0 → 55K subs in 5 months (and $1.9M dollars)

Hey, guys, it's Will. And how on earth did I go from 1,000 subscribers back in January this year to just above 55,000 subscribers now, five months on or thereabouts? In this video, I want to share with you my YouTube strategy, how I monetize the channel, and I'll also share how much money I make from the channel as well. I'll break down my video structure and how I think of titles and thumbnails and why I only upload once a week. And I'm just going to give it all to you in this video. So. So let's dive straight in now just for context, for those who maybe don't know who I am. I started this channel a year ago, and my first ever upload, you can go and see it. It's a video of me unboxing an award for making $10 million in cash from my last E Learning company that I sold for multi seven figures to a private equity firm last year. And there's also a video that I made the day that I received the wire from that sale.

Now, I want to start the video here because I think that this is something that is important to me as part of my YouTube strategy and that is marking milestones. And I guess I'm kind of doing that in that video as well. Now that we're just above 55,000 subscribers, this is really a fork in the road, and it's kind of halfway between.

0 and 100,000 subscribers. And hopefully I make it there one day soon. And this is something that I've always done with my videos. So, for example, when I won the 10 million award, that was a big milestone, a big accolade, in my opinion. So I made a video. When I sold my company, I made a video. Now that I'm halfway to 100,000 subscribers, I'm making a video. When I had my biggest ever month in my last business and we made $824,000 in a single month, I made a video. So one thing I like to do with my videos is really have a reason to make them. As weird as that sounds now, you might say, well, will you make one video every week? Why don't you make less? Why don't you make more, Will? Well, when I started this channel, or really when I started properly uploading, which was in, I believe, December last year, when I committed to one upload a week for the long term, that is part of my strategy because I want to have this channel and upload these videos for you guys for three years, five years, 10 years. And I thought if I do.

For myself, if I do any more than one video a week, it's unlikely that I'm going to stick to it. So let me, let this be the first thing that I share with you guys. And this is something that I've learned From my bigger YouTube friends who have some massive channels. I've got friends with 1 1/2 million subscribers, 4 1/2 million subscribers and thereabouts. And one of the first things they ever told me was.

Consistency is critical. So commit to a day, commit to a time and stick with it for the long term. So let that be the first thing that I share with you guys. Okay? Now second to that, how do I think of my videos? How do I think of my titles? How do I think of my thumbnails? Well, I don't have thumbnails typically. I've only just started testing kind of fancy edited thumbnails. To be honest, it's actually going quite well. So that may continue as well. But historically I, I was approached by a friend once to share my, my video strategy with you. Let me just share a story. So one of my friends and also coaching client of mine is a guy called Charlie Morgan from Fantastic YouTube channel, if you haven't seen it already, go and go and check his channel out and he WhatsApp messaged me one day and he said, will, your channel is growing so incredibly fast, you're getting so many subscribers so fast, what's your strategy? How are you doing this?

And I said to him, well, I don't really have a strategy, but if I did have a strategy, it would be this. I don't care. My strategy is not caring, it's making videos for fun because I love making these videos. It's not really caring if they actually do well or not. Now that has changed by the way, and we'll get into that in a second. But because I've already made so much money from our last business, exited for multi seven figures, I'm a multi, multi millionaire. I own millions of real estate outright with cash. I've got millions in cash. I didn't need this channel to do well in the first place. If it flopped and died, it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever to my life or my income or my business. And I think that energy weirdly.

Rewarded me because I was just making real, honest.

Pretty good videos. I think based on you guys feedback and the views and the subscribers. I didn't know that they were good at the time, but I just made videos that I thought would Help people. And I made them with honesty for fun. So really, that was my strategy. It was just. And everybody started saying this to me before everybody started copying my titles and copying the no thumbnails and copying the no, you know, the text message style titles with no capital letters. Before everybody started piling on and making it a trend.

