Going live on YouTube these days isn't as complicated as you would think. In this post, we'll discuss a few different things you need to know to make your live stream as professional as possible including:

The software/encoders you need to live stream

How to set up your live stream broadcast on YouTube

I’m a gamer so I like to give things a gaming focus, so I am going to be using video game live streaming as an example. But all of the following advice will apply to any type of YouTube channel looking to learn how to broadcast live.

How to Live Stream on YouTube: The Hardware You’ll Need

Streaming these days is a lot easier when it comes to the hardware you're going to need. I'll show you what I use to stream from my own computer when I play games, and hopefully, that will give you a good baseline for a guide.

First off, let’s talk about the Internet. This is going to be the biggest bottleneck you're going to face while live streaming. The Internet is such an important element in the mix because, in some areas of the world, you just can't control what kind of speed you're going to get when you sign up for your Internet plan.

The best speed I can recommend is no less than five megabits per second upload when you're trying to stream on YouTube. Personally, I have 10 megabits per second for my upload speed, and it allows me to push a better quality live stream. 5 is just my personal recommendation because I think any less, and you're going to struggle when it comes to quality.

Now for the type of computer you need to play a game, and live stream it at the same time, I have a GTX 1060, three gigabytes, with 16 gigabytes of RAM. I’m also using an older AMD Ryzen 7 processor. These items allow me to stream with 10 megabits per second upload. I can play Minecraft at 1080p with 30 frames a second, or I can play it at 720p with 60 frames a second.

If I try to push it any higher than that, the game performance and stream quality drops. The bottom line is that top-quality hardware is great, but with software advancing so much, not using the very latest state-of-the-art computer doesn't have to limit you.

Software: Encoding a Live Stream Broadcast on YouTube

When we talk about software for live streaming, we're actually talking about encoders. Anything you've used to live stream is an encoder, but I’m going to focus on 

YouTube actually has a list of recommendations

, some free, some not. Thanks to how powerful these encoders have become, using something like Streamlabs OBS allows you to stream a game on your computer at a much higher quality than ever before.

Before we dive in head first, I will warn you this set-up can get very technical, and I'm going to cover it very briefly, in the most basic way possible, just to get you started. All the things I'm showing you are going to depend on you at the end of the day. You need to run test streams on your own channel, and maybe even get feedback from viewers on different testing streams you try.

Let’s go through the Streamlabs OBS set up.

 First, you’ll need to connect to your YouTube channel by logging in - just follow all the prompts!

Next, go to ‘Sources’ and click ‘Add’

Let’s say you want to add a game capture, just click ‘game capture’, then ‘Add Source’

The software will now search for a game on your system to capture

If it has trouble doing this, click on the drop-down menu to capture a specific window

Adjust the screen size so it fits the window

Now let's tackle some of the more technical aspects of live streaming on Streamlabs OBS. If we visit the output section, we can choose our encoder. In the example I use in the video (above), it's set to software x264. This is going to use my CPU to do all of my encoding for me, but if you want, you can change it to NVENC or the new version of that.

This uses your graphics card to encode. Depending on what you're doing, the game you're playing, or the type of broadcast you're doing.

Personally, I prefer using NVENC when I'm streaming, so I'm going to go ahead and select that. And I'm going to do a bit rate of about 5,000 because I already know my system, and I know it can handle that. Like I said before, this is going to take testing on your part, so maybe 2,500 is a good place for you to start, and you can go from there.

Now on to the video tab. You'll notice the base canvas resolution is 1920 x 1080. I would leave it at that. In theory, I should probably raise the base canvas resolution, but that's okay. I just got my 4K monitor, and I don't feel like resizing all of the different elements that I have on my normal live stream, so I'm going to leave it at 1080.

But the output scale is what's going to directly impact your broadcast, and I'm broadcasting at 720. These days, when people watch live streams, they watch them on a variety of devices, including phones and laptops. So with this screen being a little more compact, and squashed down to 720, it is probably going to give you a higher quality live stream at little to no impact on the viewer.

If you lower that resolution, it's going to get you closer to being able to stream at 60 frames a second, which will impact everybody who's watching, regardless if it's a nice, big TV or a phone. So because I like high frame rates when I'm playing games, I'm going to leave it at 720, but if you have a super awesome computer, maybe you can try 1080 at 60 frames. That's all up to you.

The last recommended setting is under ‘Advanced’. You can scroll down and find “dynamically change bitrate when dropping frames while streaming”.

A dropped frame is basically when the stream can't keep up and starts skipping frames. You may have a nice 60 frame stream going, but now, those frames are being dropped little by little. If the software detects that, it will change your bitrate to keep up.

So this might take some of the sharpness away from the image, but the frame rate will stay high, which is what you want. To save your changes, go ahead and click ‘Done.'

