334: How To Market Your Online Store On YouTube With Eric Bandholz

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today I have Eric Bandholz back on the show, and Eric is the founder of Beardbrand, an eight figure store that sells men’s care products. And in this episode, you’re going to learn how to grow your online store with YouTube. But before we begin, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you’re looking to stand out in the inbox this holiday season, get more out of email marketing with Klaviyo. Every customer is different.

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SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postcoup.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot I O slash Steve. Now on to the show. Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter Job podcast, where we’ll teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Chu.

02:19
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I’m really excited to have Eric Bandholz back on the show for the third time, I believe. Eric is someone who I met at eCommerce Fuel Conference in Austin, Texas many, many, many years ago. And I literally see his bearded face like five times a day during the NBA playoffs because he’s a star in a commercial that promotes ShipStation. And he runs the incredibly awesome site, beardbrand.com, which is a successful store that sells beard care products that do not yet cater to Asians.

02:48
And what’s really cool about his shop is the strength of his brand and how did he establish his brand through YouTube. And today over 40 % of his business can be directly attributed to the platform. So today we are going to dig deep and learn how to start a YouTube channel the right way for an e-commerce store. And with that, welcome to show Eric, how you doing today, man? Hey, Steve, great to be back, man. How did you get that ShipStation commercial? Because I literally see you every single day.

03:16
I wish I could attribute like the good things that happened to us to like talent and our skill, but it’s usually just like dumb luck. So ships. know you applied an audition for that commercial, right? No, no, no, no. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Ship station. They, I mean, we’ve been using ship station since like day number one, like 2013 in the early days. And I think they’re only a few months old. So they, they of course knew about us and now we’re growing. And then when we moved to Austin, Texas,

03:43
They’re headquartered here in Austin, Texas. they, they, one day they brought like literally their whole ship station team down to the Beardbrand office. It was like 15 people in our little office, all crammed in our little conference room, like just trying to learn, you know, what we needed out of it. So we just kind of stayed in touch and then out of the blue, they reached out and they’re like, Hey, we’re doing these case studies. And I just thought it was for like their website or whatever. And then my mom like messages me or calls me. She’s like, Hey, I saw you on TV.

04:12
or your uncle saw you on TV and was like, oh yeah, you know, shark tank rerun. She’s like, no, something different. And I’m like, what? And it turns out they were running the spot as a TV commercial. didn’t even tell me or anything. And then like, okay, you know, I’m pretty laid back. So I was fine with it. And then, um, yeah, I mean, that was like two or three years ago that that happened and it was still running. Hey, I must be converting like crazy for them because they’re still running. Yeah, must be. Well, they’re spending a lot of money, right?

04:41
Oh yeah. Game of the NBA playoffs. And we’ll see, we’ll see spikes to viewers every time like those, those ads are run. So it’s definitely, you know, driving some awareness to our brand. So I’ll take it. I’ll, I’ll take, you know, I’m a whore, you know, I don’t know if people know that or not. I’m like a PR whore. Like if you want a case study, if you want like a good endorsement, like my favorite podcast show I’ve ever been on is my wife quit her job. Steve is the greatest host I’ve ever, you know, like the greatest conversation I’ve ever had.

05:10
you know, write it up, put me as a quote, I will be that person. Well, this is your third time on the show. think last time was, I to say like five years ago. When were you on Shark Tank? can’t remember. Was that five years ago? Four years ago? Shark Tank was 2014. Oh, okay. Yeah. Dang. Six years ago. That can’t be right. No, no, I think I was on like a year or two ago. Maybe. Like after one of our man camps or something. I probably gave you some flicks.

05:39
for not getting me on. All right. Okay. As the listeners already know out there that I’ve been working on this YouTube channel for like the past six to seven months and it’s been a slog. What’s different is like my YouTube channel isn’t to promote my e-commerce store, but I brought Eric on to kind of talk about in terms of e-commerce. A couple of things I want to ask you just on YouTube in general, since it’s a large part of your business, are there certain businesses that are more suited to YouTube?

06:09
versus another? Like, do you think it applies to all types of e-commerce businesses in general? Yeah, I mean, I think I’m sure if you’re talented and you’re capable, you can make anything work, right? I’m not one of these guys that say, ah, you know, stick to this. But I do think like certain products are probably a little bit easier. So if you’re like a consumer driven brand, direct to consumer, you make your own products, it’s probably a great platform for you. know, so we sell men’s grooming products. We do videos about men’s grooming.

