YouTube is full of an incredible range of content, but is it a good platform to build a successful channel around teaching a skill? On this episode of 

, we talk to a creator that’s done just that.

Gabby Wallace runs a very successful YouTube channel called 

 which teaches American English to learners. She’s generated 

55M views for her videos, and with a growing subscriber base of 1.6M

, she’s tapping into a clear demand from viewers for this type of content.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Gabby at one of the recent video conferencing event held in Los Angeles, where we got to unpack her channel, understand her strategy. In this podcast you will learn:

How you can use your skills to teach others on YouTube

How to leverage the huge demand to learn new skills via YouTube

How to monetize your educational content on YouTube

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TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

How Teachers Can Use Their Skills to Build a YouTube Channel: Full Transcript

Liron Segev:	So Gabby, for people who don't know, what do you do on your channel? How would you describe it in a tweet?

Gabby Wallace:	Go Natural English helps non-native English speakers to speak and communicate in English fluently and confidently.

Liron Segev:	You're literally the first person I think was able to do it in a tweet.

Gabby Wallace:	Because I say that tweetable all the time, try to explain what I do. So yeah, hopefully that's clear.

Liron Segev:	That's nice and concise, and you know exactly what you're doing. You already know that you're communicating your message clearly.

Gabby Wallace:	And I like to say it in terms of what do I help people do, not what I do because I love it. Because I do love it, but it's to help other people.

Liron Segev:	Perfect. And how often would you say that you currently upload on your channel? How many subscribers have you got? Just to kind of get a mental picture, because again, this is something very different that's not your typical vlogger or your typical something that you would expect on YouTube.

Gabby Wallace:	Right now I'm uploading 1.5 times a week, and it's been once a week for the last two years, three times a week a few years ago, and then before that it was a bit sporadic. And right now after eight years of YouTubing at Go Natural English it is at 1.6 million subscribers.

Liron Segev:	Beautiful. So, did you hear that, that overnight success didn't happen overnight?	It has been a long, long mission.

Gabby Wallace:	But it's interesting because it is like a snowball. When you gather momentum it does get easier. Sometimes people ask me, does it get easier after 100,000 subscribers? And I believe it does as long as you're keeping up with what people want to watch, because my channel has kind of doubled in size or roughly speaking for the last three years or so.

Liron Segev:	Well, yeah, I think that once you start figuring out what you want to convey to your audience, you start figuring out what your audience wants from you, you're then you're not all over the place. You're very specific, very focused.

So Gabby, if people are kind of thinking, look, I'm in the education space, which is where you fit in, and a lot of people that I've spoken to, they're saying, look, it's not sexy, it's not cool, it's not the hip thing, it's not Red Bull, right? Is there a place for education on YouTube?

Gabby Wallace:	Absolutely. And I've heard, I've seen, I've experienced that YouTube wants to support educators and educational channels, tutorials, how to's, anything that is informational. I mean, look at some of the huge science channels or the informational, I can't think of any names right now of course, but some of these channels are just huge because people have curiosity.

They want to know why, why do things happen, or what's inside things, or how do you build things. But with language and English, and the arts as well, there's so much curiosity, and many, many people love to be lifelong learners, and many, many people have to learn for work or for school, and so they go to YouTube as a resource.

Liron Segev:	And then where do you find that your audience is coming from? Are they already kind of English speaking to a point? Are they based in the U.S., which is an English speaking country?

Gabby Wallace:	Yeah. Well, English language is something that is global. So I do have viewers from all over the world. It's quite interesting. But the majority of my viewers are actually in the United States from other countries. So they've arrived in the U.S. and still looking to improve their English language skills.

Liron Segev:	Okay. Wow, that's interesting because you would expect that people who are living abroad perhaps and they want to kind of improve their language skills, that make sense?

Liron Segev:	All right. And then is it male, female skewed? What would you think?

Gabby Wallace:	On YouTube, it's interesting because I do have more of a skew toward male viewers, but on my website where I have a blog, same name, Go Natural English, it is more females. So I don't know what's going on there. Just more men are on YouTube and more women are surfing the web. I'm not sure. But it's interesting to see that.

Liron Segev:	And are you finding that you're being discovered by new people because of word of mouth or because of maybe Google searches?

Gabby Wallace:	I think it's definitely a mix. After eight years there's certainly word of mouth, but I think there's also that momentum that comes from having a bunch of content on YouTube, from being online on my website for so many years, building up the search engine optimization and whatnot. Building up that content.

And not to say that it's too late to start, because people hear the, oh, eight years, well great, I'll just go ahead and do my channel for eight years and hope for the best. It doesn't have to take eight years. I think if I had known then what I know now, it's very possible to create a channel, create a presence and build much, much faster.

Liron Segev:	You think it's easier now because technology has changed and has evolved?

Gabby Wallace:	Yes. So it's easier now because we have so much access, like an iPhone or any kind of smartphone you can record with. Eight years ago, not so much. It's easier now because we have conferences and websites, and channels and vidIQ, things that help you that we didn't have eight years ago. But, on the flip side, there's more competition perhaps. But you can't get bogged down by that. You really can't. It's your mindset matters a lot here.