I just didn't care. So really, this style is really like the William Brown I do not care style, where you just. When I think of titles, I try and just have fun, and I think of titles that honestly just make me laugh. So a lot of my titles, like how to Become a Millionaire Fairly fast, like I did. Like, that's just a funny title.

Just. Just random stuff like that. I basically. I just had fun with it. Because one thing that's really important to me in my life now and in my career is having fun. In fact, the mission statement behind my new consulting company that I'm building and growing right now is make money, have fun, and help people.

Because that's what's important to me in life, is to make money. Because I want to make more money and build more wealth for me and my family in the future to have fun. If you're not having fun, then life is just not. It's just not good. It's not worth living and helping people. Because if you don't. If you don't help people, it's not. You don't get. You don't feel good, you don't feel fulfilled, you don't feel complete, almost. It's very, very strange. So, and I piled that into my YouTube strategy. I thought, right, well, let me make money.

Let me make money, Let me have fun and let me help people. And that is really the foundation of this YouTube channel, because it is to make money, but it's also to have fun. And it's very much to help people as well. Now, I was also a little bit lazy because I didn't care about growing the channel. I was very lazy. I was lazy with thumbnails. I didn't even do a thumbnail. I just didn't even do a thumbnail. I was lazy with descriptions. I was lazy with monetization because I didn't think that it would grow as fast as it's grown. You know, I didn't think that I'd go from a thousand subscribers to coming up on 60,000 subscribers in a matter of months. I thought that it would take years. And I'm aware from people I know and clients and other YouTube friends that sometimes it does happen fast. Sometimes it does happen slow sometimes it does happen kind of middle, median. And it takes some time. But you do see growth, right? But that's the foundation of my strategy now. Like I said, it is changing now because I'm taking YouTube a little bit more seriously now because I've seen the power of it. My love for it grows and grows. My obsession for it grows and grows because this is part of my personality. I just, I love like trying to figure things out. I love like trying to understand what makes a good video, what makes a video do well, what makes a video not do well. Does it matter to have a thumbnail or not? Which I kind of don't really know the answer to yet. Which is again, it's really fun to figure that out and learn how much money can be made from just a YouTube channel alone with no paid ads, no special sales funnel or anything like that. Let's go over there and let me share how much money I have made and how much I am making from this channel and how I'm making it as well. Now I don't have the official total number of all the money that I've made from this channel, but I, but I, I do know close. So January, February, March, April, May.

6, 9, 12, 3. We've in terms of, I'll say the number in dollars. So we've done between January and today.

From this channel. In terms of not, not monetization. I'm not going to talk about ad monetization because that's like 13 grand. It's absolutely nothing from ads. But from, from the coaching side of things, we've done about coming up on $2 million cash from the start of the year to where we are now in mid June, essentially, so roughly $2 million cash in this, this six month period. And I think it's going to surprise you when I tell you right now how simple and straightforward our sales process is. So step number one, make videos. Step number two, have a link in the bio to an explainer video where you basically say here's who I am and here's how I can help you. It really is that simple. Step number three, allow people to book in a discovery call or whatever you want to call it, a sales call, discovery call, consultation call, whatever, doesn't matter. It's just a discussion call basically. And I used to take those myself and I wanted to keep taking them myself because I love speaking to you guys and helping you, but I just physically couldn't because when my channel blew up, good God, I mean we were Booking on honestly 20, 30 sales calls a day. It was just insane. Absolutely insane. Now that's come down a lot. So right now we're booking about four to six a day there. About some days we book 12, some days we book two, some days we book seven. But it's about five, six a day that, that we book right now. And because of that reason, I just can't take those calls or I would only take calls. I'd wake up, take calls, go to bed, wake up, take calls, go to bed. It's just impossible. I just cannot physically take this volume of calls.