06:38
You know, there’s guys that sell, um, you know, like watches or shoes or, know, like any kind of consumable product, those are generally going to be pretty good. But that being said, you know, there’s always opportunities out there. There’s a, and in the early days, there’s this company called like VAT 51 or something like that. I could, I could have their name wrong, but they, they just had the most outlandish type of things in their store. So they’re a pure e-commerce player in the sense that they didn’t manufacture products. They would resell products.

07:07
But they would have like the weirdest products like the 12 pound gummy worm or something like that. And they would try to eat it on YouTube. So there’s always going to be opportunity. I feel like on YouTube, if you can, you know, resonate with your audience in the right way. kind of reminds me of like factory, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. But is he on YouTube? I wonder if he is or not. Huh? He should be. His stuff should be on YouTube, I would think. Right. Yeah. Because he does political dolls too.

07:36
I don’t know if he’s still in those, right? But it’s got to be heating up for him if he’s still doing that stuff. Oh yeah, it totally has to be. Yeah. All right. So let’s like, I don’t care what you’re working on now per se. I phrase that in the wrong way. I do care. I know deeply. one cares what I’m doing. Like not even our customers. I want to rewind to like the beginning because a lot of people are listening. This is going to be starting from ground zero. Like, okay, I want to do YouTube channel or why should I do a YouTube channel?

08:05
Walk me through, if you remember back that far, why you chose to focus on YouTube and then what were your first steps? Yeah. You know, um, I always love the quote. think it’s from Drake. I started from the bottom. Now I’m here and that’s everyone, man. Everyone starts from the bottom. Going way back into the beard brain history. There’s a, there’s a, like a mystery co-founder. No one knows about. Okay.

08:31
His name is John Reisinger. John Reisinger. I originally pitched the idea to John Reisinger 2012. And he was like, all right, man, we’re going to do this like public display of how we’re going to build a brand. And we’re just going to give like the ins and outs and kind like what you do with my wife, Quidditch job. And we’re going to do it through Beardbrand. And so he actually created the YouTube channel. He’s like, yeah, let’s do it on YouTube. We’ll do YouTube. And he was like the, remember there were some videos of him. He was just sitting at

09:01
his computer like clicking around and there’s like no purpose to video at all other than him like working at a computer which you gotta imagine is the most boring type of content you can imagine and it was but he’s a guy who just started it up I don’t know if he started up a tumbler as well but pretty much he started it up and then he AWOL he’s like your typical like ADD entrepreneur on the was he a co-founder yeah he was like the original original I want to yeah I would say he’s a co-founder kind of wow

09:30
Okay. All right. But he was there for like a month, right? So he kind of he was like, Yeah, yeah, like he’s a co founder of like the community, like he kind of like the idea was always mine. And I shared it with him. He’s like, All right, yeah, let’s do it. He’s all excited. And then he had like a baby and he went on to something else, you know, so I’ll give him credit for for being there on the early days and kind of being that spark. So it was just like it was just it was there, right. And I had one video, one video that hit like how to grow beard.

09:59
And it was enough to like make more videos. I feel like if I did not have one video that hit YouTube probably might’ve never even happened. So it was definitely leveraging that, one successful video for us. What’s considered a hit. I mean, back in the day when you have like 300 subscribers, anything over like 10,000 views, I think. Okay. Well no, that’s a lot for an e-commerce store, right? If you think about it.

10:27
Oh, I am, you know, like we didn’t, weren’t even an e-commerce store back then. We were just some kind of, kind of blog, you know, it was like, I knew that first year. was just a Tumblr page, YouTube page. And then we had this little blog going on and, um, there was no like strategy. mean, I had a vision, but there was no strategy for, for monetizing it. And then we launched in 2013 when I brought on my current co-founders, Jeremy and Lindsay.

10:56
and kind of turn the community into a business and leverage a New York Times quote that we’re going to have. They’re still there, right? New York Times? No, your other co-founders. Because I would say if they left, it be you and not the other. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, again, there’s another mysterious co-founder. We had a fourth one, Joshua McKee. So it was the four of us and I was going to give them all 25 % equity.

11:25
So we’d all be equal partners, but Josh has another business that he wanted to focus on. So, um, he, kind of bailed out and then it was me and Jeremy and Lindsay and the three of us still are, are happily engaged to the business, I guess. Is that what you call it? When you have good, good business partners? I guess, I don’t know if there’s a term for it. mean, I’m married to mine. So you knock out a, you knock it out multiple levels.

