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Work Less, Earn More is the podcast that explores how to get the most out of every hour you work. Gillian Perkins brings more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and educator to help you design a business that's not only flexible and fulfilling, but highly profitable. She shares strategies that are working in her own business to save time and maximize profits. She also features interviews with successful business owners on how they’re achieving big things in their businesses with crazy-little time investment. Share Work Less, Earn More with an overworked entrepreneur you know who could use a change of pace!
[0:00] There's a good chance this might not be the first video you've ever watched
[0:03] about how to decide what YouTube channel to start. It's something that a lot of people get hung up on that prevents them from starting a YouTube channel for a long time. So we're going to do something a little bit different in today's video to make sure that we get you the answer to this question so that you can finally make that decision about what channel to start and start moving forward. You can actually get the channel started and get it to start growing. So what we're going to do is look not just at one way of figuring out what channel to start, but instead look at four different methods you can use to make this decision. And the reason we're going to look at four methods is because we've all got different personalities, and along with our different personalities come different ways of thinking about things and kind of different thinking processes that we use to figure things out. So the process that works for one person might not work for you. So today, we're going to make sure that we finally get this question answered for you by looking at four different methods so that you can choose the one that makes the most sense to you.
[1:07]
[intro bumper]
We became entrepreneurs because more than anything, we want freedom. We want to be in control of our own schedule, income, and life. But unfortunately, that isn't always the reality of being a business owner. I'm Gillian Perkins, and I'm on a mission to take back entrepreneurship for what it's supposed to be.
In every episode, I'll share with you how to get the most out of every hour you work so that you can work less and earn more. Let's get to it.
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[1:42]
Okay, starting out, we're going to look at the intersection method. The intersection method is basically where you use a Venn diagram to look at the intersection between your interests and your skills. And you can layer in a third category here and look at the intersection of all three. You can also look at what's popular on YouTube. So for example, with your passion, the things you love and are excited about, you make a whole list. You know, maybe you're interested in gardening, maybe you're interested in cooking, maybe you're interested in mechanics or building things, maybe you're interested in business strategy, whatever those things are. Then you make this second category. And these are the things that you are good at. Okay, things that you actually have knowledge about. And this I would say for YouTube, at least is the least important category, because you could have a channel about something that you know nothing about. And you could just position yourself as a student, you know, somebody who's exploring this topic. But I think it's worth considering, you know, do you have something valuable you could bring to the table?
[2:42] This third category, these are the things that are popular. So you are going to not consider every topic on YouTube. You are just going to consider these options that you already listed over here, these different ideas that you have that you're interested in. And if there was something that you thought, you know, I am both interested in that and I have skill with it. Those are the ones you want to study the very most. And you're going to do keyword research. So you can use a tool like TubeBuddy or vidIQ or even Google AdWords, something like that, to see how many searches these different keywords, keywords that relate to each of your different interests are getting each month. However, my very favorite way, honestly, to do keyword research for this sort of thing is to just go to YouTube itself and just type in related keywords. So for each of the different items on your list over here, I want you to make a list of a bunch of related topics, okay? Topics you might cover on a channel like that, okay? And I would recommend at least 10 for each of the topics you're considering.
[3:41] Then look up those individual topics and see how many views the top videos for those keywords get. And also make sure that you pay attention to, are the top results when you look up, you know, how to plant an organic garden or how to bake sourdough bread or whatever it is, do they directly match the keyword? Because if those top results don't directly match the keyword, it doesn't matter if it got millions of views, it's not really relevant to this. And so what you're looking for is of these ideas, and preferably of these ideas right here in this middle section, which ones are the most popular?
[4:19] It might be one idea, it might be two or three, but those are gonna be your top contenders and their ideas that you know are popular, so you can choose whichever one of them you're most excited about. Now, we're gonna move on to the next strategy here, but before we do, one last tiny thing is the person who this method is going to be best for is somebody who has some passion, and that's really what they're most focused on with deciding what YouTube channel to start. Not exactly how much money it can make or anything like that, but they wanna make sure that they make a channel that is something that they are excited about, they'll be able to talk about for years.