Now you’re almost ready to click ‘Go Live’, but there's one more thing we need to do, and that's set it up on the YouTube end.

Setting up a live broadcast is a lot like setting up a regular video. You still need an engaging title, a great description, some keyword tags, and a powerful 

Head over to the YouTube Studio, click on ‘Create’, then in the drop-down menu hit ‘Go Live.’ If you've streamed before, you're going to get a prompt that tells you that you can copy all the settings, the thumbnail, the description, etc. from a previous stream, or you can go ahead and set up a new stream.

In my example, I’ve clicked on the ‘New Stream’ option so now I'm going to set up everything I need for the live stream, like the title and description.

You can also set your live stream to private, public, or unlisted, just like a normal video. If you want to make it private for a little while so you can tweak the description and other metadata, go ahead and do that. But if you want people to know that you're going to stream at some point, go ahead and make it public.

Now add a description, then add a title for your game, that's really important to help YouTube categorize you for that game.

Further down the Streamlabs OBS dashboard, there is an option to schedule for later. I would highly recommend doing this, as a live stream is an event, and you want people to know when it's going to happen. Scheduling for later will allow you to set the date and the time that you're going to go live, and everyone will know exactly when to come to your stream!

Next is the ability to upload your very own YouTube custom thumbnail. Having a great thumbnail is always crazy important, no matter whether it’s a video you’ve uploaded, or whether it’s a live stream. You want that thumbnail to be clickable because it’s an invitation to watch your content. If a viewer is intrigued, they will click through to your video.

Next on the dashboard is where you tell YouTube whether this live stream is ‘

’ or not. You also have the option to impose restrictions on viewers because of their age. If you choose to restrict it to viewers that are 18 or over, YouTube users will get a notice that this live stream may not be appropriate for younger viewers.

If you’re happy with your title, description and custom thumbnail, and have completed all the details YouTube needs you to then you are ready to hit ‘Create Stream.’

Once you've created the stream, a new dashboard pops up while you're broadcasting live. It shows you all kinds of data, but what you really need to pay attention to is the information in the bottom left of the Streamlabs dashboard which is all about stream latency.

Basically, normal latency takes the broadcast and renders it for the audience. They're going to get a higher quality broadcast, but they're also going to see a higher delay based on when their chat message goes out and the time you read it. Viewers may pick up on that.

Choosing low-latency or ultra low-latency will cut down on that buffering time, but you risk your stream being lower quality.

Because you've already logged into YouTube on Streamlabs, you shouldn't need to worry about this, but if you're using a different encoder, and not Streamlabs OBS, you will need to grab the stream key and paste it into your encoder on Streamlabs. (Of course, sharing your stream key will allow people to take over your channel and stream whatever they want on it, and you don't want that!)

After you’ve finished streaming, you can come back to the Streamlabs dashboard and check out the analytics, your viewer activity, and your stream health. You can basically check all the data insights that would you after uploading any video.

Stay tuned for more expert tips on live streaming on YouTube!

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 

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.

It's never been easier to live stream on YouTube - whatever type of content you create. In this beginner's guide, we take you through the how-to using Streamlabs OBS.

How to Live Stream on YouTube with Streamlabs OBS - Beginner's Setup Guide

 in just 24 hours? Well, it's pretty simple actually. You pick the richest company in the world and you exploit the biggest tech search blind spot I have ever seen. I love case-studies like this!

But first, let's start with a little story.

Weirdly, I discovered this teeny YouTube channel, whose views had completely blown up literally overnight, because of my yearning for the new Samsung Galaxy Chromebook. I'm one of the few people in the world who gets Chromebooks. I love the fact that they're super light-weight, and even after years of use they never really slow down.

So when Samsung announced the Rolls-Royce of all Chromebooks, with a 4K AMOLED display with a stylus, I was all, "shut up and take my money". Even though it costs an eye-watering $999 USD, and it isn’t even available to buy in Canada (where I’m based).

So, if I can’t get my hands on the new Chromebook, what are the alternatives? I started to search around.....

Now, I was always under the impression that iPads were tablets. These days, however, Apple seems to be touting them as a viable alternative to the traditional computer. But I always thought computers needed a keyboard and at the very least, a track-pad, to give them the productivity you need.

And apparently, Apple now has an answer: the 

, a first-party accessory that attaches itself directly to the tablet.

Despite the price tag of $299 USD, it did capture my attention. But I needed to do the research here. I'm not just going to jump straight into this. But if I am going to do the research, I'm going to do what everybody else does - I'm going to search for it on YouTube.

Now, being a tech enthusiast, I assume that when I search for a product such as the “iPad Pro Magic Keyboard”, the usual creator suspects are going to appear: MKBHD, Unbox Therapy, Linus Tech Tips, and so on.

