, right? So it's like a video that would work really well on maybe Facebook two years ago or a year ago, not so well now, but will still maybe work well on Instagram where it's visual but there's not a huge compelling story behind it. Does that break down on YouTube where it's harder to have success with, let's say a one minute or two minute hands and pans video. And you need to really consider being in front of the camera and having somebody that is kind of the personality behind the brand.

It certainly makes it easier. I don't know that I would say it's absolutely necessary to have to be on the camera. Coming back to the principle, like the story is what's most important. So like, so for example, we work with Kristen over at Six Sister Stuff and when she was getting started on YouTube, it was just a lot of that hands and pans, you know. And so one little tweak that she made that made a really big difference. Not necessarily repurposing content, but maybe along those same lines is she now opens the video on camera and she's just doing it on her cell phone. Like it's a 720p front facing camera, you know, it's not like high tech equipment. And she's just like, you know, smiling and like welcomes people like this we're gonna do today. And she just maybe spends like 20, 30 seconds talking and like setting it up. You get to know her personality a little bit. She tells a little bit of a story usually and then she cuts to the normal hands and pants type of thing. But she's voiceover the whole thing that's telling the story and explaining what she's doing. And then sometimes at the end she'll come back on camera then and do a little clip that just kind of explains, you know, what, what happened, wraps it up and like next steps and stuff like that. So you could use the same footage possibly and just think like, what's the story here? And by story I don't mean like it has to be this huge, you know, three act structure or anything like that. Sometimes it's just to be like, guys, my kids come home in a half hour and I need to have something on the table. This is what I'm going to do. Let me show you. Right? And then the question is, will she do it? Like can she pull that off in 30 minutes? I don't know. Right now there's a Sense of intrigue. There's a sense of like, I need to stick around and see how this plays out. Because all you do is a tease. Like a basic story structure is about a character who wants something, overcomes conflict to get it, and is transformed by the process. And so it would be like, yeah, she got, the character wants to make dinner, she's got an obstacle to overcome. 30 minutes for the kids come home. Will she do it? That's the whole story. And then at the end it shows like the family just quickly like grabbing the food and eating it and, and having a good time. Like, okay, there's a transformation. So have to be super technical. It's just some sense of intrigue and makes people feel like, oh, I connected here. Not just I got good information, but I feel like I connected with somebody and that's important.

Yeah. So what I hear you saying is YouTube isn't going to be the platform that you want to just like take and repurpose a piece of content. It maybe make sense, like if you're publishing something to Instagram, that's a one minute video, that's hands and pans, you can take that, you can put it to Facebook. But if you were to just take that, lift it and bring it over to YouTube, it's not going to work as well over there because of the culture around YouTube, the people, the reason people go to YouTube to watch videos and then also what YouTube rewards. So you want to have some story there. And it sounds like ideally you are going to be in front of the camera in some capacity. What about the people who are kind of shy and don't want to be in front of camera? What, what would they do? How do they approach that?

That's everybody, you know, like I've been, I have almost I don't know, 4,500 videos or something I've made. And even still today, like, it doesn't bother me as much as it used to, but I'm kind of like, you know, I'd rather just talk to a person. A friend of mine, Evan Carmichael, has a couple million subscribers. He said, like it took his first 250 videos, he wouldn't even watch them back. He's like, he was too embarrassed to see himself on camera. And it wasn't until about video number 700 where he felt like, okay, that's a decent video, we can publish that and that's normal. Like, it's like again, you look at people at the top of the mountain, you think they just like appeared there. But I think it's normal to feel awkward in front of a camera. It is like my very first video I published on March 2, 2006. I even 30 seconds. And the main theme of that video is me sitting there so painful to watch. It's like me. Like I literally said, like, this feels really awkward. I feel like I'm talking to a fire hydrant. Yeah, that's what I felt like, you know, like, who sits down and talks to a fire hydrant? Nobody.

There's a good reason for.

But yet we're going to do that with a camera. Like, that's weird. So I think it's normal and it's just kind of like once you start getting going. I think one of the main things that helped me shift is that when you do start getting some comments and engagement, after a little bit, you're no longer talking to a camera, but you're picturing Susan, Mary and Emily and you're like, this video is for them. And you're looking and you're kind of picturing them when you talk instead of the camera lens. I think a big difference for me.

