258 Why Shorts Get Views but Don't Make Money

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Ross Rosenberg has 38 million YouTube views, over 200,000 books sold in 12 languages, and a podcast in the top 2% globally. 

Ross is one of the world's leading voices on codependency and narcissistic abuse. He founded the Self-Love Recovery Institute back in 2013 and has been building his audience online ever since, mostly by figuring things out as he went, which is both the charm and the challenge of his story.

We talked about how a throwaway tip at a dinner party got him onto YouTube before almost anyone else in his field. We got into why the shift from long-form to short-form content nearly crushed his business model, and what he's doing differently now to rebuild. He was refreshingly candid about a marketing company he hired that sent him clickbait scripts he flatly refused to follow, why his curated 10,000-person email list carries a 30 to 40 percent open rate, and what he's trying to get in place before he steps back at 67.

Ross isn't your typical "here's the funnel that made me a million dollars" guest. He's someone who built something genuinely significant, navigated a slowdown with honesty, and is still pushing forward on his own terms. I found his perspective really refreshing.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Check out Ross's work:
🌐 https://www.selfloverecovery.com
📸 https://www.instagram.com/rossrosenberg_slri/
▶️  https://www.youtube.com/rossrosenberg

Transcript

Competition And Finding A Niche

0:00

They don't earn business. They don't bring in money. They don't develop the business side of it. Like long enforcement content. It's so important if you want to make it and find your niche. Because most people are competing with thousands of other people saying the same thing. You gotta find your voice, your style, your unique abilities, and then market those to other people. What I had was interesting content that no one was talking about that feature. Unique understanding, unique skills you can get out. Because there's so much competition out there, and the algorithms of YouTube and Google change

Welcome And Ross Rosenberg Background

0:42

rapidly. Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. It's your winning track, speaker at top performance in the online courses. My name is John Antwart, and today's guest is Ross wrote now. Ross is an internationally renowned psychotherapist, educator, and author with over 35 years of innate experience helping millions great toxic relationship patterns and healed and codependency and narcissistic. Today his books have sold over 200,000 copies of World Rangers. His YouTube channel has racked up 38 million views and 15,000 subscribers. And his Delf Love Recovery podcast is in the top 2% globally, with more than 325,000 numbers. Then in 2013, he founded the Dell Flood Recovery Institute, is a masterclass in turning deep expertise into books, a podcast, a global YouTube audience, and a thriving institute of programs and trainings. Ross, welcome to the show. Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to do this. I've never been on a show such as yours that explored the business aspects. So this will be interesting. Great. Well, delighted to have

YouTube Breakthrough And Early Growth

1:44

you here. So talk us through when did you get started building your audience on YouTube? Well, the story goes, I was at a dinner party with a wife, at least a wife I was married to around 15 years ago. And a friend of mine, uh, he was an attorney that opened up three offices. And he he asked me during dinner, he says, put your phone in Google Divorce Attorneys, Chicago. And I did, and he was on number one. And I go, Wow, how'd you do that? That's impressive. Chicago is a big city. And he goes, Well, this this well, Google just bought YouTube, and if you have videos, you end up on the top of any search. And at the time I was traveling, giving this a professional seminar called Narcissist and Codependence, Understanding the Attraction. It was before the book. So I got permission to add different clips of the seminar, and people were ging it like crazy. And then I started doing my own videos, and I was getting average in the first couple years between 50 to 100,000 views per video. And so that became this incredible vehicle for me to become this prominent expert, perceived and understood as a prominent expert in my field. But I must say, and this is a very important caveat, I brought a lot of that to the forefront. Google or any SEO trick could not make a person an expert. I was able to capitalize on that and talk about a subject that I knew very well, in some ways better than most. And that propelled me to being this original narcissist codependency expert that I maintained that for almost a decade.

