Why Small Channels Get More Sales

Good news first, you don't need a massive YouTube channel. You don't even need 1,000 subscribers on YouTube to start booking clients or getting sales to your course from your YouTube channel. In fact, let's be honest here, you don't need to be a YouTuber if you're trying to sell a course or a coaching program, because gurus are going to tell you, and other marketing strategists who want you to use their way of marketing, will tell you that YouTube is a long game, that it's a time investment. And you may hear terms like rank in search, but I have clients who were able to book their own clients from a YouTube channel with less than 10 subscribers within their first 5 videos on YouTube, getting less than 100 views. More views and more subscribers is not the game you want to play as a business owner because you don't want to be a YouTuber. And let's be honest, your bank account doesn't care how many views or subscribers you have. It cares about clients. So let's talk about how your small YouTube channel can get you booking clients as quick as possible. My name is Trena Little and I help established coaches and course creators use YouTube as a sales asset and not become a YouTuber. And I want to share with you what happened to me when I fell into the trap of chasing more views and subscribers, because I think this really shows you why chasing the YouTuber strategy won't work for you as a business owner. For me, I decided to chase those views and subscribers because it was an imposter syndrome thing for me. I felt like I needed to have that 100K mile marker on my YouTube channel to look legit in the YouTube education space. So that's what I did. I started creating broader content, more beginner-level content, more viral content, and some of my videos did go viral and brought in hundreds of thousands of views, and it killed my business. Before that point, I was getting sales in my business basically every day from YouTube. Maybe there was a day a week that I didn't get a sale, but sales were coming in steadily from organic YouTube traffic. These were low-ticket products. These were also straight into my YouTube coaching experience, but all of my products on my my YouTube channel, ultimately funnel my YouTube coaching experience. Then my viral video started pulling the wrong people, beginner-level people, YouTuber people. The algorithm changed who it started recommending my videos, and they started to send me people who were never going to buy from me and more whiners and complainers that YouTube was out to get them. And the joy of more troll comments as well. That's what happens when you go viral, you guys, more troll comments. These people had no intention or no plan to ever invest in anything to help them with a YouTube channel. They were there for that free beginner-level content. So after looking at the data myself, I realized I had to delete about a million views on my channel so that I could just get the algorithm to reset who it was putting me in front of. But I'm all about sharing the truth and transparency here on my channel. So I don't only just wanna show you how to do this, but give you the proof that this system is actually working for small channels just like you you right now. So I've been in the YouTuber space for over 10 years and I've worked with large YouTube channels. I've worked with family channels, I've worked with influencer channels. I've seen large YouTuber strategies and one of the biggest things that they will tell you to do as a YouTube strategy to get more views and subscribers is to find somebody in your niche, find one of their viral videos and do that. That's why when you see like Ryan Trahan's penny series go viral, many other YouTubers did a penny series. Or maybe you've seen somebody do the how much YouTube pays me, and then everybody else does the how much YouTube pays me. Or one of my favorites, because this is a cycle that comes around every once in a while, my 5:00 AM morning routine. So once somebody sees one of those videos go viral, then everybody decides to do that video. This is wrong tactics for somebody who's trying to create content that's going to attract people that will buy your coaching program or your course. And it's the absolutely worst thing that you can do if you want to make sure your YouTube channel pays for itself quickly because those videos that went viral for someone else are not going to bring in the best people for your coaching program and your course. Just more views doesn't mean more sales. And then you get stuck in chasing these viral video ideas and now you're just an influencer creating content to create content for more views and subscribers. And I will tell you, the money that YouTube actually pays you is pennies compared to what you could do with few views, getting those people into your coaching program or your course. The other worst tactic that YouTube gurus talk about a lot, and a lot of clients come to me about, is SEO. People always ask me about YouTube SEO. How do I make this good for YouTube SEO? YouTube SEO is a thing of the past. Is there still some pieces of YouTube SEO that you should be utilizing in your optimization of your videos? For sure. But that's not going to be the thing that gets your video in front of the right people or even gets YouTube recommending your videos to the right Worrying about SEO is going to waste so much of your time that could be better spent on things that actually matter on a YouTube video, like researching the best topic that your ready-to-buy viewers are searching, packaging that video, like your title and your thumbnail. Listen, you can SEO the crap out of a video, but if you can't get people to click on your video because of the title and the thumbnail, it's going nowhere anyway. So what was the point of SEO researching it when you can't even get people to click on it? Think about somebody who bought your coaching program or your course. They are not going to YouTube YouTube to search basic beginner level topics. Think about why did they come to your course, your coaching program? What was it that they needed help with? What did they tell you that they realized you could help them do? That's an advanced level topic. That is not something that you're going to SEO or you're going to rank in search. Yes, it may actually be searched, but it's not going to be this viral level search of like 50,000, 100,000 searches per month. It may only be searched 1,000 times