Exciting news on my end – I've finally hit a major milestone by becoming monetised on YouTube. We'll chat about the journey from the initial 1,000 subscribers to reaching the coveted point of monetisation.

But that's not all! I'm happy to invite you all to join TubeFest, a groundbreaking video marketing conference set for May 23rd, 2024, in the UK. It features 2 tracks, one for creators to learn from established influencers and another tailored for business-focused content creators looking to monetise their channels.

Now, onto the Shorts Challenge – a 28-day experiment where we’ll be creating short-form content together as a group every single day. It's all about practicing that daily content-creation habit. I've even set up a tracking process to measure how the videos perform over the month.

So, if you're up for a challenge or keen on joining the TubeFest, grab all the details in this episode.

Episode highlights

1. Monetisation Milestone and the journey behind
2. TubeFest Announcement and tickets on sale!
3. 28-Day Shorts Challenge

You are invited to join the Shorts Challenge at shortschallenge.co.uk, participate in TubeFest on May 23rd, and shift from being content consumers to creators on YouTube.

Links

• YouTube Community
• TubeFest
• Shorts Challenge
• KOV Links

Hello, YouTube Success.

Welcome to a new episode.

You know, when we're doing these episodes, we normally record them and

we want to make them evergreen, right?

If you're running a podcast, you're like, well, I should always do my content.

So if you listen to it anytime, it's always appropriate.

That's the hope really, of course, you know, like some things happen, like

time goes and things you say a long time ago might not be as appropriate now.

So a great example of this is if you've watched or listened to any YouTube content

about keywords, a lot of people talk about how keywords are not as important

anymore, you know, the tags, the keywords you put in your tag, that kind of thing.

Some people will argue about it.

It's still very important.

It's still worth doing.

Other people will say that the AI is so good in YouTube that actually

it doesn't really need to be added.

The AI knows who you are, what the video's about, and it will

distribute it to the right people.

So there's stuff like that that's not as appropriate.

it's totally gone on a tangent about that.

That's not what this episode is about at all.

But I just wanted to sort of point out that when you're creating this content,

you wanna make it evergreen because this episode is not evergreen in any way.

And I'm gonna explain to you why in a second.

First thing I wanted to share with you is just a bit of a celebration really because

I am a small creator and if you listen to this, you might think, hopefully over

the time you've thought, well, actually I've got some good advice from Matt.

It's been worth listening and subscribing to this podcast or watching on YouTube,

if you're watching there as well.

Hey, did you notice the new office background?

I've got a new background.

I've not done my hair today as well as another thing.

So if you're listening to on the podcast, go and check it out on

YouTube and you'll see what I mean.

Things like that are really important.

Another tangent, it's really important to me, it feels like putting makeup

on, you know, doing my hair is the same sort of thing, I think for women putting

their makeup on, and the background and everything that happens in your

environment is also important to me.

It's the mise-en-scène is what they would say in filmmaking terms, which

is in the scene, what's in the scene.

So, you know, I do care about this stuff.

It is important.

Anyway, let's go back to the celebration.

My ADHD brain is coming out clearly in waves today.

So, I wanted to talk about milestones really because I've got a little bit

of an achievement and the achievement is that I've become monetised.

When you're starting a YouTube channel, when you're getting started

and when you're Aiming for stuff.

I think it's important to have some kind of milestones to aim for and

YouTube already give you milestones.

I think the first milestone is 1000 subscribers, then it's 10,000, then

100,000, then 1,000,000, and then ridiculousness beyond those numbers.

Can you ever even, hey for anyone here at whatever level you are, can you even

dream of a million subscribers and what that would mean for your business and what

that would do for you personally as well?

Even though the people talk about these being vanity metrics.

They're absolutely not vanity in metrics.

They are important for a lot of people.

But there's milestones like that that I think are important and actually

when we're starting on YouTube I often talk to people about the first thousand

subscribers because monetisation, I think it's changed actually recently.

It's gone from 1000 to 500 now you need to get monetised as well as it

going from 4000 watch hours to 3000.

But I still think that first thousand is super important, but

it doesn't necessarily mean, okay it's 500 now, doesn't necessarily

mean that you will get monetised.

You can hit those numbers and still not have enough watch

hours in order to be eligible for the YouTube Partner Programme.

And I didn't have that.

I didn't have the watch hours.

I've been on YouTube strangely enough, I think with this channel, I've been on

YouTube since 2018, which is ridiculous.

I really started trying on YouTube probably in 2021.

