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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
1M Sub YouTuber Exposes How to Actually Grow a Channel (Interview with Anna Tyrie)
Anna Tyrie shares the brutal truth about building YouTube channels that actually make money. Forget what the gurus tell you - Anna's been there, done that, and learned the hard way what really works.
Her Scouse accent video blew up, but brought in all the wrong people. Meanwhile, her simple singing warmups with zero fancy intros quietly built a business without her even trying.
In this conversation, Anna opens up about the YouTube mistakes that nearly derailed her business, why videos often sit dead for 100-300 days before suddenly taking off, and why she's ditched her expensive DSLR for an iPhone and a simple lapel mic.
You'll hear why audio quality matters more than anything else (seriously, viewers will tolerate bad video but HATE bad audio), her method for organizing content into "buckets" instead of chasing trends, and the simple "Francesca test" she uses for every video idea.
If you're tired of posting videos that get views but zero actual business results, this might be the most important YouTube strategy conversation you'll hear this year.
So you never know. If you make good quality content, you put it up on YouTube at some point. At any point they could take off. I've had videos that have gone up years ago that suddenly take off out of nowhere. I would always choose YouTube over everything else.
Speaker 2:Anna is an educator, an entrepreneur and the founder of English. Like a Native, she's grown a massive audience online, including over 1 million subscribers on YouTube. She also runs an online learning platform that has helped thousands of students improve their English fluency and pronunciation.
Speaker 1:Every year that goes by, it feels like it's getting harder. It feels like it's a bigger space. There's more competition, but YouTube is a long term game. Ultimately, I think that's a safer, long term space for content creation that feeds a business. I started getting money from YouTube, thinking where's this money coming from?
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is Jon Ainsworth and today's guest is Anna Tyree. We'll be talking about how Anna was able to grow that YouTube audience, what she thinks about starting YouTube in 2025, stakes that people make on YouTube and more. Anna, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Hi, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:So what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making on YouTube, or ones that you've made?
Speaker 1:I can definitely talk about my own mistakes. I think one of the biggest mistakes I made early on was kind of losing sight of my original plan with YouTube, like starting to chase sensationalism and chase those views and chase those clicks, going for things that were maybe a bit too sensational and away from my brand and my message, because of course those things take off and you know, if you're putting something out there that isn't quite in line with your brand and it takes off, it will take you in a completely different direction that you may not want to go in. For example, I had this little itch to do some accent based videos because primarily I'm an actor that was my original background, was acting and I felt like I wanted to make a resource on my English language channel that was also for actors. I was trying to serve many audiences rather than just focusing on my English language audience. I thought I'll make a resource for actors because I'm an actor and I love my actor friends and I want a resource for them.
Speaker 1:So I made these accent videos, really breaking down regional accents, which then became very popular and continue to be the most popular videos on my channel. But the audience it brought in was not just the actors, it brought in the natives of those accents, wanting to listen to their own accent being broken down and then criticize or say yay, and so it kind of diluted the audience that I wanted, and so from a business perspective, it's not very helpful to get those views because I don't want those people. I want to focus on the english language market and so that was a mistake I made, was chasing, splitting my, my audience and going trying to serve many different people, but also then, when they started taking off, I'll do more, I'll do more. Of course, you do more, do more, which has been good for growth, but not necessarily fantastic for business if you've got a very specific niche yeah, so you've got like 5 million views on your Scouse accent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everyone loves the Scouse accent, do they? Yeah, you'll be amazed. I think Liverpool Football Club perhaps is one of the biggest draws, especially for non-natives, and they love the Scouse accent. They just also Liverpool has.
Speaker 2:Surely they can't understand it. How can they I?
Speaker 1:think that's part of the draw. It's so interesting because it's hard to decipher. But yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's a very, very popular accent, so any videos done on the scouse accent usually do very well I lived in liverpool for three years and I would still have time sometimes when I couldn't understand what someone was saying to me yeah I remember this one one time, these three guys, late teens maybe they said to me where's the Aussie?
Speaker 2:and I said I said I'm sorry what they said the royal. I said do you mean the royal pub? No, the Aussie. And I'm like I have no idea what's going on here. And later on I think, and they were like annoyed and angry and just they'd stormed off and I realized afterwards that was the hospital they were talking about. Presumably some friend of theirs was in hospital and they're in a bit of a state, so they weren't in a great To be just nice and calm or whatever.