11:52
All right. So you start this community. So you had one video that hit 10 K. What does it mean to hit 10? Was it just the views and then you were like, okay, let’s start a business or did you actually make money off of that? No, no. I mean, I think it was, I would have to look back, but I think it did like in that first year, maybe like six videos, six or 12 videos, something like that. And I was all over the board with the content. didn’t really know what type of content to produce. And then I realized like, okay, well this one video really resonated.

12:21
with the YouTube audience called how to grow beard. Why don’t I do how to grow mustache or how to, you know, apply beard stuff. And I kind of got like more clarity on the type of content that was going to resonate with our audience because we tested so many different formats. How do you figure that out? So, I mean, is there like a system?

12:43
for figuring out what resonates with you. Like what are the metrics? I mean, you kind of got to be in tune with, with the data. Uh, YouTube’s really good at giving you all the data you need to, understand what’s going on. Uh, for me, like your view rate, I mean, the number of views is usually the biggest indicator. So you got videos that are generating millions of views or tens of thousands of views or, significantly more than it’s like, do more of those because clearly people want those and engage with those.

13:10
Well, presumably people found those first videos through search, right? Yeah, I would imagine it was evergreen content. know, YouTube’s got a really good recommendation engine. So it wouldn’t surprise me if YouTube just simply recommended the video. You know, someone else’s watching a beard video or they’re, you know, like they searched on Google, like something about beards and then all of sudden YouTube recommends the video. So

13:37
I think most of our growth has been from like the sidebar, you know, video recommendations on YouTube rather than people going in type and search search for us is probably about like 12%. I think people type in and search topics on YouTube. are you very deliberate about getting into that recommenders recommendations sidebar? I mean, there’s, mean, yes and no. The way to get in there is to have a bunch of videos that perform well. And then.

14:07
So there’s not like any particular strategy other than the same way you build a good YouTube channel. All right. Let’s talk about that. So let’s say you were to make a video today, like how much research goes into it versus the production. And I want to know like what metrics you look at to determine what’s a good video and whether to continue on with it. Like the whole process. mean, you just randomly decide to put out videos about anything, right?

14:36
Or do you? I think so what’s really cool is this interview where we’re literally one year into launching a new YouTube channel. So we had our primary YouTube channel is called Beardbrand. It evolved into like this barbershop content. And we spun off a new channel called Beardbrand Alliance. And within that first year, we were able to get to over 100,000 subscribers.

15:05
And we are able to, um, get, think we’re up to like 17 million views or something like that or 16 million in just one year in one year. Yeah. Okay. Teach me. So if you look at the, the beard brand Alliance, so a little more details like the beard brand Alliance was a dead channel that we had. It was previously called urban beardsman, uh, which was going to be the lifestyle component. Uh, and beard brand was going to be the grooming component, but we just based on the YouTube algorithm, we, we,

15:35
merge everything back on the beard brand channel. And then because the algorithm shifted again, it made sense to kind of Can you talk about how it shifted like just for people out there listening? Yeah. So when we originally created the urban beersman channel, which is now the beard brand Alliance channel, we noticed that YouTube was putting a preference towards like daily vloggers. This was around the time that Casey Neistat started blowing up with his daily content.

16:04
So YouTube’s algorithm, it was like, oh, hey, if this person can crank out daily content, that means viewers are going to come back and watch every single day. And they’re going to stick around longer and, you know, watch more videos. And that’s always, you got to think about YouTube’s perspective. You want to get people on YouTube and to stay on YouTube for as long as possible. And if your videos help with that, your videos will get shown. If your videos don’t help with that, like if you’re driving everyone off of YouTube.

16:35
your videos are not getting shown. So everything you need to do is about creating people who love to be on YouTube and fought and like kind of engaging with a community of people who just like live on YouTube. But I think what happened is like YouTube realized, my God, this daily content thing is burning out all the creators. They want to blow their brains out. They’re they’ve they’re like digging at the bottom of the barrel for like good content and it’s not sustainable.