And I made around 40,000 that year from brand deals, off platform activities.

So it's still making money with the channel, but it was

with off platform activities.

So even though I wasn't monetised, my first brand deal I got

when I had 763 subscribers.

I'm sure that's the number.

I wouldn't have that number in my mind if it wasn't true, 763

subscribers I got a brand deal.

And that was huge because I got paid for 4 videos.

And then beyond that first 4 videos, I then got offered a long term contract

with a particular agency, which meant that I got this extra money as well.

So I was not monetised and I've just become monetized

in the last couple of days.

So, we are at the end, at the start of the new year.

So this is 2024, the 3rd of January 2024.

That's why I said this was not evergreen episode.

And I got monetised just at the end of the year.

So I got the email that said, 'Hey, you're now, you can now apply for

the YouTube Partner Programme'.

And I did and it got approved and now I'm monetised.

Now let me tell you, I haven't got a check yet.

So I haven't got any money from my YouTube channel from the monetisation.

And I always say to people, like this shouldn't be the goal.

The milestones are important.

1,000, 10,000.

100,000, 1,000,000 milestones are important.

One of the members in the community has just joined, the YouTube

Community, youtubecommunity.co.uk.

Ricky just posted, joined the community.

And then he posted, Matt, I've just hit a hundred thousand subscribers.

Amazing.

He's a good guitar teacher.

So, shout out to you, Ricky, if you're listening to this episode as well.

Brilliant achievement, when you're thinking about these milestones,

they are huge achievements and it's not just 100,000, it's 10,000.

It's 1,000.

You should celebrate these things as you're going along.

Now I do use TubeBuddy.

So TubeBuddy also tells me, I've just logged into my channel there,

it tells me I had 150,000 views as of December the 16th and 2,500

subscribers as of December the 9th.

My subscribers right now 849, so I'm 150 away from 3, 000, which is

another little milestone that I'll be happy with when I get there.

So I just wanted to share that with you, largely because, even though this

is not an evergreen piece of content, who knows where we'll be in 2025.

When I think about the year ahead and I'm planning for content and planning what

we're going to do, I'm thinking about where we could be in the next 12 months.

Then it leads me on to something.

Well there's two things, two extra things I want to tell you about.

Firstly, I couldn't do this episode without talking about TubeFest.

In fact, every episode, I think, between now and May, I will be talking about

TubeFest in some way, shape or form.

I've got some interviews we've got coming up on the podcast and

then we'll be with some of the speakers that we've got at TubeFest.

So if you don't know what TubeFest is, it's the video marketing

conference that you need to be at.

You need to be at, right?

Because it's the first Video marketing conference of its type I think in

Europe, but I'll definitely say in the UK And we've got an amazing lineup.

We've got 15 speakers across a full day of I've called it video marketing because

it's a full day of video-based content but also we've got 2 tracks, so we've

got a creators track and we've got a I'm now thinking to myself, I've done an

episode about this, I don't think I have.

So if I've done an episode and you've heard all of this, apologies.

But we've got a creators track, which is all about big creators.

Well, it's all about creators in general, who can teach other

creators how to be good creators.

So I've got people like Nick Nimim, I've got Austin Armstrong, I've got, well, I've

got a bunch of people that are What I would say influence is in their own right.

So they've got a huge amount of influence based on their

vanity metrics of subscribers.

But I would say if you want to understand what it takes to really

be a full time creator, those are the people that you could look up to

and say they are doing that now and they will teach you strategies and

tactics and things you need to know to become a full time creator, right?

That to me alone is worth going to TubeFest.

It's tubefest.live is the website address and TubeFest is happening on May the

23rd, 2024, in just five months time and.

You can get your tickets now.

The tickets are on sale.

We sold just short of 100 tickets before Christmas.

We had a big launch in December and then we are now looking to sell another

200 tickets over the next five months.

So then we've got a business track and the business track is about how to

monetise your business as a creator.

That's really the focus and so when I said video marketing, one of the people on the

business track is a woman called Louise, who uses YouTube as the top of her funnel.

If you're not used to funnels and lead magnets and all that kind of stuff, it's

a topic for a separate episode completely, for sure, but she basically has..

When you sell a product, you need to get in front of people first, which

is the marketing side of things, and then you put them through some kind

of sales cycle, people often call it a funnel, and then you sell something

to them on the end, but you need the people at the top of the funnel, the

audience, in order to sell to people.

If you don't have no people, you've got no one to sell to.

So Louise uses LinkedIn and has banged on about this for the last year.

