Let's face it, YouTube is hard as fuck. If you think you're going to get bags of money and die-hard fans just by uploading a few scripted videos a week....
You will fail miserably.
You are required to upload CONSISTENTLY and REGULARLY to see any success. Yes, it's hard, but you must go through pain to reach the ultimate 100k+ subscriber and six-figure PROFIT milestone.
But there is a way to minimize the pain, which comes from the easiest way to produce content.
Streaming.
With streaming, you don't have to prepare scripts or edit videos. Instead, all you have to do is pull up the right software like Streamyard that is linked to your YouTube and press the "go live" button. It's that easy.
Are we saying that you should be giving up scripted, vlogging, or Shorts altogether? No. But if you really want to develop a strong core audience that will participate in all of your live chats, comment after watching your videos, purchase your products, and binge-watch your content…
Streaming is the best way to keep your audience addicted to your brand.
Come Up With A Plan For YouTube Live Streaming
There are a number of things that go into putting on an entertaining live show. The first one is making sure you have a plan.
Having a plan for your live stream is critical to running a smooth show.
Coming up with a central topic/theme/title for your show is where you should start.
Get out a notepad and start jotting down ideas. Coming up with a topic that is relevant and interesting will invite curious viewers into your stream.
Break up all of your topics, then split the show up into 15-minute blocks if it helps. This allows you to have a level of structure and sub-topics to fall back on.
You may find from time to time you go off on tangents when talking, or you interact with your audience more than you thought you would.
This is a good thing because it means that you're flowing naturally. Think of your plan as something that helps you stay on track when you need it.
What we also suggest is after you've talked for a little bit, check in with the chat as you close the loop of the conversation.
Get your thoughts on the matter, shout viewers out who say funny or interesting things, and discuss thoughtful comments.
Developing Your True Fan Base
If you're looking to build a loyal audience, streaming is the tool for you.
Streaming is the one form of content that will quickly build your cult of devoted followers. And that is simply because it is the only type of media that allows you to interact with your audience live.
As you begin to stream more often, look out for returning fans, these are the guys who enjoy your content. Anyone who returns to watch your streams time and time again should be noticed if possible (especially if you're a small channel).
Shout out those viewers as you see them in the chat and thank them for coming back to watch more of your content.
This is a matter of psychology. Noticing someone makes them feel special and reinforces their desire to be more involved more often.
Bring up their comment on the screen and discuss things they say as well, people enjoy being noticed. If you can develop 1,000 of these true fans, you'll be on your way to victory.
That's where money starts coming in, and you have a solid community around your channel.
Streaming helps you build this faster than any other method of content creation, being live with your viewers makes all the difference.
Have A Weekly Schedule For Your Stream
If there's one way to cheat the algorithm, this is it right here.
Having set times every week for your stream that your audience knows about.
When you promote products on your channel, you should always mention what time your live streams go live.
There's a specific reason for this…
If you're streaming and no one knows when you are streaming because you decide to stream whenever the hell you want, of course, no one will show up. You're too unpredictable.
You need to ensure that your audience knows when you stream because nothing can stop your fans from searching for your show if they know when it starts.
That's a piece of gold right there.
Burn it into their minds because it will cause viewers to show up and watch your show.
There is a feature in YouTube studio that helps you track how many YouTube viewers are returning to watch the channel (YouTube Studio > Analytics > Returning Viewers.)
The goal is to have the purple line outperform the blue. This means that you have more regular viewers coming back to watch the videos you released.
A returning viewer is more likely to watch the new videos you release and invest money into your channel.
If the blue line is completely outperforming the purple, it means that you are attracting viewers, but the viewers are not sticking around to watch more of your channel.
This is not good because it prevents the channel from collecting an adequate amount of watch time to push the channel further in the algorithm.
Channels like these have difficulty building loyal audiences, which usually causes the channel to struggle with making money.
Do Q&A Sessions to Make Money & Communicate With Your Fans
Letting your fans know that you'll be allowing them to ask you questions at a certain point of the stream is a perfect way to keep your community strong.
Be sure to do this towards the end of the stream if possible, and make sure to announce it multiple times during the stream.
This gives the audience a good reason for the most loyal fans to stick around till the end of the show to have the chance to ask their favorite streamer (i.e., you) a question.
Having a Q&A works well because it gives you insight into what your audience is thinking. You'd be surprised, people will often ask questions that you never thought of.
Later on, you could use these questions to develop more ideas and add future content to your channel.
Aligning yourself with your audience is essential because, after all, they are the ones coming to watch.
It also allows you to relax at the end of the stream and casually chat with your audience. Streaming for more than an hour can be tiring at times, especially if you do it regularly.
Either that or do something fun and interactive with the audience. You can change it up depending on what your stream is about.