17:02
And I think they realized that so they shifted the algorithm to focus more on kind of like really high hitting content that resonates with their audience. So rather than this like everyday kind of logging type of content, they wanted more just like good, less videos that are really good or better, better than daily content. Interesting. I just talked to someone else and he was telling me like,

17:30
unless he posts often, like he sees everything just start going down. In the old days, he used to spend a lot of time, spend a lot of money to create these productions really. And then he stopped doing that because it wasn’t making money. And then he shifted over to like this daily news show that he does and that’s how he sustains it. But he says it’s more about frequency now. But are you saying it shifted back to quality again? Well, I think there’s a balance and quality is always subjective. know, like, so I think there’s

17:59
There’s some channels that I watch that they’ll only post like once a month or once every couple months and those videos will get millions of views. So the quality isn’t necessarily like, you know, using red camera or the latest microphones and stuff like that. It’s like really interesting things that literally no one else is doing. So if you can kind of create that kind of interesting content that does not exist anywhere in the world in any shape or form, you can do it like

18:27
really infrequently. But I really think like, you know, even like weekly would be a good gauge work. We’re kind of around the two to three videos a week is maybe closer to three is what we do because our quality is not that good. Like how good can you make a like a beard grooming video? There’s just it’s never going to be that remarkable, with exception of like a very couple key pieces of content that we could do that.

18:56
you’re not able to do regularly. So you shifted to beer brand Alliance channel to do more frequent videos is that or less frequent videos? No, no, no. mean, so essentially what we were doing is seven videos a week on beard brand that were of two different types of content. One was a barbershop style content and one was this kind of studio style, you know, tutorial type of content. And what we realized is like, all right, let’s just split that up because the people who are watching

19:25
most of the people are watching it for the barbershop videos and they’re not really engaging with our studio content. And if we have like a couple of videos in a row that are duds, then you kind of get in the cycle of YouTube recommending your videos less and less and less. So you really want to make sure your content is resonating with the majority of people who subscribe. Okay. So we, we essentially split the channel. So we were creating seven videos a week. Still was just on two different channels. Okay.

19:54
All right. All right. So back to this new channel. So when you say it started as a dead channel, it had subscribers then when you started, I guess. Yeah, I think we had like, I don’t know, maybe 7,000 subscribers or okay. And so you go to a hundred K. Uh, how much of it was you promoting that channel from other channels though, versus just really starting jumpstarting from scratch? mean, to be like most people aren’t going to do what we did because of the

20:23
foundation that we had with our other channel. So we did do at like our end cards, like come over to the Alliance channel or this type of content. And I did like, you know, I’m leaving the channel like kind of like that clickbait style type of content where I’m like saying goodbye, we’ll see you. And then of course, I’m leaving it go to a different channel and they can still see me but I’m pretty much. So there were a fair amount of content where we did let our audience know and then when we told them we’re launching the new channel, I think like in that

20:52
first week or so we got like 10,000 subscribers. So we are definitely like able to collect a fair amount of the subscribers from the old channel or the big channel.

21:04
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21:33
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22:02
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E M E R G E C O U N S E L.com. Now back to the show. Okay. So let’s say you didn’t weren’t doing that. I mean, what are some of the things that you would have done with the, with the content, this new channel? What I’m basically asking is yeah. I would say like the way we grew wasn’t primarily through like those little

22:32
You know recommendations from our other channel, you know questions I guess I think the way we grew was by having content that resonated with our audience So a couple things like if you look back to around September of last year We were doing these like 30 day challenges Where we wanted to do kind of like, you know, I try to you know Give up meats for 30 days and here’s what happens or I try to wake up at 445 you know, or I try to wear a suit every day for for a month like these kind of like

23:02
really engage like self improvement, like kind of lifestyle, style videos, which was a new format for us. And they really just kind of fell flat. Like, I remember this was probably the point where I gave up on it was I tried to row a marathon, which is 26 miles in a single. And, you know, so I’m training, I’m working my ass off, I get these like, I get all these cameras, these waterproof cameras, GoPros and stuff. And we get like all

23:30
this cool like B roll footage and it’s like a nice like 20 minute long video like probably like the coolest or the most technically challenging video we ever produced and I get like, you know, like three or 5000 views on it. And then I’ll just go and I’ll turn on the lights and be like, here are the top 10 things that are great about beards and I’ll just like ramble for 10 minutes and that will get like 20,000 views. And it’s like, what am I doing? You know, what am I doing on my life where I’m spending like