[4:53] Okay, this next one is called the strategy first method. As you might imagine, this is best for people who are strategic thinkers, who like to do things really logically. They don't just want to go after something that they like doing, they want to go after the right answer. So basically, for this method, you are going to, first of all, research on YouTube. And what you're going to be looking for is categories or niches on YouTube that are popular, meaning the videos get a lot of views, but are not very competitive, meaning there aren't a lot of videos made on these topics.
[5:31] Now, this could be very overwhelming. You know, there's millions and millions of videos on YouTube. So where would you start with this? Well, I would recommend starting with videos that you watch. So maybe you notice that there's a topic that you like watching videos about and you can never get enough of it. There are never enough videos to satisfy your interest in that topic.
[5:51] Probably not something like chess, for example, where there's like tons of people making videos about chess, but you might have something that you are really interested in that, again, is underserved. So you're looking for categories like that, and I would recommend that you try to find at least three such underserved categories so that you have a few options to choose from. Now, another way you can do this research is with a keyword research tool. So you can use something like vidIQ or TubeBuddy, or I actually prefer using a non-YouTube tool. So something like Ubersuggest or SEMrush or Google AdWords or something like that. And what you're looking for is, again, topics that are popular, meaning there's a lot of searches for them per month, but are not very competitive. And most of these tools, they can show you that data. They can show you how many searches per month a keyword gets and score them on how competitive they are, meaning how many different people or websites or articles are trying to rank for those keywords.
[6:51] Again, there's a gazillion keywords that you could try to sort through. Don't try to sort through them all. Start with what you're interested in. So go back to the method we were just talking about, the intersection method. And for this strategy first method, you're going to focus mainly on kind of this quadrant here. But still, this is kind of your pool of initial ideas that you're going to research. You're just then going to really heavily focus on the research part of it. So again, you're looking for categories that are popular, meaning lots of views or lots of monthly searches, but are less competitive or underserved.
[7:30] Now, from here, once you've done this initial research, you're going to continue with your strategy first method with step two, which is where you are really going to diagnose the audience. And so when I say diagnose the audience, I mean you are going to do some research again into who is watching these videos. So some of this you can do logically. You can think, you know, who would be interested in these videos, but I'd also recommend that you get into the comments of these videos and you see what kind of comments these people are leaving, what they're saying about the videos, what are they, well, commenting on, but, you know, are they saying this is so helpful or are they saying it's interesting or are they saying that's a really unique perspective or are they being critical? What kind of comments are these people making and what do they reveal about who they are? And further what questions are they asking this is huge because what questions they are asking gives you lots of ideas for good videos that you could create especially if you discover that some of those questions aren't being answered by videos right now so the strategy first method it's really just like a research focused method and I think something that you will notice as we look at these different methods is that there's overlap between most of them most of them involve brainstorming different ideas probably that you're interested in and then doing some sort of research. And then there might be other steps too. It's more that like the focus for each one is different. And what you ultimately make the decision on might be a bit different.
[8:57]
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[10:46] So next we've got the backwards engineered business method or the BEB method. So this is the method that I would choose if you are less interested actually in YouTube itself. And really what you're interested in is online business. You just want to use YouTube as a tool to get visibility for your business. Now, maybe you've already started your business or maybe not. I'm kind of guessing that in this case, the answer is more likely not. Because if you have already started your business, then it will probably be somewhat self-evident what channel you should start. Because obviously, you would probably want to start a channel around the topic that you help your customers with, right? So assuming you haven't yet started your business, what you'll want to do first is decide what you want to sell. So like, what is the product? What is the end game here? and this is why we're backwards engineering the business. So you're going to think about what type of product you want to sell. Like, is it going to be an affiliate product? Is it going to be a digital product that you create? Is it going to be a physical product? And also the topic, choosing the niche for your business or the industry for your business.
