200: How to Turn Your YouTube Channel into an Email List Growth Machine

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks, constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. My special guest today is Lisa Lisson. Lisa is a leading genealogy expert and the founder of Are you my cousin? Which is a comprehensive online resource dedicated to empowering family history enthusiasts with worldwide. Through her website, engaging YouTube channel and sought after speaking engagement, Lisa equips researchers with practical strategies and clear tutorials to navigate the exciting world of genealogy. Lisa, I am super excited to chat with you today. Now you are one of our newsletter profit club members and as you and I were working through some things with your newsletter, I started, you know, learning a little bit more about you and your business, which is fascinating to me because I love kind of digging into all of that genealogy, family history and that sort of thing. But what I also found very interesting was the traffic that you are getting organically from YouTube and I know that you've been using YouTube for several years now and I think you're, you know, obviously you're doing a great job with it. You've grown your YouTube channel, you're getting people who are interested in sponsoring you through your YouTube channel. So want to dig into all of that for our listeners here today. But before we get into all the questions I have for you, can you tell the good audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people?

Oh, sure. Thank you so much for having me, Destiny, because I love talking genealogy and family history and well, I love talking YouTube as well. Absolutely. So what I do now is I help people who are interested in their family history. I help them find their ancestors and discover their family history. And I do that through my blog, which is called are you my Cousin? Through the YouTube channel with the same name and webinar trainings. So I love to help people beyond just the family tree that says the names, the birth date, the marriage date, the death dates and really dig into some of the stories.

So walk us back through whenever you started your business and you can take us back to that point in time and you are thinking, you know, I really want to teach people how to do genealogy research and kind of build their family tree. When you were first starting out your business and you were thinking about, you know, how am I going to communicate what's going to be my content platform, what did you start with and how, you know, when did you add YouTube into that strategy?

That's a great question. So I started out as a blogger, a genealogy blogger, and did that for many, many years. That's all I ever thought I would do with it. The blog actually started out as a way to share with my family the things that I was finding because so many people were interested in asking and I was getting lost in all the emails. So I just started the blog. And I will tell you, when your kids are in middle school and their mom starts a blog, that got me some pretty cool mom points there as well. But and so kirk forward, it sort of just was a gradual thing as people started reading it that were not actually related to me that they started asking questions about, well, how did you figure that out? How did you do that? And that was sort of the gradual progression of how it went from really just a family blog to an actual teaching type blog. And that's what it was for many years. I did that and even started speaking based on it. But YouTube really came about only just two or three years ago where I got very intentional about using YouTube. I had had YouTube for a while, mainly as a parking place for videos to put on my website, but I never really had intention of doing anything. And again, one day looked at it a couple years ago and realized people were actually watching some of those videos. So I thought, well, maybe I need to pay attention to this. And I just dabbled in it for a while and then I was in a business mentor type group and the idea of being able to use YouTube as a marketing tool, not so much a content creation tool, but a marketing tool for my business, kind of clicked and I was like, now I get it. Now I get what YouTube can actually do with for my business. It fortunately for me was right before a lot of the Google traffic changes were happening for bloggers where we were losing a lot of traffic. So it was a good timing on my part because then I was able to leverage that YouTube to build, continue to build my email list and build the business when the blog was taking a bit of a hit with some of these Google updates that have happened.

And I think you're bringing up a good point. I'm seeing it, you know, with several of my clients where with all the AI changes and everything, their blog traffic has gone down. But where I am seeing them have Success is with YouTube, just like you. Pinterest has also still been a good kind of traffic, organic traffic driver for folks. So you mentioned something just a Second ago, and I really thought it was, you know, kind of eye opening. You said. I really kind of changed the way I thought about YouTube and really wanted to start using it strategically in my business. So can you walk us through what changes you made and what results you have seen from doing that? Sure.