23:57
you know, 30 hours to bruise a video that gets, you know, a fifth of the engagement of me just kind of talking about beards. So kind of like, okay, well, here’s what our audience clearly is interested in. Like, don’t fight it. You know, like, if, if they really wanted these challenges, like, we would do them, like we were super excited to do them. And I think they’re pretty interesting things. But if people aren’t watching it, just like,

24:25
change. I that was a visibility thing or because like Google will categorize it right like oh this guy usually talks about beards like what am I going to show a rowing video to these people do you think I mean it wasn’t or no I mean no I mean I think it’s

24:42
Yeah, I mean, I think I think, you know, if I want to get really critical about our company, like our names beard brand. So and then you said it like an intro, like you’re always going to think of beards, even though we got the world’s best hair shampoo and conditioner, you know, even though we got the world’s most versatile body bar, our utility bar that can work as a shave soap or body wash or hair wash or you know, like all these things like people are going to be like, your beard, like your

25:10
So, you know, like I’ve always known that’s kind of something that we’re going to battle and you know, like if we roll with it, it’s a little bit easier, but it kind of also limits your, your growth potential. So we’re always trying to like push outside of it as much as possible. Like trying to like, just like gradually just like, okay, beard brand, know, self-improvement, you know, like become a better person, you know, like, you know, grooming as a whole, not just your beard, it’s your hair, it’s your, your style. And then of course, you know, the style component too, like wearing clothes that

25:41
Sure. Accent things. And you know, so we’d like, we’ve tried to branch off of that, but we always, we always get friction on that, you know? So these videos, like you restarting this channel, but you just mentioned earlier that if you have a string of duds that affects like future videos, is that, is that what you said? Yeah. Where our big channel right now is in a, in lull, you know, I wish I could come in here talking about how great we were, but we’re right now we’re battling with our big channel, trying to get it out of the doldrums.

26:10
So we’re trying to figure out how we can just reignite that channel and get it like hitting like it used to be hitting. So it’s, it’s like, it never ends. Like you’re always trying to figure things out and make adjustments and tweak it and find the way. ever delete your duds then or does that? No, no, no. No, that’s just ego. Like you delete stuff if you’ve got ego problems, but, um, YouTube doesn’t really care about that. So it’s what have you done for me lately?

26:35
All right. So, okay. So what is your plan to get it out of the doldrums? Like what’s your strategy whenever you put together a video, like someone’s starting out selling, I don’t know, some consumer product, like watches or whatnot. Like how do you figure out what your videos should be about starting from ground zero? Yeah. So first thing from, uh, like the worst thing you can do, like if you have a watch company is just talk about yourself all day long. Like no one’s going to frigging watch that. No pun intended.

27:02
Okay, if you guys are listening out there Eric likes to do this all the time Yeah, no one’s gonna do that You need to think about like how can you bring value to your viewers lives, know like if if my channel was just about like your brand shampoo and conditioner beard brand utility bar you’d your brand beer oil like first of all, I would I only have like 13 products and Then you know nine different fragrances. So what is that? I can do like 21 videos

27:32
And then that’s it. So first of all, you’ve got to get beyond like just talking about yourself and talking about your product and think about like the lifestyle that your customers are living and how you can create content that resonates with them from a lifestyle perspective or from an entertainment perspective. There’s really like a couple of different ways you can create content. So our big channel kind of falls into like the entertainment realm of content where it’s like here, come in and watch, get to know the personalities, get to see this transformation. Most people

28:02
that are watching these videos aren’t barbers, you know, they just kind of like to see the before and after they like to, to maybe they learn a little bit, they’ll take it into their barber, but most of it’s just kind of like they, they want to relax and chill. Do you have any products in those videos? Yeah. Yeah. So like if a barber styling the hair, they’ll always like grab, you know, your best album and or some sunscreen, but it’s not like a hard sales, not like get this at beardbrand.com.

28:28
Maybe we should. I really feel like the fans who watch it, they’ll, they’ll get it and they’ll learn. Um, you don’t have to beat their head in and too hard about it. And then the Alliance channel is more of like education. So it’s like very tutorial how to do this, how to trim your, your nose hairs, how to trim your ears. You know, like, is that? Like we don’t really sell anything with a nose hair trimmer or like, uh, you know, uh, Greg Brzezinski just did a video where he’s literally in the shower. Like here’s how I shower my

28:57
my hair or wash my hair. So if you ever want to watch like a Zeus like Greek God guy in the shower, we got that content for you. Maybe my female listeners will check out that video. It’s crazy. It’s like we’re 98 % guy. So it’s just a bunch of, it really? Yeah. Yeah. It’s just a bunch of dudes watching it. But I mean, they’re watching it for the educational. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Of course. And like he keeps it chest up. So it’s not like you’re seeing his nipples or anything like that.