Liron Segev:	Okay. So let's unpack that a little bit. So, tell me about your process. So you have an idea for a video, then what happens?

Gabby Wallace:	I have an idea. So usually my ideas, first of all come from real-life questions or problems that English learners ask of me, or that I see that they're having or hear that they're having. And from there, I do of course think about, is it going to maybe be a popular topic? So is it something that someone would want to click on? Is it something that would spark their curiosity? Is it something that's maybe a little different than what's been done a hundred times before? Although, it is also good to take a look at what has been done and what has been successful to get an idea of what people do click on and want to watch.

So my process is, first of all, before I even look at anyone else's content, before I see what other people have done on the topic, I write down my own thoughts because I don't want to lose those. So, as someone with lots of years of experience teaching English, I do have some ideas.

And if you're listening, if you're a content creator, if you're a teacher, if you're a tutor, if you have some expertise in a topic, write down your own ideas first before you go look and see what other people have done. Because I find when I look at other people's videos, then I'm comparing myself and I start thinking, oh, well maybe I should do it just like they did it. But no, we should not. You have to keep your own ideas first and foremost.

So that is really kind of my process, is to jot down my own ideas first, then take a look at what other people have done to see if maybe I could improve on it, or somehow maybe relate to that or talk about it somehow, and then put it all together into a script or talking points for my video.

Liron Segev:	So it's your own content, it's the way that you're going to bring it across, and that's what your audience are going to respond to.

Gabby Wallace:	And here's the thing about English or any academic subject, it's all been taught before, it's just that you need to put your own spin on it, your own experience, even your own opinion or your own kind of synthesis of your experience, the topic and helping a specific niche of people.

Maybe I might be helping business people from Japan who are advanced English speakers, and maybe you're going to start a channel that's helping beginner people from Mexico, beginner English speakers from Mexico who want to attend Harvard business school.

Liron Segev:	So don't be put off by the fact that it was done before. Bring your own spin to it, make it your own, find your own voice and then connect with an audience, because there's going to be an audience for you.

So if somebody kind of thinking, look, there's no money in this right now. You can't make brand deals out of these things. Would they be right, wrong?

Gabby Wallace:	Yes. So with educational channels, I think a very smart way to monetize is actually to have your own course. But let's go back to brand deals and sponsors, because there are of course many, many products and services related to learning. And so, if you can find a product or service that is related to your topic, that's an obvious fit.

Or take another step out, people need notepads, and pens and whatever you study with. Adjacent products that you could probably promote or sell on your channel. And so, there are many things related to learning. There's just, I mean you have to be a bit creative, but I think it's almost more obvious than if I had an entertainment channel, it's like, okay, well what am I going to promote here? But if you have a subject you're teaching, I think it's almost more obvious and a stronger pull.

Liron Segev:	Well, and the beautiful thing is that, guess what, these companies who sell the stuff, they need an outlet, they need an audience. If you're the one providing that audience, you can make some amazing grand deals.

Gabby Wallace:	There's also lots of companies that offer tutoring in different topics, and so either you could offer tutoring yourself or you could promote a company that does. So I think there's so many options for educators.

Liron Segev:	Absolutely. Become an affiliate for them. Get a referral commission for doing that. Sell stuff on Amazon that you speak about in your video. Have a link and a description to all that. So there's lots of money to be made. Don't believe the press.

Gabby Wallace:	Well, and I really want educators to do well because teachers don't make much money traditionally. And so, I think there's so much opportunity online, on YouTube especially. And so I just, I really want to empower teachers to do well and to enjoy what you're doing, because we teach because we're passionate about our subjects and helping students. And I think that teachers deserve to make money too.

Liron Segev:	Couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely 100%. And we speaking here about a language skill, but education is across lots of different industries, lots of different topics. If you have a skill that you can teach somebody else, that is the education path. Find a way to bring a voice, bring it online, and you can also get 1.6 million followers if you do the work. But you've got to put in the effort, right?

Gabby Wallace:	Yes. It is not for the fainthearted. Not at all. And I've had to grow a bit of a thick skin as well because it's not always easy. I won't go into the negative things. There's not many negative things. But for someone who's a bit sensitive, you might have to grow a thick skin.

Liron Segev:	But I think lots of teachers do have already a thick skin. They’ve got to put up with our kids in school.

Gabby Wallace:	But it's so rewarding. I mean, I received messages from English learners from all over the world, and it just, it warms my heart hearing from someone, they say, hi Gabby, I'm living in Afghanistan, and I'm watching your videos, and it's helping me so much. And it's like, wow, I can't even imagine what life is like over there.

Gabby Wallace:	Yes. Oh, it's magical. It really is.

*Liron Segev:	Totally, totally love it. Gabby, if people want to find you, find your channel, now is the time to tell them.

Gabby Wallace:	Yes, yes. Please come to Go Natural English everywhere. On 

. I'm Gabby Wallace and it's been awesome talking with you.

