TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
TubeTalk tackles the questions that real YouTubers are asking. Each week we discuss how to make money on YouTube, how to get your videos discovered, how to level up your gaming channel, or even how the latest YouTube update is going to impact you and your channel. If you've ever asked yourself, "How do I grow on YouTube?" or "Where can I learn how to turn my channel into a business?" you've come to the right podcast! TubeTalk is a vidIQ production. To learn more about how we help YouTube creators big and small, visit https://vidIQ.com
TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
How New Channels Get Views Fast With Strong Branding
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Stop hunting for the “perfect niche.” The real advantage on YouTube is a brand people can recognize and competitors can’t clone.
We sit down with Nate Curtis, founder of a YouTube agency driving over 100 million long form views per year, to unpack what actually makes new and small channels get traction in 2026. We talk about why niche selection is overrated compared to expertise and distinctive positioning, and how tiny brand choices like colors, fonts, wardrobe, set design, and even body language quietly shape trust and clicks. If your channel feels like a template, Nate explains how to turn it into a signature.
Then we get tactical: consistent posting as the compounding growth engine, why YouTube videos can “wake up” days later, and how the platform decides who to recommend your content to using your title, description, and transcript. Nate shares a simple research method using burner accounts to surface viral formats, plus practical rules for titles and packaging so viewers don’t scroll past. We also break down a clean hook formula that confirms the click, adds social proof, and sets a clear promise to boost retention.
Finally, we go beyond ad revenue with real monetization paths: YouTube Partner Program basics, sponsorship types, rough CPM baselines, and how creators can realistically work toward $50k a year by combining volume with repeatable systems and smart deal making. Subscribe, share this with a creator friend, and leave a review with the one brand choice you’re going to change first.
Niche Obsession Vs Brand Moat
SPEAKER_01A lot of people obsess over picking the right niche. I honestly, I'm gonna be so real. I think it's all propaganda. I think the real moat is having a unique brand that nobody can copy. Do things that work and do them until they stop working.
SPEAKER_00Hey, welcome back to the Only Podcast. It's more important for you to be successful more than us. I'm Travis and I'm here with a very special guest today. And I think sometimes when I have guests on, people go, okay, well, what am I gonna learn from this? I think today you're gonna learn a tremendous amount of things because I brought on Nate Curtis. Uh listen, Nate, you've talked to and helped so many different people and so many different companies. I would love for you to explain to people who you are and what you do. I'm Nate.
SPEAKER_01I run Views. We're a YouTube agency that does over 100 million long-form views on YouTube every single year. I've been absolutely obsessed with YouTube since I was 14 years old. So I've been in the game a long time and I've helped hundreds of creators grow their channel.
SPEAKER_00So one of the things that uh I see you post on X a lot is um retention graphs and then different niches, a lot of things. Like you talk about a lot of things that people are really interested in. And what I've seen you do most recently, which I think is super interesting, and for people who listen to this podcast, it's gonna be awesome. Channels that are brand spanking new and getting views like right out of the gate with their first video. Um let's talk a little bit about how that happens. Because for the most part, if you think about it, 90% at least probably 99% of videos on their very first channels with the very first video on YouTube don't do well. Like they might get three views over the course of like three years. Um, everyone's first video usually sucks. But you know, you've been posting lately people getting like a thousand views in like two days, which is crazy for a channel on their first upload. How are they doing this? What what are the things that they're doing right that most people are doing wrong?
SPEAKER_01So the thing a lot of people don't realize, they'll see on X, Instagram, YouTube, all these people saying you can blow up with your very first video. Da-da-da. I'm even guilty of this too, because you actually can blow up with your first video, but there's always gonna be some kind of caveat. So I started my first YouTube channel around seven years ago, and you'll never believe this. I got almost no views on my first video.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, you'll never believe this.