Publishing Cadence For Long And Short

3:26

How often are you publishing on YouTube now? I'm publishing a long form video once every week or two. And short form videos, they're being released every day. Have any long form video usually has about 15 or 20 clips that I can use. Because the way that I do my videos, and actually the way I do therapy, is I'm focusing on facts and explanations. Not a lot of filler, not a lot of, you know, grandiose um discussions about me, but this is what we need to do. This is what is going to be most helpful to you if you follow my program. Things have changed a lot. Oh my gosh. I I used to get about 12,000, 15,000 views a day from my long form videos. Now I get on average on my long form videos around three to four thousand after a couple months. But it's my short form videos now. Like racking up to I'm up to around 10,000 views a day, but there's a short forms, but they don't earn business. They don't bring in money. They don't develop um business the business side of it like the long forms. Yeah. Yeah. So if I understand right, what you're what you're basically doing is you do the one long form video and then you take clips from it, then what you're putting up is a short form. Okay. How much time are you taking you to film those long form every one or two weeks? I t I typically um spend about 35 to 45 minutes on any video. Sometimes I'll do a video on uh an interview that I'll have on my podcast, or um I'll use a video that uh permission, of course, of me being interviewed on another person's podcast. But usually the videos are 35 to 45 minutes and they have unique content. That's that's the hard part after all these years is to come up with something that's different. And there is a lot of repeated material, but we're talking about 15 years of this type of work. I mean, some some of the people that followed me are deceased. They were old to begin with, just to be fair. No responsibility. And then and there's a whole new generation, new clients are now there was a time that my demographic was very clear. And they were about 60 percent, and then uh the men um the same age at the other 40 percent. Now um the demographic is widening to younger folks, and that's because I'm I'm I'm not only posting shorts on go Google, I'm posting the same things on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And then what's the next step for people after that? Like, what is it that they can can buy from you? Because you've got video seminars and you've got you actually do um one-to-one practice with people as well, right? Is that is that only in person or is that online as

Monetisation Mix Therapy Books Seminars

6:14

well? Oh, it's it's online. Online. Okay. Yeah, I live I live in Petzcole, Florida. Um I got a nice couch over there, but I I decided um I I was I was uh ahead of the curb before before COVID. I owned a counseling center back when I lived in Illino Arlington Heights, Illinois. And um I had a chance to hire another another therapist. And with each therapist, I made around thirty to forty thousand dollars extra profit a year. And so I had to make a decision. Do I hire another therapist because business is good, and give up my office and work from home and just come in and just borrow whose ever's office is available? And I did that. And then that's when I started doing everything online. Okay, cool. And so what percentage of of revenue for you is from doing one-to-one sessions with people and what percentages from anything that you're selling online? Aaron Powell Well, I'm a good example of how if you don't keep your nose to the grindstone. I I hope I'm using this I'm I'm really terrible at some sayings, but if you don't really keep hyper focused, you can lose your footing. And there was a period of three or four years where for personal reasons I wasn't doing well. And even though I was putting out videos, wasn't you ha you have to keep hanging away at this. You can't slow down because there's so much competition out there and the and and the algorithms that you t YouTube and and Google and they change rapidly. And so there was a period of time that that I about 30% of my income was selling these online um online seminar videos that were available audio or video. And over time they got old. And uh I got complacent. And uh when I got back, came back and got my mind, my heart, everything was ready and ready to just rock and roll again. I found out that the the seminar videos were uh um were outdated. So then I I've been experimenting, and there are s I get I don't know about you, but I get I get hundreds of emails from people in all disciplines trying to sell these these these quick get quick rich uh ideas. And but there was one company that I um recently gave a chance to, and that's a whole nother subject, but to your question, that part of my revenue has become less. My book sales, um, I've made about six hundred thousand dollars um since writing my book in 2012. I knew there was gonna be a time they would slow down. Are you familiar with the Andy Warhol saying we all get 15 minutes of fame? Yeah. Yeah, well the way I understand the way I understand it, I got twenty. Okay. And and so I my books sold well. They were um um um they were bringing in um uh uh very nice uh amount of revenue upwards to about um I I would say um five thousand and seven thousand a month. And so so there was a time in my business that things were going well. So so I'm an example of what happens when you get older and you start to wind down your career. Because I I don't I don't regret it, I'm not apologetic about it, but all that stuff needs constant revision. It takes work to create content to keep pushing out there to be original. Some people can do it until the moment that they're you know they retire. And for me, I decided to not define myself from my work and not be a workaholic. So there was a time that I was making great revenue from my book sales, the online video and audio sales, and then my practice. And that is the the meat, that's the meat of the meeting So that all in all, that's about where I get most of my revenue. Oh, I should add, back in the day, I gave live uh I gave retreats. People from all over the world would fly in and we would have a three-day retreat, and it was transform transformational. It was something really deep and profound, and I decided I didn't want to do it anymore. It just was too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so so I have been in transition, and where I am right now is to bump everything back up so I can retire in two years. Right. And so if someone's gonna identify with my work, it's someone who figured out a way to strike it big, maintain that, and slowly, naturally, naturally, lost uh lost the not lost, but experienced a slowdown that was always okay because it still always made enough money to live on, but lost the footing of being a star, you know, and I quit and I'm using air quotes, famous, well known, and found his or her place and where they were at this new lowered level of business. What's what do you find

