5 YouTube Features Preventing You from Generating Revenue (and how to work around them) | Ep. 10

How do YouTube features impact your ability to earn revenue? It might surprise you! Learn which ones could be holding your earnings back and simple ways to fix them. Implementing these YouTube tips for your bio, home page, playlists and trailer video will help you generate more revenue with your channel. 

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Transcript

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Meredith  0:00  
Is your YouTube channel set up to keep you from generating revenue? You might actually be surprised about this YouTube is, of course, the best place to grow your audience online because of the powerful algorithm. But what if I told you that some of YouTube's popular features are actually preventing you from generating revenue, meaning sales with your videos, let's talk about it here on episode number 10 of the video brand infusion podcast. My name is Meredith and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business for consistent revenue without constant selling. And whether this is the first video that you've watched of mine. Or maybe you've seen a whole bunch you know, I love saying that YouTube is the most powerful way to build your audience online, to build your list to generate sales to generate revenue in your business. But YouTube itself is also a business, which poses some often overlooked conundrums for US business owners who are using YouTube as a marketing platform. And if you continue creating content, to build your audience to build your list to generate revenue with YouTube, without first fixing some of these roadblocks, then you'll be missing out on leads and sales without even realizing it, even if you do publish great videos consistently. So let me explain why this is huge. Inside of my membership, and inside of like my own strategies for YouTube and audience growth and lead generation and revenue generation, I follow a framework that I created that I basically just think of as a roadmap. And I really love this roadmap analogy for this kind of business for content creation, for course creation, selling digital products and programs. Because it's not like as soon as you start your engine and get going, you just have an open highway with no obstacles or roadblocks or pitstops. Right. But the nature of business in general, any business is that it's kind of your job to identify those roadblocks that are holding you back from going faster, and eliminating them as you eliminate those roadblocks. That might be keeping you stuck or keeping you moving at a slower pace. Like a speed bump, for example, you eliminate those you move faster, you get to your desired results, your subscribers, your sales, your revenue, your lead generation faster, even while you're putting in the same amount of effort or even possibly less effort, because you've removed the obstacles that are holding you back, right. However, if you look around, it's not like we're not being told all these things that we need to do more of add these 10 things to your workflow, turn your long form videos into short form videos, it sounds like one step. And it's actually like 25, it's really easy to think that in order to go faster, I need to do more, spend more time, put more stuff on my to do list. And what I hope you take away from this episode is that maybe the answer isn't do more to go faster, maybe it's eliminate some of those speed bumps to go faster. And if you eliminate these five big roadblocks on YouTube that I'm going to talk about, in this episode, you will be able to grow your channel in terms of more subscribers more leads more sales, generate more revenue in your business without just adding more stuff to your never ending to do list. Sound good. So there are five features on YouTube on every channel. Everyone has these features, YouTube calls them features. And if you're creating videos, to grow your business, and you're using YouTube as a marketing platform, you have to think about these features a little bit differently than the way that YouTube wants you to think about them. So number one, let's talk about your YouTube bio. And specifically, the umpteen million links that YouTube lets you put in your YouTube bio. Now I'll give credit to YouTube for restructuring how every bio works. It used to be the about section of your channel. And over the last, I think year, maybe year and a half. YouTube revamped how the bio works so that there's more of it showing on the front page of your channel. And they also gave us the ability to add a whole bunch of links. So let me explain why having multiple links in your bio is preventing you from generating revenue in your business if you have a YouTube funnel setup or even if you don't have an exact YouTube funnel set up, if you have something that you're offering a digital product, a course a program, or even a free download to get people onto your list that you know is eventually going to lead those new email subscribers to an offer, then, that should be the only thing you want people to click on and take action on. And YouTube wants people just keep watching YouTube videos, right? YouTube is okay with people just hitting that subscribe button. But we all know you can't take the subscribe button to the grocery store, you'd need to generate revenue if you're here on YouTube to generate revenue. So when you put 510 links in your bio, and some of them go to something free and some of them go to something paid. And some of them even might go to your Instagram or your Tik Tok. People aren't clicking on all of those things. Now I have, I think three links in my YouTube bio. And for a long time, I only had one because I wanted anybody who finds me for the very first time and says to themselves, Oh, I wonder what else does she have, I wonder if she has a freebie or something. I wanted them to go to the very top of my YouTube funnel, because that's how they're going to get the most beneficial free content from me when they opt in to my list. And it's also going to get my offer in front of them. And if it's right for them, they'll make a purchase. And I know that because I know my numbers because I have a YouTube funnel set up so I want to direct people to one place. So now Yes, I have three I think links in my bio. Because I have three really great free trainings free downloads, I binge worthy content video may at method video that explains the YouTube funnel. And also my crush it on camera setup guide, but you definitely don't see links to go follow me on Instagram or go follow me on Tik Tok, I want you to stick around on YouTube. And I want you to get onto my email list. So just because YouTube gives you a whole bunch of spaces to add all of the links that you could possibly think of. Don't do that. So I think YouTube gives us so many places to put in links because it's trying to compete with Instagram, which now gives you places to put multiple links in your bio, but it doesn't actually end up helping you generate revenue in your business. Number two speaking of links, there is a feature if you're in the YouTube Partner Program, which would mean that you're monetized on YouTube 1000 subscribers 4000 hours of watch time or whatever it is now. And if you are in the YouTube Partner Program, you can put a link at the end of your video that's clickable in your video a clickable and screen element. You could link to your freebie you could link to an offer, you could link to anything that you want in there, but you can't do it unless you're in the YouTube Partner Program. So if you're using that it's probably not preventing revenue. But if you're using an end screen, clickable element for a lead magnet, for example, you're probably missing out on some leads, unless you're also putting that link in the description of the video as well died note, here's a little bonus for you. You can also put a clickable link to your lead magnet or to your offer in the comment section and then pin your comment to the very top so that it's always easy to find. And you don't have to wait for people to get to the last 20 seconds of your video to hit that end screen element. Because the reality is they probably probably weren't going to do that to begin with. Number three, this

