spk_0:   0:00
way. Welcome to the think marketing show, the number one podcast for growing and Skilling your business with online video. I'm Heather Torres

spk_1:   0:11
and I'm Sean Cannell and we're from think Media. And if this is your first time listening welcome.

spk_0:   0:16
This show is dedicated to helping you learn how to get your content notice. And the latest money making strategy's working right now online. So whether you want to grow your YouTube channel or maximize online video across social media, this is for you. How do you make money with a small channel? I'm excited about this because I have a small channel minds, only it almost 15,000 subscribers. And we have a lot of people who look at you with 1.5 million subscribers having a seven figure media company, all these big things, But everything starts small. So talk about how do you make money with a small channel?

spk_1:   0:49
Well, first of all, actually think that even your channel I wouldn't consider small. I mean, 15,000 is insane, you know, and you've already made quite a bit of money off of your channel. And so, you know, I think that the question we what small may be hard to say. Maybe refers to 1000 your 1st 5000 up to 10,000 subscribers. I think about friends of mine that we're able to go full time around 10,000 subscribers. I was able to go full time at around 20,000 subscribers. I went all in on think media at 16,000 full time A 20. So what The strategy is, well, the first thing. And I know that this is gonna be one of those like, OK, come on, man. Like, but the first thing is actually like not to focus on making money it all first, but to focus on influence first. You know, our phrase over it at video influencers is helping you build your influence, income and impact. And we say it in that order because it actually is a progression that you can't make income if you don't have influence. And you can't make a difference in an impact if you don't have influence or income in our opinion, because if you can't keep the lights on or if you're starving yourself than how are you gonna ultimately impact others, you need money to fuel the mission. So it all starts with influence. And the reason I say that is the first thing I would say to make money on a small channel is find another way to make money like too many people, I think they maybe start with desperation, which is the worst way to start anything. If you start in a desperate place on YouTube, you'll make bad decisions. You might try to make quick money with affiliate marketing. We'll talk about that in a second. And it could be good, but too early, and it's maybe coming from the wrong place. You might try to use gimmicks, and you might try to use Clickbait as opposed to saying, You know what? I'm gonna identify another way to make money so that I can even fund my YouTube channel in its infancy stage. In my case, I actually started my channel Clear Vision Media for my company back in 2009 and I had a freelance video production company, and then I started think media in 2010. So in 2009 I used my cameras and my lighting and all these things that I actually got from taking a loan out and the way I was paying the loan down was from waiting tables at Red Robin. And I thought, If I can't make money in my business, I can at least just make extra tips on the weekends and eventually pay this thing down and took out a $7000 loan to get the gear. And I realized that I was gonna pay the bills via doing freelance video work building websites doing YouTube optimization and then use YouTube to do you two been affiliate marketing reviewing cameras with really no timeline of when I needed that to succeed. I think that's a good recipe. Another way is like working some other job, you know, freelance online. Whether that's doing virtual assistant work or doing graphic design or using any skill doing a call center, we're just doing anything. So that way you can invest in your YouTube channel without needing to, like, make a demand on your audience too soon.

spk_0:   3:45
Yeah, I think that's really, really important. I've found that with even my home school channel. I work for think media, and so I have zero pressure on that end to fund that mission. But it is a mission like it's it's close to my heart, but I don't have the time. Thio May courses yet. I don't have the time to develop out the curriculum that I want to. I don't have that time yet. So one of the things you introduced to me was this idea of affiliate marketing, and I know that's how you went full time. So let's talk about what it is and how you can apply that to your YouTube channel as a small channel to start making money.