a month, maybe 5,000 times a month. I just want to reiterate that that's not how YouTube works anymore. Just because you have a keyword in your title or a keyword in your thumbnail or a keyword in your file name, that doesn't work on YouTube anymore. That is super old YouTube advice. Somebody is telling you to do that, you wanna run because that is not how YouTube has worked in years. YouTube has advanced so much that when you upload your video, it's already knowing exactly what your video is about even if you give it no information and it's gonna take the information that you're talking about in your video, it's going to find find people who like watching content on that information. So that's why we need to stop thinking about YouTube SEO and start thinking about packaging of our video and topic of our video. If you want to get on YouTube and within your first 5 videos close $19,000 in sales, I think it's important that we just say this out loud right now. Subscriber numbers is a vanity metric. YouTube does not prefer content from channels that have larger subscriber numbers. YouTube prefers content and will recommend content to people that they actually click on and they actually watch. You could literally have zero subscribers, but if you have a video that people click on when YouTube recommends it and people watch it to the end, YouTube's gonna push that to more people because you're doing exactly what the algorithm wants you to do. It is getting people to watch content so that they can run ads, and you're keeping them on the platform. And you as a business owner have such a huge opportunity here because if you already have an email list, again, you can start a YouTube channel with 5, 10 subscribers, and when you publish a video, you get your email subscribers on over to YouTube watching your content. You've already got a leg up on anybody who's just starting an entire business or entire channel from scratch because you've got a built-in audience already that already signed up, said, yes, I want content from you. And you tell them about that YouTube video and why they should go watch it. And it's not going to matter how many views or subscribers your channel has as total. YouTube says, whoa, this channel has this video and people, 20 people watch to the end. I'm going to find more people like those 20 people and put this video in front of it. And if you did your job with the packaging, the title and the thumbnail, those people are going to click on it. And YouTube's gonna find more people like that, and that's your discoverability opportunity. You use your built-in audience to train YouTube who your people are, and then YouTube will go out and find those people for you without even needing to spend a single dollar on ad spend. Because when you look at channels that have large subscriber numbers, let's say they have 100,000 subscribers, and you look at their videos and they're hardly hitting 1,000 views, that is immediately screaming, "This person bought these subscribers." And look, I will tell you, my channel does not look good right now. I have I have over 60,000 subscribers and some of my videos can barely hit 500 views, but I'm going to tell you this, I have not spent a single dollar on ads. What I have done is I followed YouTuber practices in the beginning of my YouTube journey. I've been on YouTube for 11 years and so it is skewing the subscribers that I have. And if I could go in and delete half of my subscribers and just have 25,000 subscribers on my channel, I would love to be able to do that. I would rather have 25,000 dialed in subscribers subscribers for exactly who I want to speak to versus the 60,000 number that I have that probably over 70% of them aren't even the right person for my channel. When I'm talking to a lot of my clients, a lot of them get nervous because they do not want to be a YouTuber, and I get it. I don't either. I've seen that strategy. I've seen that game. I've seen that play out, and I don't want to play that game either. So let me walk you through a couple examples of why I'm telling you, you do not need to be a YouTuber to get results on a YouTube channel, whether you're just starting it or you have a small channel. One of my clients, Steve, when he came to work with me, he already had about 20,000 subscribers and he was posting videos. Some of those videos were getting tens of thousands of views. He was following the YouTuber way. He was ranking in search, keyword researching, right? But his course, his hormone course was maybe selling from those YouTube videos, maybe one course a month. That's about the sales he was getting. And so when he joined my YouTube coaching experience, I explained to him, here's the strategy we want to go. Here are the types of topics you need to be talking about. Here's the sequence that the videos need to flow so that you're getting people to actually buy from you. So when he started implementing the playlist funnel that I talk about, his views were significantly low, like a couple hundred views at max, but he started making sales in his course. So initially he was making about 8 sales every 18 days versus, you know, 1 sale a month. And as he continued publishing this content, because the great thing about YouTube content, if you're doing it right, each video compounds on the last. So you're getting views on your new content, which is pushing views to your old content. And it's just this kind of snowball effect to where he was getting sales almost every other day to his course when he switched from the YouTuber way to the business strategy way and getting less views but more quality views. You've also heard me talk about Belle in the past as well. What's very interesting about Belle is she had about 100 subscribers on her channel when she started. She knew she wanted to quit Instagram and she knew YouTube was going to be the way to do that. And so again, less than 100 subscribers when she started, her videos got 20, 30, 50 views max, and within her first 2 videos, she closed about $16,000 in sales, less than 100 subscribers. By the time she finished her 5 videos, she had closed $42,000 in sales. By the time she finished 16 videos, she had closed $152,000 in sales. But here's the really key point. She had a family emergency. She had to log off for 6 weeks to take care of her family. And what happened while she was gone? Those YouTube videos continued to generate tens of thousands of dollars for her because she wasn't running