SPEAKER_01Second video, same thing. And stay with me. Third video, fourth video, fifth video, sixth video. It took it took a long time for me to finally get my first viral video. But once I did, once I really like thought about it and really analyzed that video, and once I started to put in more reps and got better, I realized that there's a whole system to YouTube. So I started a second YouTube channel when I was 16 years old, and it was actually just helping other people how to grow their YouTube channels. And with that very first video, I was able to get 200,000
Why “Pick A Niche” Is Overhyped
SPEAKER_01views because I simply just took everything I knew, came into a niche with, and it's not even actually, I don't know, I don't even want to say I came into a niche. A lot of people obsess over picking the right niche. I honestly, I'm gonna be so real, I think it's all propaganda. I think the single biggest thing you can do is pick a niche that you are an expert in and come in with branding that is unlike anybody else. Because you could talk all day about how the helicopters for millionaires niche makes you $25 RPM, but who cares? I don't know anything about helicopters. If if my only advantage is that I can use Chat GPT and say, generate me five angles for this video, then like, dude, Noah Morris, you guys have interviewed him. He's literally just gonna come in and make 20 of those channels and just beat me. The moat that you need to have is not your niche or finding something before anybody else. The real moat is having a unique brand that nobody can copy. I talk about Greg Lav all the time. Greg Lav is the co-founder of a company, actually, the founder of a company called Bloom. They do crazy amount of money. Like, I think they're worth over a billion dollars, if I'm not mistaken. And he's the fastest growing personal brand entrepreneur channel on all of YouTube right now. And he's making the same concepts as everybody else. He's talking about how he made his money, the his mindset, his daily routine. Like, this is old stuff, but he brings a new angle because in his videos, he's posted up on like the water. He's posted up in the woods in a big field. He's got his MacBook on this like wooden rustic table. He's got a cigar in his hand, he's got whatever, his bloom energy next to him because his brand is like natural energy. So he comes in, he speaks in a way where he doesn't feel like he's 70, but he's also not this 20-year-old who's like selling a course. He's like this, you know, he's like aged whiskey. He's this guy that has all this experience, but he he brings it around natural energy. He's not telling you to work 24 hours a day. He's saying like you need to take care of yourself, you need to get ripped, you need to go to the gym. You don't need to go uh get all these women. You need like a loving wife. He has like kids in his family, he travels, he's very healthy, very happy. That's his unique brand. For me, I came into a niche where there's already tons and tons of players, VidIQ being one with millions of subscribers, and I was able to actually outperform a lot of VidIQ videos with my first few videos. Not a diss on VidIQ, VidIQ is great, but even other creators too. I came in with a unique brand. And what was my unique brand? Everybody talking about YouTube strategy at the time was in their 30s or their 40s, and they were talking from like a creator lens, which is totally fine. But what was missing and where I could provide a very unique angle and unique brand was in the fact that I was 16 years old, that I had done it totally faceless, and that I was able to make like some money at a young age. It's not like too bombastic where it's like I'm making $10 million per video. At the same time, it's like, dude, this is a real opportunity. I'm 16 years old and I just randomly stumbled upon this, and like you can do it too. It's pretty simple. Combine that with just again, unique, unique traits. Like I talked about, I used my actual channel beforehand as proof. I was like, this is not me just telling you this. This is like, I literally just did this. I just made the second channel to show you that I did this. And with all of our clients, it's the same thing. It's like, how can you go into a niche that is already proven because your niche is not gonna save you? If you're a TikTok shop expert, if you're a dating expert, if you're a fitness coach, if you like to game, it doesn't really matter. You should pick something you're passionate about because the reality is you're gonna have to post hundreds and hundreds of videos before you go viral. And if you're not passionate, you're just gonna give up. Then it's how can you approach it with a unique brand? Can you go into the make money online niche and not be like everybody else and have like the little guru like wood panels and have your supercar and then have ironically your sure SM7B and look like Imangadzi? Can you come into a niche that is incredibly saturated, like all niches, and just be different,
Branding Details That Actually Matter
SPEAKER_01right? Starts with your colors. Can your colors be different? Can they actually mean something, right? Are they gonna match your website's uh logo? If you're talking about like nature, it should be like some greens, some yellows. If you are very like dark and mysterious, it should be like black and like red and like maybe a purple in there, right? Then your fonts need to fit that too. Your setting, what you wear. People don't notice this. I literally wear, I wear black in every single, like almost every single piece of content. I actually wear black every single day. And there's literally a reason for it. It makes me feel because I'm very young, it makes me feel not immature. I think a lot of people that talk about YouTube strategy are flexing Lambos, or on the flip side, they're very like, I'll call it like wonky. This is not a disc, by the way. This is just my brand. People are like wonky for me. I'm very energetic. I try to be like classy though and very mature for my age, and at the same time, like just an aesthetic thing. Like I have a very light skin tone, so to look good on camera, I don't want to also wear white because then I'll wash myself out. Instead, I wear black to create some contrast so I have a more balanced frame, right? I don't have my hand on the microphone. Sometimes I have typically I like to have my hand off the microphone so I can use my hands when I talk. I try to keep a very open body position. I try to be very casual, right? All this stuff for your brand actually does matter, right? If you're very loud, you should have an open body position. If you're very quiet, you should be like Ryan Trahan and speak a little bit timid. Have a font that is not in your face like a comic book or like super like. It should be like very, very simple. Use like a very simple font. All this stuff matters. As much as you might think, oh, my font's not gonna get me a million views, it's not, but you're gonna hit a cap at some point. You're gonna get 10,000 views a video, and you're gonna be like, how do I get to a million subscribers? How do I get to a hundred thousand? I've done this before. I I've worked on channels with millions of subscribers and hundreds of thousands of subscribers and have gained them hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And the single biggest thing that everybody ignores is their branding. People talk about outliers all the time, copying other people, copying what works. Yes, but it only works when you couple it with a strong brand. This is the stuff that like Red Bull is paying consultants like a billion dollars for. So if you can crack this on YouTube, you're ahead of 99% of people.
