Cheryl's YouTube video hit one million views in a year on a channel with under 1,000 subscribers. She used TubeBuddy to find the search term "Zoom virtual background without green screen," then followed a 4P framework: planning, producing, promoting through her email list and comment engagement. She earned between $3,400 and $40,000 from the video.
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Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have a video with 1 million video views and do it in less than a year on my small YouTube channel. So I'm here to prove that it's possible. Not only that, I'm here to break down how I did it. In early April 2020, the whole world was moving toward video out of necessity. It became a lifeline, not only personally, but professionally as well. So everyone was going to video conferencing platforms. Zoom happened to be the one that seemed to be rising to the top and was becoming the most popular. And so I married the keyword research within YouTube along with my own observations of what was happening in my own audience, because people were asking me, well, Cheryl, what about virtual backgrounds? And what should my virtual background be? And do I need a green screen? And so I took those observations from my audience. And then I went to YouTube and I thought, okay, well, let me do some keyword research. And that's really where it starts. So I have a framework that I use called the 4P framework. It's what I use. It's what I teach. And it includes to plan, produce, publish, and promote. And I do that every single time I do a video. I'm doing it now as well. And so in the planning phase, what I do is I go into YouTube and I use I have TubeBuddy associated with my account. I do all kinds of keyword research, right? I go in there and I look at Zoom and then I put in Zoom green screen and I see what kind of results those tools are showing me. What I'm really looking for are the actual terms, the actual keywords and phrases that people are typing into Google or typing into YouTube in order to craft a title that would appease those inquiries, right? Those queries that people are putting out there. I want to be able to create the video answer to their questions. And so I settled on Zoom virtual background without green screen. The reason why is because when I was in a lot of these Zoom meetings, I had observed that there was an option within Zoom itself that if you had the proper computer requirements, you could actually have a virtual background without the green screen. I thought, well, that's pretty interesting. So why don't I— that'll be my little twist. So what I did in this case of this video, and you can, of course, go and watch it for yourself afterward. What I decided to do was show the fact that and how that would work if you had the proper computer requirements, you could use Zoom in that way. But then I also followed it up and I thought, well, I'll just add a little bit more. I'll show them also the other version, which is how you would do it with a physical green screen if you do not have those requirements on your computer. Okay, and so that is the premise of the video. So what I did in the planning phase was keyword research. This is what I recommend to small channels. Now keep in mind, in early April of 2020, when I published this video, my channel wasn't even monetized. The monetization of my channel didn't happen until around I want to say it was about mid-May, mid-May of 2020. So prior to this, I had less than 1,000 subscribers. I wasn't even monetized. I couldn't have made money on my YouTube channel at that point that I published this. So all of that to say that even for small channels, you can have a breakout video, you can have a hit. Now, much of what happens algorithmically is out of my control. The only thing I can control is to do my best to look for how can I inject myself in the conversation with expertise and insights and observation around a specific topic and marry that to what people are actually searching. And that is what I recommend for small channels. When you want to get to your first 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the last 12 months, which is what makes you eligible for the YouTube Partner Program, and I I talk about it in this video right here, so you can go and check that out later on, on how you can do that. What I always recommend is to start with searchable content. That is going to be the fastest way for you to get to that monetization level. And it's also really my theory and my, my whole concept around how you can build your business, which is as an early-stage entrepreneur, as a solopreneur, as a coach, a consultant, someone who's maybe an information marketer or packaging your content into courses and programs to sell, you want to be positioned as an authority, as an, as an expert, as a resource in your industry or niche. And so doing educational content, how-to content, and essentially that's what it is when you are looking online and you're doing searchable content, you're going to teach people how to solve that problem that they're looking for an answer to. So that's really the theory there. Now, as far as the rest of the framework, I then produced the video. I did get my husband to help me because I was sitting behind the computer and he was shooting with a gimbal, like an Osmo gimbal, with my smartphone on the gimbal. So he was able to maneuver around. So I did get some help there. We did choose to shoot in a couple of different locations in our home to give it a little bit of variety. And I also tried to make it as comprehensive as I could. Some of that has come back to bite me on the, you know what, in terms of comments, because there are a lot of people who didn't appreciate the fact that I actually showed both sides of the coin in this video, as opposed to only without a green screen. So despite my best efforts to explain that in comments, not everyone was appreciative of the fact that I showed both ways. There were a lot of people who were complimentary and said, hey, this is one of the best videos I've been able to find on this subject. So the comments run the gamut. And then the fourth part of the 4P framework, so the plan, produce, publish, obviously it's published on YouTube. And then the promote phase was to promote it, right? Tell my email list, share it with them, share it with my network, share it when I'm out in speaking engagements. And if people are asking questions, let's say I'm in a speaking engagement, I'm on a summit, and somebody says in the Q&A, hey, what about green screen? I say, hey, you know what, I actually did a video on that. Here's the link. So ways to promote your videos to other people. And then also I did respond to comments, not all of them, because I think there are over 800 comments, but I tried to, you know, respond to as many of the comments as I could, which also helps. You know, the more that you can comment on the video and respond, the more that the algorithm is going to, to like that. And it all adds up. The views add up, and so do the dollars. If you go to Google and you search how much does a YouTube video with 1 million views make, you'll get an answer of anywhere between $3,400 and $40,000. I'll let you know how much money I made on this video in the next one, so I'll see you there.