Liron Segev:	Really appreciate it. Thank you for hanging out here, Gabby, sharing some amazing information. And you know a teacher, you know someone who's frustrated maybe where they work and you want to give them this opportunity, share this episode with them. Let them embrace YouTube culture. Gabby can do it, lots of people are doing it, and we'll catch you guys on the next episode of Tube Talk.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

There are also millions of viewers turning to YouTube to learn new skills. If you're a teacher or an educator, find out how you can build a successful channel around teaching these skills on this week's TubeTalk.

How Teachers Can Use Their Skills to Build a YouTube Channel: TubeTalk 188 with Gabby Wallace

Have you ever watched a YouTube ad knowing full well that it's an ad, but it's so well done that you don't mind sitting and watching the entire thing? Yep, me too. So today on 

, we speak to one of those companies who does this really well and they are going to be sharing tips and tricks on how to keep an audience engaged. Let's learn from them.

We know that one of the best ways to keep your YouTube channel growing is to build a very engaged audience. The problem that we most of us face is that we launch a video, we think we did a good job, but we look at our retention graph and realize the audience has left really, really early on.

So, you have to wonder how do these companies get that engagement to the point where viewers actually want to hit that subscribe button or buy their product. I’m joined by Rob Towne, Director of Performance Marketing at 

 to understand how can a video titled ‘

How to Use a Raw Egg to Determine if Your Mattress is Awful

’ got 182 million views. In this episode you will learn:

Why storytelling is at the heart of a great YouTube ad

Why you need to identify your audience before you start advertising to them

How your audience is a collective with many needs and requirements

How to Make a YouTube Ad That's Good Enough to Watch: Full Transcript

Liron Segev: Rob you're on YouTube, but your guys sell mattresses. What's going up? Tell us about your channel.

Rob Towne: So I joined Purple about a year plus ago, and the YouTube channel had 100K subscribers when I came on board, now it’s up to 175,000. And even to me that was surprising because I come from a background of LinkedIn advertising for B2B companies and things like that. But the fact that Purple's found such success with what they're doing on YouTube, I think we've done a great job of using that as an opportunity to both entertain and educate.

And mattress is a noisy space. So people are always talking about it's comfortable or whatnot. But what we're doing there is we're trying to entertain and show people how ours is different from all the rest.

Liron Segev: All right. So for those who don't know what the Purple brand is, how would you describe that?

Rob Towne: So the Purple brand and the way that we express ourselves, we don't take ourselves too seriously. We have a lot of fun with it. I mean, there's decades of innovation and rocket science that into the actual product itself. We have medical patents that have been used by the co-founders before they moved over and started Purple as a direct to consumer company. But in essence, it's the idea that sleep doesn't have to be something that you dread. You don't have to wake up in pain every morning.

And for a lot of people, they can improve their whole quality of life and their sleeping. People aren't just trying to go to bed and then wake up in the morning and do nothing. They have something that they're passionate about. So we just want to help people to be better at living those lives that they want to live their best life. And that's by bringing them a better opportunity to sleep on something that's different than anything they've ever experienced.

Liron Segev: Do mattresses and pillows have a place on YouTube? Because YouTube is all about GoPros, vlogging, foodies and techies doing their thing, but a mattress company is essentially doing really, really well on the platform.

Rob Towne: So that's really exciting for us. And so we think that for anybody who's looking on YouTube, whatever they're into, our audience is anyone who sleeps because we can just give them a better experience in life.

Liron Segev: And essentially that's pretty much everybody.

Rob Towne: Yeah, exactly. And so we've seen that people love our videos. In a pre-roll situation, anyone can skip after five seconds but our average watch time is over a minute. People are actually enjoying what we're putting in front of them.

We have over a billion minutes watched on YouTube, and so it's an exciting place to be where we see people aren't just watching it and skipping it. They're watching it for a continued duration. They're subscribing to our channel and they're sharing it with their friends. So we have a lot of earned views on top of the paid views.

Liron Segev: It's not your typical content that you would expect to find on YouTube. And yet the content is so appealing. People are not only watching, but they're also subscribing. So down to good old content, content, content, content.

Rob Towne: Exactly. And I can't say enough about the team that we have that's so creative and works really hard to put out these videos that are amazing and incredible. We've collaborated with other production studios in the past. We've been flying out to different cities to do shoots on-site and really it comes down to the creative direction and what we're going to put out there.

Our writers, our videographers, the great acting talent that goes behind it has really helped us to be in a position where we're not just telling our story and we're not just talking about the technology, but we're giving people something that they enjoy and they're going to come back for more.

Liron Segev: So take us through that process if you can, from the time that somebody comes up with an idea, what do you guys do to flesh it out to see whether it's worthwhile doing?

Rob Towne: That's a great question. Any of our products before their launch, there's a lot of research that goes into them. I mean we're looking at competitors out there, we're seeing what's on the market and what's not on the market. We're seeing where there's frustrations where people are saying, oh, for instance, if you've got a pillow, people love that feeling of turning the pillow over and finding the cool side of the pillow.

Well, what if both sides were always cool and they never heat it up? Like how can we solve some of these issues for people so that they never have to worry about it again? And then once we have that idea, we get our research involved and then we start to take different materials testing.