And when I searched for “iPad Pro Magic Keyboard” on YouTube, the auto-suggestion list was full of all of the keywords and phrases you might expect. So far so good.

But on April 19th 2020, that same search didn't return any videos about thw iPad Pro Magic Keyboard from any major tech creator. Not one. And I thought that was pretty odd.

I even checked on the Apple website just to confirm the keyboard was actually out. And it was, although there is a lengthy shipping delay. But on that particular date, I didn’t see any content in the YouTube search results from the creators I know, love, and most importantly, trust.

So let's go back to the YouTube to see what results 

First of all, from a VidIQ perspective, we think ‘iPad Pro Magic Keyboard’ is a fairly juicy keyword. Our keyword tool (which you can access by 

) confirms that search volume interest is increasing, and there’s not enough video competition to keep up with demand. That’s a win for any creator right there.

No matter which way you slice and dice it, the launch of any Apple product is a massive global event. Which means it is always a BIG thing in the tech community.

On April 19th, YouTube pushed one creator in particular to viewers searching for ‘iPad Pro Magic Keyboard’. Up until that date, 

 only had 1.2K subscribers, and was just one of the millions and millions of channels posting random content. The creator didn’t even appear to have any strategy around optimization or a growth, as witnessed in the poor quality of titles, descriptions, and thumbnails.

Then, out of the blue, this TikTok-length video appears on their channel - and hey, it’s all about that Magic Keyboard that every Apple iPad owner is starting to get really, really excited about.

You can see from the VidIQ Historical View Count feature, how the video quickly gained massive traction.

So how did a 19-second video from a tiny YouTube channel generate 75,00 views in twenty-four hours? And how did that creator's videos jump to the top of the search rankings for a very juicy Apple tech phrase?

I think it's pretty simple - the absence of options. I think for a brief moment of time, that video was one of the, if not, 

 first videos to offer a genuine review of the Apple Magic Keyboard. And with that golden opportunity, the creator did what we always recommend you do, double down on your best content.

There is a well-worn debate that often rages amongst YouTube creators - quantity versus quality. Most will rightly argue that quality should take precedence. But this is a perfect example where I would argue the exact opposite. At least to a certain degree.

When you have everyone's attention, because there is no competition, you should push out as much content as possible because that window of opportunity is not going to last long.

So yes, six videos from MrExitStrategy's small channel in a 48 hour period may seem a little excessive, but when you do a search for that 'iPad Pro Magic Keyboard' and all of the results at the top of the search engine are from the same creator, whose videos are you going to click on?

The videos themselves tell me two things. First of all, this creator really does like his computers. And secondly, sometimes all you need is a mobile phone and something interesting to film. I think, basically, in this situation this creator has two objectives for serving their audience:

Give the audience more iPad Pro Magic Keyboard content

Make more videos based on viewer feedback

At the time of writing, MrExitStrategy’s YouTube channel has now generated 

. Of course, he has over the required 1000 subscribers too so he’s now eligible to apply for the 

It is a little concerning that a channel with that many views only has a tiny amount of subscribers. But this is a feature of many, many tech and educational channels.

Well, often viewers just their specific questions answered, they don't want or need to subscribe to the channel after that. And to be honest, the quality of the videos on MrExitStrategy’s channel does suggest that the creator isn’t using any kind of strategy to encourage viewers to subscribe for future content.

So you might see this as a smash and grab. The opportunity was there and the creator grasped it with both hands. So what's going to happen to those search results when all of the other tech creators get their hands on this product?

How Smaller Tech Channels Can Win at YouTube

On April 20th 2020, I did an incognito search for ‘iPad Pro Magic Keyboard’, so that my watch and search history wouldn't influence any results.

And I witnessed a brand new set of well-established super popular creators, such as The Verge, 

, and Peter McKinnon, top the search rankings.

To find our hero of this particular case study, I had to scroll way down the list. When you no longer have something unique to present to the audience, quality is always going to win out.

What's very interesting about all of these new videos I saw flood in was when they were published. All at exactly the same time. 9AM EST on April 20th 2020.

The reason for this is, of course, major tech companies will send out new products to the most trusted creators and ask them not to publish their reviews or unboxing videos until a certain date and time.

So all of these big creators, like The Verge (video below), were waiting for that release embargo date to arrive.

But those rules don’t apply to your average consumer who orders a product from a website and just happens to get it before the release embargo. And again, that probably comes down to the unique challenges that the 

 is presenting to tech firms right now when it comes to logistics.

Some people just receive their products early, then immediately post about them to YouTube. All of which has created the perfect storm for this particular YouTube case study.

Want to grow your YouTube channel as fast as possible so you can monetize it? Read how one very small creator did just that!

How One Tiny YouTube Channel Generated 1000 Subscribers & 4000 Watch Time Hours in 24 HOURS!

Name me a topic that you can’t find at least one video about on YouTube. Go on, I’ll wait.