Which is why I now have two coaches that help me to take those calls. And that's their job. And I've worked with these guys and I've known these guys for absolutely years now. They're not sales reps, they're not high ticket closers or any of that nonsense. They're almost friends, to be honest. They, they are, they are friends, really. We just have a working relationship in, in the middle of it and they're absolutely awesome. So they're just like me, normal, down to earth. No, no bs, no hype, no American sales craziness. Just raw and real. Which is really the thesis behind this channel is just keep it real, be honest, be open, be transparent, have fun, make money, have fun, help people. We always come back to that mission statement. So let's go back to how we monetize the channel. Make videos, put a link in the description to an explainer video, allow people to book in discovery calls with you, take the calls and sell them something that is a mutual win, win. That's it. So through all the years of learning, I mean, for those who don't know who I am, by the way, I used to own an E Learning company. I grew it to $16.4 million in total sales. I exited that last year to a private equity firm for, for a few million more. So I've learned a lot about business, specifically E learning, coaching, consulting, online education, that kind of thing. That's my niche. That's what I know the most about. Outside of that, like I mentioned, I also have a real estate holding company, but I don't really know a lot about real estate. I just buy it with cash and rent it out. So that's a very, very, very simple business.

And that's it. That's how I monetize the channel. I may or may not take on sponsors in the future. I probably won't. I might. If it's a good fit, I will. If it's a company that I truly believe in and use myself and, and there's integrity there. I might do that. But other than that, the plan for this channel and the strategy behind this channel really to come back to strategy is to.

Have fun making valuable videos that truly help people and truly add value in a basic, raw, real, honest, integrity led way.

That is, I mean, maybe that's the most important part. I'm kind of learning as I speak to you guys and as I share this with you, it's kind of making me think a lot more deeply about.

This channel and what the journey and what the strategy has been. But it's really, it's really add value and allow people to find me that may or may not need help. The people that don't need help can just enjoy the videos and that's great. That's value. The people that do need help can go to the link in the description, go and watch the value video all about me and how I can help. And if they want help, they can speak to one of my two coaches and I will help them to do something similar in terms of building an online education, coaching, consulting business, monetize a skill or talent or passion that they have just like I have or over the last seven years. And I want to do this for as long as I enjoy it and as long as I find it fun. And the minute that I don't enjoy what I am doing, I'll just stop doing it. I'm not sure if any of you guys are music fans, but one of my favorite techno DJs is a woman called Nina Kravis. And I'll never forget, she once said I was watching a documentary about her and she once said, the minute that I don't enjoy DJing and making music and traveling the world doing this, I'll stop doing it. I think she said, like, I want to be a dentist and one day I might be, if I don't enjoy music, I'll go and pursue dentistry. And it sounds simple, but I think that really impacted me and I thought, wow, you can do something that you love and you can make money doing something that you love, but it doesn't have to be forever. And a lot of the things that I've done in my life.

Haven'T been forever. So when I was younger, for those of you who don't know my, maybe my backstory, it is on my website if you want to go and.

Read it. So if you go to williambrown.com with a hyphen between the A and the M, don't ask, by the way, you can read my entire story there. In terms of every entrepreneurial venture, I don't know why I'm doing that so much in this video. Every entrepreneurial venture that I've ever undertaken. So my first was skateboarding and I monetized that by making skateboard videos, then graffiti and I monetize that by making a graffiti magazine, then music and I monetize that by making music and DJing all over the world, then trading and I monetize that by making an E learning company which is the one that I just sold last year. And now my knowledge and just everything that I've learned. And now I just help people do what I've done. And right now I guess I just sell my knowledge.

And this is the title of my book, how to 10 million sell your knowledge and make millions. This is exactly what I do. I sell my knowledge and I make millions of dollars.

And it's very fun and very easy. And this is something that I almost feel guilty about sometimes when people come to me and they're struggling to build a YouTube channel or they're struggling to build and grow a business. I always find myself and clients have even told me off for this in a respectful way, but they have said, well, please can you not say that? I often find myself saying on calls, it's easy, just do this. It's easy. You know, it's not hard. Just, just, just do this. It's easy.