Conversion Path SEO And Attention Spans

11:12

when you're selling stuff online? I mean, whether it's the one-to-one sessions or through or the video seminars or anything like that. What's the process? Do people go straight from YouTube to buy? Do you focus a lot on your email list and kind of trying to get people onto the email list first and then selling to them? Like what's your kind of process there? So I'm gonna I'm gonna answer your question, but around it at first, and then I'll try to I'll answer it. So back in the day, first, I don't know, wasn't 13 to 2018, um, I would put a video out in the video within like three or four months would typically um get up to a hundred thousand views. And and people would say, How do you do it? You know, people would just get a YouTube channel and they can bar barely get like you know, 50 or 100 views. And I said, Content. Because my early earlier videos videos were not produced very well. It almost are embarrassing. It is what what I had was interesting content that no one was talking about that featured um unique a unique vision, a unique uh unique understanding, unique skills. So content is so important if you want to make it and find your niche, because most people are competing with thousands of other people saying the same thing. And you you gotta find your voice, your style, and your your unique abilities, and then market those to other people. What's the process for you from someone seeing one of your videos to becoming a customer or a client? Is it do they go straight from YouTube over to the website and buy? Do they go on an email list? What tends to happen for you? Well, well, this is this is what really almost crushed my business was YouTube um spending more focus on its short format than the long form. Because in the long form videos, people will watch a video like a class, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And there are cards where it's throughout the video, something will pop up, it'll say something. If you click on it, it'll take you right to my website. There is information in the description that talks about my services and people on the website. But the way that I look at people now on the internet, everyone has ADHD. And I say that more as through through an analogy. People now cannot sustain their focus. They go from one one bit of information to the next, to the next, to the next. And if they watch my videos, they don't stop long enough to think about, okay, I want to check this guy's website up. And so it's still the same thing, but the business is less because people will see my videos, my short videos, and the same rule uh applies. It's about content, it's about a unique vision, it's about a unique understanding of something. It's about my brand, which is me, my personality, you know, the the the the intellectual clinical psychotherapist who also is emotional and sensitive that explains things. And and people like that. On every short, I put a uh what do you call it, a watermark that you can see the website, and people will go to the website. So if when people hear something that they like, they either remember the website on the short video or they just Google Ross Rosenberg. Right. And I I come up in most I do quite well with SEO when you put my name out there. Okay. I'm all over the place. And so so that that that's been the recipe. And I've been wanting to change that and do what other people have done, which there there are legions of coaches out there that don't owe their ass from the hole in the ground that take a three-month course because they can't find a job that suits them, so they decide they're gonna make money as a coach.