There’s unique, unusual, thought-provoking, and hugely entertaining content being uploaded to the platform every day, and creators are building significant views, subscribers and communities around it.

Our guest on this week’s TubeTalk podcast (

just click the play button above to hear it in full

) we talk to Dan Markham of ‘What's Inside’, who has grown his main YouTube channel to 6.8M subscribers, and his social following to over 500K followers.

Dan is clearly positioned to give us all the tips and tricks of building an audience, building a following, and absolutely rocking it on YouTube with his unique content around discovering what’s inside things.

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

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:

So you have an idea for a channel on YouTube but it's around an unusual or unique topic. How do you make that work? On this week's TubeTalk podcast we talk to one creator who's done just that!

How to Create a YouTube Channel Around the Most Unique or Unusual Content

We at vidIQ have been creating YouTube Stories alongside the regular content we upload 

, and you have been loving them. And you’ve been loving Stories from other creators too.

Now, YouTube has added a brand new call-to-action button to its YouTube Stories feature which allows viewers to subscribe directly to the channel that published that content. That’s fantastic news for creators who want to boost their subscriber count.

YouTube Stories: Boosting Subscribers & Your Community

 in that they work best on mobile devices, and are an amazing way of keeping in touch with your audience when you're not creating longer content. Most of us take a couple of days, even weeks, to push out new videos, but with these bite-size pieces of content, you can stay in touch with your audience every single day.

, the maximum video length is 15 seconds. __15 seconds for a subscriber? I think that sounds worth it, don't you? __

Built into this new feature is one massive plus and one huge negative. We'll start with the negative first. Unfortunately for many of you, this feature is not going to be available right unless you have 10,000 subscribers. But as with all YouTube features, Stories will be rolling out to more and more creators in the future, so do make sure to check on your mobile device to see if you have access.

On the flip side, here's a really interesting thing about that Stories subscribe button I don't think YouTube has considered.

When you're not subscribed to a channel and you watch one of their Stories, you’ll see a subscribe button which allows you to, well, subscribe. Right up until that Story finishes you still have the ability to unsubscribe using the same button.

However, once you're subscribed to a channel and you watch more Stories, there is no unsubscribe button. I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but ultimately you've got nothing to lose in pushing people to subscribe to your channel, right?

Tracking the Success of YouTube Stories in Analytics

And in more good news, you can actually track the success of your YouTube Stories in analytics. Just click on the ‘See More’ button on ‘Channel Analytics’ in YouTube Studio, then click on ‘Subscription Sources.’ YouTube Stories will be one of those sources and you can click the checkbox filter to see subscribers by YouTube stories only over the last 28 days.

Now, I am not for a second advocating that you should adopt a ‘subscribe to me’ mentality when it comes to YouTube Stories. What I am suggesting you do, as with all of your content, is provide value.

We've been experimenting with a YouTube story Q and A where people can ask us any question they like and I will respond with a YouTube story. We get tons of engagement, and whenever we run one of these mini YouTube clinics, we see a mini-surge in subscribers from YouTube stories.

Now, these are not channel-changing numbers, but I see this as another tool in your YouTube arsenal for growing your audience. Every subscriber helps.

How do you get more YouTube subscribers in just 15 seconds? We show you how.

How to Get More Subscribers On YouTube in 15 Seconds!

Finding success on YouTube can be very, very difficult and exceptionally frustrating. But when you consult with hundreds, if not thousands, of YouTube channels, you tend to pick up some patterns of channels that are set up for success and what they did right to get there.

On today's episode of TubeTalk, we dive into three levels of YouTube success with 

. Sean doesn't just simply have one YouTube channel; he has 

 with 830,000 subscribers, and you know what? Just for fun, throw in his 

 with about 100,000 subscribers. He also coauthored one of my favorite YouTube books, which is 

. He has years of experience, lots of consulting, and lots of brand experience. In this podcast you will learn:

Why the best time to start a YouTube channel is right now

Why the first law of YouTube success is research before you press record!

Why ranking your video content is crucial to success

Liron Segev: Sean, thank you for being here on TubeTalk

Sean Cannell:	Man, after that introduction, I don't even know who you're talking about. I'm tired after that introduction. That sounds exhausting.

Liron Segev:	I do not know how you do it, and on top of which, you have an event that you run. Sean, what's got you ridiculously excited about this YouTube world that you're in?

Sean Cannell:	You know, I don't think my excitement for YouTube has changed ever since I first discovered its power and its potential. I am empathetic to the fact that there's demonetization and whole channels dealing with, whether it's copyright issues or the community guidelines shifting, but all that to say, I think it's important we never forget that YouTube is a free platform that I know I didn't create the internet, I didn't create YouTube, and yet, it's changed so many of our lives. It's changed my life and people listening right now. I just have immense gratitude.