So I started to really view YouTube as really a marketing tool. And so I really knew that to do that I needed to, one, grow my subscribers, which I grow my, you know, my YouTube subscribers. So that's continued to do. But I needed to be very strategic with that and I had to actually understand YouTube. So I had to take a step back for a moment and study what is YouTube about and how can I use this? And again, I was in a business mentoring group, so I have some support there. But what really I recognize is at the end of the day, YouTube, it's. It's a fantastic video platform, but they want to keep people on YouTube. YouTube's really not all that excited to send people from my videos back to my website because they want to keep people on. On YouTube. That's their business model. And so once I understood that, what I strategically was able to do was, okay, if I can keep people watching my videos. You know how you sit down to watch a video and then you watch the next video and you watch the next video. That's what YouTube wants. And so if I can capture people's attention that way, then YouTube will then serve up. Oh, you're interested in watching genealogy videos. Well, let me show you another one that you might be interested in. Let me show another one of Lisa's videos into your home feed that you might be interested in. And so that was a way that YouTube is actually using their algorithm to grow my channel. All of that's just organic within the YouTube platform. So I wasn't actually, you know, I wasn't paying no paid ads or anything like that. It was simply leveraging their algorithm for that. It's a slow growth. It. I'm not going to say that it's a super fast way, it's a slow growth, but I prefer the slow and static to that kind of overnight sensation that sometimes we see that's not necessarily really sustainable. So I always wanted to make sure I created really solid videos as far as content is concerned and giving value. And I would recommend, if you like this video, be sure and watch the next video on your screen because I'm going to show you how to research the 1850 census record for your ancestors or whatever that next video would have been after I would do several in a series. And then at the end I'm like, if you really like this, head over and sign up for my newsletter so that you can get actionable tips into your inbox every week. That way I'm not sending them off the platform every video, but every 4, 5, 6, I'm going to make that call to action off the YouTube channel.

So I understand your strategy. The strategy is like any social media platform, keep that, you know, they want to keep them on that platform. So you are leading them from video to video. And then maybe after the fourth video or the fifth video, then you would say, go sign up here to get on my email list and you can get these weekly tips in my email. I love that. So let me ask you this. I'm going to switch a little bit of gears on you here. I know that your channel has a mix of educational and promotional content. So can you walk us through how you balance all of that where you're teaching those valuable genealogy techniques while incorporating affiliate promotions and other products that you might have in your business? Sure.

So I think a lot of what I always try to keep in mind when I'm starting to try to create that content calendar, and I do create a content calendar, I create one, I try to do it about per quarter because I find that works better. If I go too far out, I kind of lose the flow. But I do create that content calendar. What I always want to keep uppermost in mind is that I'm delivering value, that somebody who watches that video will walk away with something that they have learned. Regardless of if I'm promoting an affiliate or a sponsorship, I don't want it to be so heavily based that they can't walk away without some type of information, without having to maybe necessarily purchase that product type thing. So I do try to make sure I always have something in it for everyone, shall we say? And I do balance. So it is an educational type of thing. I try to keep that focus on the viewer. And a lot of what I'm showing and teaching is how I do genealogy research, how I tackle those tough problems. And so I want to share the products that I use that actually help me do that. The companies are actually really respond well to that because it is kind of watch me how I use this particular product or watch how I do this particular technique. The audience really seems to respond to that type thing.

I love that. So it's really, you know, here's how you're doing it and here's how you're using this tool to do this genealogy research. And I know that you've gotten some sponsorships and definitely I know you have Zillia partners out there. So I think that strategy is most definitely working for you. So let me ask you this, and this is, you know, partly just for my own education here. One of the reasons why I personally haven't tackled YouTube and I use podcasting as my content platform is, you know, I probably have some mindset issues there. I, I feel like I'm a little bit older and I feel like I'm always willing to lose those few pounds and that's really probably has kept me from jumping on YouTube. Can you walk us through? Have you ever experienced that? And if you have, then what helped you kind of get over that?