I've been friends with her on LinkedIn for a while now, or connected with her

at least, and I've been to a few events where she's been there and she's been

talking, and every time I talk about YouTube, she says, Matt, you know what?

YouTube's been the best lead generation tool for me.

I get so much business from YouTube, and she's a LinkedIn trainer,

she's a LinkedIn expert, would be a more appropriate term really.

And I was like, Louise, you've got to come to this event and speak and tell

us how you are using a platform that's totally unrelated to your expertise.

She's using YouTube to sell LinkedIn services.

So, there's people like that.

There's people like Robin Waite.

There's a whole, Andrew and Pete, there's a whole bunch of of business

based people that are using content creation as a method to bring

an audience to their business.

And so I just wanted to bring those two groups of people together in

the hope that you, as a new creator, as an experienced creator, as a new

business, as an established business, you could talk to people that you

probably wouldn't normally talk to.

If you're a business owner that doesn't create much content and you

want to get into marketing and create more content, speak to the creators.

If you're a creator that doesn't do much business, is not making

much money or wants to become full time and you need to monetise your

business, speak to the business owners.

They're going to be in the room together.

The speakers are going to be there.

They're not speakers that are hands off, that you won't be able to speak to them.

They are going to be in the audience with you.

When I went to VidSummit for the first time, which is an

event that's in Dallas in the U.

S.,

I remember sitting next to a woman there and, and we were both watching, we were

at the front, I was on the front row and we were both watching this woman

and I said to her, it was, this woman, six sisters I think she's called, there

was like these six sisters and they had a huge channel and they've got brand

deals and that kind of stuff and I sat next to this woman, I think her name was

Sarah, I'm sure her name was Sarah and I said to her, it was 2018, so forgive

me for not getting the names right, but I said to her, I said, what do you do?

And she says, I have got a cooking channel on Facebook.

Little did I know that she was one of the speakers.

Later on I watched her session and she had the biggest cooking channel on Facebook.

Not one of, she had the biggest.

She had several million followers or subscribers or likes, I think

is what Facebook does really.

S he had several million likes and it was all about, I don't know if you've

ever seen those cooking videos where you see from the top down and you see

them getting made and then it's really creative types of videos and they

show you like how to create something in like a minute and it does really

quick, it gives you all the ingredients and then you see all the quick tips.

Cuts and the food getting made is, you know, proper makes you hungry.

At least it makes me hungry when I'm watching these videos.

But she had that channel.

She had the main one and was a huge creator.

And I just sat next to her, sat there chatting to her, you know, and I never

forget that because when I created TubeFest, I was like, let's make

it something where that's the case.

W hen I went last, went to VidSummit, Mr.

Beast was there.

You don't get near Mr.

Beast, you know, like he's there.

He's talking.

They tell everyone, hey, Mr.

Beast is Jimmy here.

We call him Jimmy, but you don't get near him, you know, unless you're one

of the speakers or the influencers there, whereas at this event,

you get to speak to the speakers.

They're business owners like you and me.

They're creators like you and me.

So, definitely worth doing it and being in that.

And it's an intimate environment.

We're looking for 300 attendees.

So it'll be an intimate environment to get a hold of these people.

So then the last thing that I wanted to talk about is the Shorts Challenge.

So, I was sitting there thinking to myself, as you do at the start of the

year, again, while this episode is not evergreen, and I was thinking,

what can I do, what could I, what could I really challenge myself with

this year to do something different.

I've got almost 3, 000 subscribers on my YouTube channel,

how can I accelerate that?

How could I get to 10,000 this year?

What am I going to do that's different, that's going to accelerate me where

I'm not going to look back in the year, because if I look back at this

year And I look at how many videos i've published, I would probably

say there's not a massive amount.

Now don't get me wrong.

We did increase our video output.

We definitely I'm just going back and looking on Youtube Studio right now.

The first video I published, the first actual YouTube video I published

this year was my new channel.

You know my new 'Welcome To My Channel' video, which was February

the 2nd 2023 and then there's probably 20 videos after that.

There's a few Shorts that I did and there's some live videos I

did but it's about 20 videos.

So for me to go from 1,000 to almost 3,000 during that time with 20 odd

videos, how can I get to 10,000?

What's my strategy going to be to ensure that happens?

And really, what I've decided to do is do a bit of an experiment, which I've

done before and it worked really well.

And I'm also going to track it quite religiously.

I'm going to come up with a tracking process in the next couple

of days, but I'll kind of give you my idea of it now, and then

you'll understand what we're doing.

