How I Grew My YouTube Channel to 25K Subscribers in 1 Year

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Learn how Brendan Ecker optimized his own YouTube channel to over 25,000 Subscribers in just 1 Year.

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Brendan Ecker is not a financial advisor. All statements made by The Brendan Ecker Influence, subsidiary to Gold Shark Media Inc., are strictly opinionated, and for entertainment and educational purposes only. Gold Shark Media Inc., Brendan Ecker, or The Brendan Ecker Influence Show, will not be held responsible for any financial losses. In viewing this content, it is implied that the audience viewer understands and has read this financial disclaimer. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

If you're watching this, we are gonna focus on my YouTube channel a little bit and how I like to run my YouTube channel. Okay, so my YouTube channel is all about entrepreneurship, personal development, education, sales, life. Essentially that's pretty much what my channel is. So if you kind of look at my channel, you can kind of see some of the stuff we post, like chase your dreams or stay poor. What separates winners from losers? My thumbnails. It usually has a dynamic photo of me. If I'm talking in the video, if it's more of an advert like this video right here for the dreamers, that's so because I'm not in it. Obviously I don't put myself in the thumbnail and little things like that. I mean that'll help your channel too, you know, because you want to stay on topic. You want to stay focused on what the audience wants and what your YouTube channel is about, what your content is about.

Speaker 1: 0:45

A lot of YouTube channels struggle because they're posting stuff that's unrelated to their channel's topic, right? So if you look at mine, mine's all advertising, marketing again, entrepreneurship, life, personal development. So if you look at my channel, it's pretty consistent to what the brand and the niche is, right. So Apricot Solar here. This is just like a shout out, an influencer shout out. We did. We told the client we'd get them 5,000 views. We still have some work to do on SEO. We got to get more views, but you know, part of the way I like to do that is simply by shorts, right? So when we get, when we create the shorts, we're going to get a bunch more views. You know what I mean. So timestamps are great too. If you want to actually get real views on YouTube, then using timestamps is excellent. And again, just community posting. You know engagement. So if you go on, so when you start running my channel, managing my channel, you'll see the way it's set up.

Speaker 1: 1:33

You'll see that I have some interviews where I'm talking to, you know, other entrepreneurs, right? Nick Hutchison, chad Huffer. Those interviews crushed it. I did another one with Catherine TDidi, and then I did another one with an Alan Lazaros. Yeah, alan Lazaros. Here's Catherine Tidi and these are both essentially entrepreneurs. All of these, all of my guests, are entrepreneurs, business people, scientists, just interesting people who are changing the world, you know. So those are the guests I'm trying to get.

Speaker 1: 1:57

And again, sorry for my voice being a little bit deeper than it usually is. I'm kind of sick. So, as you can see, I'm all about the YouTube shorts game because it works, right. So we're a newer channel, in my opinion, because we're not even two or three years old yet. Right, we're just now coming around the two year mark. But you know, we haven't really gone hard on YouTube, but this is just kind of some of the stuff I like to post.

Speaker 1: 2:17

So, as we kind of move on, I want to show you, you know, some of our videos. We'll show you the videos here real quick. Why not, again, give you one more little look of what everything looks like? There you go and then shorts same thing. We've got a ton of shorts that provide a lot of value. Our audience loves the shorts. It looks good on the feed. Our thumbnails are super powerful, right, it tells you what you're going to see, but it doesn't tell you too much, which is important for optimization. We have great guests and we usually try to make at least three shorts per guest, if we can. Yeah, you know this is what it's all about. You know this is what YouTube is about is creating a life for yourself that can actually give you more opportunity.

Speaker 1: 2:56

So, 29,200 subscribers how did I get there? So, yeah, I got to 29,000 subscribers because, essentially, I did promote a lot of my videos through YouTube advertising, youtube promoting. However, a lot of my views came from just really good videos. Right, I'm a decent I mean, I like to think I'm a decent video editor. You know, some of my videos just are horrible, right, some of my videos just they don't do good at all. Some of my videos, people don't watch them and it just looks stupid, right? But YouTube's competitive. There's millions of people on YouTube every day and there's more people signing up for YouTube to build their own YouTube channel today. So, at the end of the day, it's a super competitive if you're going to be on YouTube.