I know Susan (Wojcicki) didn't start the company, but if I ever see her, I want to hug her and give her flowers as well as the whole team because YouTube is just this amazing place. It's not problem-free, but it has so much potential, and that potential still exists at such a major level right now.

Liron Segev:	Let's rewind the clock a little. Tell me about the time you decided that look, YouTube is for you. What happened? What were you doing at the time when you saw this amazing potential?

Sean Cannell:	Well, I'll go just a few clicks before that. That was when I got into video. I started video in 2003 just because I was volunteering at my local youth group in my small town, Marysville, Washington, an hour north of Seattle. I picked up a video camera and Adobe Premiere and I started making these weekly video announcements. They were terrible. We always say your first videos are your worst videos. I know every creator can relate to that, but think about what a blessing it was that I was actually putting out these videos that were playing Wednesday night at youth group, and they weren't even posted online yet. I was cutting my teeth. I was getting through that season of suck. I sometimes say, as I walk through the season of suck, I will fear no evil because you kind of go through the season of suck.

I got started in video, and then fast-forward a couple of years, the first YouTube channel I actually worked on was my church's. Now, this is actually shocking because churches are usually years behind, sometimes a decade behind, but yet, for whatever reason, in our small town, our pastor was pretty progressive. Twitter came out, YouTube came out in 2005, but he wanted to start a channel. So in 2007, I'm uploading videos. There's 15-minutes time limits, so we're turning everything into two and three-parts and trying to figure out thumbnails and titles and all that stuff. I didn't know anything, but think about how early that was.

So by 2009, I started a business called Clear Vision Media, and started helping businesses build websites. I did video production for them. Started working with authors and speakers. In fact, that's when I met Benji Travis, the co-author of YouTube Secrets, at the YMCA in our small town. We started to connect. He said, "Hey, my wife's this famous ..." Famous? He's like, "My wife's got like 150,000 YouTube subscribers." I was like, "You're a liar." I didn't say that, but I'm thinking it. Not in our small town. What are you saying, bro? But then I went home. I was like, "What the heck?"

Early on, we actually worked together. I was a videographer for them and doing video production way back in 2009, 2010. That's how I kind of got into YouTube. All the way in 2007, once I started watching some of the early YouTubers, Julian Smith ... Come on, remember the Malk video? Some of that stuff. Early guys. I was so excited about the platform. I didn't know what I was going to do or what the future held specifically; I just knew, man, I see something happening here. I am passionate about it. This seems so powerful.

And now years later, that has come true. That's not just financial or business. I mean, friendships, relationships. Our relationship, us being at events together.

Liron Segev:	And it's international. Go to sleep at night here in the States, and wake up in the morning, and there's 100 comments on your videos from people who've just woken up on the other side of the globe, loving your content, want to engage with you, felt the need to leave a comment on your video. Are you finding that today people starting out have it much easier or is it maybe just very different today to when you got started?

Sean Cannell:	My answer here is kind of unique. I think it's equal and here's why: I think that, for me of course, I had the early adopter advantage because I got into YouTube years ago, but I also had a lot of disadvantages. There wasn't channels like Video Influencers or Think Media, so we were completely just trying to figure it out - testing, experimenting, wandering through the desert, making mistakes, trying to figure it all out.

And on top of that, even the technology was significantly harder. Now we're talking dual pixel auto focus, tap your face, all these things that are so much ... I mean, people trip these days. They're like, "I can't believe the camera doesn't have IBIS. I can't believe it doesn't even have auto-focus." I'm like, "Bro, that's new. Those things are just a few years old." We had to manually focus our cameras and guess what? Just take the extra time to do it.

I think that it's equal because while being an early adopter is easy with less competition or easier, there's still so much to learn. Now you flip it, you can learn faster, you can skip whole skillsets. Editing is speeding up. Even the production, renders, exports, all of that's speeding up. You've got better information, you've got proven roadmaps from people that have gone there and can help you get there further faster, but you do have increased competition. Of course, every day competition is more increasing.

I think it comes down to this: it doesn't matter. Is it too late? Can I still break through? Is the weather perfect right now? It just never will be perfect.

The best time to start a YouTube channel was in 2005. The second best time is right now.

Liron Segev:	People just need to do it because so many people who are stuck in this cycle of research, analysis paralysis. I'm going to watch another video. I'm going to take another course. I'm going to download another PDF. The best way to do it is to do it. You want to share a message? Just share the message. Simple as that. Do you find some common denominators amongst all the people that you speak to, the people that you consult with, which almost are like the laws of success of YouTube?

Sean Cannell:	Yeah. I actually have a training called the Three Irrefutable Laws of YouTube Success. A caveat here is that my point of view and who I help the most are teachers, coaches, consultants, people with a message, people that want to leverage YouTube to probably drive some kind of business result, and also impact people. While that can blur into kind of your new school creator, the way I summarize it is I help business-minded content creators.