Yeah, that makes sense for sure. One of the things you said was when you start to get some comments. I think when I think of the possibility of me creating videos on YouTube, one of the things I really worry about is comments. I feel like YouTube is maybe different than a blog post where people can kind of stumble across it and leave pretty much whatever they want to say as a comment. Do you have any advice for people in regards. And I also know that comments and responding to those and engaging with an audience is an important thing. So do you have any tools in your tool belt that you use to help deal with people who are leaving not so friendly comments?

Yeah, it's the Internet. You're gonna get those. There's always something there who's just that person. Right? Yeah, it's. And I know like as a creator, when you pour your heart and soul into making this piece of content and you're emotional, you're emotionally attached to it, you publish it and you get like a hundred really positive comments. And then there's that one and it almost like. And it's just like, like. And we have like my wife and I. There's actually. Be totally honest. There was a point where I've. We got some. A series of kind of negative comments. And I felt like I was just going to quit YouTube. Like, I'm done. This is not worth it. I am doing all of this for those people. Like, no more. And. But then. And I. So I've been there several times and I've had people talk me off the edge of the cliff more than. More than twice with like, I'm done. But. But I think, like, the main thing that people bring me back towards, like, tim, like, you're gonna stop serving these million people over here because. Because of that. Those seven people over there or something. And at the time, I'm like, heck, yeah, I am done. You know, but you gotta give us some time. And so I don't know that I have an easy, like, way to just more people. Because it hurts. It does. And kind of part of it, you.

Know, and I think that maybe more than anything is what's helpful is this universal reality that for you, for me, for anybody that is creating, putting stuff out there, we all together experience this. And I think one of the hard things is a lot of times as a creator, it can feel very siloed, it can feel very alone. But then once you hear somebody else say, like, oh, yeah, that happens to me too, and it's terrible, there's a little bit of a weight that's lifted because you know that you're not the only one that is carrying that burden. It's like, oh, this is something that everybody thinks, feels, and experiences. And so I'm not alone in this. So I appreciate that perspective. And just the reality of it being like, yeah, that stinks, and it happens. And it's part of the game. Like, it's, it's the part of the cost of entry in the creator space is to have to deal with that. And I think it's true. Like, whether you are an athlete or an artist or a YouTuber, like, you're always going to have people who are going to be weighing in and giving their insights and advice and comments, probably when you don't want them. So I think that's. I think that's good perspective. So 2019, and there's still potential, huge potential to build a following and to connect with people and to have influence on YouTube. What does that look like in terms of the business mechanics of that? Is it. Is it realistic for somebody to build a YouTube channel and to expect to get to the point where they could create an income from just the ad revenue? I know, you know, if you do a comparable to blogs and content, the. It's. It's hard to get to a point where your site has enough traction and viewers and page views to create a substantial income just from ads. And so a lot of people talk about complementing that with services or Product or things like that is the Same true for YouTube. What is your advice? Obviously a lot of it depends on the goal of the person. But what is your general advice for people who want to approach YouTube as a business platform?

Yeah, do not depend on advertising revenue. I mean, and I'm not just talking about AdSense in general. I'm just, well, let me rephrase that. I guess like you can. There are plenty of people who depend on advertising revenue and they do great and they're basically creating a media company business model. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, YouTube itself is a platform that runs on advertising revenue. So there's nothing wrong with it. But, but the reason I don't like that game, I guess is because it's so, it fluctuates so much and it's like now I have to work really hard to keep my views up and there's an algorithm change and all of a sudden all my views are in half and, and now I can't sell, like, I gotta lay off these two people because I can't sell the advertising I used to sell because people only, you know, want to be in front of a eyeballs. And then it's like, well, should we advertise with you or the, or your competitor who has, you know, more numbers and cheaper rates? And you're like, ah, you know, it's just, it's a game, we can go that route. This is not one that I enjoy personally and I usually recommend that people do a few things like they actually created like a sustainable business where it's like one, I know what value I'm providing to my viewer through my free content and then so I'm delivering good value. So let me back up, I guess a bit. A good business model is one that is a business model is a rationale for how one creates, delivers and captures value. Right? So I'm creating good value and delivering good value for free through my YouTube channel. And then I want a way of capturing good value and I like it when I'm just delivering 10x the value that I'm delivering for free in my videos, when I deliver that in a format people are willing to, to pay for. And now I. So the way that math works for me in terms of comparing it to revenue, this is my actual, my actual math here, actual numbers is like if I do a video that teaches people like, I don't know, let's say like how to craft an engaging thumbnail and at the end of that video I'll say, hey, like if you really want to grow your channel, got this free or I got this, this ebook, it's called 30 Days to better YouTube channel you every day is going to give you one, a lesson, something you need to learn. Two, it's going to be a task, something you need to do right there in your channel. And then three is going to give you links to further resources. If you're interested, check out the link in the description. And that's pretty much all I say. That was like, like 10, 12ish seconds, something like that. Not, not. I don't do like a hard sell or anything like that. Whenever I do something like that, at the end of my videos, I'll convert about 1% of the audience into sale. And so it's a $30 product right now. And so at 10, at 1% of a thousand views is 10 sales. So that's $300 per thousand views on average. Whereas I'm going just based on the advertising revenue like YouTube, like it varies very greatly depending on your audience and where they're located and a lot of factors. But let's on average say get like two, I get around $2.50 per thousand views. Sure. Some people get like 15, $20, some people get like 75 cents. So like I said, it is a pretty wide range. But. But either way, the advertising revenue is not getting close to $300 per thousand views.