Speaker 1: 3:34

So how do you combat that? Well, for me personally, I like to focus on channels that are similar to mine, but I also like to do community posts and I'm going to start doing them a lot more. I haven't really been doing them as much as I should, but I definitely want to start doing them more, right? So this could be something as simple as who do you think will be the next president in 2024? And it could be like Trump. Maybe you put Patrick Matt David in there. You know you make it like entrepreneurial. So which entrepreneur of these four would make the best US president for the next election? Just an example right, this was this is what gets people kind of engaged. I haven't really posted any community posts yet, but I really want to, and it's a great way to get subscribers for free and not have to promote your videos just to get them. So a lot of my videos that I ended up just doing really well on were the ones where I had podcasting guests. I was answering questions, answering difficult questions that people wanted to know, and so that was kind of that's kind of what got me to almost 30,000 subscribers.

Speaker 1: 4:34

Now, you know, it's really just episodes or it's episodes that are evergreen content, like why most businesses fail. You know that's not necessarily evergreen content, but you know a lot of my content. We still need a lot more of that. You know, like 10 tips to grow a billion dollar brand slash business. Those are great topics, right? 10 life changes that can increase your net worth.

Speaker 1: 4:56

Another great video because, at the end of the day, any, anything with a number, anything with a countdown on YouTube, it crushes percentages, random numbers, like that. It works. I don't know why. I'm not the YouTube gods, but it works Okay. So, yeah, I mean like, if you're going to be on YouTube, if you're going to do this stuff, you're going to be video editor, then you got to ready. You got to be ready for YouTube to switch everything on you all the time, right?

Speaker 1: 5:20

So, in terms of all of this, let's show you a little bit about the preferences Run button. Sorry about that, hold on, we'll focus on the. What was I looking for? Newer channel. Sorry again, guys, I'm fighting off a cold right now, so it's hard for me to find stuff at the moment. Kind of tired.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So we have three channels, right, and so for these three channels, like ones for B2B Growth Today that's just our marketing agency channel, and this is our second marketing agency channel. This is for more of the podcasts. I'd like the podcasts to start ending up on Gold Shark Media and I'd like more of the marketing content and advertising, any kind of promotional shout outs. I want that going here to B2B Growth Today. And then for Brendan Acker, this is just more my life, you know, experiences things like that, right? So we're really just trying to grow an awesome channel here where we can do big things and, you know, break the surface level of YouTube and see what we can do on our own. So that's kind of how I like to run my YouTube channel, at least.

Speaker 1: 6:20

But if we go to customize channel here, if we go to customize channel sorry, it's not working there we go. Oh my God, I hate being sick. I don't know about you guys, being sick is the worst dude, it's fucking horrible. So these are kind of that's my channel trailer. I just like that because I think it's a great. You know, I kind of try to switch my trailer, my channel trailer video out every now and then, and then for returning subscribers I choose a video that everybody can relate to, and so, and then, with this order, I like to put my popular videos it's good to put these up here.

Speaker 1: 6:57

Right, you want to put the four of you on the top, because that's the YouTube's AI will essentially match up with the audience's taste. So if they want a certain video, then your video will pop up. You know, if they're, if what they're interested in matches your title or your YouTube description, your YouTube video concept, then it's going to crush. But it only crushes if you have that for you tab up here, because that's the first thing people will see is the ones, the videos that are made specifically for them, right? And then you have, then you want to put your popular videos up here, because this is, these are the ones that everybody likes to watch, these are the ones that clearly did the best. And then videos this is just your regular content, your orderly sequence of events, right? So you have your basic videos and then, obviously, you have your shorts here, and this is the way your YouTube page should be set up.

Speaker 1: 7:39

And so, for branding, I just made a basic profile picture with a white background. I like that white background. It's kind of like that Kardashian effect. I call it. I call it the Kardashian effect because, you know, the first time I really saw the white background was on my mom's Kardashian show, and I noticed the Kardashians love to have that white background because it makes you glow, right? So just a nice little tip for you. And then, plus, white looks clean, right, you know, white just looks icy, it looks nice, looks clear, and so I like that. When it comes to YouTube, when it comes to building websites, white, white, white. And then so for the banner, I just kind of have my logo and my watermark and all of my other agency logos and nothing special there. Basic info you always want to have your main channel's name by this at sign. That'll help optimize your channel Right. And then if you want to make a description that's always kind of there, that's right in your about section about you, then this is kind of where you'll find that Right.