SPEAKER_00And branding can mean a lot of things. We'll probably dive in that here in a minute. But um what do you say uh from the creators who are just kind of starting out uh is the biggest mistake you're seeing
Consistency And The Slow Start Curve
SPEAKER_00consistently, uh especially in 2026?
SPEAKER_01It's a few things. I think number one is the biggest thing is like not posting. I think the single worst thing you can do is post one video a month. If I was a new creator and I was like actually serious about doing this, I would post one or two videos every single week, and I would literally commit to doing that for a year. Because it literally took me, like with no special knowledge, not really any special skills, like I was teaching myself how to code, so completely random niche. I'm not picking a profitable niche. It took me a little bit over a year to get my first viral video. But the thing most people don't realize is behind that one viral video is compounding growth. So I was like 50 views, 100 views, 100 views, 100 views, 100 views for so long. And when I got that first viral video, A, it got me two million views, and it just unlocks something in my brain. And not only did it does it unlock something because you can just replicate why that video worked. And also, this is the power of a brand because I was doing my best to make a good video. I was bringing my brand out, bringing my personality out, making good videos. I got added to like a group chat with all these other creators, like literally the same people that inspired me to start making videos in the game development niche, which is where I started, were in this group chat. And they all just put me on to crazy ball knowledge, right? This is gonna this is what's gonna happen to you too. As you get bigger and as you keep posting content, even if you're not getting views, you're gonna stumble upon other creators that are either in your situation or that are bigger than you, that are in your niche and that are outside of your niche. When you do this, this is the easiest shortcut ever because yes, it's good to consume content. Yes, it's good to get advice, and it will shortcut you. But the biggest thing you can do is take all that advice and then couple it with action. It's like a math equation. Information times action equals results. Information times zero or very little action equals very little results. You can literally like plug this into a formula. So my biggest advice is post, like it actually does matter. Post consistently from an algorithm standpoint, it also does matter because YouTube's not going to know who to recommend your videos to. I made a tweet about this today. I think this is actually really important to talk about because a lot of people don't know what a viral video is actually going to look like
How YouTube Finds Your Audience
SPEAKER_01on their channel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So this is a client of ours we just onboarded. He has around like around a thousand subscribers, I believe, and averages like a hundred-ish views per video, which you can see. And look at the graph of this video. Immediately, this video was like a five of ten or something, right? And immediately the very first thing I told this client, by the way, five of ten means in the last 10 videos you posted, it was like his fifth best. So it's like a mid-performing video and it's not getting very many views. So initially, the client's reaction is like, well, what went wrong? My reaction was, listen, this is actually a normal trajectory of a small channel. See, YouTube doesn't know who to recommend
Meet Nate Curtis And Views
SPEAKER_01your videos to when you first post. YouTube takes your title, your description, and your transcription of your video. It doesn't care about hashtags, doesn't really care about tags, doesn't care about the time you upload. It takes what your video is and tries to figure out who to recommend it to based on similar videos that it thinks are similar to it. So, for example, if you post how to make a million dollars, it's gonna get recommended to viewers that have watched other videos like that. For example, if you post a MechaCamillion gaming video, it's gonna be the same thing. So YouTube needs time to figure this out. I've literally had client videos sit at under like 500 views for five days and on the fifth day it blows up, which is crazy to think. But what it means is that you you need to have some level of patience, you need to understand that YouTube on like Instagram and TikTok is not going to just immediately blow you up. And if it doesn't blow up immediately, the video is dead. YouTube videos actually get views for years and years and years. Now, if by you know day 15 the video is not blowing up, well then it's like it's probably not gonna blow up until you get more other traction to your channel or just make a better video. But it's fine. Like the whole process should be make a video and just leave it. Like literally, I recommend you delete YouTube Studio from your phone because it's such a bad mental health drain to just look at a video and it's not performing. Like when I looked at this video for a day, I I had to like force myself. I was like, all right, I cannot look at this video. Like, I need to look at it after like two days, let's say. I actually got a text from my client when it started to pick up, he's like, dude, this is insane. It's blowing up, it's blowing up. I was like, all right, perfect, excellent. What I what I said holds true. A new a video on a new or a small channel will always take time to blow up, especially in 2026. YouTube's very heavily cracking down on AI slop and spam. So the same way, and granted, my first video on my second channel that blew up 200,000 views, I think it took about five days for it to hit a thousand views. That's even like way faster than I see a lot of channels getting traction now. Nowadays, it takes much longer, and oftentimes it also takes multiple uploads. YouTube just wants to make sure that you're not an AI, you're not spamming, you're not posting bad content. So the best thing you can do is post and forget, and then post the next one and then forget. Post the next one and forget. Literally, like just set a commitment to yourself and say, I'm gonna post videos for a year every single week. I'm not gonna stop. You're gonna get something. The second you get something, say like a 10x outlier where you're getting 10 times the average views you get, like a thousand view video, you just replicate that thing. And then you replicate, then you replicate. And over that sample size, you're just gonna get better. You're gonna get connected to big creators, you're gonna learn more.