29:23
So you’re getting an audience that way of just guys and then do you steer those people to your product somehow or are just building an audience or a community? I mean, so like if I tell you like how to, how to style your beard and when we sell products that help with styling your beard, I want to be using it or I’ll talk about it, you know, like, same, same thing. Just in fashion. So if you’ve got products, you know, like, uh, you know, if you’re selling handkerchiefs, you know, it’s like how to, how to use

29:50
how to blow your nose outfits, you know, or how to set a table with handkerchiefs or how to fold handkerchiefs. So you’d have stuff like that, but you’d also think about like beyond the handkerchief too, because you kind of want this like 80 20 rule of like 80 % contents about the audience. And then 20 % is kind of like self promotional or 10 % is kind of self promotional. So it’s like, these are for wedding, you know, like wedding planning tips, you know, the best way to plan. So like the channel can kind of like be beyond

30:20
just handkerchiefs, it’s going to be, you know, the wedding environment is going to be like the crafting environment or whatever it is. And that will give you like a much broader range of content that you can, can hit with. And then it might even like open up new like product opportunities for you down the road. What role does keyword research play in your video production? Very little, if any. little. Yeah. I don’t think we do any of that. Really? Okay. It’s all about, and we’ve, we’ve talked about this

30:50
you know, off camera before, but so much of your success, like 90 % of your success is going to be your thumbnail and your title. Your, your thumbnail and your title need to work together to create interest and intrigue. But you don’t want to be given away, you know, that old saying, why, why buy the cow when you can drink the milk for free, you’re not doing that with your thumbnail. So you don’t want to give away the answer in your thumbnail that you want to have like, why

31:17
Like something like, I really want to figure out this answer. I really want to watch this video to know what they’re talking about. Um, and that’s called the hook. Okay. So you want to have a hook for your thumbnail and title. Now, a lot of people confuse the hook with clickbait. Clickbait is when you are fraudulent and you lie and you mislead your audience on what’s going to be in the video. And that’s where you have like a, an image of a thumbnail of like a big breasted woman. And you’re talking about e-commerce or something like that’s clickbait.

31:47
Okay. Do not do that. Do not mislead your audience. Do not like, you know, do not be fraudulent. Like because YouTube, their algorithms trained to learn that type of activities and your stuff won’t work. So the skill is learning that hook. So you get 90 % of that is going to drive people to watch the video. And then the other 10 % is like, have a good video. That’s that people want to watch, you know, like, but it, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the best video, but it does have to like satiate that.

32:17
that desire they had when they clicked it.

32:21
And you know, I’ve had other YouTube people on before and I guess half of them fall into your camp, like zero keyword research. But then the other half, when they do keyword research, there’s like two components, right? There’s discovery, like you said, on the recommended side, but those videos on the recommended side have to be related to something that’s popular that people are searching for or watching, right? So it seems to me that you’re probably correct.

32:47
to get on the recommendations is probably the majority of the views. I think that’s the case actually even for my channel right now, but to grow and become more discoverable, it seems like you have to target something that people are looking for or want, right? Yeah. mean, you got to create something that resonates with people, man. Like I, uh, I mean, to be fair, like when I say we do these things, we do it because it’s built for like our production style and our goals. It’s like, if something doesn’t hit, we’ll just create another one. Right. Whereas

33:17
Some people may have like smarter every day. That guy Destin, I don’t know if you’ve ever watched his channel, he’s got like 7 million subscribers, but he does these incredible projects that costs like tens of thousands of dollars to produce and make me manufacture like air guns. He just did this like air gun that will shoot a baseball out. And of course it’s one of those things that no one’s ever doing. He’s spending a ton of money in it. Like he needs to make sure it hits right? Because he’s spending.

33:46
$20,000 to make a video. Whereas me, I’m spending, you know, 20 minutes of my time and then my video editor spends like another three or four hours, you know, so like that’s $200, right? Of, of cost. So because our investment costs are so low, it’s just like, okay, that didn’t hit, just turn out something else. But if you are something that’s producing a type of video that has a lot more investment in it, then yeah, it does make sense to be a little more prepared.

