I blame, or thank, my college roommates for getting me to watch YouTube consistently. We didn’t want to pay for cable, but my suitemate had a GIANT tv given to her, and my roommate had an Amazon Fire stick, so we signed in to Netflix and YouTube and settled on the couch with our homework. My roommate got us hooked on Good Mythical Morning, which she watched every morning with her microwaved croissant, and I watched Jimmy Fallon reruns with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.
Between my brother and my husband, I also got acquainted with several car channels. They weren’t my favorite to watch, but I started to pick up on recurring themes and styles that the most successful channels employed. Of course, with the stories of millionaire YouTube stars flooding in, the boys started studying how these channels made their money. So, we watched a couple hours of how-we-did-it talks and a great deal more hours of shows for “research.”
I have contemplated adding a YouTube component to my blogging efforts. There are a few common themes I noticed in studying self-help courses, but I don’t have enough content at this point to build up a consistent YouTube presence. However, other beginning entrepreneurs seem to have plenty of interest in the medium itself and in the success that older vloggers have had on the site. When I ran across Sean Cannell’s “Viral Video Checklist” on increasing subscribers and sales on YouTube, I figured I would sign up for the emails.
The Pros
- Mr. Cannell provides quality content on how to leverage YouTube as a search engine, how to structure your videos to keep people engaged, and ideas for monetizing your channel outside of YouTube ads. I appreciated that he put so much detail in the free course and that he explored less traditional routes for monetization.
- While the course came through email, it actually linked to several videos that you could watch and take notes on. Each video had an accompanying worksheet. The pages are helpful with lots of space to brainstorm and review the important points of each video well.
- The follow up emails that Mr. Cannell sends after the initial week of promotion include quality information and articles. The emails also only come once or twice a week, making them far less annoying than other courses that send ads every day.
The Cons
- In the first video, Mr. Cannell mentions that the year is 2017, so these free videos are not necessarily up to date. However, the techniques I learned in the videos are congruent with how the famous YouTube channels my family watches operate their sites, so I presume the techniques are still useful two years later.
- The free videos are, of course, leading up to a pitch for the paid course sold in fourth video (but you could just skip watching it.) The paid course costs $697 or 5 payments of $147, so I recommend seriously contemplating how much you want to speed up your YouTube progress in comparison to the cost. The video says the course is a “limited time offer,” but it reopens periodically.
What I Tried
- I don’t currently have a YouTube channel, so I couldn’t implement Mr. Cannell’s suggestions right away, but the videos did give me ideas for how to successfully add a visual component to my blog at a later time.
Initial Conclusion
Mr. Cannell’s checklist had lots of great ideas that were consistent with the style and techniques I see on the most popular, monetized sites that I watch on YouTube. If your medium of choice is YouTube, I recommend completing the checklist. However, the course costs a pretty chunk of change, so I personally would do as much analyzation of my competitor’s sites as I could before I used my credit card. That said, one of the groups I will be reviewing next week started their success with his course, so it may be worth completing if you are looking for rapid results and can rationalize the investment.