So, what we're going to do is a short form piece of content every day.

Now the idea about doing a short form piece of content every day is,

there's a couple of things to it.

The first one is that, I want to get into the habit of creating

content every single day.

Now I know, even for somebody like me that's created a lot of content

before, I know probably the first couple of times I did it, I do it, it's

going to take me between 10 minutes and 30 minutes, 10 to 30 minutes.

As I get going and as we create more of this content, I reckon, we could

film it, edit it, and upload it.

Actually I'm probably going to outsource it but forget that bit for now.

But I could probably film it, edit it and upload it in ten minutes by the end of it.

So can I say to myself and commit to myself that every day after my

morning routine I'm going to create a short form piece of content.

Then what I'll do is I'll give it to my VA and ask her to

publish it across the platforms.

In reality, just to be really clear with you, the first couple

of times I'm going to do it myself, after that I'm going to give it to

an editor, which might be my VA.

She might do that as well, but most likely a professional video

editor, not necessarily someone that does this stuff all day every day.

I'm gonna give it to them, they're gonna edit it and then it's going to come

back to VA, and the VA will publish it.

That's probably the workflow that will follow in the end but right now I'm

focused on the fact that can I create, can I have 10 minutes to create this piece

of content and get it onto the platforms.

And then what happened, what will happen after 28 days of doing that,

now I call this the Shorts Challenge.

So if you go to shortschallenge.co.uk, you can get involved in this with us.

I'm recording this on the 3rd of January.

Hopefully this is going to go out on my podcast tomorrow on the 4th

of January, no pressure to my VA to get this sorted but we're going

to start on the 7th of January.

So you can come and do it with us on the 7th of January in a group.

So the great thing about doing these kinds of things is I like to do it in a group.

I'll be talking about it loads on my socials as well.

If you follow the King of Video page, when we published the episode, you'll

see all this stuff there as well.

And it will be on my YouTube channel.

The great thing about doing stuff as a group is it gives you motivation for me.

Now the Shorts Challenge will email you every day so it says 'hey, have

you done your video today?' You then have a place in the YouTube Community,

youtubecommunity.co.uk, where you then go and put, you you go and drop the

link of the video that you've done.

So again, you'll see the people that have done it before.

I think we did it in May last, I think that's the last time we did it.

So you'll see all the people that did this for 28 days and their videos

and the results that they've got and I wanted to do that really because I

wanted, with some of the challenges that people do, you take them and you don't

get to see what other people have done in real life, like I can't hide it.

That's their videos, they've published it so you can see that for yourself.

And So you do it in a group, you've got a place where you can

go post the videos that should help it as well in terms of views.

And you can share and get involved in that kind of stuff and it's

all starting on Monday next week on the 7th 7th of January.

I'm saying the 7th of January like it is Monday.

I just assume it is, I'm pretty sure.

That is the case Monday's the 8th.

Brilliant.

Well done, Matt.

Well done, Matt.

You got the date wrong.

8th of January.

We're starting on the 8th of January.

In reality, ah, the reason why I say the 7th is because what I usually

do is on the night before we start, I do a live video and we just talk

about, the process of what's going to happen over those seven days.

And in also in reality, you can actually start at any time.

It's an evergreen piece of content, you know, it's an evergreen challenge.

You can just go and sign up for it and start it straight away.

Now, there is a cost associated with it, I think it's £27, £27, I'm

going to say that, which is about $35 if you're listening in the US.

And I have had people take this challenge all around the world.

So they're not just UK based people like I am.

If you're in Australia or in America, you can get involved in this as well.

Just you, there will be a conversion rate for your fee, which £27 is about $35.

I think that's it really.

That.

Ah, no, because the other thing I wanted to tell you then is what I'm

going to do off the back of that.

So my view is like, okay, what can I do for the year?

I'm going to do a short form piece of content.

Now, we have the podcast episode that goes out every week.

So I am publishing a piece of content to YouTube every week now.

So that makes me feel better.

I am going to look to add to another piece of content that's not the podcast,

because I don't think the podcast Is going to have as much of a positive

effect on the YouTube channel as creating like useful helpful content.

I like to do how to show people how to do editing I've got a few ideas for some

Descript videos, that kind of thing.

So I'm going to make sure that I publish one long form piece of content as well as

the podcast, so that's two pieces of long form content plus a video every day, which

sounds like a lot, and it should sound like a lot if you're just getting started.

But please remember, with the podcast, I film this like I am with you.