Speaker 1: 8:40

So there's so many ways to make money on YouTube. You know, and eventually you monetize. I actually I monetize YouTube through sponsorships so you know, I might do a shout out for another business or another brand. I might, you know, I might work on one of their YouTube videos for them, and that's kind of the way I like to do YouTube. But I make more money from the sponsorships and, you know, doing brand deals and whatnot than I do actually like getting monetized. Like I still haven't even really been monetized yet through YouTube just because I haven't reached I haven't reached the watch hours yet, but I'm pretty close. I've been. I've gotten emails now like, oh, yeah, you're almost a monetization, so that's cool. But yeah, these are all the links we have If you haven't already been looking. Um, you know we have IMDB here. I just try to keep everything. Eventually, I want to have a social media manager for each of these just managing all of this stuff, and that'd be really cool. That's kind of the goal later, at least.

Speaker 1: 9:30

And then in terms of content oops, sorry, wrong button In terms of the settings this is where a lot of people mess up too. So on their YouTube channel they don't put the tags in that match their channels, you know niche. They also don't click this button. No, set this channel as not made for kids. I never upload content that's made for kids. This can confuse people and wrap people up. I remember it confused me when I first started on YouTube and I was just like what the hell? Like, what is this? Like? No, set this channel as not made for kids. Like, why would I not want to make my videos for kids? My videos are for everybody, right? So you're going to think that. But and you're going to want to click the yes button, yeah, don't worry, my videos are made for kids. My kids can watch my videos, but that's not what they're asking. Youtube is basically saying no, set this channel as it's not a kid's channel. Like a kid's channel like Blue's Clues, like Dora the Explorer, right? Like? Like children's shows, like children's YouTube channels, whatever that might be. Educational YouTube channels for children, right? If your YouTube channel isn't for children, specifically for children in the niche, then don't click that button. You know you want to click no set.

Speaker 1: 10:32

This channel is not made for kids, because our audience is everybody, yes, but you know, mostly our audience is 25 to 35 years old, right? Usually that'll be a 10 year. Usually your audience will be a 10 year deviation from your current age, right? So if you're 15, your audience is probably going to be like 15 to 25 years old. You know what I mean. If you're, if you're 35, then your audience is probably gonna be somewhere between like 35 and 55, you know, right now my audience is 25 to 35 and that's kind of what's crushing. And then I also have an audience that's kind of that's like 18 to 25. So it's kind of I'm kind of like right in the middle and I have this sweet spot.

Speaker 1: 11:10

So promotions, this is just my, this is essentially just your Google ads tag, right, and then don't show potentially inappropriate words. I like to chat this just to make sure you know people will say racist stuff or whatever People will say nasty to you. You know that's just YouTube. Whatever it might be, you just want to have that box chat so people can't say things they shouldn't be. And advertisement disable interest based ads. If you select this option, personalized ads will not be shown on videos on your channel, such as ads based on viewers interests or remarketing ads. You don't want to clip this because you know when you do get monetized, you're going to get paid based on the amount of advertising you have on your channel and then allow viewers to clip my content. If you deselect this option, viewers will not be able to clip your content, so I like to allow viewers to clip my content because the more publicity the better.

Speaker 1: 11:57

And then feature eligibility. This is just essentially, you know, standard features upload videos, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This isn't nothing too crazy. I mean this is just, you know, intermediate features. It's just basic settings, okay. So yeah, I mean this is cool stuff and this is just what it's all about YouTube's cool, youtube's fun. And this is just. If you want to have like basic, if you want to have like a satin stone description on your YouTube channels, with satin stone tabs that are always going to be there, then this is where you'll set that up YouTube channels with set in stone tags that are always going to be there, then this is where you'll set that up. Creative demographics, promotions, I mean yeah, so go to Google ads. You know, that's kind of where you can see your your YouTube advertising. So let's.

Speaker 1: 12:40

I've spent a pretty good amount of money on YouTube ads. For not spending a lot of money, I guess, I don't know if that makes any sense. I just I haven't spent too much money on it, but I've kind of played around with YouTube ads because I'm more of a fan of Facebook ads. I like Instagram ads. It can give me kind of everything I need, but it just goes to show YouTube ads work, man. I mean, I haven't been active. I haven't run a YouTube ad in a few months. I've been focusing a lot more of my money on my team and building out my agencies and building out a good system where we can, you know, make consistent revenue. So a lot of my money and a lot of my advertising dollars, I've been reallocating them towards building a solid team for both of my agencies, and so that's kind of why recently I haven't been spending money on stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 13:22

So anyways, back to YouTube Again. I have a bunch of tabs open. I'm aware of this, and this is just because I have so much going on, man. I mean I actually have, like I said, I got three different channels right. So I have Brennan Acker, influence, b2b Girl Today, gsm, and then I actually want to create a fourth channel where we are doing more TBEI clips and that's going to be like the Brennan Acker Influence clips, kind of like JRE clips, right, where it's a Joe Rogan experience clips, where you're just taking like five to 12 minute clips and you're putting them into your video.