spk_1:   4:17
Yeah, you know that. Also, affiliate marketing requires a little bit of influence because we talk about affiliate marketing. We recommend sending up for the Amazon Associates program because Amazon is the everything store, and pretty much everything is there when you sign up and you get accustomed link. Now, when someone clicks, you're Lincoln by something you'll make between four and 10% off that sale. And this is a way that initially I was able to quit my day job and go full time on YouTube was just through Amazon and YouTube and talking about tak and cameras on my channel. Think media. However, early on people go, that sounds awesome. So they try to apply for the Amazon associate program. They have one or two videos up. They only have 33 subscribers, or maybe they even have 3000 subscribers. The average video gets around 350 views, but you don't have a ton of mo mentum yet a ton of influence yet. And so what people do is they apply for an affiliate program. They either don't get approved or they get approved, but they don't make enough sales within enough amount of time. So then the account get shut down. It goes back to needing influence first, needing to kind of hit a tipping point of growth, a tipping point off, kind of breaking through with your content. And so once you hit, what I'd probably recommend is that you probably want at least 10 to 20 videos, and it would be ideal to probably have at least 500 to 1000 subscribers around there in with some level of consistency. Not 1000 to 5000 subscribers that say that she built over five years, and they just slowly grew on there. But just like you did, you started knowing you were going to do home school. You started with homeschool Topic videos. You started to build momentum, of course. Also ranking videos, answering specific questions, being a video ranking academy student just doing that, like to the T. And it really works his your channels grown on autopilot, even if you can upload a lot of videos. And then it was no friction for you to get approved for the Amazon affiliate program toe work with other affiliate programs through curriculum companies. So, yeah, affiliate marketing is what I would recommend a notice. We don't say YouTube ads in any other way. I think affiliate marketing is the best way to start making money as a small channel because you don't need a brand to select you for a brand deal or waste your time e mailing brands When you're super small and it's just a ton of work you can. Soon

spk_0:   6:28
as

spk_1:   6:28
you get approved for that program, you can start making money based on your results. If you can figure out just on, all you need is one video to really change your life. We'd mention the greens powder video where I have a green juice powder that I mix up that video is earned over $10,000. It's one video in one niche around one key word that blew up like that. I've got this video called Best Christmas Led Lights. One video. That video's generated over $10,000 every year it generates more one video around one keyword in one niche. I didn't get the brand to work with me. I didn't get free product sent to me, actually purchased the product myself. Or actually, I was. I got to borrow it from a friend, but I hustled to get it like I didn't have to talk to anybody else. I was empowered myself to use affiliate marketing. I know maybe this is some new terms to some people. So actually play list over on Think Media, our affiliate marketing, Siri's. We go deep so people could learn a little bit more about affiliate marketing, as I think, the best way to make money with a small channel when you're getting started.

spk_0:   7:27
Yeah, a lot of times. One of the mistakes we see is that people will just put links down below, and there's no reference point to it. So talk about how you were able to go full time of affiliate marketing because of the connection or tell us a little bit more about that.

spk_1:   7:41
I think, yeah, and we actually teach that in a program that maybe we just linked to it because it's a little of this, a baby course that we have called video product review profits and what is putting into that and description below. Um, and I talk about, I think, five unique things you need to know about making money with affiliate marketing through product reviews. That's where people make a mistake. They just have, like, a blogging channel, and they think I'm gonna vlog. I'll link up to the camera using the description, and then some people click that I'll make money. No, because the intent and watching your entertaining vlog is not to then check out the description for things to like buy. And they're not looking for a camera. Conversely, if you do a video called Blend Tec versus Nen Ninja blenders, which one is better? The person who's watching a video like

spk_0:   8:26
that probably wants

spk_1:   8:27
toe by a blender at the end of that viewing session. So what I mean is, and what we teach in that program is being can grew it through the whole process, really thinking through what is the online consumer? The online shopper. Which, by the way, that's why I love affiliate marketing. E commerce is on Lee around 15%. Going into 2020 in this next decade. Like that means that I mean again on Lee. 15 out of 100 people are shopping online. Most people are still shopping offline. Well, that's gonna continue to grow. More people are gonna keep shopping online. That is more opportunity for us to do product reviews to cover products. We love and used a new product tutorials to make a lot of money through affiliate marketing. So when what's the intent of the consumer who comes online, What are they searching for? And then when they watched the video, what kind of information do they want to learn? And then what did they need to know about doing next? Helping them make that next decision to click on that link and then even thinking past that? Click to the fact that you say this product's amazing, but then they get to the page and the pages, not super optimized, or there's horror. You say it's amazing, but there's horrible reviews on Amazon. No one's gonna buy that, because you also. Then your credibility is lost in that. So you're thinking through the whole what we would call like a customer journey, which is a whole different approach than most people. When it comes to affiliate marketing, there's kind of love it out there, hope to get some cliques, hope to get some sales. And I've learned that, you know, just hope marketing doesn't work. You have to do strategic marketing and again willing to. Some resource is that people are interested