Speaker 2:But I was just like, oh, if you said where's the Royal Hospital, I would have said, oh, it's just down here on the left. But it was just like, oh god, still still struggling with this, you know yeah it's, it's a.
Speaker 1:I think it fascinates many people. Even people around the uk just find accents fascinating, and so those videos do very well. But it wasn't just the accent videos. I was initially chasing views with things like swear word videos and things that would get people's attention, but then if they do take off, then you've got those videos that maybe you're not the most proud of, being kind of front and center, you know, and you don't really want that. So that's a mistake that I made. And I do see some younger YouTubers starting off with a very clear route and you can see what their style is, and then you see them starting to make those types of videos that are maybe a bit more edgy and you think, just be careful, just be careful, make sure you stick to your, your brand and and what you feel proud of. Because essentially I've ended up removing quite a few videos that in those early days I was just making to get views.
Speaker 2:How do you balance that? Because obviously you do want to get a lot of views, but you only want to get views from the right audience on the right topic. So how do you? Do you still work at that? Do you still struggle to find that line, or you feel more comfortable now?
Speaker 1:It's always a balance, but I think you just have to choose your avatar, know like picture an actual person you know. If you're in a business, you're selling something, you should know who your avatar is. If you have a business behind your YouTube channel, and actually choose one of your actual customers, a customer that you love I've, you know I've always had a very close-knit relationship with a lot of my customers. I really get to know them. I build friendships with some of them.
Speaker 1:So when I'm making a video or considering ideas, I think if I was delivering this to Francesca, for example, would she find this interesting? Or would she furrow her brow and think, why is Anna talking about this weird thing? If I think that it's something, she would her brow and think why is Anna talking about this weird thing? If I think that it's something she would gladly open and consume, then it's the right idea and I just have to find a way to package it in a way that's fun. But yeah, just showing it to your avatar in your mind and thinking, or to your mum would my mum be proud of this? You know it's a good benchmark.
Speaker 2:What other mistakes do you see people make besides sensationalism and chasing clicks?
Speaker 1:Poor quality audio.
Speaker 1:I think, that's one of the biggest killers. Obviously, when you start out, you don't have much money to invest and you're just getting out and making content. But poor quality audio, whether that's you know you're using a headphone and you're you know one that attaches through your ear and you're kind of knocking it, or you're allowing your mic to rub on your clothes and not paying attention to that, you're in a space that's very echoey or there's lots of background noise those kind of poor quality production elements have such a negative impact. I think audio quality over everything is really important, because I don't know about you, but I personally cannot. I can't listen, I can't watch a video if the audio is bad. Even if it's really interesting and I really want to watch it, if the audio is bad I can't stand it.
Speaker 1:So I have to turn it off, and so I think audio quality should be something that's paid attention to very much in the in the early stages. I don't know if it is one of the biggest mistakes, but it certainly would have an impact on on views and watch time, so depends how fast you want to grow, I guess got it sensationalism, chasing too many views and audio quality.
Speaker 2:What are the big mistakes you see people make?
Speaker 1:I think some of the basic stuff of paying attention to how you're titling. I see some small creators that I've helped, like friends, who say, oh can you check out my channel? I don't know what's going on. Who who don't pay attention to any of the metadata, who literally don't do any like description or tags. They'll do a very, very long title that hasn't got any keywords in. They'll make a thumbnail that makes no sense. So that person who's scrolling and you're catching their eye for two seconds has no idea what it is, so they just pass on by and don't pay any attention. And I mean that's the basic stuff. You know packaging and making sure that you've got your metadata done. But it is something that I say time and time again to friends and young youtubers who are just coming into it that initially, content is important, but you've also got to pay attention to how you wrap it as well. You know you have to put some of the basic elements in yeah, it's the way I've heard people describe it.
Speaker 2:The way I try and think about it is if the title and thumbnail is no good, then no one's going to watch the video anyway. So it doesn't then matter how good the video is after that. So you've got to start with like okay, it's got to be an idea that people are interested in. Either they're searching for it or something that will.