We're flying internationally, pulling in textile samples, building in our lab, everything that we produce, we have 900 plus employees, just in the state of Utah where we're manufacturing a lot of stuff. We're innovating in our labs so R&D is a huge part of what we do. And so we take it from an idea to some conceptualization and testing and then we put it in front of customers and we do some in-home product use because a mattress or a pillow or something isn't going to give you a full experience when you just sit or lay on it for a minute in the store, you've got to actually experience it for weeks on end in your home.

And so we put it out in front of people. If they give feedback, we tweak it, we improve it until we get to the point that we're very proud of this product that we're putting out. We're very confident that it's going to be successful. And from then on it's just about awareness and helping people know that we've got something.

Liron Segev: Speaking of the awareness part, now that you've got the product, you have confidence, you want more people to be aware of it, what's the next step to get it onto the YouTube, into advertising, into in front of people?

Rob Towne: I think any company needs to really look at what type of impact they're having. Well, first know who your audience is. If you don't know who your audience is and you're speaking to the wrong demographic, then you're not going to get anywhere. But once you know who your audience is, they still are not a single individual. There's still a collective and there's a lot of different purposes that people have in their lives. What emotion strikes them most? What benefits and features are going to matter most to them?

So we found, for instance, if we're looking at just our mattress line of products, there is a huge consideration in across device tracking of the different things. But when we're looking at across spouse conversion tracking, that gets even harder.

So we consider that somebody is in the market for a mattress, but it might be the male of the household who ends up making a purchase. Well, that's being highly influenced by a female who's in the house. So we're strategically guiding our message towards that her. She's really essential in the buying process and we need to make sure that we're speaking to her.

And so from our evolution of growing as a company, from a single Kickstarter to where we are today, we need to keep that in mind in our messaging that we're making sure we're hitting the right target audience and that we're bringing them the right message.

Liron Segev: Do you work with influencers? Do you work with people that are out there that have got audiences that you maybe you want to tap into those audiences? What's your process around that?

Rob Towne: Yeah, 100%. We love working with all of the influencers because they know their audience best. They've reached out to people in very authentic ways and so because our product might take a little bit of understanding, it's unlike anything out there on the market. They're able to tell the story a little bit more than we can if we just give somebody a 15, 31 minute video kind of advertisement.

We want people who can authentically speak about their experience. Then we'll work with them to be able to tell the story of what makes sense best for them. I was talking to somebody earlier and saying, for some they're just doing a house tour and they're talking about improving the room. For others they're very adventurous. They're riding dirt bikes and mountain bikes and they'll take their old mattress and tow it behind a pickup truck in the grass and then talk about it in their own way.

We just love to be that kind of brand that's easy to work with and we're not going to dictate the story. You know your audience best. You know your content best. We're going to trust you to tell that as long as it's a brand safe, family friendly type of way, we'll let you kind of go in the direction that makes sense.

Liron Segev: And that's perfect. Being authentic is number one in any advertising place.

Rob Towne: It's just super easy for the audience to see through when you're not being authentic.

Liron Segev: You've got some guidelines for influencers being family-friendly in line with your brands and what you expect that you would be safe to watch. But they know their audience, and you let them serve out that content that makes the most sense. And some of it's going to work really well. Some of it maybe not so much as you expected, but it's about learning, adapting and rinse and repeat until you get it right.

Rob Towne: And there are some times where I would totally not expect something to work out the way that it does, but I'm so excited when I can allow a creator, somebody who's already on YouTube to just run with an idea. They bring it to us and we talk about a little bit and I'll say, listen, I couldn't have thought of anything that was as good as you just came up with right now. Go for it. We'll see how the results look. And more often than not, it surprises me as having very positive return on investment.

Liron Segev: And how do you track that return on investment? Is it from an affiliate link or do you look at video views? What are your metrics?

Rob Towne: Yeah, I mean depending on who we're working with and what type of a deal we've negotiated, we'll have an affiliate situation where somebody can continue to earn revenue years on after. I mean that's a great thing about YouTube is it's evergreen. So when we get an affiliate link into the description and somebody chats about that in their video, they just say, hey, look at the link in the description for the best deal. That can just go on and they keep on getting these royalty checks month after month after month.

For others, they'll be more interested in taking an upfront type of deal and we'll say, how about we work with you, if you're the right size, you're the right brand and we'll outfit your family or you and your spouse with a good set of products.

And then we work with them on that set and for us then we just kind of measure the cost of those goods against what type of sales, revenue and profitability we have. In some cases, we have to work with a lot of small creators to get a lot of small progress. Sometimes we'll work with a large creator where there's a higher level of investment. Obviously, we have a higher return that we expect on that higher investment. And the biggest thing for us is not just number of subscribers but it's the engagement. Are those users going to actually listen to you and take some type of action off of it?

We don't expect you to be like a salesperson in a mattress store because that's what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to fix that broken system. But if somebody's listening to you and they're really qualified audience, then they'll just guide themselves through the rest of the process.