34:15
So when I say these things, like what works for us may not necessarily be the right answer for everyone out there. I guess what I’m trying to ask you is why aren’t you doing more keyword research? I mean, it’s an extra 20 minutes added onto your because it like, for me, I want to have that title without any restrictions. I wanted to really be able to be free to work with that thumbnail to

34:44
engage with the audience. So, you know, once you start keyword stuffing your title, it doesn’t come off as like human language, you know, sometimes it comes off as just like a little weird. So I don’t know. It’s just not my style. But let me ask you that question a different way. How do you increase your chances of getting on the recommended list? I mean, it’s create really engaging videos that people want to launch.

35:14
But how do you get them to discover you in the very beginning when you’re starting from ground zero? I mean, YouTube learns, right? Like it just, it just knows it, what it like, you know, like the, so, I mean, if you want to talk about it from like an analytical standpoint, it’s your click through rate, which is the number of people who view the video and then the number of people who click on it. Right. So that’s your thumbnail and your, your, your title. Like if you have a good click through rate,

35:44
Like 15 % or something like that. YouTube’s just going to be like, Oh yeah, show it where people, and then when you pair that with your watch time and people are like literally watching the video, YouTube knows, like it doesn’t take much data for them to quickly realize they’ve got a winner on their hands. So yeah, like that’s why I’m saying is like, if you’re thinking and you’re investing a bunch of time on like keyword research and promoting on Reddit or whatever, all that brain energy should be like, how can I make the video better?

36:13
You know, how can I make it more engaging? How can I get that title and thumbnail, get more people to want to click on it and want to watch it? You know, what are the things that I can do that are really exceptional? And you got to think that way rather than like, oh, how do I find the right keywords to do or how do I find what’s hot? So you threw out some numbers just there and clearly you’ve been doing this for a long time. So you probably have some internal metrics, right? What’s a good click through rate? Like everything, it all depends.

36:42
For you I’m asking like you guys know so our channel the big channel the good click-through rate is like 5 % 5 to 6 % Maybe like in the very first hour like 8 % something like that and then the small channel the Alliance channel You know like we know we have a winner our hands if it’s like 15 % So it is smaller. It’s newer like the audience is more engaged and then I think like, you know across the board YouTube is around 5 %

37:11
is a good one. And then you have like your, notification, which is like the amount of people who want to be like notified of all your videos and their click through rates. And that’s kind of like in the across the board YouTube is like, I think it’s like point 5 % to 2.5 % is kind of like the range that they have for those notifications. So I think that’s like a big indicator in the really early days if your video is going to hit or not, is if you’ve got something that’s outside of your norm.

37:40
But the downside is you don’t get those metrics until two days later, but you’ll YouTube’s got those metrics. So they’re, they’re, you know, putting the video through the algorithm, um, based on those, those early numbers. And in terms of, uh, the percentage view, is there something that you shoot for? Yeah. So we don’t really care about percentage view necessarily. We care more about like just the average view duration. So if you can get a that

38:10
you know, people watch for five minutes or at least based in our market. If someone’s watching something for five minutes is going to blow up. Mike, we’re going to get a hundred thousand views guaranteed. And you know, anything north of that is like five 30 or six minutes. And it’s just like unreal how the video, how long are these videos? They’re like 10 minutes. We try to aim for like 18 minutes. I think it’s kind of our sweet spot for our barbershop videos. And then like eight to

38:38
12 minutes for our studio style content. then, um, yeah, most of our stuff, think our average is around like three 30 to four minutes is our typical view duration for a I’m just, I’m just comparing notes on mine. I typically get 40 to 60 % of people who have the duration, I guess it’s a different type of content, obviously. Yeah. So I guess how long are your videos then?

39:06
They’re always around 12 to 15 minutes. Okay. 10 to 15 minutes. I would say. Yeah. Yeah. So you’re getting like five or six minutes, huh? I think so. I was going to have you take a look at that at some point. Yeah. mean, if you have a call, can look at your, you can open up your dashboard or something. Yeah. No, that’d be sweet. That’d be sweet. Uh, you gave me some thumbnail tips the other day. Do you want to share what you told me?