Speaker 2:The concept is something that's going to catch their attention and then the title and thumbnail convert how much of that potential you turning into actual views? And then if people don't stick around for the first 15 seconds because it doesn't sound like what it was that they just clicked on, then they're not going to watch the rest of it. It's like, oh my god. It's almost like the packaging is more important than the video in a lot of ways you know because you've got to get people in there it's.
Speaker 1:It's a really interesting point, but we were talking that I'm in part of a group of creators and we were actually talking about this yesterday, and when you're a small channel with a lot of um, I think on mobile it doesn't it auto play videos anyway when you get, when you're in my mobile, that's too dangerous.
Speaker 2:that on YouTube on my mobile, that's too dangerous. That way madness lies.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think the outcome of the conversation yesterday with all these YouTubers was actually, when you're a smaller channel, concept and content is absolute king, like if you have a good idea, even if you don't package it very well. If you have a good idea and you execute it well, youtube will push it. If you have a good idea and you execute it well, youtube will push it. If it's getting those cues back and people are actually watching, and I think because you get this autoplay on mobile the hook. The hook is what's probably most important when you're starting out is get a great idea and make sure the hook is good. I see a lot of people do these crazy long-winded, really boring introductions. You know, and they're talking all about themselves and and and make sure you subscribe to my channel, even though you don't know who I am or what I do, and make sure you hit the like button and leave a comment. And there's all this like guff at the beginning. That's just going to make someone switch off and move away.
Speaker 1:I have multiple YouTube channels. I am a serial YouTuber. I'm actually embarrassed to actually think about how many YouTube channels I've got, but one of the earlier channels I started with was a singing teaching channel. It's called Verba Vocal and I started making videos in there, initially just for my actual students, not for a wide audience, but for the people I was seeing face to face. And what I did was, instead of an introduction because I wasn't doing it for an audience, I was doing it for students. I just go straight into the content. Okay, let's start with the warm up and straight in, I put it on YouTube so my students could go and consume in between our lessons and work on their voice. And over the coming months I started getting money from YouTube, thinking where's this money coming from? What I don't understand. You can make money from YouTube and that's actually what sparked my work.
Speaker 1:My serious work on YouTube was realizing this could be a business and that video Minions Views. That video did particularly well because most singing warm-up videos are hello welcome to my channel. Let me tell you a bit about me and you should do this warm-up every day. But every day somebody doesn't want to listen to that same introduction. Every day someone just wants to do the exercise and so my videos go straight into the content and I proved concept by doing a second one, straight into the video, straight into the warm-up, a different set of warm-ups Again, smashed it straight out.
Speaker 1:You know does really really well. I did it again and again and there's several videos all doing the same. Because there's no introduction. So people don't care about who you are, they care about the content. They especially in the educational scene, I think. So minimize your introductions. Make sure your calls to action are in there, but maybe somewhere knitted into the middle or somewhere at the end for the people who are actually interested enough to stay that long at the beginning. They don't care. So I would say, push your calls to action further back in the video.
Speaker 2:All right, so sensationalism, poor quality audio, not thinking enough about titles, thumbnails, metadata and doing boring, long-winded intros rather than getting straight to the point.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, cool. If you want to grow your email list quickly, you've got to check out our Double your Email List guide. Having a bigger email list makes everything else in your business easier. It means that every time you do a promotion, you make more sales, you make more revenue, you help more people. With this guide, you'll get a step-by-step process to everything that you need to do to grow your email list. If you follow it, you will very quickly experience a boost in your lead magnet conversion rates and you will see more people joining your email list. We typically see an increase in new subscribers each month of between 2 and 10x. So grab your copy of the double your email list guide now at datadrivenmarketingco slash guide and watch your email list transform. That is datadrivenmarketingcoau. Or click the link in the show notes, the pinned comment or the description below. If you were starting now, would you start a YouTube channel?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think YouTube, Every year that goes by, it feels like it's getting harder. It feels like it's a bigger space, there's more competition. But YouTube is a long term game and I've had videos that go, that's gone up years ago, that suddenly take off out of nowhere, and so you never know. If you make good quality content, you put it up on YouTube at some point, at any point they could take off. So I think, if it's part of a long-term strategy, yes, youtube is the place to be. You have more control. I feel I've never had a problem with YouTube. I've had my Facebook hacked twice. I've been monetized, demonetized from Instagram, with no support or ways to try and figure things out. I think these other platforms they can be flash in the pan or very difficult if you hit problems, whereas YouTube, I feel connected, I feel supported and ultimately, I think that's a safer, long-term space for content creation that feeds a business. So I would always choose YouTube over everything else.