Right. That's really interesting. How did you so for that YouTube, let's say that kind of call it a funnel, for lack of a better word. So you have people coming in top of the funnel. This is free content. After that it funnels down. And you know that it's that 1%. Do you know that just from comparing like, hey, here's our ebook sales this month contrasted against our total video views. Is that kind of how that, how you crunch those numbers?

Utm strings and the URLs they click and so I can just Google. Yeah.

And for those that aren't familiar with that, can you talk about what that is and how you use those?

Yeah, if you just search Google for what would you search for? UTM strings, maybe. Yeah, it's. There's a little generator. Yeah. UTM parameters. So you can kind of just customize your URL a little bit. Like the URL seems the same, but you're adding these little tags to it. And so when someone clicks it, your Google Analytics is tracking those, those in like campaign metrics. And you can see like, okay, this, this person came from YouTube and they clicked on it on the end screen of the video because that'll have a different tag than the description, for example. And you can see like, hey, people clicked on the end screen. I got this number of people and they converted at this percentage. And I can see how many views the video got and compare it to that and figure that out without too much.

So it's a great way. Yeah, so it's essentially adding a little, it's extending. It's not a URL shortener, it's a URL lengthener. But what it does is it allows you to put information in that URL that Google understands. So, so what I hear you saying is you use that URL at the end of a video. So when somebody clicks on it, Google is then tracking and saying, okay, we understand this, Google Analytics, specifically, you're here. We understand this person is coming from this video and you can see then, okay, great, they've actually purchased this product. So you can see that it's all hooked up and tracked. So would that be a recommendation that you'd have even for somebody, let's say, in the food space, if somebody's creating food and recipe content, would your recommendation be to at the end have some type of call to action towards a product that somebody can kind of have a 10x value experience with?

Yes and no. So the yes part is like the way advertising works, I think, as we all understand, is like someone pays us $5,000 to promote their service to our audience because they're banking on our aud to like $25,000. So it doesn't like that Math breaks down. People, advertisers will stop paying us.

Right.

So the way I think about it is like, if my audience has 25k, I would rather just deliver something to them directly and cut out the middleman and create something that I'm passionate about that I know is going to serve them exactly the way they need it, it's going to change their life. And like, I'm really excited. Like, I sell way different than what's my own thing because I'm. Because I know what it's going to do for them and just take the 25k myself and then I don't really have to worry as much about flexibility and views and traffic and stuff like that. But on the other hand, though, the reason I say no is that there are some people who just don't want to make a product and they just don't want to have the deal with customer service and they don't want to have the deal with like deliverables and refunds and maybe even inventory or depending on the product and things like that. And so I don't think there's anything wrong with doing the advertising revenue. I just think, like, as long as you understand that you're basically selling other people's stuff, and if you know how to sell other people's stuff, well, then you might as well just sell your own thing and not have to go from brand deal to brand deal, you know?