And I think it is easy, maybe to me, because I've done this for so long, but I think if I had to share a tip or a tactic with you guys in regards to how to grow a YouTube channel and maybe monetize it as well, I say don't overthink it. Good God, so many people overthink this. I was talking to one of my buddies the other day about his passion is cooking and I said to him, look, start a YouTube channel and maybe an Instagram or a TikTok alongside it and make videos of you cooking. Maybe get your daughter involved. He's got a young 4 year old daughter, maybe get her involved as well to just make it more fun to watch. You know, it's a guy and his kids and they can do it together and you can maybe teach her the recipes or whatever, you know, but just put content out there to bring it back to you guys. Just have fun and make raw, real, honest, genuine, valuable content. Don't overthink it. You don't need to edit your videos. You don't even need to Do a thumbnail. The thing that is most important to me about my videos.

Aside from the content and the value, of course, is the title. The title is.

Honestly, it might even be my favorite thing. I was saying this to a friend the other day, like, I love thinking of titles. I've got this list in my iPhone notes and I'll share some more strategy with you guys. So I was walking to the beach yesterday with my girlfriend and a title just popped into my head. And straight away, out comes the phone. I open the notes and I write the title down straight away. And that's how all of my titles come about. I just, they just come to me and I guess my conscious, my subconscious is just ticking away in the, in the background and just thinking, you know, let's Talk about the YouTube channel, let's talk about where the business is at, let's talk about an accolade, let's talk about an achievement, let's talk about a milestone.

Whatever, whatever it is. And I write down the titles. And then whenever I've got some free time, like today, I've just got a free day today, which is awesome. So I'm just going to relax, do some reading, make a video, have a cigar in the, the garden and just do what, whatever I want to do all day. And whenever I've got a day like this, I usually make a YouTube video, or sometimes more than one. I might even make more than one today if I've got the energy. The, the.

Here's another thing as well. I can't just make a video. I've got a. Almost have it in me. I know that sounds weird, but. So this video, I thought last night, I thought, right, tomorrow I'm going to make a video at around 11am, 12pm and it's going to be about growing the YouTube channel. And then I just let it sit in my subconscious overnight or just for one or two days. And I just think, right, I'll talk about this and I'll talk about that and I'll talk about this and I'll talk about that. And then it just comes together in my head and then I just hit record. There's no notes, there's no plan. Because again, I want it to be like a friend having a conversation with a friend. That's how I like my videos to feel. And hopefully they do. Let me know in the comments section if that is how the videos feel to you. I hope so.

And then I just share what I want to share. So let's just rewind for a second so I've talked to you about how I monetize the channel and I've told you roughly how much money I've made this year so far and how I've made it again. Video link to a.

Value video call and then share an offer. And I won't go into offers and pricing in this video. There's other videos about that on, on my channel already, so, so go and watch those if you haven't already and subscribe and check out my other videos. Shameless Plug. Don't care.

So we've talked about monetizing the channel. We've talked about the underlying strategy which is basically the, I mean like, like I said to Charlie Morgan when he asked me about this, Charlie said to me, what is your strategy for growing your channel? I said, it's the I don't care strategy. And then he adopted that. And he's done very, very well with that. He's got a fantastic YouTube channel. If you haven't seen it yet.

Go and watch it. You might find a few replica videos from ones that he's copied from me.

Copycats. Copycats. But I don't, again, I don't care. You know, I really don't care.

So go and check that out. And again, he's used the I don't care strategy to massively beneficial effect. And I've seen quite a few other people copy my titles and copy my style.

And copy the raw, unedited.

Style and they've done really well as well. And I think it's, it's not mine. I, I wouldn't even say that I've invented this. I was probably just.

One of the first more recent people to, to, to do this style. So I, I certainly wouldn't call it my own. I think I'd be quite egotistical if I did call it my own.