ads. She wasn't even posting any new content. Those videos were her sales team while she gets to take off work. That's the difference between trying to get more views and subscribers versus creating strategic videos that bring you ready-to-buy viewers to a small channel. I want to break this down a little bit so it's totally clear, and let me know in the chat if all of this is tracking with you. Just go ahead and comment YouTube if you're like, whoa, YouTube is where I need to double down on. But I mentioned this idea between beginner-level kind of like viral content and like these more advanced problems. I like to call Beginner Betty content versus Expert Esther content. My mentor Mariah calls it champagne problems because she thinks about her clients as her champagne clients have champagne problems. Let's say you are an Instagram strategist. Typically you teach coaches how to close more sales in the DMs. If you were to create content around how to grow your Instagram account or how to start an Instagram account from scratch or how to write your Instagram bio, that is going to attract very Beginner Betty, aspiring, probably influencer-level views. All the people thinking that they can make it big on Instagram, right? They're not selling anything, they don't have anything to sell, and your offer basically means nothing to them at this point in time. That video probably will get tens of thousands of views, but it will make you no money. But if you created videos, for example, like these, how I close $20,000 deals through Instagram DMs, or how to close high-ticket sales in Instagram DMs, you attract a completely different person. Of course, less people are going to watch that video because less people are wanting to close in the DMs, but the people who will watch that are people that are primed and ready for the problem that you solve in your coaching program and how to close in the DMs, right? That's your buyer. That's why a channel even with 5 subscribers and you pop one of these videos up, you could literally book a client from just 10 views on a video if it's the right video. That's the spectrum you need to be thinking about when you're thinking about content on YouTube and why YouTube isn't a long game. YouTube could literally be generating sales within the first 2, 3, 4, 5 videos like my clients when you focus on Expert Esther content versus Beginner Betty content. Now, something I didn't even mention, Beginner Betty content is very competitive. Everybody can create Beginner Betty content. Everybody's creating Beginner Betty content. Guess what happens when you create Expert Esther content? There's not a lot of competition. You rise to the top. You are the one being recommended for your specific niche. Niche. You become the go-to expert for how to close in the DMs. That's what happens when you start thinking about YouTube as a business owner and not a YouTuber. And following this tactic is so important because of what happened in my channel, right? If you come out the gate thinking you just need views and subscribers and you start creating beginner-level content for beginner Betty, YouTube's gonna assume that's what your channel is for. It's going to keep sending you beginner Betty and you're not going to make sales. You can continue to stay broke. YouTube wants to put your videos in front of the best people for that content. So you need to make sure you are creating content to attract Expert Esther so YouTube keeps sending you Expert Esther. Now if you're thinking, oh no, are my videos for Beginner Betty or Expert Esther? I actually created a custom GPT where you just plug in your video, whether you created it or it's a video idea that you have, you plug it in and it's going to tell you, uh-oh, is this a Beginner Betty topic or is this an Expert Esther? So that you don't have to worry about focusing on or spending your time on Beginner Betty content anymore. So go to trenalittle.com/whoswatching to get ChatGPT and test out your next video idea. Now let's take action. Here's 2 things that you can do this week. The first thing you need to immediately stop thinking about success on YouTube is views and subscribers. Stop, stop thinking like, I will get on YouTube when I have the time to commit to it because I know it's a long game. It's not. You could literally be getting sales from YouTube within your first 5 videos if you're thinking about it from a business owner strategy and not a YouTuber strategy. Start asking yourself, for every video you think you're going to create, who would watch this What type of content or what question would attract my next coaching client? If you have 47 subscribers and they're all expert Esther, that's the goal. This is why it's so important for my clients and my coaching experience to get my thoughts on their topics before they create them because we can be so blind in our own content, right? Myself included. And we think this is gonna be a great video. When I'm looking at their offer in their ready-to-buy viewer definition, I say, hey, I think this is a bit vague. We need to get much more specific in this topic because right now Now this is going to be much of a broader topic, and I don't think it's going to bring the right people in. That's the power of having me as a YouTube strategist in your back pocket. And what my clients really benefit from is having my lens as a YouTube strategist and understanding the strategy for business owners on YouTube to get that feedback instantly so that they're not putting those videos up that could put them in the algorithm at the wrong spot. Because my biggest question for you right now, and let me know your answer down in the comments, if you put time into YouTube, what is more important for you? More views views or more sales? Type which one you want down in the comments below, because if you do this strategy right, most of your videos are going to get under 500 views, but they will be booking clients for you every single week. I would say without even maybe doing sales calls, because the view number doesn't matter. For me, the bank account number does. Now, if you're a business owner and you're really thinking about going all in with YouTube, I want to tell you exactly what I would do today if I were a business owner starting my YouTube channel in this video right here. So go ahead and click that, dive into it, and I'm giving you the complete walkout of what I would do if I were a business owner starting a YouTube channel today.