Ethics Versus Funnels And Bad Agencies

15:06

They take a three-month course in coaching, and half of the courses I understand is on marketing. And then they create these practices that and they employ mark marketing agencies and they build these programs, these funnels. See, that's where the money is. And so I I need to do that. I actually did that, but I found that the company that um I was using misrepresented their skill skill level and they didn't know how to handle me. And it wasn't like me, wrong, you know, ego, you know, ego-driven. They were so used to making shit up and having the coach talk about it and and being charismatic. Right. I wouldn't do any of that. That was the system, was it? They'd make up stuff that would sound good on on YouTube and the coach would just say it. And so they would send me these scripts. And it was a big contract. You know, I had pretty high aspirations. And then they would send me these scripts, and I said, I'm not doing that. I don't talk about that sh shit. By the way, what is the what is the swear away, please, yes. Actually, in my YouTube videos, I don't, because that takes away um potential audiences. It would be this content. It would be clickbait. And I would tell them, I said, I don't do that. And I try to say it's about content. If you're gonna write these scripts, you have to know what I do. You have to read my book. And at the end of the day, they were well-meaning, but they weren't as good as they portrayed themselves. And I I pulled the plug, which is a bummer because that that was my retirement plan to finally get get on with what everyone else is doing to make a lot of money. But I do so I do pretty well right now, but it's all direct services.

Curated Email List That Actually Opens

16:46

How big's your email list now? About I think you said it was about 10,000, maybe it's about it's about 10,000. But it's it's not the 10, it's that's not a really true answer. And most people will answer it in the expanded, exaggerated sense. My email list, once a year, I will go through half of the emails I sent, and then I will collect the email addresses that opened up at least one of my uh emails. And so I keep doing that. So my email list on average has a 30 to 40 percent open rate, which is most people are lucky if it's five percent. But to me, that's harassment. And I didn't I I won I won't send an email to someone that that I mean it it it annoys the crap out of me, and it annoys most people. And I don't I don't think it really works in my profession. So my my email list is curated, and uh and so that that's that is anyone who has has an email list and knows about marketing knows the value of that. It's it's a little piece of gold. Do you know about how many new subscribers you get per month? I'm gonna guess maybe uh five hundred. Okay. Okay. Uh but but um it's three hundred and sixteen thousand, and everything was big in the first ten or twelve years. And um again, you don't get as many subscribers. If your videos do well in shorts versus long form, you don't get the same amount of uh subscribers because people just go boom, boom, boom. They just keep going. And I'm guilty of that. Sometimes I'll be on my phone and I'm just kind of swiping away at the next little short. But it's it's still pretty bold. Not bold, it's it's still still a lot. I'm still out there and I'm reconnecting to a bigger audience. This this flourish that's been going on the last year of my getting my heart and my mind and my soul into it and understanding that I have to focus on shorts. I figured out everything that I did with marketing and stuff, I just figured it out. And it took me a little while to figure this one out. And so now the content on the shorts are different than the content before. I made the mistake of hiring an editor, because I work, I work really hard and I can't do everything. And so I hire people. And and the editor would would edit my videos and she would do wonderful work on editing, but she would also pick 10 shorts. And she didn't understand the material like I did, of course, and no one could expect that she did. And so she would pick what she thought were the best clips. And I found that I have to listen to them and I have to identify those clips. I have to be able to pick a beginning and an ending to each one, and then have them be chronological chronologically connected. So there's a topic within the larger video that and I'm progressing with my shorts through that topic. That's helped me out. That that's been part of this resurgence that's going on in my business. Aaron Powell When you do You said how valuable the email list is to you. What what are you doing at the moment to grow the email list? Like when where do you link to do you have lead magnets? Where do you link to the lead magnets from if you do it? I don't, you know, this is where I am a dinosaur. My email lists, my email lists bring in much less business, or my my emails. Mm-hmm. My email blasts bring in much less business than my YouTube work. My Instagram. So when I say videos, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter or X, those are the main ones. When I I use my email, I email list to send out weekly or sometimes monthly emails featuring something new or different. Because I'm writing articles. I write I write new articles maybe once a month, and I'm having different videos. The email list for me is about continuity. I don't use it to its potential. And that is that's why whoever is listening, I'm trying to be very accurate about. And when I say a dinosaur, I'm a successful dinosaur. If the meteor hasn't hit the earth yet, I'm a tyrannos fucking source drex. Actually, that's not me. Sounded sounded good. But it's just continuity. It's just moving forward because for me to make the income that I need now, I need to see uh 20 therapy sessions a week. And I can make a really good living that way. And and and so if I bring in anywhere from one to three new clients, say one to four clients a month, that's the business model I have because my clients stick around a while. The nature of my program, it is a year-long program, the self-love recovery program. And it's very deep, intense, and it's formulated to do a lot of different things during this period of time. And so the emails remind people of what I'm doing. It periodically, when I have sales, I'll lower the cost because I'll sell my books online, I'll sell the um the audio and video. But um I don't use Use it to its greatest extent, like other people do. How do I get them? Everyone that writes me an email, every new client that inquires about something, I take that email address and I copy and paste it on my Excel sheet. And so the people who are on my list are solid individuals with established interest in me versus some tool that mo a lot of people use that will just get all these emails. And they and they create these lists and and they're guilty of sending really they're they're they're they're the annoying people. Now these annoying people probably make more money than me. You know, that's that's kind of where I, you know, my sense of ethics and morality kind of play play into what I do. I don't want to sell out. And that's one of the problems I had with this marketing company. I would not sell out and be some something I'm not. I am not gonna talk about this bullshit narcissist topic that they wanted me to because that's that's candy. That's not what I do. I go into things deeply. I discuss things that so yeah, so the email list has been important, but it has been underutilized. And when I am I am gonna try another company for um marketing and funnel creation, that is when that email list will reach its fullest potential. Yeah. 10,000 is a lot. I mean, I think 10,000 good email addresses. Yeah, I think it it sounds like some of what you're talking about is very, very common with a lot of people who I I interview on the podcast or I um have worked with as clients. Like the most important thing is helping people. And it's you want to make money, but you're not willing to do that at the expense of as you put it, selling out, but also like just sharing information that is not as useful, that isn't like the main thing that people need in order to improve their life. And uh I think it's it's definitely something that is doable. It is possible to make more money and keep your ethics and make sure that you're doing things in the right style. I'm a living example of that. Is that um I am it I have something to sell. And that product, that brand, which is me, it saves lives. It worked. I know it because it's me. I know I know what I'm doing, I know how I do it, and I know how well I do it. And that is what