But it's just, I think people can resonate with, with just raw, real videos with no BS and no shiny editing and all this crazy stuff. So that's the foundation of this channel. Raw, real, honest.

Value driven, no bs. And I'd highly recommend that you just, just replicate what I do for yourself as well. You don't have to edit your videos, you don't have to do big shiny thumbnails. You don't have to do any crazy fancy titles. Just keep it real and have fun.

Another thing that I'd bolt onto that is consistency as well. So from what I've learned, I get a lot of comments where people say, and this is awesome, by the way, if you're One of the people that says this to me, I really, really, really appreciate it. People say to me in the comments section, when I see a new upload from will I watch it immediately or will I look forward to your videos every Sunday or something similar? Now, this is actually one of. I mean, it's. This is really important. Let me share this with you. And I think this will give you a light bulb moment. I think this will give you a breakthrough. Now, there's a YouTuber called Hamza and he said to one of my friends, I think it was Andrew Kirby, I'm pretty sure he said to Andrew, think about the way that humans watch television. It's the same show where the same stuff happens again and again and again at the same day or days at the same time in the same way. That is what people want. Is that where it just. It's. It repeats. It's not all different every time. It's just the same good stuff again and again and again and again and again. Now, a good example of this is my mum. So she's watched these British drama programs, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, EastEnders. It's the same stuff again and again and again by the same people. It's always. Some drama is happening in the same setting.

The same days every week, the same times every week, the same thing every week, the same people every week in the same setting every week. And although I am starting to vary my backgrounds and setups for YouTube as a bit of a test.

That is very, very important.

Now, another thing that you guys will have noticed if you pay attention is that I always wear white T shirts. Now, I don't do it for branding, I don't do it for continuity. I don't even do it for a reason. I do it because I only really wear white T shirts because it's just easy and simple and I don't have to think. And it just saves the cognitive load of having loads of different clothes to wear. White T shirts. I'll put on a shirt if I'm going for the dinner, I'll put on a suit if I'm going to a wedding or whatever. But day to day, a white T shirt for where I live in Dubai or even when I'm in England when it's nice, weather is fine. You can wear it with shorts, you can wear it with jeans.

Right? But that is, It's. It's become an element of repeatability for me and my brand and my title. My.

Me, my brand and my. I guess that's it, isn't it? Really Just, it's just got that element of.

That is who Will is and I honestly don't care. I'm past caring again. I don't do this to make more, more money. I do this to have fun. I want more money, not gonna lie. I want more money, I want more wealth. I want to see, see how far I can go financially in life. I'll make that very clear. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna hide that, whatever. But I think having repeatability again the same day, the same time, maybe the same studio or the same kind of studio, I like to have like the nicest looking background that I can because I think it's enjoyable to look at and it adds more value to the video in my opinion.

So I guess that's another part of my strategy as well.

And that's really it. Consistency, continuity, value, don't really care strategy overall for the most part.

Monetizing the channel to build more wealth if, if you want to. I guess that's for 99 of people. They do want to make money from their channel.

And I really hope that that helps and inspires you guys and adds value for you guys and gives you a bit of an insight. Now I do want to leave you with one more tactic and I'll share some of the newer stuff that I'm doing with this channel, the newer experiments that I'm doing with this channel as well.

Which is as I travel, I'm making videos in new settings.

Which to be honest hasn't worked very well so far. And I think that is because of the variance in.