Speaker 2:If you were recommending to somebody who was starting YouTube in 2025, what to do, what would you tell them?
Speaker 1:So the first thing I would do is ask them to take their knowledge of the topic and to sit and write down like a hundred titles. To go crazy. How far can you spread this particular topic? Do you have the inspiration to make lots of different angle like angled content around this, this topic, um, and then, and then to create buckets like ideas of different types of content and do a lot of research. I think research is probably the first step. To be a student of YouTube, go and be your avatar and think what would my avatar search for and then start watching like hours and hours and hours. See where YouTube takes you Discover, because we all know a handful of people already doing the thing that we're interested in doing. But there are, I can guarantee there are loads more. And if you spend time being a student of your topic, you will find youtube will serve you some really interesting characters and interesting angles on your niche and that can be so eye-opening because you'll also learn what works, what doesn't work, what's boring, what's exciting. Why don't we do long intros, these things? It teaches you so much when you sit in the seat of the student and the viewer and then, once you've done all your research, which it does feel boring, but it's so important. It'll save you so much time and help you grow much faster Once you've done your research, which is it does feel boring, but it's so important. It'll save you so much time and help you grow much faster. Once you've done your research, you should always continue like never stop, always keep dipping in, but do your research, then lay out your own ideas and put them into buckets of different types of content and then create a schedule.
Speaker 1:Okay, so for me in English teaching I would do listicle videos where I'm listing off 10 phrasal verbs that are good for work or whatever these lists of vocabulary, and then I might do a grammar or technical type of video. Maybe I cover the IPA or something, and then I might do a speak with me style of video. And then I want to rotate my schedule. I don't want to do three of the same video back to back. I want to do one from one bucket, one from another and one from another and then repeat the cycle and after doing three or four in each bucket, you see well which bucket works well, what type of content is working well and what's not. Okay, so my listicle videos maybe aren't working so great. Maybe I stop doing those for a while and try a different style of content. And yeah, just create some form of structure and schedule, because that will stop you from going mad of structure and schedule, because that will stop you from going mad.
Speaker 1:There's nothing worse than hitting Wednesday afternoon like I do and go my goodness, I have to release a video this weekend because that's my schedule, but I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know what I should do. What did I do before? It's awful when you get to that point where you're scrambling to keep on top of things. It's much better to have everything laid out, know where you're going, prepare in advance, and then you can be relaxed and more measured with your execution. Because, again, when you get to the point of actually putting the video out, you don't want to rush it. I've been up till midnight, one o'clock in the morning, sometimes jumping out of bed, going I didn't do my, my thumbnail, or I've got a video going out at 7am and I haven't, I haven't done the metadata and then coming down to do it, rushing it, making a mess. I've had them videos go out at the wrong scheduled time because I accidentally scheduled it for midnight rather than noon, which kills the video flat because it doesn't get the momentum. And yeah, if you rush, you're not doing yourself any favours. You'll make mistakes and all that work and effort you put into creation is wasted. So be measured, set a schedule, do your research and then hit the ground running ideally.
Speaker 1:And I think the other big piece of advice I would give is do not get hung up on the numbers. When you first start, it takes YouTube and the algorithms time to understand who you are, who your audience is, and then find that audience for you, and so the more content you put out in those first stages gives the algorithms and YouTube more content to work with. It's learning more about you, and so then it can go and find more and more people to serve on your behalf. And so you know it can take at least 90 days to find your audience when you first start out, if you're going out with a lot of content. So don't get hung up on those numbers. When you release a video and it only gets like five views, don't worry about it. Don't resort to asking all your friends and family to look at it, because they're not your audience and that will give the wrong signals to youtube, then they'll start trying to find more, more grandmas to serve your stuff to.
Speaker 2:And if you're doing skateboarding?