Narcissism Content That Stays Ethical

24:19

I do. Here's the interesting I'm gonna just shift a little bit to give you an way that I adapted to doing something that I didn't like, but decided I was gonna do it. So when I first got onto YouTube, I would do you know these videos a codependency treatment, codependency this, narcissism. The videos on narcissism always hit big. In fact, I have one video that's been viewed four million times. Whoa. Yeah, and don't take the mask off a covert narcissist, just run, or something like that. And and and so in the top ten of my YouTube videos, they account for about like seven million views. My um, and I realized that the topic of narcissism was my strong suit because everyone and their brother is talking about narcissism. Not as many back then, but there still was quite a lot of competition. But I talked about it in ways that no one else did. And so I just started to incorporate that. I would every so often do a video on narcissism. But every video on narcissism has a foundation, a connection to what I do, and narcissists impact on the victims. And so as much as I would just talk about narcissism, for me, that's not selling out. I just happened, I had to open my mind to it. And then so I accidentally became this world world-renowned expert in narcissism, which I am. I stand by it. I mean, I I know what I know, and it's more than most people, and I can articulate it better than most people. And so I embraced it. And so it was a way to bring in more people, and then people would then hear videos on either those videos or watch the videos on codependency or what I call self-love deficit disorder, and they would they write me and say, Hey, I'd like for you to help me. So that was an example of me looking at something that I thought originally didn't feel ethical to me, and I made it ethical. I found a way to build um another part of my brand. In fact, I provide expert, expert witness services. And once a year, I get about maybe 50 appointments. There's 99% of the times I talk them out of using me because people and it it's a I I think it's a really valuable session. They pay you know a decent amount of money. It's $300 or 45 minutes for for that session. But because of my expertise on divorces, the family law, attorneys, the guardian ed lightums, and you know, all of these different topics that I know quite a lot about, I help people, I orient them towards how the system works. And it doesn't work by hiring a guy like me to come into court and say, judge, that person's a narcissist. That's a fan, it's a fantasy. You can't use an expert that way. And so I help them understand how to either win and what they need to do, or help them understand that they can't get what they want because of the system is built against them. And every so often people hire me to actually be a witness or an expert witness. And that's and that's an example of how I took something that was not part of my business intentions, and I embraced it, and I found a way to just I stumble across things and I end up getting up and going, I look back at what I stumbled on and I see, well, that was a kind of a good thing. And and I incorporate incorporated that into my business