And let's say that you're releasing a course, the Q&A section could be used to have the audience members ask questions about the upcoming course. The Q&A would act as an easy sales call.
Everyone that calls you is considered a "warm lead."
Warm leads are people who have shown interest in your videos, products, and services. If they make it all the way to your Q&A, the chances are that they have heavily considered investing in you. Then, all you need to do is comfort them enough to press the "purchase" button.
Before the course launches, you could even create a video topic that only focuses on the course itself. Sure, the video will probably not get many views, but it will allow you to communicate with die-hard fans that are willing to give you money.
Your audience would need to be strong enough to be able to pull any money from viewers. Don't expect to make any money if you know for a fact that your loyal audience isn't large.
Exit Language On YouTube Live Streaming
For the love of God, do not end your show with some epic rant about how you will end the show in 15 minutes.
The moment you mention the show is about to end in any way, shape, or form, portions of your audience will start leaving. But, again, check your analytics. You will be able to tell with the dip at the end of the audience retention graph.
You need to wrap up the show in 2 minutes or less.
Essentially when it's time to end the stream, you need to pull the rug out from underneath the audience…
Using what we call "Exit Language or Ending Language" dampens your channel's ability to grow. Exit Language is essentially mentioning that you're going to end the stream soon if you're more than 2 minutes from the end.
It may take some time to cut the habit out, but it's worth it for the sake of optimal growth for your channel.
Let's compare the exit language graph to the non-exit language graph. You will see a MASSIVE difference.
The exit language one drops off quickly, while the non-exit language one drops off slowly.
The Biggest Advantage to YouTube Live Streaming
Streaming is the best way to create content with MINIMAL effort.
You can turn a 3 hour-long stream into short clips instantly. With little to no editing, big channels like PowerfulJRE (Joe Rogan) could turn their podcasts into short, digestible clips that viewers can digest content without having to watch 3 hours of video.
That is why you will commonly see large live streaming/podcast-focused channels create new clips channels to spread the message further across to larger audiences. (and to make money, of course…)
Viewers have low attention spans, they would prefer to watch a short clip versus watching hours of content.
Very few viewers will watch the stream all the way through on replay. Livestreams are popular when they are on, but the popularity goes down after the stream is over because it has low replayability.
Clips channels are the trend right now, and they will continue to grow in popularity as streaming grows in popularity.
How do you start clipping your streams? It's a straightforward process.
First, you need to find a YouTube downloader that turns YouTube URLs into mp4 files.
We highly recommend you use "ytmp4.top.”
All you have to do is to press share > copy > paste URL into "paste video URL from"> press the green "download" button > download.
If you're using Adobe Premiere Pro, drag and drop the video, then clip out the section you want to use, and maybe add an intro along with an end screen. Once you're done, export the video, then drag and drop the video into YouTube.
Make MASSIVE Amounts Of Money With Super Chats
The other significant advantage to live streaming is the YouTuber's ability to make TONS of money through Super Chats.
Although we highly recommend YouTubers to stay away from just focusing on AdSense (Youtube's paycheck), it's a viable way to make money.
The biggest live streamers in the US can make around six figures PER MONTH.
After a channel gets monetized after reaching 4,000 watch time hours, 1,000 subscribers, and 0 community guideline strikes, YouTubers can make money through ads and Super Chats.
If you decided to stream with your monetized channel, fans could send up to $500 of money with a question or sticker attached to it.
YouTube takes 30% of the Super Chat money (We wouldn't be surprised if YouTube ends up taking a higher percentage in the near future.)
Super Chats are the easiest way for fans to interact with their favorite content creators directly.
However, you really need to become big to reach this level of money, and quite frankly, it's not worth the effort for most YouTubers.
You can make the same amount of money as these big streamers by putting in less hard work and focusing on how to sell online products or services around the YouTube videos you publish.
This comes from providing value to your viewers through YouTube, building your loyal subscriber audience, collecting your audience's emails, sending email sequences, promoting your products/services through ads, and other marketing practices.
Don't think that YouTube live streaming is the only way to make money. Either way, you will be in a much better position if you develop a business outside of YouTube because no one except yourself can take down the business you developed.
YouTube can ban you, and suddenly, you are making $0 in AdSense money...
Don't make this mistake!
How to Clip YouTube Livestreams
This is how you clip videos the correct way...
- Finding the right clip that your viewers want to watch is the most crucial step. The easiest way to do this is by watching the video on 1.5x - 2x speed to find the best moments quickly.
If you are streaming regularly, we highly recommend you take time stamps on a sheet of paper as you are streaming. If you have expendable money and want to systemize everything, highly consider investing your money into a person that will watch all of your streams and take timestamps along the way.
