Setting Up Your Channel
Most people overcomplicate this and think setting up their channel is a big job, but in reality, you only need to set up 3 things and they don't take a lot of effort at all.
Profile Picture
Your profile picture should be your face, not your company logo.
People don’t trust logos on YouTube…they trust people.
Plus, you’re building authority around you, not a brand.
Channel Banner
Your channel banner should have a call to action to subscribe.
And it should clearly show what type of videos you'll be making.
For example, "Subscribe for weekly dropshipping videos".
Channel Bio
Include your offer or lead magnet at the top because only the 1st line shows on your channel page.
The rest of the bio should be about the incentives for the viewer - make it clear what's in it for them to watch your vids.
Choosing What To Promote On YouTube
YouTube only works as a funnel if there’s a clear next step.
So before you create any content, you need to decide what you want viewers to do after watching.
This is what you will mention in your calls-to-action (CTAs) in your videos
For most people, there are a few options: calendar to book a call, free lead magnet, offer landing page, etc.
If you're selling something low-ticket, you can CTA directly to your offer. For example, if you're selling a $9/month Whop community, this works perfectly.
Or if you're a SAAS company, you can CTA to get started for free or to request a free demo, if these are things you offer.
But if you're selling a high-ticket product or service, which if you're reading this doc, you probably are, then it's best to CTA to something which is low commitment from the viewer.
It's easier to get someone to click the link in the description if it's free or benefits them in some way, compared to clicking the link in the description to just read about your offer that costs $5,000, for example.
It has a much higher conversion rate in terms of views:link clicks, and allows you to get leads from YouTube into your CRM.
So in this case, I would recommend one of these 2 options:
Book A Call
Crucially, this isn't positioned as a sales call. It can be a "free audit" or a "free strategy call" or something along these lines.
Lead Magnet
This is my preferred option because it allows you to gather leads which you can nurture through your already existing sales funnels.
For our business, we have a lead magnet for your first 3 months' worth of video ideas. It's a really easy sell for the viewer because it's completely free, and gives them something actionable which they can literally use to kick-start their YouTube.
And from our perspective, we then get their email address and phone number, so they're now part of our sales funnel.
Plus, we have confidence in our strategy so when they take the 12 ideas and they perform well, they now trust us and are more likely to pay us in future.
PS you can get the 12 video ideas here if you want them.
Video Ideation
You should start with just 4 video ideas. This is enough for a month's worth of content as we recommend uploading weekly at the beginning, especially if you've never created content before.
So in terms of how to come up with video ideas, there are lots of different methods and all of them could have their own Gamma doc packed with information.
But to get you started, I would recommend using YouTube search.
How you do this is you go onto the YouTube home page and type your niche into the search bar, but crucially don't hit search.
You want to see what other keywords are auto-populating as YouTube tries to guess what you're searching for.
This is extremely valuble information because it's essentially YouTube telling you what other people are also searching for.
You can go one step further and add words like "best", "how" and "what" in front of your niche to get even more video ideas.
And at the start, when your channel is new, YouTube doesn't know who to show your videos to and it's unlikely they show up on people's home pages.
So because of this, you want to target videos which show up in search results, and this method tells you exactly what people are searching for.
And although it's all well and good having all of these video ideas, how do you know which ones to target?
For each search result, scroll through the results and compare the view count to the subscriber count.
You're looking for videos with a discrepency. For example, a channel with 200 subscribers that has a video with 1000 views.
These are known as "outliers" and they're the types of videos you want to be creating at the start, so find 4 of those.
Scripting Videos
Writing about how to script videos could be a full book in itself, so I'll try to keep it short and sweet.
Essentially, you want the general structure to look like this:
The hook is the most important part of the video, and a good one will do all of these things:
- Reiterate the Title
- Relate to Audience
- Sell Viewer a Dream
- Present Problem
- Promise Solution
- Present You as Authority Figure
- Give an incentive to watch the whole video
If your hook isn't good, the viewer is clicking off straight away which not only means they aren't hearing what you have to say or what your offer is, it also tells YouTube that your video is bad since people clicked off so quickly, which results in low views.
For the body, you want it to flow naturally with each section building on the last. Everything should be connected, where it's almost like you need to watch the next part in order for the last part to work, if that makes sense. This is for retention purposes.
When you're scripting for yourself, it's up to you how you do it but personally I prefer bullet points with prompts which I can elaborate on with recording. I find if I record using a teleprompter, it's pretty obvious and sounds quite robotic. But it's personal preference which you go for.
You should include a mid-video CTA around 20-30% of the way into the video but it should be really short and brief. The reason for this is because only a small amount of people will make it to the end of the video, so if you only mention your offer at the end, then most people aren't even hearing about it.
That being said, your outro at the end of the video should speak to the viewers' pain points and present your offer as the solution, rather than selling the benefits.
Going back to our example of giving people 3 month's worth of video ideas - we usually talk about how when you're starting YouTube, it can be hard to know what videos to make, you don't know whether something will actually get views or whether it'll flop, and it's intimidating scrolling through competitors' channels trying to decide which videos are worth recreating. And that's where we present our offer as the solution because we literally give you 12 video ideas which is enough for 3 full months of content.
Recording Videos
Okay so now that you've gotten your scripts ready for the month, it's time to record.
A lot of people think you need a fancy studio set up or an expensive camera, but that's not the case.
We have clients making $40,000/month who record on their iPhone. Look how makeshift our recording set up was for one of our YouTube videos.
As long as you can see you clearly on camera, the audio sounds decent enough, and the background looks tidy and professional, then you're good to go.
From here, it's just a case of recording the videos. It can be daunting if it's something you've never done before but the best advice I can give is to pretend you're talking to a friend. Forget the camera is there and just talk to one of your mates.
A lot of people stiffen up and sound robotic because they're intimidated by the camera - so just pretend it's not there.
That being said, you're creating educational content, not entertainment content. No one is clicking your video just to pass the time when they're eating their dinner - they're clicking your video to learn how to do what it is you're teaching, which ultimately is how to make them more money.
So don't worry too much if you aren't the most personable person in the world. By nature, I'm a very laid back person, but I still sign clients through my YouTube because I create good content and provide genuine value to the viewer.
Other tips I have would be to record the hook in one-take but for the body, you can re-record things as many times as you need and even take a break between each section if you want.
If you've used bullet points like I do, you might want to take a few minutes between each section to brainstorm and think of exactly what you're going to say.
I wouldn't worry too much about how many times you have to say something or whether you stumble over your words - your editor will be used to this and will know exactly what to do.
Finding A Video Editor & Thumbnail Designer
The best way of finding a video editor in my opinion is to look through the "Video Editors of X" community on Twitter/X.
This way you can look through their work and DM the people you think are good and find out how much they charge and what their availability is.
I would recommend focusing on people that edit business videos rather than other types of editors like vlog editors or gaming editors.
Most editors will have a 3-4 day turnaround time and in terms of price, you can find people for as cheap as $50 per edit and as expensive as $500. I would recommend around the $150-200 margin. Under this and the quality isn't great - above this the quality doesn't improve massively, it's just people charging more.
For thumbnail designers, Fiverr is the best way of finding these guys and again, you want to look for people who have worked on business thumbnails before.
I would recommend paying $15-20 per thumbnail, and most designers will offer a discount if you pay in bulk. We used to use someone who charged $15 for a thumbnail but for 30 thumbnails only charged $300, for example.