Liron Segev: Totally, totally love it. If people want more information, where should they be looking out? What's your website? What's your YouTube channel?

 you can find all of our latest products. If you look on YouTube for the brand Purple, 

. I mean it's really exciting to have over a billion views and so many videos out there with millions and millions of views. So if anyone wants to go check it out, subscribe, we'd love to hit 200,000 it was great mile mark for us to hit the milestone of 100,000. So we're just really excited where we are.

Liron Segev: A lot of it is very, very funny. People watch it for the entertainment value and it's absolutely amazing. Definitely go check out the website. Definitely go check out the YouTube, hit that subscribe button and then thank you for hanging out with us on TubeTalk.

Rob Towne: Thank you so much. It's been great being here.

Want to know how to create ads and other branded content on YouTube that really connects with your audience? Find out on this week's TubeTalk.

How to Make a YouTube Ad That's Good Enough to Watch: TubeTalk 189 with Rob Towne of Purple

It takes a lot of talent to take a YouTube channel and grow it to over 450,000 subscribers. In this week’s episode of TubeTalk, we chat with Rob Wilson, who has done just that with for 

, with a combination of educational content for the creator community, plus videos that have gone viral around trending topics.

Rob is going to share with us the strategies he’s developed by managing our YouTube channel, and from creating original content for vidIQ, so you’ll pick up plenty of tips, and tricks that you can apply to your own channel. In this episode you will learn:

Why creating great custom thumbnails on YouTube is vital

Why there is as much to do after you publish a video than before

Why doubling-down on your best content is a winning strategy

Sometimes you need to learn the rules to break them to be successful

How to make your video content more valuable to your target audience than other creators

How We Grew the vidIQ YouTube Channel to 450K Subscribers: Full Transcript

Liron Segev: Rob, welcome to TubeTalk. How long have you been with vidIQ?

Rob Wilson:	Thank you very much for having me on Liron. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. I started making videos on the vidIQ channel in April 2016, and I've been the Director of Video Content since October 2017. So, full-time, around two and a half years.

Liron Segev:	So, going full time on YouTube, essentially. This is what it boils down to.

Rob Wilson:	Yeah. I used to have my own channel, a tech channel, and I was juggling two things at the same time. But when the boss here at vidIQ was impressed with the work I was doing freelance for vidIQ, they offered me the opportunity to turn my passion into a career, and I didn't say no, couldn't say no, really. And ever since, it's been the dream job and journey into YouTube.

Liron Segev:	And for those who want to know more, here’s Rob’s YouTube story in animation form:

Liron Segev:	Rob, speaking of being good, which you’ve proved you are in getting viral videos, getting the right topics, being able to do the right research, with your own channel and now with vidIQ, you must have a bunch of tips and tricks you want to share with us. So, let's hit it. What's tip number one?

Rob Wilson: So, the first one I think is something that a lot of video creators do when they first start out on YouTube. They don't pay enough attention to the video itself after it’s been uploaded.

A lot of people, myself included, put in a lot of time, effort, resources, and mental energy into the creation of the video, but you have to get a potential viewer to click on that video. And that's only successfully done via the description and thumbnail. The way people are going to stop scrolling through search results is the thumbnail. You want a thumbnail that makes a person stop scrolling, and then the title entices them to actually click on the thumbnail.

At vidIQ, I continued what I was doing with my old channel, which was to have a template and then maybe change an icon on a bit of text. So, I might spend maybe a minimum of five, 10 minutes on a thumbnail. And back in 2018, we had a click-through rate of somewhere in a region of like 2.5, 3%, so we knew we could do better. And through the course of 2018, moving into 2019, it was Jeremy Vest, who's the Director of Marketing at vidIQ, who started to mentor me a little bit in improving our thumbnails. There's a lot of general practices such as making your thumbnails consistent, having a simple format, so fewer elements are actually better. You don't want a busy, chaotic thumbnail.

And perhaps the most important thing I learned through creating 

 is that most of us create thumbnails on a nice big, beautiful, 32-inch widescreen or whatever, but there's only one person who will ever see that thumbnail of that size and that is you, the creator. What you have to realize is that people see these thumbnails at five or 10% of their ideal size, and so you have to factor that in. That means that the thumbnail has to tell a story, a fraction of its size, and so you have fewer elements and only a few primary colors in there.

When we started to implement those changes over the course of six to 12 months, we saw our click-through rate increase from 2.5% to 5-6%. It’s still not where it should be but we had a benchmark of a percentage and we wanted to improve on that. And through doing that, we didn't just improve our view counts by 2, 3, 4%, we were also increasing our view count by a massive amount, and that led to YouTube distributing our content to more users going forward.

So, I think for the majority of video creators, whatever length of time you're spending on thumbnails, double it, potentially triple it. The thumbnail itself is the shop window for the channel so you need to make the shop front more enticing for your potential customer.

Liron Segev:	Yeah. And it's important what you said, it's the thumbnail has got the mission of just one thing: stopping someone from scrolling.