These laws are also based on the fact that YouTube is a search engine. Now, I'm aware—I think that actually everybody can leverage that fact at different points in their YouTube career, different videos that they upload, but it's not maybe as relevant for peer entertainment channels or things like that.

The final caveat, these are two very good, specific examples, there's sometimes comedians and musicians will ask me, "Well Sean, how can I use these laws as a musician?" I say, "Here's the trouble being a musician: your music is either going to be good or bad and people are either going to like it or not. If you title your video right to rank it for such and such cover of a song, look, that's going to be determined by if the market likes that or not."

You have a little bit more of a, in my opinion, challenge. If you want to be a great comedian, you just need to get it out there and grind and put those videos out, or a musician, you need to level up your craft.

I actually think, and this is why I love teaching it, that it's a much more forgiving path to share your expertise, to share your knowledge, to actually be a guide to people that are just a few steps behind you. Whether that's in homeschool, and these are the people in our community, Heather Torres is actually on our team. She's helping people with homeschool. You've got Steve Panate who's helping people with real estate, leveraging YouTube to grow his real estate business. You've even got Dad Verb who is video production and freelance video per day. He's got his own agency, but then he does a Dad Verb channel, parenting channel, to review strollers and different things.

So almost a way to put it would almost be practical. Not that I don't help motivational and inspirational people, but that I love the practical path of YouTube, and these laws apply to that, and they start with this: Number one: research before you press record. That's the first law.

It's everything. That's why I love tools like vidIQ, and KeywordsEverywhere.com, and why I love even YouTube itself. That gives us those predictions and the auto-complete. That can give us insights into the exact videos that we should make.

The biggest mistake most people make when starting YouTube is they don't know what videos to make, to talk about, so they just turn their camera on and just randomly pontificate their thoughts or just make random content.

I've learned that random acts of content typically don't work, unless you're a meme account and being random is your message or you're a comedian and that is what has worked for you. You want to be strategic, specific, starting with the end in mind.

When you use the powerful tools of research, you can not only come up with the specific video ideas you should be making, you also are now going to be leveraging the fact that YouTube is a search engine, and so that you are giving your content the best possible opportunity for not just getting views when you upload it to your subscribers, but being viewed by new people for weeks, months, and years to come, leveraging YouTube search.

Liron Segev:	Absolutely. Research, research, research, research. So many people pick up the camera, will film. We've all seen them at events. They're walking around with their GorillaPods and filming for hours on end, and then they have three SD cards full of hours of videos. Now what?

But if they did their research, and they knew that they wanted to come out with five tips to make your YouTube videos better, they'll shoot five tips and they're done because they know people are searching for that. I cannot stress this enough. Totally echo that. Research, research, research, unless you really have a following on TikTok or Instagram and you're leveraging that audience to come across to YouTube. If you're starting at zero, research is so, so key, and YouTube is that search engine that wants to marry a query, a question, with an answer. Be the answer. Love that. Hit us with law number two.

Sean Cannell:	Law number two then is rank your videos. The purpose of your research is to get that video ranked. Now, here's my definition of ranked videos: there's of course search, which is if someone types in an inquiry, homeschool versus public school, in the search box, and then there's the top result, there's a second result, there's a third result. Those are ranked videos. They're ranking for a particular search query.

Heather Torres, on her homeschool channel, when she made that video, it ranked in search based on how she created the content and how she optimized it, and therefore, she grew her channel so far to 13,000 subscribers, which are focused homeschool moms that are wanting to just learn and grow. That is ranking and search.

But we know that, actually, the largest traffic source on YouTube is suggested videos. What I've discovered is I define ranking as both. Ranking is search and suggested. Ranking simply means that you're getting seen. Suggested video, in a way, is a ranked video. It's YouTube saying, "This is worthy of being put on the sidebar because of the minutes watched, because of the consumption," and that's the one-two punch of YouTube. When I look at my traffic, a lot of times we get about 1.5 million views a month on Think Media, and about 40% is usually suggested videos and 20 to 30% is search, but the practices, the tactics, I believe, of doing search right, gives you much more leverage for suggested. When you get that mix right, you'll leverage both and you can experience the dream.

When a video is ranked, the dream, for me, is views while you snooze. Think Media gets roughly 2,000 to 3,000 views every 60 minutes, whether I upload new videos or not. Crazy powerful and that is search and suggested traffic predominantly.