Yeah, that's really interesting and I think really fun for people to think about. Not that the numbers will be the same for them as the example you gave, but I think to have that as kind of a framework to use to say, oh, I can get to this point where I can really control and understand my business, because from start to finish, I kind of own that process. I know if I can get 10,000 views and 1% convert and the product is $10 or $30, I can start to see how valuable that is. And that's where business becomes really fun, is when you can start to understand those numbers really concretely. So does that then impact. Do the products you have then impact the content you create, or is it the opposite where, you know, content that's going to work well, so you create products around that? What does that look like in terms of strategy around creating something that will work well on YouTube for a product?

That's a good question. I don't. I don't think I think about it in either way, actually. I think I think about it in terms of, like, what does my audience need right now? Now what. What questions are they asking? What problems are they trying to solve? And for my business, that changes over time as YouTube evolves and people get better at certain things or certain things that people used to do don't work as well anymore. Right. And so it's kind of like I want to. I try to serve people the best I can through my free content on my YouTube channel and master YouTube, spread a message that reaches people, changes their life. And then. And so the way my business has kind of worked, which is, I know this is gonna sound kind of like, okay, Tim, you roll your eyes, but it's kind of true. It's just like, I just try to blow people away with value. Like, I don't try to hold anything back in my videos. It's not like, ooh, like, this part people need to pay for. I'm like, oh, I want to, like, just give away as much value. And people are like, man, this is what I get for free. Like, what Would I get if I sign up, pay for a one hour session? And at the end of the one hour session, people are typically like, oh my gosh, like how do I keep working with you? And I don't even have to sell it. They just ask. And I know maybe that sounds a little bit. I don't know, but I just try to focus again. Maybe coming back to that, before we started Hit Record, we mentioned the book called Thou Shalt Prosper. And in that book he's just like, just like give freely. Like, just. And the people who win are the people who aren't just trying to extract value from people. They're the people who are like genuinely trying to serve the best that they can. And the better serve the better. That works for your business.

That's awesome. And what I love about that is it applies whether it's YouTube, a podcast, whether you're publishing content to a blog, in relationships that you have with people you care about. Like it's this universal principle about around this idea of giving and the importance of giving and how that is a smart. And generally not just smart from a business perspective, but it's smart and right, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And a bonus that oftentimes it results in you being able to build the thing that you care most about. I think a big reason for that is because in giving there is also inherent trust that is passed along. Like, I'm not going to hold back and I'm going to give you everything that I can and I want to help you, which is such a core foundational thing that relationships are built on. So, Tim, we're coming to the end of the podcast interview. I know there's tons of stuff that we could hit, but we. And we could talk for hours, but we have to wrap it up. I would love to hear where people can go to follow along with you to continue learning. Maybe you can mention your site. I know that you also have a course specifically for people who create food and recipe content. And that's a free course which ties into what you're just talking about, which is delivering a lot of value. But share a little bit about where people can find you and where they can check out that course as well.

Yeah, so I put together. It's a free one hour course. It's called YouTube for food influencers.com and it's about an hour you just go through showing you how to set up your YouTube channel and how to optimize it and position it so that some of the things we talked about earlier in terms of branding and things are clear how to integrate that into your channel so that when people find you, they want to subscribe, follow along very quickly. And so that's totally for free. YouTube for foodinfluencers.com I also have a weekly podcast show on itunes where I talk about how to master YouTube and spread your message and you can just search itunes for video creators and that should pop up for you. So either of those places great.

And we'll link to those in the show notes as well. Tim so great to connect again, talk about YouTube in 2019, what's happening and how people can create incredible channels. And we just really appreciate being on the podcast. So thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me. It was fun.

And that is that, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning into the Food Blogger Pro podcast this week. And before we officially wrap up this episode, it's time for our Reviewer of the Week. It's been a few months, months since we've shared Reviewer of the Week, but we've gotten some new reviews recently on itunes and we are just so, so appreciative. Bjork and I read every single review that we get and the reviews really help the show get in front of others. So today we'd like to send a special thank you to Small Farm Big Life who said I get so much helpful information from this podcast. I'm constantly pausing to take notes or look things up. I've gotten so many helpful tips for my favorite food blog, I can't recommend Food Blogger Pro enough. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your review. And if you would like to be featured in an upcoming episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast, you can search for the show on itunes and let us know what you think of the show. We can't wait to read it. Thanks again for tuning into the podcast this week. And until next time, make it a great week.

Sam.