spk_0:   9:59
in celebration of the launch of this brand new podcast. We're giving away two tickets to our annual conference grows video live a $1500 value

spk_1:   10:08
or you have to do to enter is make sure you subscribe. Leave us a review on Apple podcast and then take a screenshot of your review and go to think marketing show dot com for the rest of the details.

spk_0:   10:21
Yeah, okay, so build influence. First start with affiliate marketing, and then our third point is to sell something.

spk_1:   10:28
Yes, you know, we

spk_0:   10:30
don't even

spk_1:   10:30
mention you too bad, and you know What's cool about YouTube is that if you get approved for monetization after 1000 subscribers 400 hours for 1000 hours of watch time within 12 months, period now you can monetize your videos. Sometimes people get so myopic, so focused on just that way of making money. And it's a losing recipe because what I've learned is even if you start getting you know 500,000 views a month, depending on your C P M. That might only be like, let's say, a couple $100. And again you could make a couple $100 somewhere else. Like Builder. You'd go drive uber or lift during, you know, for a few hours every day, make that money and then focus on growing your YouTube channel to build something more significant. And what that thing that's more significant, could be is selling something thinking about Can you create a digital product? We talk a lot about this. One of the reasons why we started think marketing, because the e learning industry, people that are now wanting to learn online and the traditional forms of education are really being flipped upside down. It's gonna be Forbes didn't article by 2025. It's gonna be almost a $1,000,000,000 a day industry, like 330 or so 1,000,000,000 a year. That means a $1,000,000,000 a day. People are gonna be buying e learning materials. Yes, through E learning through colleges and universities. But also through the stuff we quit, we have digital courses. We have all these students, like in our inner circle program that have digital courses and all these different people that are packaging their expertise, their knowledge or just how to do something we're out of learn something or or packaging digital communities. This really cool things. And so that's something you could sell. But she could also sell all kinds of things. I mean, we have guessed this isn't you learning to, but McCain Dogs has a physical brick and mortar dog training studio up in Canada, and they also have an online course for how to train your dog. We have other people in our community, some people that are doing kind of cocktail stuff, and what they do is they will sell the Shakers and they'll share the cell. The sifters Kent, who just came nor mastermind in Las Vegas Cowboy Kent Man. He's got skillets, and he's got, you know, spatulas that he sells. So he does cooking videos, crushing with AdSense because he's really grown his channel. But he's also making money through events. He's making money through physical products. So what reason we skipped past ads is you want to think of YouTube not actually as your business? Probably the worst mindset you could ever have. It's just a distribution channel, right? You want to think bigger than YouTube. Use YouTube to make your living. Don't make YouTube. You're living. AdSense can go up and down. It could disappear tomorrow. But if you have a real business, I sell physical products. I sell skillets and cooking materials, and I have got cooking classes and cooking retreat. Well, you've got a real business. And

spk_0:   13:24
then, if YouTube changes will, you could move to the next platform like you could go somewhere else.

spk_1:   13:28
But so what is that bigger business you're building? What is that? Something else you're selling? There's a lot of opportunities, and I'm excited to talk about that in future. Think marketing show episodes.

spk_0:   13:38
Yes, the think marketing show that was amazing. So build your influence affiliate marketing and then sell something. What incredible tips for having a small channel. And I think again, even if you have a small channel, you can start applying these things. But it is the long game, right? It isn't, You know. Let's get to our 1st 210,000 It's the long game of building something that's sustainable online. So thanks for those tips, Shawn. Thanks for checking out this episode. We hope you've got a ton of value, and if you haven't already subscribe here to the think marketing show, wherever you're watching or listening,

spk_1:   14:13
and it would mean the world to us if you would rate and review this show on Apple podcast

spk_0:   14:19
as we grow this movement of purpose driven content creators, we encourage you to share it with a friend and we'll see you in the next episode.