SPEAKER_00So, what do you think it is? Because when we talk about this, I think some content creators hear, oh, okay, I just need to keep posting what I'm doing, and eventually it'll work. That's not necessarily the case. Some people aren't posting the type of content that's going to eventually connect. What is it about the content itself that needs to be made, shot, thought of, researched, whatever, that makes it successful eventually. For example, this client you had, you know, they've been posing before. It wasn't like you guys just put up a new video and all of a sudden it worked. You must have done something different than what they've been doing all this time
Human Content In A Post AI World
SPEAKER_00before.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the reality is most creators actually have the hard part figured out and they just don't know it. So, this client, for example, he's in the TikTok shop niche. This dude is so cracked. He's like actually insane at TikTok shop. Chances are, if you follow that first step, so we're gonna start with your niche, you've picked a niche that you're passionate in. That's literally the hard part. Because the reality is, like, you can't you can't put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. If you don't know what you're talking about or you're not good at what you're you know speaking about, like you have no unique advantages, you're just doing it because you think it's a profitable niche. Literally, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you have viral ideas, doesn't matter if you have viral titles, thumbnails. Yes, you'll have all these people telling you you can do this like faceless cash cow channel, and you can, but I'm gonna keep it so real. You're literally just gonna get out competed in two months by people who are running literally like a thousand of these channels. I have so many friends that do this, and the level of knowledge they have that transcends yours is actually insane. That should not demotivate you, that should actually motivate you because there's a much easier way than like trying to cheese the system. Instead, you need to go back to the roots, right? Why do people watch YouTube? People are not robots, people are not the algorithm, like it, they're just people, right? Would you want to watch like some brain rot like video? Absolutely not. I would hate to watch that, right? And now, especially that the sentiment around like AI slop and automated channels is really, really shifting towards more human-led content. This is where you should go. This is where YouTube's features are encouraging uh less AI content, right? Whenever a platform like YouTube, who's literally spending billions of dollars per year on improving the platform, makes a change towards a certain direction, that's the direction you should go in. Because it means they see something you don't, right? YouTube is banning channels that are AI slop. YouTube is literally like terminating channels that they view as AI slop or spam or deceptive, inauthentic content, right? YouTube is literally cracking down on this. YouTube has labels on videos now, automatic and manual. Is this AI or is this not? Because they realize viewers don't want to watch like bad content. So where should you go? You should go in the direction that YouTube's actually pushing you to go in, which is to make human-led content. So that's number one. Number two, you have your niche, you have your human content, is your branding. Your branding needs to be just like stellar. This does not even need to be something that you overthink. You don't even need to ask Claude, ChatGPT. Like, just use your brain. Like, what are my best characteristics? Literally ask like a spouse or a family member. Even creative directors have creative directors. So I call myself a creative director. We work with dozens and dozens of clients, again, 100 million views a year on YouTube. I have a creative director because the reality is like somebody else is gonna be able to tell you what your biggest characteristics are more than anybody else. So for me, I might think that I'm like super smart and this like genius and like super good looking. And then my creative director is like, dude, you're just you're loud, bro. You're like so annoyed, you talk too much, right? But that's a strength. That's something you can amplify. So think like your personality traits, the way you dress, the way you look, the way you come across to people, first impressions, amplify it. Are you really loud? Perfect. You need to be 10 times that in the videos. Are you very composed? Are you very wise? Perfect. Everything needs to communicate that message. Your setup, your colors, the way you speak, your fonts, editing style. Keep it very simple. Put this on one page. That's step
Viral Research With Burner Accounts
SPEAKER_01two. Step three is viral ideas. Create a new YouTube account. We call this a burner account. I I I'm about to put you onto some crazy game. Making a new YouTube account for your niche, call it your name research. It's gonna have no watch history. Then find the top 10 channels in your niche. You're gonna watch like their top four to five videos on that account around 30 seconds of the way through. When you refresh your YouTube homepage, your whole homepage is only gonna be concepts in your niche. Do this as well with a couple niches similar to yours. So if it's AI, a similar niche might be coding. A similar niche might be make money with AI, similar niche might be tech, right? For my niche, YouTube strategy, I have one for YouTube strategy, I have one for business, I have one for X and LinkedIn strategy, one for short form strategy, one for just YouTube Shorts. Don't overcomplicate this, but make these burner accounts and train them, and then you just have an unlimited source of viral ideas. See what formats are working really well, and then take them for yourself. Then, because you've established your brand, you're not just gonna copy these people and look like them. You're gonna look different and you're gonna make the video different. If you keep seeing people make videos that are like how to start day trading full course, then you're gonna make how to start day trading full course, but you're gonna add like a special tool that you use for it. How to start day trading with Claude, how to start trading with Fable, how to start trading with whatever, how to start trading as a teenager, how to start trading if you have no time, right? Take your brand and then put a twist on it. Viral ideas are how these big channels and small