Continuity. So again, I think people get used to my office in Dubai and then when I'm in a swimming pool in Thailand, it just doesn't quite feel the same. That's my, my thesis now. We'll see how this video does. It might do well, it might not do well. Again, this is just one of the hundreds of videos that I'm going to make over the coming months and years. So it has, in the grand scheme of things it has little importance overall. If it does well, it'll book us more discovery calls. If it doesn't do well, it will book us well. Actually, I take that back. This is another thing to share with you guys and this is very weird and you almost wouldn't believe it. So one thing that I have noticed is every once in a while I'll upload a video and it doesn't get that many views. It might get 2, 3, 4 or 5,000 views, but it books a lot of discovery Calls weirdly. And I guess that's just because of maybe something that I've said in the video or the theme of the video. I don't really do call to actions in my videos of like go to the link in my bio, click on the work with me link, watch the video, booking a call, speak to my team and discuss having me coach you. I don't really do that. It's very rare that I do that. But maybe that's the reason as well because it just reminds people, oh yeah, I can get Will's help if, if I want it and that's how I, I get the help. So maybe that has an impact or not. I need to go back to those videos and, and check them out. But that's one thing that I found. So the views actually doesn't always even matter.

Sometimes you can not get many views, but you get a lot of calls. Sometimes you can get a lot of views and very few calls and there's not really an impact. So that's quite an interesting one and I guess for you guys as well. You don't have to have a big channel by the way. You absolutely do not have to have. You can make a lot of money with 5,000 subscribers. With two and a half thousand subscribers. I know someone who's doing about 120k a month. I can't remember exactly what his offer was, but he had like two and a half thousand subscribers or 3,000 subscribers. Pretty small channel, but it was just on point. The videos were so specific.

That all the viewers were just the ideal client, the ideal avatar. And this may be something that I'm doing right or wrong as well. I don't know what I'm doing with my finger.

But some of my videos are very mass market and that may be a good thing, it may be a bad thing. I actually don't, don't really know for the long term. We're gonna find out over time.

But yeah, that's an interesting thing that I've noticed as well. And on a more tactical level for any of you that are doing this already, one amazing thing about a YouTube channel is that the show up rate to the discovery calls is wildly higher than paid ads. The close rate is wildly higher than paid ads. And that is an obvious one. But I just wanted to share that just in case any of you maybe didn't know that. And it's just because I think YouTube builds so much value and trust and respect and just likeness almost just. It's just in a great way. But yeah, I Think if I had to share one thing that is the main thing that I've learned is probably the continuity and the, I'd say the continuity number one.

And the consistency number two of just never missing an upload, same day, same time for the long run. So unless I, unless I bloody die, which I very much hope that I don't, then these videos will continue for years. I hope that I'm still making these videos in 10 years time. Not just to keep helping you guys and keep growing and learning myself, because I learn from these videos as well. That's the great thing about teaching people. You learn just as much as your clients learn because you're reminded when you teach. Which is, which is pretty cool.

I've completely lost my train of thought. But yeah, just, oh, that's what I was going to say because I want to watch these videos back in a year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, and see like, where was I, what was I thinking? What was I doing? What was my strategy? How much money was I making? You know, we're making about 4ish $5 million a year from the channel now. Maybe that'll be 10 million, 20 million, 30 million more in, in, in the years to come as we keep making the product better, getting better client results. I'm sure you guys have seen the William Brown Testimonials channel, which is my separate channel for all the client testimonials. It's insane. We're uploading like 1, 2amonth from people that were helping to make tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars with their YouTube and with their own knowledge business, which is awesome.

Yeah, it's just great. So good. YouTube is one of the most fun things in the world to do and I hope that you guys take a lot of value from this video and go out there and have the same fun and make the same money as well. So I hope that helps. I'll pause the video here for today and if any of you guys have any questions, by the way, just put them in the comments section below the video. And as I usually do, I usually try my hardest to reply to really as many of the comments as I can. So please feel free to ask me questions. And it is me that replies to them, by the way. That's what it's like being retired. Well, not retired, but partially retired at 33 years old. You get to respond to every one of your YouTube comments, which is maybe a, maybe a. Well, I, I like to do it and if I like to do it, I'll do it. If it's fun, I'll do it. And if it's not, I won't. Basically. So make money, have fun, help people.

And that's it for this video. Hope it helps.