Lauren Bateman built a guitar teaching channel to 125,000 subscribers in 4.5 years by staying committed instead of chasing quick money. She nearly quit twice, but her channel earned $16,000 in one month during COVID and now gains 8,000 subscribers daily. She calculated exactly what views and upload frequency she needed, then stuck to it.
Questions this video answers
$16,000
About 8,000 new subscribers per day
About 4.5 years
About 125,000 subscribers
$500 per month
Hey, content creators. I get asked all the time, Lauren, how did you become successful on YouTube? What made you stick with it? Did you have times where you felt like you were gonna give up? And the answer is yes. I almost quit on my YouTube channel twice. There's gonna be periods in my journey where you'll see I didn't upload videos very consistently and I did fall off the track because I got overwhelmed. But how did I overcome this to become a successful YouTuber? Well, that's what I'm gonna share with you.
Now. The biggest thing I see with a lot of YouTubers is they're focused on the money first. And the money helps. It absolutely does. Because when you start making money on YouTube, especially when you're putting all this time and effort in, it really like validates why you're doing what you're doing. And it does motivate you to keep moving forward. But in the beginning, you know, those first couple years, you're really not making a lot of money. And I just want to get this out right away. You YouTube is not easy. If anyone tells you YouTube is easy, they're lying to you. YouTube is a long term game. It is not a short term strategy. It is not a get rich quick scheme. Okay? It took me years to get my YouTube channel to where it is today. Now let me ask you a question. If you knew that you could change your life forever by committing to a quality YouTube channel, would you do it? Would you put that four, five, six years in? Would you invest the time to change your life forever? Because that's exactly what YouTube did for me. It completely changed my life. I am so grateful for the fact that I have my YouTube channel during coronavirus. Because my business, I have a brick and mortar business too. I have online businesses and offline businesses. And when Corona came around, I didn't know if I was going to go bankrupt. We thought we were going to lose everything. I didn't know if the business was going to exist after coronavirus. But something really cool happened. The online business took off because everyone was online, right? And I had that YouTube channel. And that YouTube channel helped me get through Covid. I nearly shit my pants when I saw in April, I made $16,000 in one month. And I was like, holy crap, this is amazing. If I can do this once, I can do this every month. And of course, you know, I got a little bit sad, I got a little bit depressed because after, you know, the first rush of COVID summer came around, views went down. I wasn't making as much money, I'm like, okay, now I'm down to only making a few thousand dollars a month, which, honestly is better than nothing, right? But. But I had that stuff seed. That seed was planted in my head. I did this once. I can do it again. I can get this back to that. So what I did was I looked at my Covid numbers. How many views do I need? Okay? If my videos are getting this many views when I upload them, how many more videos do I need to upload to get back to that high point? And that's what I've done. I'm actually past. I'm way past the COVID point of where I was before. I'm getting about, you know, 8,000 new subscribers to my guitar channel every day. So this is the question I want to ask you guys. Are you willing, willing to make a commitment? Because I think that's where most people fall off the track. They get so focused on the money. The money will come. If you're doing the right things with YouTube, the money will come. But I want to ask you, is, are you willing to make the commitment? Are you willing to put in the time? Are you willing to sacrifice your weekends? I'm here on a weekend. This is Sunday, all right? This is Sunday for me. Most people, Sunday is a family day for me. I'm recording because I got to get this content done. Because I got other things during the week that are taking priority this week. And I'm like, I have to prioritize getting my content done. All right? So make a commitment to building a business that could be life changing for the rest of your life. We're not talking about something that's just going to, you know, make you money once and done. I want you to build a channel. When I started, said, hey, if my channel can pay my rent, then I'll be happy. If I could pay my rent every month through my YouTube channel, then I would consider that a success. So you need to sit down and you have to say to yourself, what is a win for me? What does winning look like on my YouTube channel? Does it mean I can go on vacation every year? I just went on. I went on vacation in July to Iceland. Okay? Went on vacation. I didn't upload. I mean, I scheduled videos to upload. I didn't record a single video for 10 days. I didn't really interact with my audience for 10 days. Okay? I have a whole Facebook group and everything. And I went to Iceland, and by the time I got back from the trip, I had entirely Paid for that vacation through my YouTube channel, through my courses, while I was away. That's insane. That's amazing. Wouldn't you guys love to go on vacation and not have to worry about money? And that's the thing I want to get in this video, is the commitment to the end game, the commitment to winning. All right, and do small milestones. We all want to make a million dollars. Everyone wants to make a million dollars online. Start small. I want to make $500 a month. Okay. Would $500 a month change your life? I know it was life changing for me. Okay? $500 was. Was my car payment. It was my groceries and my bills. Okay. That's a lot of money. $500 every single month. And this grows over time. Okay, I'll put a video up here just to show you guys my first couple years in YouTube and how much money I was making even when I was a smaller YouTuber, because maybe that's going to provide some motivation for you guys. And I know I'm talking about the money here, and I'm saying, like, everyone's focused on the money, but. Yes, focus on the money. But what does the money help you do? What does the money help you achieve? Does it help you achieve Freedom of time, meaning you can have a schedule whenever you want. YouTube. Still a lot of work. I'm still working. All right, this is work. All right, it's fun. I enjoy the work, but this is work. Does it mean that you can adjust your schedule? All right. My wife is a nurse. She has a rotating schedule. She's working today, but I think she's off in a couple days. And that means in a couple days, I can take the day off to spend time with her if I want, or I can take 10 days to go to Iceland and have a vacation with her if I want. And I think that's the important thing about YouTube is that it provides freedom. And I think that's what a lot of content creators are looking for when they start a YouTube channel is they're looking for freedom. But they get disappointed by how much work they have to put into it in the beginning. And they're going like, this is not what I wanted. I didn't want a second job. Because you're probably working another job right now. They're like, I, I didn't want a second job. I wanted freedom. All right, but you don't understand that the freedom comes after you've put two, three, four, five years into your channel. I'm about four and a half years into my guitar teaching channel over on YouTube. Like I said, 125,000 subscribers. But it took time to get there and it's growing and it's building. Every month it gets bigger and bigger. But I'm committed to serving my audience. I committed to giving them the content they want. And I'm committed to the life I want to create for myself and for my family. So I'm going to ask you guys today, what commitment are you willing to make to your YouTube channel? Put it in the comments below. If you are ready to commit to your YouTube channel and if you guys are really ready to make that commitment, well, I have a quick jumpstart for you guys. I have a 30 day course that you guys can go through where I talk about finding out who your audience is really getting down into the nitty gritty of what you should be focusing on as a smaller YouTuber. Because when you grow, you focus on different things than when you're small. So we go through the importance of titles, thumbnails, how to do the proper research, what SEO, what software do you need to really be successful on YouTube? So if you are interested in making a real commitment to your YouTube channel, check out the link below and check out my Jumpstart program.