Oh, sure. I think tackling the mindset piece of actually doing YouTube really that was probably the hardest thing I have done on YouTube and I came at it with having no background or skills to video and to edit. Those are all self taught that I've done. And at the end of the day I just had to kind of build myself up and go, I'm just going for it and let's just see what happens. And it took a while for me to feel comfortable in the front of the camera. When you edit your own videos, that is a very humbling experience. That was really tough on me. But I finally just realized that people did like my videos. They don't mind that I don't have the prettiest aesthetic background that's so popular out there with the YouTube crowd. They don't seem to mind that I have this southern accent and then I stumble over my words at times and I lose my train of thought and people have reached out to me. Oh, you know, I can really relate. I like the fact that you're just very casual and I feel like I know you. So I think just having that positive feedback was very helpful. I would also, when I would create the videos and I would just be so nervous about putting them out there early on where we schedule the videos out because I do create ahead of time and then I schedule the videos much like you would a podcast. And I always knew in the back of my mind if I chicken out, I can unschedule it. And do you know I have never ever unscheduled a video. It was always just that kind of scheduling thing and then giving myself a little space and it was okay, but it was always knowing in the background, I guess that I had that option, but I never actually used it with that. So it was Kind of funny.

Well, I love that little tip. Just go ahead and schedule it and you know, when you're back in your mind, if you, you know, want to unschedule it, you had that opportunity. But I love the fact that you've never taken that it never went down path.

I've even had, I have dabbled in for a while there, I was doing YouTube Lives to help kind of build that connection audience. I even had an asthma attack live on a YouTube video. So I figure if I can go through that, then I'm good. In fact, it was one of the highest views YouTube lives that I found.

I know that sponsorships are something that you are interested in both for your YouTube channel and for your email newsletter. And I believe you've had people approach you based on your YouTube channel and wanting to do sponsorships. Can you walk us through what happened there and the collaborations that you found through your YouTube channel?

Oh, sure, sure. That was actually, I think I was a little surprised, but people started reaching out to me to as far as sponsorship partnerships with. On the YouTube channel. And part of that had to do with just, I think one that I'm very consistent. There's a fairly small niche when it comes to genealogy. Recently I think I was able to gain traction that way. But what I found is that when we would get either converse through email or virtual zoom meetings, that when I would approach them with the ideas, in other words, they might say, we're interested. What do you think? And it's important that I put in the my due diligence to make sure one, that that company is in alignment with what I do and what I value. And then I would brainstorm ideas and say, okay, this would be the idea for the video. These are the learning objectives that I have for that video. And this is how I see your product fitting into that video. And this is why I schedule it the way I schedule it. So really kind of giving them that background to recognize that it's more than just, you know, okay, we'll just put a little ad out there and we're good that I had some actual background in strategy behind my videos. I think that was the difference because I did have such a strategy behind them.

And I love that, you know, YouTube video is sponsored by XYZ company. You are actually giving them a full proposal on how you would incorporate their tool or whatever they were offering into your video and using it as a teaching opportunity for your audience. So I think those are the most powerful sponsorships, quite frankly, that we can do. So Lisa, first of all, thank you so much for being here today. Do you have any last minute tips for the audience if they're like thinking, oh, maybe I should try YouTube in 2025, maybe that's going to help me get some organic traffic that I may have lost, like from my blog. What would you say to those people?

First off, I would say do it. And dot, you don't have to be perfect. Even you let go of that. But I think one of the most important things to really when you starting out to try it is to be consistent. So I currently post new videos every week, but not everybody is able to do that. If you can only post one every other week or one a month, if you can be consistent and consistently promote them on your other platforms, through your emails, through your social, other social media platforms, then that will get you get that foothold in and get you started to grow in that YouTube channel. But it's the consistency that's so important.

As it is with everything, right? The consistency is, is there whether it's your newsletter that you're sending out on a weekly basis, a podcast episode that you're doing on a regular basis. Can you let them know where they can find you?

Oh, absolutely. So I'm at. Are you my cousin pretty much on all the platforms and. Or also you can. My name, which is lisalison.com is my website and is kind of the gateway to everything that I do and so definitely can find me on all of those platforms.

And I'm going to make sure that those links are in the show notes and your free gift for them is called the Big Genie list, which is a curated collection of essential genealogy resources to find your ancestors. So, Lisa, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing everything that you've learned about YouTube with us.

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.