Liron Segev:	Well, there's a couple of things on that. Firstly, you said that her channel's got 13,000 subscribers, but you also said a very, very keyword here, which is focused. It's not a numbers game, which is the vanity metrics is driving me insane, which people just think, "I've got to get subscribers. I've got to get subscribers. Sub for sub. Let me just get as many numbers of my channel as possible." If you're doing this as a business and you're looking to grow a course, you're looking to get more people through the front door of your shop, you're doing it with a business intent in mind, it's not a numbers game; it's the right number game. So it's the intent that's absolutely critical to that. I love the idea of focus and in fact, and I think you actually told me this once, that nothing will suck the joy out of YouTube faster than comparing it to other people.

Sean Cannell:	Absolutely. You know, what's interesting is I think it would probably be encouraging for people to hear that you also never know what's going on under the surface. You never know what someone's CPM is. Someone might be getting 10 million views a month, but their CPM is 50 cents, and you might be getting a fraction of that, but your CPM is $10. Furthermore, you don't know what's happening on the backend of their business. So many people judge on the surface.

This comes our way a lot. They'll say, "Man, you don't need to get views," like some troll gamer kids somewhere, and I'm like, "That's fair." Because if you compare that to a Jake Paul or a PewDiePie, then correct. Compared to that, I'm just a blip on the radar. But let's flip that. 1.5 million views a month is insanity! That is a crazy amount of traffic and this 16-year-old, is actually probably a 36-year-old living in his mom's basement with four subscribers, is commentating on how many views we're getting, also not realizing that there's an entire business model behind that's generating multiple seven figures.

You just never know what's really happening and too many people, yeah, they're judging by the surface. They're judging vanity metrics, what's happening on the surface, and they don't really even understand how the game works.

Liron Segev:	All right, so that was two laws. What's the third?

Sean Cannell:	The third law is then reoccurring revenue. To recap, number one, research before you press record. Now you're going to make the right video for the right audience. Then you want to rank your videos. We could share resources. Obviously, the book. We didn't really go into how, but if you could pull that off. Number three though, you need this, you want to have reoccurring revenue in place.

Why are these the laws of YouTube success? Well, by the definition of these three laws, success in my mind is freedom; you're using YouTube for leverage. You're achieving that goal of generating revenue from YouTube, not like you would generate revenue from going to work at your job. I worked at Red Robin, a hamburger place here in America, for ten years. I was a busser, I waited tables, and so I knew what it was to go in and I traded time for money.

What I'm after here with these laws is leverage and freedom because if you are making the right videos, they're ranked in search, therefore they work for you when you're not working, but only if law number three is in place, and that is reoccurring revenue is set up.

Now what's cool about YouTube is if you are getting views while you snooze, like our friend Sonny so famously said, if you're doing that, then you are making ad revenue. That actually can be pretty great. We could maybe do a conversation some other time about feature YouTube accounts or niche YouTube accounts. I got a friend, he's got 15 channels. He's making $100,000 a month just in ad revenue. He's not in the videos. So ad revenue actually really can be a strategy, it can create leverage of course, and people realize that, but in a significant way.

But then I'm into probably the second biggest one is affiliate marketing because if videos are relevant to affiliate marketing where you're doing product reviews, tutorials of some kind, when those videos are viewed while you're sleeping, you also are making sales through affiliate marketing.

I will say this: I'm less of a fan of brand deals, and more and more, my mindset has been shifting about brand deals based on some of my mentors and stuff, and that's just my personality. I hate having a boss. If I'm working with four or five different companies, it increases my stress level because I've got four or five bosses. While there are just very few brands that we love working with because it's just a great synergy, it's almost like family, my favorite is really taking your power back and building a business on your own terms.

That monetization strategy is sell something. Your income is correlated by the amount of buy buttons you have on your website. The listener might say, "Well shoot, I don't even have a website." Okay. Well, then I don't know. I guess you could send someone to a PayPal, but thing one. Thing two, how many buy buttons are on your website? Well, zero. Well, if your income is correlated to the amount of buy buttons you have on your website, then we might have a problem of why you're not making any income.

What's really exciting, because again, going back to vanity metrics, there's that famous article, I'm sure you've brought it up before, many of your listeners have probably heard it, Kevin Kelly, 1,000 True Fans.

Look, you don't need a million subscribers, 100,000, or even 10,000; but you need 1,000 true fans, and however you serve them, whether that's through a box that comes out every quarter, some kind of a digital course, some kind of merch, some kind of physical product, some kind of white label or outsource or eComm, if you want to create this freedom business embracing the power of YouTube online video, and impacting people in the process, then setting up reoccurring revenue streams is hugely important.

This might go without saying, but I actually kind of want to emphasize it here. It's this: you need to make more money. A listener might be like, "Yeah! Tell me about it. That's a moot point." But no, I actually think that a lot of creators, that's why we help business-minded content creators, and a lot of content creators are not business-minded.

Our views towards money are very interesting, right? It's how we're raised. We can sometimes have different mindsets. When I say you need to make more money, it's because I hope that you're listening and you've got a big dream, you've got a big vision, you've got a vision that's bigger than money, but it's going to take money. I think that sometimes, we have that starving artist perspective, and that can really put a lid on us as creators.