This will allow you to refer back to the timestamps to find the best clips.
The other way to find clips is by looking for spikes in the audience retention graph and clipping them out. However, you shouldn't rely on this method because not every video you stream will have them (most will not have them.)
- If you are using Streamyard for your streams (we highly recommend you use it because it's super convenient) make sure to download your recordings.
The downside of using a tool like "ytmp4.top" is that it downloads the clip in lower quality. However, Streamyard allows users to download higher-quality HD videos.
It's up to you if you want to put in the extra effort to download higher-quality videos, it's always an option.
Viewers quite frankly don't care about your video quality. Quality content is the most important thing you need to have.
Higher quality videos take time to download and upload, which will add time to your clipping process, which already takes a long time to complete. Either way, "ytmp4.top" video quality doesn't differ much from a Streamyard download, so we recommend you just use the YouTube URL downloader.
- Creating a thumbnail with an eyecatching image and title is SUPER important. You need to clickbait your viewers if you want your clip to succeed.
If you fail to draw the viewers' attention, your clip will fail even if the content was good.
However, the video will still fail if your content was trash, but the thumbnail and title were great. So make sure to get the content AND thumbnail right. Otherwise, you will be leaving massive amounts of watch time on the table.
Clipping is a very time-consuming process. It's easy to do, but it's very tedious, especially if you are clipping 7-14 times per week.
If you don't want to waste your time on clipping, hire someone to do everything for you. You will save loads of time and money just by outsourcing it because it will allow you to focus on scaling instead of putting all of your energy into editing the content.
The Biggest Disadvantage To Streaming
Although streaming is super easy to set up and record, it has one problem.
It's almost as time-consuming as filming and editing scripted content (maybe even more so). However, this will depend on how frequently and how seriously you take live streaming.
Livestreaming can eat away your TIME if you make it a lifestyle.
We have worked with many live streamers and seen the downsides to streaming if it's taken too seriously. Some content creators can handle it, but many are unable to.
Unless you're as focused as FreshandFit or Timcast IRL, streaming might be a good option for you.
You really need to be SUPER disciplined to stream 7 days per week. Now, let's say you combined the 7 streams with 14 clips…
You are uploading 21 videos per week!
Even if you have an entire team around you managing all of your content, 7 live streams will still take up your time because there is no one to replace you.
And here's the BIGGEST problem with live streams... (we're not trying to scare you.)
You are very limited with your travel capabilities unless you decide to stream on the road. If you have a studio like Timcast IRL or FreshandFit, you are sort of locked in your own workspace.
That is why we recommend YouTubers not just focus on one content creation strategy but multiple. So don't just focus on the live streaming; mix it up with content strategies like scripted videos, live streaming, shorts, and vlogging.
Don't make YouTube into a full-time slave job. Some content creators can handle streaming frequently because of their crazy work ethic. But for most creators, daily streaming will make you miserable.
Conclusion
Having a schedule set in stone for streaming is critical. But if you don't manage yourself, it can be easy to burn out, especially if you're creating other types of content as well.
Streaming is by far the easiest way to build an audience that is devoted to watching your content. It's not difficult at all to make more than enough money to quit your day job with 1,000 or more fans that are willing to buy your products and services.
Having a plan ready before you stream will give you the confidence to go live and not mess it up. Also, keeping the more important topics for the latter half of the show helps keep your audience engaged, thus increasing your audience retention.
In addition, reserving a block of time towards the end of your stream for Q&A will give your audience something to look forward to. Streaming is all about maintaining a high view count while you're live for as long as possible.
This is why you need to stop using Exit Language. This will ruin your chances at keeping your audience watching right till the end. Not saying things like "We will be wrapping up here in 15 minutes" will increase your chances of having steady audience retention right until the end. You need to keep everyone watching until the end so that when you wrap up, give no more than a 2-minute warning.
Keeping a tight schedule for your weekly streams is the key to cheating the algorithm. Yes, we mean it. By having a schedule that your audience is very familiar with, they will remember when your streams will start. Of course, your die-hard fans will search directly for your streams, and there's nothing the algorithm can do to stop that.
YouTube live streaming can bring in a lot of money and great opportunities to expand your business. However, if you are not careful, streaming can take away all of your time, preventing you from enjoying life to the most total capabilities.
Overall, consistently streaming is an excellent way to build up a YouTube channel in a reasonable amount of time. You're also able to clip all of your streams to continuously push content out and keep your channel very active.
If you're curious about how to dive deeper into the life of being a YouTuber, we will teach you all of the best practices our most successful clients are using to make six-figure plus profits each month.
Click the red button below to receive the 4 pillars of YouTube strategy if you want to figure out which business path you'd like to go down with your channel!