Speaker 1:videos. Maybe your gran isn't the kind of person you want watching your videos, you know. So be patient, know it's a long game and be in it for the long game. Set yourself up so you don't burn out and always stay focused on your avatar and, yeah, don't rush it.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we've got start out by figuring out your niche. So we've got start out by figuring out your niche. Go through and create, make a list of 100 titles for videos that you might make. Put them into these different kind of buckets so in your case it might it was like listicles or grammar, or speak with me, so you kind of got them in in different headings. Have a few of those. Be your avatar. Go spend hours searching through youtube looking at all these videos. That'll give you more ideas, I would think if other things you could, make.
Speaker 2:It would help. You think, oh, I like this, I'd like the way they did, that I could do this. Don't do it this way. Shorten the intro here, be more dramatic there, that kind of thing. Then, once you've got that whole plan, start recording videos.
Speaker 2:Get, I think, what you said earlier get a few weeks ahead if you can create a load, yeah yeah, how many videos should people be making when they're starting out like that, because you said it takes a while for youtube to get the hang of who your audience is? Should people start with like a video a day to get it going, or is that then going to create a problem? Because then what if you can't do a video a day after that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, I think, the most important thing, regardless of the algorithms change all the time. So you can make a plan today, I can give you advice today based on what I know, but then it could change tomorrow and I won't know. It's changed until months down the line. Like, I think, trying to second guess what is the best practice's when we don't know exactly what the algorithm changes are. I wouldn't play that game.
Speaker 1:What you need to know is what can you manage? What is healthy for you in terms of a consistent content creation schedule? Can you manage a video a day? If you can, then go for it, can you manage one short and one long form piece of content a week? Then great. What's important is consistency. If you go out with a video a day for the first five weeks and then you do one video in two weeks and then a couple of videos the next week, that's not going to help you. And also, if you continue with a schedule that doesn't work and you burn out and you start to hate it and your content just becomes low quality because you're trying to rush it, then that's not going to serve you either. So choose a schedule that works for you.
Speaker 1:Make the best content. You can Remember that the videos live on. This is not Instagram Reels, it's not TikTok, it's not do it now and then it's dead. I've had videos honestly, most of my videos now on my main channel take 100, 200, sometimes 300 days of mediocre views and then they pop off out of nowhere and suddenly start getting thousands and thousands of views and it always surprises me, but it's consistently happening. Your videos, once you put them out there, live there and will often be subject to experiments. They'll be paired and matched onto other pieces of content that suddenly go viral, and then yours is suggested next to it, and then yours is suggested next to it. I wouldn't worry about making loads and loads. Just make good and make consistent content that works for you. I think that's the only piece of advice I've got on that.
Speaker 2:One of the favorite things I see is when I occasionally come across a video from a channel that has, like you know, eight videos and seven of them have got 200 views and one of them's got 14 million. And you're like that's interesting. There's a yoga one, there's a yoga nidra video and for anybody who doesn't know, a yoga nidra is some kind of like a guided meditation and this woman obviously was recording these videos kind of like you were saying how you were doing it for your students before she was recording them for her students at her Shropshire yoga studio, you know, like people she would see in person. And this one was just it's a great yoga nidra and it's just gone absolutely crazy and she clearly doesn't quite know what to do with that. I find that kind of stuff absolutely fascinating and that's kind of like what you were saying there about the you don't know which. You know it's going to live on forever, it's going to go, it might go viral at some point.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating, that 300 days, honestly, before something would start to really pick up. And you know, sometimes it's sometimes you can make a really great piece of content and feel really, really good about it, but the idea of the content is just not. It just doesn't land with people for a while, but then maybe it suddenly becomes popular. Someone said that um, I had a student say that they found me because I'd been mentioned on a japanese tv show. One of my videos had been mentioned on a japanese TV show. One of my videos had been mentioned on a Japanese TV show and then suddenly I've got this huge following in Japan. I'm like where is what is causing that? And you just don't know. I have an Easter video. I'm expecting it to pop off anytime because we've got Easter coming up.
Speaker 1:I've got an Easter video which was doing okay for a while and then suddenly every easter would really jump, really jump in views and that's interesting that after all this time, it's now getting really popular, and it's because lots of teachers are asking their students to use the video as part of their homework and this has become part of their curriculum or something, and so every year I get the students complaining in the comments that their teacher made them come and watch this video, and so you just don't know when your content will be picked up, why, and you just have to allow YouTube to do what it does best and allow people to do what they do best, which is sharing good content and good ideas. All you need to do is focus on good ideas and you know, making stuff that works for you in your life, and I'm all about balance. As you know, john, I've got a lot to juggle, so it has to be right for you, and hopefully, over time, it will work out with YouTube too.