You're listening to this now, I'm filming this live, and I give it to

my VA and she does everything else.

So, if you're doing this yourself, please know that there's that piece

of work needs doing by somebody.

You 're not there yet, maybe.

So just focus on, let's start with the Shorts Challenge.

What if we just got into the point of creating a piece of content 10 minutes

every day, putting it out on the socials.

You could just start with YouTube.

I know Melanie, when, who did my challenge last time, she just did

it on YouTube and got great results.

She was sending me screenshots of the results.

It weren't viral videos, she definitely wasn't getting viral

videos, but she was getting hundreds of views, more than hundreds on some

occasions, and it was increasing the subscribers on her channel as well.

So it had an impact.

And it certainly had more of an impact, compared to doing nothing.

So what if we did that for 28 days?

So how I'm going to measure this is, and this is a bit that I'm..

it's the last thing for this episode I'm going to measure this is I'm

going to have an Excel spreadsheet and I'm going to go and I'll make this

available in the challenge actually.

I think it's a good idea for you guys to be able to have a tracking sheet as well.

And it's going to have the title of the video.

It's going to say it's going to have a link to the video so you can

put the link to the video so you can always go and check it as well.

It makes it easier to go back and check it if you've got the link.

It's going to have how many views it got in 24 hours.

How many views it got after five days.

How many views it got after a week?

I think that's it.

Maybe I'll go 1, 3, and 7, something like that.

And this is just a way of, so then what would happen is, when I get to day 3

of publishing a video every day I then go back to my Day 1, just check the

views, make a note of the views, go back to creating the video every day

when I get to Day 7, I go back to Day 1, check it, just add the views.

It sounds like a lot of work.

It isn't.

It's a very quick thing and that's why you put the link to the video

so you can quickly click it, check the views, make a note of it.

What's going to happen with this tracking is, then you will start to

see some trends in your own videos.

What videos are working, what videos take a little bit of time to take off.

If you're just purely doing this on YouTube with Shorts, not Instagram

Reels or TikTok, which I do recommend you put them on there as well and see

the impact that it's going, but I know that, I appreciate that it's more work

for people if they're on their own.

But if you're just doing that on Shorts, some Shorts videos can take

two weeks before they take off.

It might be something that's happening in the world contextually.

That means your video takes off at that time.

So you could then go, what happens after two weeks, what happens after a month.

And of course you can outsource this tracking as well.

So once you start it, I would say do it yourself, maybe do it for seven days.

And then if you've got a VA.

VA is a Virtual Assistant.

If you're not a business owner, or if you're just a creator getting started,

you might not know what a VA is.

It's a Virtual Assistant.

So you can have somebody that goes and does that work for you and

just keeps track of those numbers.

And then maybe like once a week or once a month, you can review those and

look and see like, okay, this piece of content seems to be taken off.

I should do more pieces of content like that.

Now you can visually do this yourself.

You can go and look on your youTube Shorts, you can look on your TikToks

and you can see the numbers, but by having the tracking sheet, it will help

you see it in a much clearer way over a period of a longer period of time.

Okay, I hope all that makes sense so just to summarise

and stick with me to summarise.

So for the summary, because then my view, my listen duration on the podcast will

help the summary is, celebrate with me because we've got an achievement here.

We're monetised now, TubeFest is happening May 23rd.

Come and grab a ticket.

There's a discount if you go to the website and then sign up for the

mailing list, you'll get a 10% discount, so make sure you take that offer.

And also Shorts Challenge, shortschallenge.co.uk.

You can come and get involved.

Now, you know on this podcast I'm not going to just be

pitching these things to you.

I hope you found some value in the plan that I've got.

I will be reporting back on this plan this 28 day plan I've got, and let you know

how we got on but it's, I just wanted to invite you really to come and get involved

in some of the stuff that we're doing.

I know some of you listeners have come and joined the community, and

it's not been as much of an active community as i'd like it to be.

So we're going to make sure that we up that over the next few weeks as well,

but come and join come and get involved.

That's what YouTube is about.

You can't sit and listen and watch for the whole time.

You've got to stop consuming and start creating.

Alright, my name is Hughes, King of Video.

Thanks so much for listening.

Please rate this episode a 5 out of 10, and I'll love you forever, thanks.

Bye bye!

Okay, I may have said rate this a 5 out of 10, but of course you knew

that I meant a 5 star out of 5.

I mean, honestly, I don't know where my brain's at sometimes.

So yeah, what a low way to end the episode.

Bye!