Liron Segev:	The more attractive your thumbnail is and the more eye-catching it is, the easier it's going to be to get somebody's attention. They simply scroll over, they look at your title, and together, as a unit, they pretty much sell themselves. The viewer thinks "Oh, wow, I need to click on this. I want to see what's going on." And that seems to be quite a big change on the vidIQ channel, particularly if you look at the old videos compared to the new ones, it made a world of a difference. Is there something that we should be paying much, much more attention to, would you say?

Rob Wilson: So, at the beginning of vidIQ there were a lot of fundamental things that weren't quite right with the thumbnails. A good way to look at this is to try and look at a foreign language channel and see if you can work out what's going on or what the video's about by just looking at the thumbnails. You'll tend to find that the most successful thumbnails very rarely rely on text, and then the thumbnail comes almost like a universal language. It doesn't require me to spell out exactly what's going on.

, and the Spanish channel manager uses our thumbnails. They may change a bit of text here and there, but generally speaking, because of how the elements are already in place, they don't have to do too much. I think that's a good indication of how a thumbnail, as you say, needs to stop the person from scrolling through whatever they looking at.

Liron Segev:	Yeah. And a big tip here is also not to repeat your entire title in your thumbnails. It's just no point in doing that. It's such a small real estate, use those elements to really grab attention, and get somebody to read your title.

Rob Wilson: I think a good example of that might be, let's say the title of the video is, "How to Save Money Whilst Studying at College." Instead of putting that entire title in the thumbnail, just have a figure that says, "Plus $500." Add a big headline statement like, "This is how much you could save," and then a title just extrapolating about saying, "You could save $500 while you're at college."

Liron Segev:	Okay. So, now we understand thumbnails. You've prioritized that, you've made that your mission to really understand the science of thumbnails and really dive into that. Does that give you those viral videos? Some of your videos have got a million-plus views if I remember correctly?

Rob Wilson:	So, how I've discovered success is, whenever the YouTube analytics are telling me something of interest, that the video is getting way more views than the average video on the channel, it's something that you can't really ignore.

Let's say you're a business owner, and you suddenly see that one line of products is selling really well, do you just wait for that product to sell out and not order anymore? No, you're clearly going to order more of that product. It's a similar line of thought for a video creator in that, if YouTube really likes a certain piece of content from you, you should make more of that content.

Just to give people a bit of context here, whether you like this story or not, back in 2018, 2019, PewDiePie vs T-Series was the biggest YouTube story for around about six months. And we did a bit of testing with it, to begin with. But once we discovered that one or two videos had been getting like 50 to a 100 thousand views versus maybe educational content on vidIQ, which may get 5 to 10,000 views, we said to ourself, "Okay, we know what our core is at vidIQ, and we're not going to change from that. I'm not going to deviate from educating video creators on the YouTube journey. But what I'm also going to do to increase the exposure of our channel is continue to make more of this PewDiePie vs T-Series content."

And what I realized was that in terms of the elements you should be sending to YouTube, those being the title, the description, the tags, to a lesser extent, you can more or less keep those elements almost identical and have a little bit of a change. So, it might be ‘PewDiePie vs T-Series: It's Getting Close’, might be one title, and then the next title might be ‘PewDiePie vs T-Series: The End is Near.’ A lot of elements are the same so YouTube knows exactly what the content is, so it's going to serve it to an audience that already has watched the content before.

Back in my tech days, when I realized that, for whatever reason, YouTube decided that I was the foremost authoritative educator on how to record your iPhone screen, most of the titles would start with ‘How to Record Your iOS Screen’ or ‘How to Record Your iPhone Screen’, and then go into the specifics like new app available or fixing audio issues. But it was always hitting those same SEO keywords for YouTube to understand the content.

I must emphasize viral means something different to every creator. It might be that you average 5,200 views on your videos and then you have one which gets 20,000 views. Well, for you, that is your viral moment. You don't have to wait for a video that gets a million views. It's all relative to the size of your channel.

Whenever YouTube is telling you through analytics that you're doing something right, you want to grab onto that bone and shake it as hard as you can. You want to try drilling to that topic as specifically as you possibly can

Liron Segev:	And ride it out. If YouTube is loving you for that content, and that content is being distributed not just to your audience, but to new audiences, and they love your content, well YouTube is telling you, "Look, make more of this." But if your next video is weird, it's back to your old content, you've now paused this entire train that you were on because now YouTube says, "Well, what do I do with this new content?"

Rob Wilson: And you know as well as I do that there's so much resistance to this logic of doing the same thing over and over again. I don't want to be pigeonholed as just being that person who does that thing. And you've just got to change your mindset into, "Hang on, I'm known as a person who does this thing, and everybody on YouTube is being shown my content because I know how to do this thing." And I'm more than happy to continue making content on something that's working for my audience because I'm thinking about "How is YouTube going to grow my channel?" But I'm also thinking about, "How is my audience going to react to this content?"

I didn't imagine that I would be a person making ‘How to Record Your iPhone Screen’ videos on YouTube, but when you start getting hundreds of thousands of views, versus what you were getting before, it's like, "Okay, yeah, I love making videos. I'm going to take my creative passion into this topic. It's still about tech. It's very specific, I know. When I build up an audience, I will take those viewers on a journey to where I want to take them." But I think, to begin with, you do have to be a bit of a slave to the SEO and keywords that are working for your channel.