channels go viral, like literally across the board. I could show you example after example of big and small channels just copying each other in terms of their packaging. But it's very, very important you do this because you can never really guess what people want to watch. What you can do is make decisions based on data. So you take these outliers, you'll make viral ideas, your titles and thumbnails, you should make those first. So then you don't have to re-edit or re-record your video. People don't click if if people don't click, people don't watch. So it's very, very important you get your packaging right. And beyond that, like those are the biggest things, honestly. There's way more optimizations we're making on a small channel, but if you just get those things right, you're gonna at least see a difference in your views and you're gonna be able to like constantly improve. Next thing after that is your hooks. Your hooks matter a lot. Uh, you don't have to overcomplicate them. Usually people talk too much in their hooks, usually people don't pay off the title and thumbnail, like confirm the click. People don't include enough social proof. So if you're like how to make a million dollars and you're just like, these are the best side hustles, like, okay, how about instead, I've been doing side hustles for the last 15 years and I've made over a hundred million dollars. Or if you haven't made a bunch of money, you need to like frame yourself differently. So instead of being, this goes back to your brand, instead of being an authority and trying to copy like an Alex Hormozy who's worth 100 mil, instead you should reframe yourself. Goodness. Branding is so important because it does dictate how you're gonna be positioned, right? If you're 18 years old and you have side hustles, you should not be trying to frame yourself like I'm this big authority, I'm top dog, like I know how to, I know how to do everything. Instead, I always say, like, are you Batman or are you Peter Parker? Batman is like top G. Like he's like, this is what's gonna happen. I'm gonna do it brute force. I'm gonna, I'm, I'm king. I know what to do, right? That's like uh Alex Hormozy, let's say. He's not bragging, but he's just like silently like silently like top G, right? Peter Parker, his whole storyline is I'm still learning how to do this thing, but it works, right? People love Spider-Man. So think about like, are you the authority or are you somebody who's learning? Are you somebody who can study other people? Are you somebody who's a peer? Right? These are all different levels of branding that you have to just assess where you're at and decide. So for me, I started actually more, I would say, like a like a peer to somebody. I was like, hey, I'm no expert, but like I did this already. Here's how I did it, and here's how you can do it too. Now that I've evolved as a strategist, I've worked at some of the largest YouTube agencies and brands in the world. I've again generated hundreds of millions of views, and I've grown my own channels as well. I view myself and position myself as more as more of an authority now. Right? I'm telling people this is what works objectively, this is what you should do. Versus when I started, it was more like I did this and it works, so you can try it if you want to. Right. Your thing could also be I've never done this, this is really hard, but come along with me to learn this thing. Right? Your branding matters so much because people are gonna see through inauthenticity.
SPEAKER_00Uh let's talk a little bit about um titling because then I want to get into intros after this.
Titles That Fit Your Audience
SPEAKER_00But uh, we've done a lot of uh research here at Vid IQ, especially about certain titles. And you kind of touched on it there just a minute ago. Uh, I, we, you, uh, in the titles. Very interesting. We've seen a difference between things that talk about you, the viewer, versus I, and also things like um I have done versus you should do. What have you found in kind of your testing of different title ideas and different structures that work the best for most niches?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's fully dependent on the brand. So we have a dating psychologist client, for example, where our best performing titles are about a large group and not you or I. We might use the word I, but it's more like I asked 10,000 men this one thing. Men are tired of this. 63% of men are single. We find that works better just having tested different titles because she's more academic. It's more addressing of like a broad issue in the space that just resonates better, right? We wouldn't know that if we didn't really think about it and then include it in her brand too. That sort of title branding also goes to her scripts, too. It's never gonna be like, you need to do this. It's never even giving advice, really. It's more just like, here's here's the reality, here's the facts. I'm a psychologist, right? For other people, for example, TikTok shop client, it's like, I've done this, here's how you do this. I'm an expert. I've done this for 10 years, whatever. For myself, it's honestly like a similar framing. For title rules, there we have a few rules internally that we use to consistently get high performing titles. Number one is to make sure that if you have an audience generally under the age of like 40 to 50, you're gonna keep your titles under 65 characters. The reason is two, one, your titles won't get cut off on the YouTube homepage, which is very important to make sure people are clicking. Number two is to make sure is to number two is to make it very easy for people to click. If a younger audience has to think whether or not they want to click for more than like a millisecond, they're just gonna scroll. Like it's like monkey brain. It's like we're too we're we're cooked. Like I'm Gen Z, like we're cooked. We have literally everything instant dopamine. I used to DoorDash every single day, like we're cooked, right? But that it matters for YouTube too. Versus an older audience, we actually have data because we have some clients that get a lot of like 55, 65 plus. Longer titles actually work better, over 60 characters or over 70 characters, really, because our hypothesis is that an older audience is not as cooked as us, and they're gonna really think about a title and actually read a title and make a more informed decision to click, which is a reflection of you know the media they consumed for the majority of their life. They're gonna be thinking deeper, and the extra context will actually help them make the click.