Speaker 2:If you want help with growing your course business, then book a call with me or someone from my team. Go to datadrivenmarketingco slash call or click the link in the show notes, the description or the pinned comment below. We have helped dozens of people more than double their revenue in 90 days and helped seven people to reach seven figures through this process. So book a call using the link in the show notes, the description, the pinned comment, or go to datadrivenmarketingco slashuk and we'll have a chat. All right, any other top tips for people starting out YouTube.
Speaker 1:Don't stand too close to the camera. I mean, this isn't something that people talk about very often, but there's a psychology of space and it's very clear when you're actually face-to-face with someone. If somebody stands very close to you in what's called intimate space, so like within your arm's length, that's intimate space, and then like in dirty dancing yeah, this is my dance space if you're in intimate space, if that is reserved for loved ones and even only certain loved ones right, you don't want people standing that close to you.
Speaker 1:But people on YouTube videos will often stand really close to the camera. I think it's because they want to see themselves clearly in tiny little monitors. I was guilty of this for a long time, but then when someone's watching you on their phone or on their TV, you are huge and it feels quite uncomfortable and you can't put your finger on why it's uncomfortable to watch. And so I went into this psychology and realized actually what you need is to be in the social space, and the social space is where you can actually see like hands. So you want like waist up and hands, and that's the social space and it's just understanding that from a digital point of view. So don't get too close to the camera, have space, and that will instantly make people feel more comfortable. They won't understand why, but they will.
Speaker 2:What's the minimum equipment someone needs to get started with YouTube, do you think?
Speaker 1:You know, these days I think it's brilliant because these days all you need is an iPhone and a decent mic and a decent mic.
Speaker 1:So I recently invested in like a little clip-on lapel that just then you put an attachment the receiver into the bottom of your phone and you can just record with your phone. For me this has actually been a new upgrade to my filming, because I would normally film on my DS. So I have to get an SD card, put that into my camera. I have to get a battery that's charged, put that into my camera, make sure there's a spare, because I usually go through two batteries when I'm filming. And then I have to get my mic pack out, put the batteries in that SD card, in that clip that on, get them both recording at the same time, the same rate, and then I have to sync it all in post-production.
Speaker 1:Long-winded, really boring, and that's part of what I hate about my filming days the actual preparation for getting set up my lights, my camera, my microphone. Now I've got a good iPhone. I have my little stand. That's so easy to just pop up and down. I stick my receiver in, pop my lapel on. It's always charged because it just sits in this little charge box and I'm good to go. I don't have to do any sync in post-production, it's all done, and so that's all you need. You just need a camera, a phone with a camera on it and a decent mic. I mean you don't have to have a decent mic, but I highly advise it. And even if you can't afford lights like you can just stand in front of a window to make sure that you've got good light on your face. That that is all you need what's the mic?
Speaker 2:any mic you particularly recommend. You said a lapel mic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can I just get it out? Yeah, I find my okay. So, um, this is holly holliland, and if you can see that, it's brilliant. Honestly, it's so cool. It's just these tiny little buttons and the little magnets. You pop that into the bottom of your phone. It's so quick and easy and take it out with you. Am I going to film today? I don't know, but you know what? I can stick this in my pocket with my phone and my tripod. That goes down to the size of an.
Speaker 2:Of course I'm gonna film today. Yeah, I have six youtube channels so yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's so easy to get started. These days I actually film like that the video that I just put up, that you said you had a quick nosy at today that I did that on my iphone. It's just so easy. I don't think I'll put my DSLR on again, to be honest.
Speaker 2:You're all scrubbed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How do you use your YouTube videos to grow your email list at the moment?
Speaker 1:So at the moment, with most videos, I will have a bonus value add download that they can access On the main channel with the lessons I offer, like digital PDFs, and they have been declining in popularity lately, I think maybe because of AI making everything so accessible in terms of information products. So what I've been trying to do is, rather than just offer transcripts or lesson notes, is make worksheets or like additional. You know, here's five must-know idioms to use if you want to be assertive, but here's a PDF with 30 more, or you know something that's an additional value, something that's additional to the content they're getting, and so then there's just this call to action for them to click on the link in the description. I do have some reservations about that. For every video I have done it lately because I need to kind of expand my list at the moment, but I wonder how detrimental that is to your standing on YouTube, because obviously YouTube rewards time on platform. So if you keep them on platform, youtube will reward you by pushing your content, but if you regularly send people off platform, youtube is not going to like it. If you are the exiter, if you're the exit, if you're taking people out, then they're not going to push your stuff so much, so I would.