Retirement Plan And Ethical Marketing Help

27:42

model. Aaron Powell What's next for you? Where do you want to go? You mentioned a couple of things so far, but I'm kind of I want to talk about it a little more if that's okay. Like what do you want to do? You said you want to retire in a couple of years. Where do you need to get the business to? Where do you kind of want to get to? So for me, like most people who want to retire, it's about having money in the bank, investments, you know, real estate. And so so I have a certain number that I want to reach in my investment accounts, which is essentially my savings account. I'm not a gambler, so I don't I don't get into these risky stocks and trades and all that stuff. I'm I'm pretty mutual fund, mildly risky. And and to get to a certain number um so that um meta um uh Social Security will click in. And and at age sixty seven so right now I can't I I can't get much out of Social Security because I'm making too much. But the law is set up that once you've at sixty-seven, it doesn't matter how much you make, you get the full Social Security benefit. And so my plan is at age sixty-seven, which is a year about a year and a half, actually two years really, is to work halftime because I I like my I like my job. I love my job and to work halftime, like a day or two, um, and then spend the rest of my time enjoying life. Because I don't know if I'll know what to do if I stop working completely. And so I need to get myself connected to a marketer, marketing agency that is is not crazy expensive. These peop they're these people, they the ones that are from America, United States, um, if they're good, they want a portion of the revenue, anywhere from um from 10 to 25 to 35 percent. And they charge exorbitant fees because they know that these programs work. And so, and so I'm gonna dust myself off. It's been about four months since me and the actually not four months, excuse me, two months since me and the marketing company split waves. They violated the contract, they weren't helping me. So it's to find a marketing con a marketing company that can help me build a funnel that could help me create more sales and do it in a way that's ethical. That's about my stuff, not bullshit um, you know, clickbait or talking about promises of you know cures and help, you know. And so that that is my goal, and and I'm gonna have to refocus myself on it soon sooner than later. And now in the meantime, my goal is to keep relevant. I need I um I survive by new clients. So that that is to do the videos, the podcasts. My podcasts are essentially they are the YouTube videos. Whenever I do a new YouTube video, the long form, I go, welcome to my latest YouTube video and podcast. The podcast is the audio from the video. And so they're they're they're they're both and and the podcast is has been doing well over the last five years, and just keep all of the all of the gears and working in synchronicity and and just keep the business flow going. And that's and and that's how I make I make a living and and I and I get to do something that I love. I love that. Ross, thanks

Where To Find Ross And Farewell

30:54

so much for coming on the show today. This has been awesome hearing your story and and how it's all worked for you. If somebody wants to go and check you out, where should they go? What's your website or YouTube channel? It's selfloverecovery.com or email me at help at selfloverecovery.com. Beautiful. Ross, thanks again for coming on. I really, really appreciate your time and sharing your story with everybody. Well, thank you. It was fun. I don't usually talk about this stuff. And it was actually helpful to me because I do my best work after I'm done talking. And it's it sounds strange, but like like in a therapy session, I'll say something because um things just come to me. And and I'll and I'll go, oh, that's a good idea, and I'll stop and I'll write it down. And so so there's a part of me that listens to myself. And so what was helpful for me is to explain what I do and how I do it and understand it from a historical point of view. So thank you for that. And and I hope that I can inspire someone, some people to find their 15 minutes of fame, their their time where they can feel that they can connect to a larger audience and enjoy that while doing something important. Amazing. Thank you so much, Ross. And as always, thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate you guys, and we'll see you in the next episode.