Liron Segev:	Yeah, and until you find your own feet. And you can always pivot at a certain point. I love the example that you gave. It's like being a shop owner and a certain line of products is selling really well. It's the same thing here where you're going to say, "Well, I know it's selling really well, so let's go back to what we were doing last week." You would never do that. You would jump in on whatever's selling well and create followup and maybe an additional product. It's selling, people are loving it. Let's give the people what they want. So, this makes absolute sense.

And the whole big pigeonhole thing, I never understood it. I speak about this often on the TubeTalk podcast, where you basically say you don't want to be known as the best in the world for that topic. It's crazy. It's absolute madness to me. It's crazy how people are shying away from doing what succeeds. But one of the things that I've really loved about your YouTube channel strategy is being able to see the trend early on and jumping in on that. Does that help a channel grow just by being first, or do you see a different approach where it's more of what people are going to be searching for?

Rob Wilson:	I think this fundamentally falls back to the question of quantity versus quality, and I have an attitude of quality to a certain extent, that doesn't impede my speed of delivery. I've almost changed that concept on its head there.

I have built up a talent for getting content to a market or to YouTube viewers before anyone else by recognizing that there is a story to be had there and then turning it into a video. Now, it might not end up being the best video on YouTube for that particular story, but it will be there before most creators.

 as an example. When the latest iPhone is released, he won’t necessarily do a live stream of Apple announcing it because that's just not his style. It's not the way he works as a creator. He will create the highest quality content, which you would literally cannot get anywhere else. The way he delivers video content is unsurpassed, which is why he's such a successful tech YouTuber.

There are many different roads to take, and I think you just have to understand what works best for your workflow methods and be the best at doing that in a certain way. As a quick example, when YouTube released a new feature called hashtags, we made a video, and it came out in the first 24 hours. And I think today it's got maybe a quarter of a million views, and it's, I think, pretty much the only video that anybody watches because it's at the top of the search rankings.

Now, for something that's so specific and niche, being first is so crucial, but I will accept the argument that doesn't work for everybody. But I think certainly in the search intensive area of YouTube, being first can give you a competitive edge even when you're a smaller channel.

Liron Segev:	We all know YouTube is the world's second-largest search engine, so it's all about what are people looking for? YouTube wants to deliver that content to them. So, being aware of what's going on around you is pretty darn important. Do you look at those things like trending hashtags? I'm curious like how you would research a topic before deciding whether it's worthwhile going after. What is your process for doing that?

Rob Wilson:	My answer is probably going to dumbfound a lot of people. And I don't know if I answer this because it's just through the amount of experience I've had with making videos. But it seems to be that when I see a certain comment or I see a certain news story or just whatever's going on in YouTube, within five to 10 seconds, I already have in my head the genesis of what the video is going to be, and then I go about making the video. And I know this will probably sound like it's completely backwards to a lot of people.

And this is why I often stress that every video creator's journey is different, but it's not necessarily right or wrong. Once I've made the video, I will then start the process of saying, "Okay, let's have a look at how other people have titled their videos or used metadata." And then, I will construct my content similar to theirs. And it's just the way I've always worked. You could well argue that maybe you need to do the other way around and do the research, but my argument would be, if I spend an extra day researching then my video is going to be the 712th rather than the fourth or the fifth video out there.

So, yeah, I think that's the best way to answer that particular question. I wish I could share that certain gift that I have to be able to have an idea and turn it into a video so quickly. I mean, obviously, then it takes a long time to actually make that video, but I always seem to be able to know whether I'm going to go after a video without too much thought. I mean, I say this to a lot of people, "Stop thinking and start doing when it comes to YouTube." And I'm a very, very practical person. I like to get things done and learn that way.

Liron Segev:	All right. So, there isn't one way of achieving a goal. Do you find the people are maybe just doing too much at some stages or maybe trying to apply absolutely everything? Should people be listening to absolutely everything or take things with a pinch of salt?

Rob Wilson: By all means, learn as much as you can from people who've been through the experience of growing their channel, but nothing beats your own personal experience on the platform.

I guess the best way to put this into a specific example is that we all say that 

Watch Time is the most important metric on YouTube

 and that the more Watch Time you get, the more YouTube will share content, and even YouTube says that. But I have certain videos, tutorials telling people how to use very basic things in the YouTube studio, where I've purposely front-loaded all of the information in the first minute of a video, and then as it goes into a bit more detail after that main bit. Because my philosophy is when I want to know how to delete a YouTube video, I don't want to want to go through two or three minutes of preamble. I just want you to show me how to do it. And I assume that's what my audience wants, as well.

So, those videos have relatively low audience retention. It might be 30, 40% and the view duration might be like 50 seconds, which sounds completely counterintuitive to what the general advice is. However, because it's a very search-driven topic and the videos seem to do really well, even though they're not watched for very long, they get to the top of the search rankings, so that's an example of where I would specifically not do a longer video because I'm understanding that the video itself is a particular niche.