SPEAKER_00So, with that, so you you kind of set this um this expectation, and you want to meet the expectation. You've talked about that. But let's talk about the first 30 seconds of most videos. How much time should creators be spending on it? What should they be trying to accomplish? And do you have any tips
A Simple Hook Formula That Holds
SPEAKER_00along that line?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so your hooks are probably the most important part of your actual video. If you look at any retention graph, which is where like how much people are being engaged, you'll see this in your YouTube analytics, usually after 48 hours. The biggest dip is always in the beginning, even for channels with a million subscribers. This is because monkey brain people are like so easy to like click away, honestly, is the reality. But once you have people hooked, they should stay for the like most of the video. Generally, it looks like dip and then flat if the script is actually good, right? So the hook's very, very important. Your hooks should follow basically a four to five step process every time, and they should be pretty concise and pretty condensed. First thing, so first line or two lines needs to be confirming your title and thumbnail. If your title is six ways to be a top one percent clawed user, your first line should be these are six steps to be a top one percent clawed user. If you don't do this very early, viewers are gonna subconsciously think you're gonna waste their time and just yap and they're gonna leave. So you need to confirm the title and thumbnail with like one of your first lines. Second thing I like to do is social proof. Social proof is authority that shows that you know what you're talking about. So if it's the how to use claude like a top 1% user and you just don't say like why you're qualified, like how am I gonna trust you? You probably just like use chat, you probably just use claude to make this video, you liar. Subconsciously, viewers are gonna think that. So your second line, right? Your first line, these are six steps to become a top 1% claude user in 2026. See, I've been an AI expert for the last 10 years, and I work in the top AI tech company in the entire world. Bang, easy social proof, right? Now it's like, damn, this guy's like super experienced. Like he's actually gonna be cutting through the noise and giving me good sauce. Third thing is extra context. So, what's like more that you can give viewers to really either increase urgency, increase scarcity, right? Anything that's gonna make this video feel more appealing than others, right? So, an example would be these are six steps to become a top 1% clawed user. See, I've been an AI expert for the last 15 years, and I run one of the largest AI companies in the world, and 99% of beginners that I talk to don't know any of these hacks. That's the context there. 99% of these beginners don't know any of this stuff, right? Frame this however you want, it's just extra context to be like, wow, like I really need to watch this video. Part four is setting up the video. So once you've done that, you're gonna say, so today I'm gonna show you all six hacks, why they work, and how you can start implementing them today. So it's like a very explicit promise. The title is basically kind of promising that, hey, I'm gonna give you these hacks. The explicit promise in part four is this is exactly what you will get. In the edit, we always show a roadmap too. So, like, you know, it'll be like one, two, three, four, five, six. And then when we cut to each section, it's gonna be like zoom into one, then zoom into two, then zoom into three, four, five, six. This way, viewers feel like they're going on a progression. Optionally, if you're a business owner, you do a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free thing you give away to get somebody's email or phone number or whatever, some way to like market to them. So what you might do in the cloud video, you'll be like, and if you stay until the end, I'll also give you 10 more easy prompts that will level you up even beyond the top 1% for free. So then they stay to the end. It's the first link in the description. You click it, you get their email, and you give them a ton of value. That's a warm lead that you can now market to.