[12:01] Then from there, you're going to think, okay, what sort of content would attract? Okay, so content, not really thinking so much about the exact channel yet, but we want to attract people who want help with this thing. So what are some like different specific video ideas that would be interesting to them if they would want to buy that product? And then from there, the final step will be kind of planning the channel itself. Okay, so on YouTube, what is this going to look like?
[12:31] And you might go and look at channels that cover some of these topics. So look up these topics on YouTube, find channels that made videos about that, and look at what is their channel about as a whole? What kind of niche does it fit in? What formats and styles of videos do those channels make? And by seeing like real life examples of channels that are talking about this thing that ultimately relates to this product you want to sell, I think you'll get kind of a visceral reaction to which of these channels you would actually like to make a channel that's like, you know, which one seems like video that you would enjoy making that you would want to keep making on into the future? And which one is the most popular? You know, are there some different kind of concepts of channels that are doing really well? Others that are struggling, even if they are talking about the same general topic? I think a great example of this might be like the health and wellness or fitness space. There are channels that mostly make videos about their personal experience, where it's like, I tried creatine for 30 days or something like that, or I tried weightlifting for 30 days. Then there are channels that are very like science-based, where they make videos where they explain science concepts. There are videos that focus on nutrition versus channels that focus on fitness. So there's so many different varieties of channels in that one niche or vertical on YouTube.
[13:49] And when you watch these different ones, you might notice that some of these videos might be a lot easier for you to make than others. Some of them would work with your personality or not so again we're kind of looking at the same steps here like we're looking at this step of what are you interested in what are you passionate about what would you like doing we're also being a bit strategic about it we're doing some research but by doing these steps in a different order it's gonna work for people with a certain personality or thinking about things in a certain way and particularly with this one with the backwards engineered business method. It is about kind of what your value is or what your focus is.
[14:27] If what you really want at the end of the day is to make money with your channel and to fuel a business, then we really want to start there, not start with all our random wild ideas, because you might separately have lots of ideas for YouTube channels you could start.
[14:42] But you have to ask yourself, which one is really going to serve your end goal? Okay, now let's look at the last of these methods. And this is the lab method, okay?
[14:52] So basically what the lab method is, big picture, not talking about the steps exactly, is it's experimenting with different video ideas in kind of a real-life way, and then from there deciding what you actually want to create. So while the other methods were about pre-planning, this method is about learning by doing. And I will say that this is actually the method that worked for me. So like you may have, I tried some different variations that are like some of the methods we talked about earlier. I tried focusing on the research, you know, figuring out what topics were popular, thinking about what topics I was interested in and trying to choose one to make a channel about. And I ended up just really frustrated. I started and stopped several different like blogs and YouTube channels trying to find the one and trying to stick with it and be consistent. And I just couldn't seem to manage to be consistent. And also it was really, really difficult to choose one idea to focus on in the first place at all. But so for the lab method, what I did was I just gave myself freedom to create videos about whatever I wanted. And it might sound like that's not even a method, but there are some rules here.
[16:02] First rule, again, is freedom, okay? So that you're not going to limit yourself at first. You are just going to make videos about whatever you want to. But the second rule, and this one is, I would say, equally important, is that you are going to be consistent, okay and what you are going to be consistent about is your posting schedule okay because if you give yourself total freedom over when you post and what you post about most likely you are not going to post enough videos to figure this out and you're going to just feel kind of like overwhelmed and purposeless and directionless okay so we need to give ourselves some sort of confinement okay put ourselves in a little bit of a box here which is i am going to post a video every single week I can make it about whatever I'm interested in right now, but...
[16:50] Every single week, I'm posting a video no matter what. And the best way to do this that I found is to give yourself a schedule. So not just like you tell yourself every week you have to post a video, but then the week goes by and you didn't post a video. And you're like, how did that happen? You know, where did the week go? You make a schedule. So you're like, on Mondays, I will plan videos. On Tuesdays, I will film the videos. And then on Wednesdays and Thursdays, I will edit the videos. And then every Friday, I will post a video. So you give yourself a schedule like that. and it could be the schedule but it totally doesn't have to be so we got a rule here we are consistent and what this does is it forces you to test you know you need to do the experiments to test different ideas and figure out what you actually like talking about what you're actually the most interested in and what you like making videos about which isn't always the same thing as what you are just interested in from here the third step if you will is to choose an idea okay And this might sound like, well, isn't that the obvious last step of any of these? But I feel that in this particular method, it's an especially kind of big part of the process.