And we can extend this to all sorts of things, like for certain people, thumbnails, it might be really handy to have text on the thumbnails rather than not much text because, again, when people are searching for content, them scrolling down and they may stop on a particular thumbnail that just spells out exactly what the video is going to be about. Whereas, if storytelling elements are in a thumbnail, you need a bit more intrigued in a bit more of a potential hook.

So, I think knowing the rules is brilliant, and you should continue to learn through whatever sources you want, whether it's through vidIQ or other growth experts. But just appreciate that sometimes you have to break those rules in order to succeed because you may need to disrupt what's currently going on in your topic, or you may discover that something works specifically for you, and that's fine, but you have to recognize that.

Again, going back to making more of a content that works well for your channel, that's where you're recognizing where your strengths are. I think that's what a lot of video creators tend to lose a little bit as they're trying to learn how the platform works for them.

Liron Segev: I know in my tech space, the people around me were making the exact same type of thumbnail, always you making the YouTuber face, holding some sort of a device, and that was the thumbnail. I decided to go and do something different. It’s still me in the video, still making that weird YouTube face, but with lots of color. Instead of going down the black and white route, I went green and pinks and reds to try and experiment because I want to be different. I want somebody to stop what they're doing, as we said earlier, stop what they're doing, grab their attention.

So, whilst we always teach a certain way of doing things, you do have to look at your own analytics, you have to look at your own channels, and then be able to say, "Okay, that bit works for me. I understand how that bit works, but I'm going to not use that because, for my channel, those aren't the right needs." In my analytics what should I be looking for as signs of success?

Rob Wilson:	Obviously, click-through rate, which we've kind of alluded to with thumbnails. What I would also look at, as well, is what I call the resting heartbeat or the cadence of your channel. And that's when you analyze how your channel is performing on an average day, so when you've not released a video.

Let's say it gets a thousand views per day, and then after you've made some videos, they'll probably spike on those particular days when you release a video and then it'll start to tail off again. When you start to discover that certain videos are bringing up the entirety of the channel, and this might be like a hero video, a lot of educational channels find this, that they have one video that's pulling the entire channel and that one will turn into evergreen content. And you suddenly go from a thousand views a day to maybe 2000 views a day.

That's when you start to realize that your channel is growing through just daily content. I mean, it's not the subscribers that are important. Though, of course, subscribers are important for many different reasons. They are important in terms of value to different video creators. I think they're far more important to channels such as Casey Neistat, Mr. Beast, and Janell, who are very much storytellers. They're putting their lives in front of an audience a lot of the time.

But I think for vidIQ, or other ones who are very search-driven, you'll find that it's a lot more difficult to get those subscribers to begin with. And there are, of course, exceptions to the rule like the top of the tech industry, MKBHD and Unbox Therapy, where not only do the viewers find the content that they want to watch, but they also find the personality that they want to associate themselves with. And those are the real superstars of YouTube.

I think video creators tend to be good at one or the other to begin with. They're either really good on camera and really personable and likable or they're really good at bringing concepts and themes and explanations to content. And I think I'm certainly the latter, and I would love to be able to get to the former as well and be much better in front of a camera going longterm. But I know you're about to say you're already really good on camera. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Liron Segev:	Well, you took the word out of my mouth. I got nothing more. How many videos have you done in total?

Rob Wilson:	I think I'm up to about 1600 to 1800 videos now, 500 on vidIQ and then a thousand plus on the other channel.

Liron Segev:	And the reason I bring that up, and I like to ask you this in public, which is what this is, is just to show that even with so many videos, there's still an element of, "I still need to get better. I still need to learn. I still want to improve a little bit with every video. So, I'm better at my editing. Great. Now, am I better at my thumbnails? Am I better being on camera? Am I better delivering a concept?" And even with so many videos under your belt, you’re still constantly, constantly trying to improve. And a lot of the big creators that we speak to, they're saying the same thing, that they're constantly trying to get better and better and better.

What's one message you would give to every single video creator out there?

Rob Wilson:	So, time, in my point of view, is the most important currency on YouTube because everything is already free. So, you can't persuade people to watch your content because it's cheaper than others. Your content has to be more valuable than anyone else's in the time that the viewer is willing to spend with you. So, try to think about how much value you can provide to your audience in a time that they have available because it is so precious.

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Ever wanted to know the winning strategies behind vidIQ's YouTube channel? In this week's episode of TubeTalk we talk to Rob Wilson, star of all your favorite vidIQ videos.

How We Grew the vidIQ YouTube Channel to 450K Subscribers: TubeTalk 194: Rob Wilson

 of YouTube channels of all sizes, I’ve noticed there are 4 common mistakes that people are still making. In this post, I’ll outline those mistakes so you don't make them.

The vidIQ Academy: Kick-start Your 2020 YouTube Journey

Before we start with the big mistakes YouTubers are still making, let me tell you how you can start growing your channel, and earn revenue in 2020 by joining the new vidIQ Academy! Members of the vidIQ family that 

have upgraded to our Boost and Pro packages get immediate access

 so you can start your YouTube success today!

Are you struggling to grow your YouTube channel but not getting anywhere? Check that you're not making these 4 very common mistakes!

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