SPEAKER_00For someone who's like, I just like to do content that is fun and entertaining, and I don't really understand how to sell anything, or maybe I don't even want to sell anything. What
Monetization Beyond Ad Revenue
SPEAKER_00are the monetization options? Uh, also and and and really kind of help people, creators in that because I know I can I can think of some people that have left comments to go, well, maybe I play games or something and I don't really have anything to sell. I don't know how to make more money outside of that. What are some of the ways that uh creators are making money outside of just ad sets? Because that can go up and down or just away.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so for my first two or so years of YouTube, I was actually in that boat. I was just making videos that I thought were fun and figuring out how I could monetize it. And it's actually pretty easy to do when you understand how YouTube monetization works. So method one is to use the YouTube partner program. You need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours in the last, is it 90 or 365 days? 365 for the last one. 365 days. Okay. So it's honestly pretty easy if you're just consistently posting and you have some viral videos. Usually the thousand subs will come before the 4,000 watch hours. At the same time, I had a video I posted like a month ago. I checked it because I had some beginners asking questions. It had 4,000 watch hours like just on that video. So like it's very, very attainable if you keep getting better and keep posting. So the YouTube partner program generally, depending on your audience, will pay you between two and I've seen people upwards of like ten dollars per thousand views, depending on your niche. So it's gonna depend on what types of audiences you bring in, how much money they have, are they watching on TVs or phones? Are they watching for a long period of time, etc.? That's really nothing you can control. I wouldn't stress about it. Just understand that it's gonna be extra income, but for a lot of creators, it's usually not too much on my channel. I probably get like a couple thousand extra dollars per month, and that's one of like the largest YouTube strategy channels. Granted, not too high frequency of uploads. So it's extra money. What I would more rely on is sponsorships, and what I did rely on is sponsorships. Other creators will have different opinions. I'll just tell you for me, I found a lot more consistent and high income from getting sponsors. So a sponsor can look a few different ways. A brand will either approach you or you will approach a brand and you'll say, Hey, I want to do a sponsorship. They'll be like perfect. You want to do an integration or a dedicated video? An integration looks like in the middle of the video, you're like, and before I tell you this next thing, I want to thank my sponsor, uh Balcony VPN, right? Whatever, not a real company. And then you shout them out for 60 to 90 seconds usually. A dedicated video is gonna be like you partner up with an AI tool and do like a full video with the AI tool. Dedicated videos, this is my baseline or always was my baseline. It's like you take your average views from the last 90 days and you divide by a thousand, multiply by 70. So that's like a $70 CPM. So if you get 20,000 average views, you can probably get like 1,500 for a sponsor. This will fluctuate. Like some companies will pay you more because of your audience, whatever, but generally that's where I baseline. For an integrated segment, right, 60 to 90 seconds. Usually this will be in the middle of your video, and you can expect anywhere from like 15 to $35 per thousand average views. So if you get 20,000 views, you could probably get like three to five hundred dollars for a sponsor. It's again rough ranges, and if you're good at negotiating, you'll actually squeeze more. I have a full video on this as well, as does vidIQ, I'm sure. Yeah, I think some people don't understand that like this stuff adds up over time.
SPEAKER_00It's not like, oh, $500 is not well, $500 for like one video or two videos, but you're doing multiple videos a month, right? So this stuff adds up very fast. What is a realistic expectation for a content creator who really puts in the time and maybe either follow the things that you've been saying? What do you think the realistic expectation for them uh uh for them to make and in a good niche? So let's say you had the perfect niche for them, they're working at it, they do a good job. How long do you think it would take for them to make like $50,000 in a year? Do you think that would take a couple years, or what do you think that would be?
SPEAKER_01When you get past that first like curve, which is the longest part, it truly does look like a curve. Like, literally, imagine like imagine oh, how do I say this? There's like definitely a good metaphor for I should know this. I love metaphors. Uh imagine like imagine if you just did something for an entire year and you just knew that there was a result at the end, you can low-key like have a mentality like that. Like, realistically, if you post one to two videos a week, you always make them better, you constantly get new information and apply it, and you talk to other creators and you double down on what works on your channel. Like, I don't see why it shouldn't take a year. And if it doesn't take a year, like boohoo, it'll take two years or it'll take three, whatever. Like, as long as you're getting better and you keep getting advice, you will be able to do it at the end of the day. And once you like the the best thing is once you do it, you just can't stop doing it. When you have one viral video, you have the audience, you immediately just have an unfair advantage over everybody else. Because you can even post a video that's not supposed to go viral, and it will still get you like more views than you would have on a new channel, let's say. And once you have a sponsor, you can then work out another deal with the sponsor. I'd work out like three video deals with sponsors where I would literally have guaranteed income, right? If you really get close with a sponsor, you can do a sponsorship every single month. If you're posting twice a week and it's like, oh, it's only $500 a video, okay. That's $50,000 a year. Like there you there you go. Like there you go. That's an entry-level sponsor, right? Now imagine you get more views because you're posting one to two videos a week. You're going to be getting ahead of everybody else who's struggling to post, you know, a couple times a month, and your channel's going to compound.
SPEAKER_00Finally, what do
Systems Double Down And Post Everywhere
SPEAKER_00you think? So I asked you earlier what are content creators doing wrong that you see, and you answered that. But what are you seeing that content creators think that they're doing right, but they're actually doing wrong? A lot of things. That's that's the top one or two. It's an interesting question. Like people that are really confident that maybe come to you and go, I know I'm doing this part right. And you're like, bro, you're not really doing that part right.