Meredith  9:14  
might be a hot topic. But here's a feature that YouTube is very, very interested in pushing that I don't think benefits us as business owners using YouTube as a marketing platform and that is shorts. And I have seen people go back and forth on this. I've seen big, big big channels, do their own research and testing and see Do they work? Do they help your channel grow? Do they help your business grow? Like how are they impacting your overall efforts on YouTube and from my own experiments and what I've seen with other people, I'm not at all convinced that YouTube Words helps your business grow in any way. Now, I'm not talking about tick tock or reels. Those are completely separate platforms, right? So I'm not anti short form content, you'll find me on tick tock, and you'll find me on reels. But when it comes to YouTube, I think YouTube is still trying to figure out how shorts fit into the mix. And I don't think it's working out that well, I couldn't be wrong, I would love to hear in the comments if you're using YouTube shorts. And you can track your YouTube shorts, not to views not to subscribers, but to revenue. Can you track your YouTube shorts to leads and revenue, let me know because I'd love to hear about it. If I could create a short strategy that did lead to leads and revenue, absolutely, I would be using it. So please share your wisdom with me, so we can share it with everybody else. Number four is playlists. And if you're using playlists to simply group your videos to kind of categorize your videos, then you're using YouTube, the way that YouTube wants playlists to be used. But you're missing out on a really critical component of the playlist feature. And for this, I'm going to share my screen with you over here. And what you're seeing here on my homepage are playlists. And notice they're not just a category, it's not just recording, or video editing, or create a YouTube funnel. The playlists are titled in a way that make them a headline on my YouTube homepage. So now my YouTube homepage isn't just a collection of thumbnails. It reads more like something you can skim and find something really easily that might catch your eye, whether it's crush it on camera, or build a channel, or create a YouTube funnel, or, you know, edit your videos. So if you're using YouTube's playlist feature, that's great, you can categorize your videos that way. But where the playlist feature really shines is by creating headlines on your homepage. So if you haven't set these up like this, just add it your playlists create really juicy titles, juicy headlines, and then you can customize your homepage from the YouTube studio and decide exactly which playlist you want to have on your channel and what order you want them to be in. And let me share a little bonus tip about this as well. Because if you notice, on my screen, we have, we have rows of playlists here. But then I have this one video kind of standing on its own, it's a little bigger than the rest, the title is bigger, the thumbnail is bigger, and the entire description is visible in goes further over on the page. It's taking up a lot more real estate on this page than the regular videos that are showing up in the playlists. How did I do that, I created one playlist and added one video to that playlist. So now I have this situation where I can break up my homepage a little bit between these rows of playlists, and highlight a video a little further down on the page that if you're skimming and you have a business, and you want to generate revenue with your YouTube channel, I want you to see that video and go Ooh, that looks interesting. So I love that it can take up a little bit more screen real estate and get the attention of the right viewer. So it's a single playlist with a single video in that playlist to make that happen. And number five, this last feature that YouTube wants you to use to help YouTube that doesn't actually help you generate revenue is the YouTube trailer, which is a special featured spot on your YouTube homepage. Let me share my screen with you again and I'll scroll back up to the top. And by the way, if you're listening to