[17:55] Because here we are going to decide like how long we're going to do these first steps. And by the way, I would recommend that you do set a time limit on that somewhere around two or three months if you're posting a video each week. And that when you get to the end of that time, then you decide what topic do I want to focus on for now? Especially if you are really struggling with the decision, let it be that. Let it be, I'm going to stick with this topic for now. You can always switch to a different idea in the future. And of course, that goes for all the methods. But this is the method for the person who's like, you know, having a hard time nailing it down and the other methods haven't worked for them. So they need to experiment a bit. And so this is especially important here that you know that it's just a for now decision. You can change your mind in the future. You can pivot. You can start a new channel.
[18:44] You've got lots of options, but you will make the most progress. And I promise you will not regret starting your channel now so you can start making progress. And that's two different things. One part is starting growing your audience, okay? Because that takes time, right? So we need to get that ball rolling. But the other part, which really I suppose is the first part.
[19:05] Is starting the process of figuring out the channel, okay? So even if you don't know what channel you want to start, even if you're really struggling, well, just start posting videos. And then just make a decision, even if you don't know if you want it to be forever, because this is going to help you get closer to the truth, closer to the solution that you're looking for. All right, well, there you have it. The four different methods you can use to decide what YouTube channel to start. I hope that one of these stood out to you as a method that would work well with your personality, depending on if you are more of like a free spirit and you have trouble narrowing things down, or if you are more focused on the money and the business side of things, or if you are a very like strategic logical thinker if you want to use the strategy first method, Or if you are more like passion-driven and you want to focus on what you really like doing and then kind of as secondary considerations, consider what you're actually good at and what's actually popular on YouTube.
[20:06] So yeah, I hope one of those methods will work well for you. Now, once you choose which YouTube channel to start, then you will need a strategy for getting this channel off the ground and growing, right? So if you haven't already, make sure you check out my YouTube Masterclass. It is all about YouTube strategy. I teach you in the masterclass how the YouTube algorithm works and how you can work with it to grow your channel as quickly as possible. Masterclass is called Three Secrets to Reach 1,000 Subscribers in Just Three Months. There's going to be a link in the description below for you to sign up for that. It's an instant access workshop. So you can sign up and then just immediately watch it. Obviously, it's pre-recorded. So you can watch it any time zone, anything like that. And it's about one hour long, but I know it's going to save you so much time and so much frustration as you get started on YouTube, because if you don't have a good strategy going into it, it doesn't matter how good of an idea you choose for your channel, it can take you years to get any traction. And most people give up if they don't see traction within that first year. So I want to show you how you can start getting your channel to see some serious growth within just the first three months because I know that's going to be so motivating to you. It's going to help you stick with it long term and it's also going to get your channel way further than it ever could otherwise.
[21:30] All right. Well, that's all for this video. Thanks so much for joining me for this. If you aren't already subscribed, make sure you do that now because I post new videos every single month all about online business and online marketing and YouTube strategy and things like that. And I would love to have you join me for the next one. And if you liked to this one, give it a like as well. All right, that's it. See you guys next time.
[21:51]
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Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Work Less, Earn More. Now, here's what I want you to do next. Take a screenshot of this episode you're listening to right now and share it out on your Instagram stories. And when you do, make sure you tag me at gillianzperkins so I can see you're listening. Sharing on stories is going to help more people find this podcast so they too can learn how to build their business in a way that allows them to work less and earn more and if you really love the show head over to apple podcasts right now and leave work less earn more a review to give it a boost and help even more people find it okay let's wrap this up i'm gillian perkins and until next week stay focused and take action.
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