I’m starting a public journey to grow the HeyCreator YouTube channel to get monetized.
As of writing, we’re at:
- 217 subscribers (need to get to 1,000)
- 145 public watch hours in the last year (need to get to 4,000)
First things first — click here to subscribe. Cmon now. It’s the least you could do. I’m basically begging for it.
Alright Tim, calm down. Let’s backtrack a bit. There’s some questions to answer…
What is HeyCreator?
HeyCreator is the new name for the company I work at.
We are a marketing services company for knowledge-based creators. Simply put, we help the people who teach other people things on the internet make more money. This comes in the form of digital product & service launches, website development, newsletter production and more.
On the public end, my boss Matt and I run our company’s paid community and public-facing content. My official title is Content Producer — my main job functions are to create content that helps other creators grow their business, help out with any video-related projects across our team, and support Matt with our growing community.
My main goal for 2024 and beyond is to position the HeyCreator YouTube channel as THE place to grow your creator business and have fun doing it.
What have we done so far?
Since March, we’ve published 17 episodes of The HeyCreator Show — our weekly podcast that also goes out on podcast platforms. We’ve pulled at least 3 shorts and a breakout YouTube video from each episode.
Of the 36 long-form videos that have been published on our channel, only five of them have over 100 views. That’s… not encouraging 😟
Show topics have included newsletters, courses, creator mindset. We’ve only done a little bit to make the show contextual for YouTube. More on that in a sec.
All in all, we’ve gotten our reps in — but our only focus has been on getting these videos done, not doing them extraordinarily well.
The results show for themselves.
What’s the plan to grow the channel?
There’s soooooooooo much I’d like to do to improve our videos. I can’t do all at these at once, but here’s what I’m planning to try.
Improve my setup.
I just bought a house and will have my own office once we finish renovations. Better lighting, camera lens, and overall look will give me more authority in our content.
More in-the-video work.
Like I said before, we have just been getting episodes done — not doing them to the best of our ability. Each episode is just one of our faces for minutes at a time, no supporting b-roll. No music or sound design. No text. None of that YouTube-y stuff that users on the platform expect.
Get closer to our ideal audience.
We’ve tackled topics we think our audience would like. I don’t think we’ve done enough to see what’s working for other similar creators and put our own spin on that.
Title & thumbnail before record.
It’s 50-60% of what makes a video successful, but we’ve only been putting in 5-10% of our time to nailing this. There’s so many resources available that can get us closer to creating curiosity-inducing titles. Having these decided on before we record will work wonders.
Recurring series & segments.
I absolutely LOVE the idea of having series worth coming back to. There’s certain shows and channels I return to only for a specific segment or type of video. We have the room to experiment here.
More FUN.
Our content being tactically helpful is the #1 goal. Always will be. But within that, how do we have fun? How do we play games, be silly, and create opportunities to laugh? There’s so much helpful content for creators out there, but this will be our separator. The brand is colorful and fun, and I’m desperate for our content to match.
What’s next?
Today, Matt and I are recording — and we have our title and thumbnails planned out!
Over the holiday weekend, I’m planning on building out more high-level editing production assets to do more in the videos. I’ll share more when I have them!
If you subscribe to our channel and have any suggestions for how else we can improve our content, please reply and let us know.
Tim