this episode, audio only, all you have to do is go to my YouTube channel to see what I'm talking about. You'll see rows of playlists. Those playlist titles are skimmable headlines, and then at the very top of my channel under my name and my picture. What you're seeing here is a YouTube channel trailer or a featured video on my homepage. So let me explain what's happening here. Now this YouTube feature is What YouTube calls their channel trailer or their featured video. And it's designed as a channel trailer to be like a little commercial for your channel to introduce yourself. And it's really there is as far as YouTube is concerned, it's there to help you gain subscribers. Because at the end of the trailer video, there's a pop up for the little subscribe button. And for years and years and years, that is what people have been using the YouTube trailer for, what I'm using it for, is to actually generate revenue. So what I put in my trailer position is not a video that I hope you watch and then hit subscribe. It's a video that I hope you watch and then opt in to my free three by four method video, I like to think of this as a billboard. It's bigger, it's clickable, there's a call to action, it's titled and designed to get the attention of the exact right person. That would be the ideal customer for my 30 days to a thriving YouTube channel program. And because it's in the trailer spot, when I customize my homepage, which you can do in YouTube studio, I select that exact video that's at the top of my funnel to be placed in the trailer position. And then I also select that same video to be placed as the featured video. And there's a little bit of a difference here, you don't get a trailer and a featured video on your channel at the same time, they could be the same video. But when somebody lands on your channel for the first time and they're not a subscriber, they're going to be shown this YouTube trailer video. If they do hit subscribe, then anytime they come to your channel, they'll be shown the featured video. So again, it could be the same video for me, it's the same exact video. But once they hit subscribe, and once they watch the featured video, it doesn't show up at the top for them again. So if you look around YouTube, you go to some channels that maybe you're familiar with. Just poke around and see. Do you notice that they have channel trailers? And what are they using them for because YouTube wants us to use that as a way of getting people to hit subscribe as a way of introducing ourselves, which is great. But if you're using YouTube to generate revenue, and using YouTube as a marketing platform, that spot at the very top of your channel.

Meredith  17:37  
Big real estate on your channel is prime location for what I think of as a billboard, to generate leads and sales in your business. So don't let YouTube fool you into spending time and energy creating an actual channel trailer. Instead, spend your time to create one lead getter video and use that as your Billboard at the top of your channel because that's the very top of a YouTube funnel. It's at the top of your channel, and it's at the top of the funnel. And that's square one of really how a YouTube funnel actually works and why it works. On YouTube. It's by far the simplest way to generate consistent sales of your digital products and Online offers. With YouTube and an episode one, I cover all of the nitty gritty details, I show you how YouTube funnel works for me how it set up, there's a visual of how you can set it up for yourself. So that as you create content on your channel, and you attract your ideal customers to your channel, they can instantly see a way of working with you further if they are in fact an ideal customer for you. But without that billboard at the top without that lead getter at the top and without the rest of the funnel and a way to make those sales. Then all you're really doing on YouTube is building your audience and helping YouTube build its business so you can dive into Episode One for the whole YouTube funnel system. And make sure you follow me here if you are using YouTube as a marketing platform for your business.