Speaker 1:I probably, as I move forward, I'm going to balance it out again have a couple of value add and connecting videos. So you've watched this one. You must learn about this now. Or go and test your skills with this video and then redirect them onto something else and then half of them be a lead magnet. With my my podcast channel, I tend to offer one big lead magnet. So, because I'm doing daily content there, I can't make a lead magnet every day. It's just too much. So I have one big lead magnet which is a big database that they can access for free and uh, yeah, I mentioned that at the end of every video, if they're interested, or I mentioned it in the description and top comment got it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what we found. So I'm not the youtube expert. I'm the expert at how do you get people onto the email list and how do you make money from them, and so my perspective on that could be slightly different. But we basically, for every video, somebody we're working with will put in lead magnet in the pin, comment the description and mention it. Ask them to mention it after their first main point of the video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's like someone's got into the video not right at the beginning, so you'd like someone's just dropping off immediately because it's boring, but after the first main point and then again at the end of the video and what we're seeing is the difference in opt-in rates, depending on how well you do. This is dramatic. Right, like the average person who has some lead magnets might be getting like a 0.5% of views opting in, but if you're smashing it on this, then you can be getting like 4% to 5% on videos of of views opting in, but if you're smashing it on this then you can be getting like four to five percent on videos of those people opting in, yeah, which then in terms of like the, the growth of the business in terms of revenue, is like massive, absolutely massive.
Speaker 2:And then I've got got a couple of videos that I've seen where it's been like a 10 opt-in rate which is just like, oh my god, there's got to be the perfect opt-in like you're talking about right.
Speaker 2:It's been like a 10% opt-in rate which is just like, oh my God, there's got to be the perfect opt-in like you're talking about, right. It's like, okay, this is the workbook that goes with this. So Jack, who's going to come on the podcast soon, he is teaching people banjo on YouTube and then selling banjo courses, and he will teach people in the video or he'll demonstrate certain songs and it'll be like the tabs for these songs and for anybody who doesn't know tabs is basically like a simplified version of sheet music for string instruments. The tabs for these songs are in the description. You can go and download them and so that fits so perfectly, so beautifully, that just a ton of people go and opt into those, and then that grows his email list like crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I found putting QR codes is like the new thing.
Speaker 1:QR codes on screen because, well, it depends on your audience. But just having a quick look in analytics and seeing how many people are actually watching on a smart TV or maybe on a laptop or something, and just having a QR code there so they can quickly do a scan and I've done it myself we watch a lot of YouTube on our smart TV. We don't have regular TV because we cut the cable by accident and we haven't had it fixed since we moved in. We have a wisteria, so we're doing a trim.
Speaker 2:When people say they cut the cable, what they mean is metaphorically but you decided to do it literally.
Speaker 1:Literally, literally. So we've never had regular TV. So YouTube is our thing and, yeah, I often see people putting QR codes on their videos and I'm like I'm interested in that. So I get my phone out and I go straight to their website. Go straight to their website. So I've started doing it with try to do it with most of my videos now put a qr code in somewhere at the beginning where I mentioned the lead magnet, and then at the end as a reminder, along with the end cards nice anna, this was awesome.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate you coming on today thank you sharing your wisdom about growing youtube. You're obviously phenomenal at it and know a huge amount, so I really appreciate you spending your time. Thank you. If someone wants to go check out any of your YouTubes, where should people go to check you out?
Speaker 1:If you're interested in English or pronunciation, then English Like a Native. If you type that in anywhere, you'd find me English Like a Native, but my website is englishlikeanativecouk. If you want to brush up your singing then look for Verba Vocal.
Speaker 2:Verba V-E-R-B-A. Verba Vocal Nice. Thank you Fabulous. Thank you so much for coming on and thank you to everybody, as always, for listening.
Speaker 1:Thanks, John.
Speaker 2:See you next time.