SPEAKER_01I would say a lot of people think it's productive to consume a lot of information, but then only post like once a month or a couple times a month. And then they I'm gonna keep it so real. I like I like to be very, I like to be blunt. I'm gonna keep it real, like it's cope. You can post once a week. I sat down today. This is I'm there's literally nothing special about me. I hate filming videos. I sat down this morning, right before this, and I filmed a one-hour video. If if you cannot tell me that you don't have time to film eight-minute videos, you just need better systems, right? Or you just need to grind it out. Like when I first started YouTube, I was literally so obsessed that I was working for, yeah, I'm not saying do this, but I was working for like 15 hours a day, right? You don't have to work 15 hours a day. I was crazy. I would not, I would, I would not be doing that now. But point is, like, there are systems out there. Like, don't think you need to do everything yourself. The top YouTube strategists and channel owners are using systems. Whenever something works, literally do it again. If a video pops off for you, you can just remake the video in a couple weeks or a month with a twist. If laziest ways to make money gets 10,000 views on your channel or a thousand, then do laziest ways to make money with Claude, laziest ways to make money with chat GBT. All the big channels do this, by the way, right? If a creator is playing a game like Mecha Chameleon's like super, super popping right now, and it a video does good, it's not like, oh, I've already done that. Like, if anything, it should be a signal that your audience wants to see you do it again, right? Do things, do things that work and do them until they stop working. Like you might, even if you get less views every time, say you get 10,000 views in your next try, you get 8,000, then 6,000, keep doing it until you get like a thousand views. This is true across all social media. It's just double down on what works and do not stop posting. Consistency is not just like this glittering like rainbow thing that gurus will tell you to do. Like it literally does matter because information, you actually like you don't know anything until you post. Like the most learning I ever did was not from a course, it was not from a YouTube video. Those things helped. The biggest thing was just trying things and learning. And then when something does click, because it eventually will, then that's when you double down.
SPEAKER_00I think a lot of people uh look at the different content creators, especially that I've interviewed and stuff, and they think once they hit a certain milestone that it's over, like you figured it out, there's nothing more to do. But the constant evolution on YouTube never stops. Uh, and it's never this thing where you just figured it out and you're done. There's so many content creators that were popular five years ago that you just can't find on YouTube now, they're just gone because they just continue to do the same exact thing. Finally, for this podcast, what is the one thing you need to keep in mind to keep things changing, but not lose your identity of what made got you there in the first place?
SPEAKER_01Brand. Brand is everything. I I'm so obsessed with brand across all my social medias. Brand and volume. I think volume is truly important. People ask like quality or quantity, the best thing you can do is do both. Like have a standard for yourself that is super, super high. Always think brand first in absolutely everything that you do, then couple it with volume, right? And do it, post on all socials as well, is the other thing, too. YouTube videos are not just YouTube videos. If you want to get free views and do no work, take every YouTube video you post, put them on Spotify, put them on X. Put the YouTube video then through an auto clipper or make one yourself. Just ask Claude to make you one. That's what I did. Super easy, and post all those clips on YouTube Shorts, Snapchat, X, TikTok, Instagram, and trial reels and Facebook too. Don't don't sleep on Facebook. Facebook's take all those clips, say, make these written posts, put them all on X. X doesn't care how much you post. Then take your best X posts, put them on LinkedIn in your YouTube community tab, and then have a link in your pinned comment in your YouTube community tab to do something. Even watch your latest video. Then take all your long form YouTube videos, do the exact same thing. Make them either Twitter articles, Twitter threads, or Twitter posts, and then also couple that into your LinkedIn strategy as well. Post them on Facebook if you want. Then find the best angles. Like, because you with this, you've just taken one thing and you've made a hundred pieces of content. Like you're telling me you can't post everywhere. Yes, you can. You just need you need better systems. If you post everywhere, you're gonna start to see trends. Like I always see on my ex, for example, that things about Claude would go viral. And I had never posted a video about Claude in my own YouTube channel. Lo and behold, I see it goes viral because I'm posting like hundreds of times per day with this system, with doing no work. I post a Claude video on my YouTube channel and it blows up. Like that's crazy. Viral content on one platform is viral content on another platform, like across the board. It's going to go viral. So think brand and post everywhere to give yourself a testing
Links Replay And Subscribe
SPEAKER_01ground.
SPEAKER_00If you want to know more about Nate, I'll leave a link in the description for his ex and I'll have a bunch of information there. If you listen to the audio only podcast, there'll be links to this particular video on YouTube where you can follow that all the way out to Nate. And I want to thank you so much for joining us. This was a lot of information. So make sure you rewind. Uh, it's timestamped below. There's going to be things that you probably heard and then it maybe just went over your head. Go back and listen again. There's a lot of gems here. I want to make sure that you all take advantage of this information. If you're new here, feel free to hit that subscribe button. And I have another video for you right here. We'll see y'all in the next one.