Speaker 1: 13:51

So anyways, guys, there's not really much else to this when it comes to optimizing videos. Actually, there is more. When it comes to optimizing videos, I really like to use it IQ Right. So I'm actually using my other account, but if I let me log out and go to my B2B growth you know I signed up I should have actually had the premium account for my main Brendan Acker YouTube channel, but whatever, nothing's going to be perfect. So you can kind of get some pretty good stats here, and so that's just one video I was in the middle of optimizing. That's one of our testimonials, our client testimonials. He's super happy with our services, which is great. But yeah, yeah, vidiq is the best I like to go to optimize and this will help you get like your YouTube videos, like banging when it comes to SEO. I didn't realize this until I started using it, but, like, my title got better. You know vidIQ, if you pay for the boosted services, they'll essentially just help you boost your channel a little bit. Right, they'll help you, um, you know, because you get title thumbnail and it tells you like okay, this is how it's going to be optimized, based on the data, and vidIQ has a archive of see. I haven't optimized all of these yet. I haven't redone these, some of these. I'm curious to see what we're going to be able to do when we do change these titles. But anyways, yeah, this is how I like to optimize my videos. So let's just say you know this video right here, one of my ads, so we'll go to this video and then, okay, the title's terrible, apparently right, so let's generate a new. Let's generate some new titles.

Speaker 1: 15:18

Best Business Growth Strategies featuring Sam Alvins. I don't know why that's in there, because Sam Alvins isn't in our video, but the seven strategies for business growth how to grow your business that one's not too bad. You know, sits business growth strategies that made Tesla the most valuable company in the world. I mean, yeah, I mean like again, you'd have to kind of regenerate these based on your title and what your video is about. So that video that I'm actually trying to optimize right now is more an advertisement for B2B Growth Today. So it just outlines our services and what we do. So this is pretty good how to scale your business, business growth strategies Right. So that alone is already a better title. So, boom, that's upgraded. And then now I mean I personally like this. I think this does justice.

Speaker 1: 16:08

But just for purposes of this training video, let me just show you how you can optimize your thumbnails for YouTube videos. So when you optimize thumbnails for a YouTube video, you can do it like this through vidIQ and the boosted plan. So pay for that boosted plan and you can grow a pretty badass YouTube channel. Again, I charge money for all of this stuff. Everything I'm telling you. Other people will charge you money to tell you, like, all these secrets, like vidIQ is a huge freaking video optimization secret. Vidiq is a great way to grow your YouTube channel, great way to like actually build something special, you know okay, so like I don't know why it thought that that was a great idea. But let's try it again. Sometimes these can be really slow. Again, this isn't even finished uploading yet.

Speaker 1: 16:51

But my point is that vidIQ will essentially recreate your thumbnail for you and make sure that it's something that can actually get some views right, based on, again, the data, like what's actually good? It's pretty awesome how it'll tell you too. It'll tell you like oh, it's your videos, your thumbnails, missing emotional triggers. The thumbnail could improve by focusing on a more visually engaging image. Right, unique concept, creative emotion or creative execution. I mean curiosity, elicitation, you know all I mean. That's pretty advanced stuff, right? So here we go, already, a better um thumbnail already, maybe not, I mean, I still like this one better, but you know we're going to leave it how it is.

Speaker 1: 17:31

And then for your tags, you know, look at, like business to business. That's a horrible tab to use. Right, based on the data. Nobody's searching that, so let's take that out and instead we'll replace it with something like lead generation. And then publish, Authorize with YouTube, give us a moment and then guess what happens. Set it up with your account, just link to. All you got to do is sync it up, give Google permission, because Google owns YouTube, and once you do that, everything's nice and published now and we have new tags, fresh tags and the video is way more optimized Pretty awesome, right? So this is what you can do with vidIQ today in the software at your fingertips, right? So we now have an optimized video, or a little bit more optimized video. So that's cool stuff At the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 18:16

Ladies and gentlemen, I got nothing else for you. Stay prudent, stay powerful and stay wealthy. Be sure to subscribe to this channel If you want more tips on YouTube growth. I'm going to be making more extensive videos on this in the future. I'm going to try to get over this cold so I don't look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer when I make these videos. But with that being said and done, stay prudent, stay powerful and stay wealthy. We'll see you in the next episode.