It's like look, you need to make revenue because doing this is hard. You've got to hire a team eventually. But also, you've got to make revenue because is your vision bigger than you? I've heard some people say, "You know what? I only need enough money for myself and my family," and they view that as contentedness, which I respect. In my opinion, that's selfish. Why? Because there's more needs around planet earth than just you and your family. So if you have the ability to create content, build your influence, generate revenue, make way more than you think.

People are still like, "Okay. Yes, I would love to." But I actually think it has to fit into the framework of why because reasons come before results. A lot of creators plateau, I even think they burnout because they hit a certain level of success. This YouTube thing can rush in and you can experience success, you can experience money, but they don't necessarily know how to manage it or know how to build a business, or how to actually keep their own fire lit. Sometimes they drift a little and maybe because their vision needs to expand.

So anyways, I just encourage people, when you set up that reoccurring revenue, now you can build more momentum. How amazing is it that you could actually pay somebody else and help feed their kids, build their family, that you could bring people together with you and actually build a movement all around this fact of YouTube? But the only reason that's going to happen is if you create leverage because you can't be working 60, 70, 80 hours a week trying to feed the YouTube machine, grinding it out, as a solopreneur forever. You've got to create leverage. You want to rank your videos and have reoccurring revenue streams so you can continue to make a greater impact and go forward with your mission.

Liron Segev:	The more money that you make, which by the way, I don't understand why people almost feel bad for saying that, it's almost like they hide their head in shame, go, "Well, I'm making X-number of dollars per month out of my YouTube." Good. That's the point of this because conferences cost money, travel costs money, meeting costs money. Would you suggest that people go into YouTube with the end in mind? In other words, go into YouTube thinking of this as a business and therefore everything revolves around a business mission?

Sean Cannell:	I would suggest what you said first, absolutely, that they should start with the end in mind, but I wouldn't say that it has to be a business mission. I think that what you said first is what's so important. Having real personal clarity on the fact of is this meant ... This is actually a conflict, not really a conflict, but it's something that we talk about in our community a lot in the sense of people, they want YouTube to be their full-time job, but they pick a niche or something that couldn't even support that.

Here's an example. Only around 8,000 people a month search for underwater basket weaving. Now actually, you could make underwater basket weaving a full-time job. Of course you could, you probably could build different revenue streams, but only 8,000 people a month means the market size is not very large.

You've got to start with the end in mind. If you say YouTube is a creative outlet for me, it is something. You might have a target to say, "You know what? I hope to earn an extra $5 to $10,000 a year so that YouTube is going to be our hobby channel and our vacation money," and you set a clear vision like that, you put a level of hustle in it, you love doing it, but you don't ... I mean, I'm not saying you have to build a team and scale.

It's completely predicated on your vision, but if you flip it because that's where people are out of alignment; people are saying, "Yo, I want to be a millionaire," and then they start an underwater basket weaving channel and they're frustrated because it's not growing as fast. The market you're in, your niche, your business model, your plan is incongruent with your aspirations.

That's probably the way to summarize it. If you can get clear ... I heard a quote, "Definitiveness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement." It's hard to figure that out. It's easier said than done, but that's why, in our book, chapter one, the first law of the seven secrets of YouTube success is clarity. Start with the end in mind.

Yeah, you just want to be clear on your goals, and I think something to consider is be clear on your goals of the whole picture. If I'm open, I know that YouTube, for as much good as it's done, it's pulled out probably some negative tendencies in me as well. The algorithm is kind of vicious. And I don't mean vicious by not ranking videos. It is a content monster that ... I actually really feel like, unchecked, it can drive you to burnout. It can drive you to just keep feeding it, keep hustling, keep grinding.

Early on, when we were talking about comparison and vanity metrics, I think that's the other thing to consider too. What is your vision for your lifestyle? What is your vision for balance? What is it you ultimately want to build? That's so personal.

A lot of times though, we don't think through those things, and we just charge the one mountain of views or of a target of money, but you want to think about that big picture.

Kind of to wrap back to that, that's why you also don't really want to judge because some people are choosing to work 60, 70, 80-hour weeks on this, and of course their numbers are probably going to be superior. But if you just say, "I want to upload one video every two weeks. I figured out a few income streams because I want to be able to have more time and margin with my family. I've got a bunch of kids," everyone's in different seasons and the people I respect the most are the people that, really, they're thoughtful and they just have wisdom about what's right for them. They figured out ... It's no judgment. If someone wants to crush it all day long, or on the other side, someone is on a slower pace, well, of course the numbers or the growth is going to be incongruent there-

Did you know there are three main laws of YouTube success? Find our what they are in this week's TubeTalk podcast with special guest Sean Cannell.

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