39:34
feel for all your, you know, all your loyal YouTube subscribers. I don’t have to read this twice. You want to share those with the audience? So, so Steve, Steve made the mistake of like, in my opinion, again, like everyone’s got opinion. Well, you’re the expert, so I’m not going to argue with you. Yeah. Don’t argue with me. mean, he, put his title, his description and the thumbnail and some of his titles are like,

40:01
I don’t know, 10 words long. So he’s got like this little thumbnail and then like all these friggin words on it that are exactly the same as the title that you can just read right above it. And then he’s got like a little itty bitty Steve in the corner. People want to look at you, Steve. They don’t care about all these words. They can look at the word somewhere else. So you’re just in my opinion, like we found that faces work really good and you want to get that eye contact and you want to zoom the heck out of that. Like

40:30
one of my best performing videos on the Alliance channel is literally like this part of my face. It’s just like the mustache, like in a little bit of the nose, like no eyes or anything. It’s just like super zoomed in and then like scissors in there like, or no, it a comb in there, a comb in there. So, uh, yeah, man, the closer you can get that zoomed in the better it’ll be. Do you split test your thumbnails? We kind of do. We kind of do. You’re not able.

40:59
mean, there’s there’s ways you could do it. You’d like you could buy Facebook ads beforehand and kind of see what people will click on or engage on. There’s a lot of ways to kind of do it better with with better engagement. But we just kind of in a non scientific manner because you don’t really have a control. Well, if something’s hitting or not hitting, we’ll change it out. what’s your metrics for hitting or not hitting like, you know, pretty cool thing that’s like you’re based on your

41:28
So we try to have like number five or higher for every video we produce. want to every video is moving in the right direction. So if it’s kind of coming in at eight or nine, then we’ll work to after what duration, like what time period within an hour within an hour. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like as soon as that pops up, uh, you, you generally know, some of the, your, your best use of your time is going to be

41:56
when that video goes live to just watch the metrics for an hour, two hours and just see what they’re doing and then get to know those like the back of your hand. You just want to know what a good 30 minutes is, what a good 10 minutes is. And then like, cause that first hour is where you’re to be driving the most of your engagement traffic. So you really want to, I want to say most, but it’s, it’s like very crucial that you’re hitting in that early stage. So we’ll change things up really, really quickly.

42:25
within that first hour, maybe even first half an hour, depending on how things are going. All right. So, okay. So let’s say after the first hour, you’re at like eight or nine in terms of your last 10 videos. What do you do? What do you switch up? Yeah. I mean, we, every video we have like multiple thumbnails and multiple titles that we’re willing to try and test. And, um, like for instance, we, we just had one that came in like number nine and the thumbnail was,

42:53
It was a bald headed guy getting his beard trim. was a very unremarkable trim in terms of transformations. Like you would not be able to distinguish the before and after, but that was like the intent of the cut was the guy didn’t want to lose any length. He just kind of wanted the bulk taken out and kept symmetrical. But we have a lot of bald headed beard guys. Like this video should really hit hard for us. And it was a dud out of the gate. And I think the problem we had was the thumbnail was like all barber hands.

43:22
and scissors and you couldn’t see the beard you couldn’t see the client at all. So we switched it out with essentially like the beard getting styled and it’s now like number two out of 10. really, it went from like bottom of the list to you know, top of the list, not top of the list, but upper list. about old videos that have been out for a while? Do you ever go back and switch the thumbnails and titles? I think there’s

43:50
There could be opportunities for that. Like one thing we’re trying to do is get some consistency with our thumbnails by putting like a little photograph of the barber and in the corner so that everyone knows like when I watch this video, it’s this barber or that barber and can kind of get in a playlist. But we haven’t gone back and change them. But I think like as we’ve we get a little more capacity to do those things that I would like to do it.

44:19
That example you just gave, uh, what was the text on the thumbnail versus what the name of the video was for that winning? We don’t put any texts on our thumbnails. Oh, you don’t. Okay. Yeah. I’m not wasting, I’m not wasting good thumbnail or thumbnail space with text. Hmm. Can you discuss the pros and cons? Faces like, cause again, you want to have that intrigue. You don’t want to, you don’t want to be giving that milk away for free. So, um, by having no text on there, you

44:47
automatically create like a little intrigue like, Oh, what’s this about? Interesting. I guess, again, like every channel is different. Like there are some communities in YouTube where you have to put text on it. It’s just like clearly the things that really work. But for us, we found that, you know, text just takes up opportunity to show off the work.

45:10
Okay. So you mentioned before that your big primary channel has been kind of flat lately. What is your plan to revamp that? Gold drums, man. Yeah. So what’s, mean, things change all the time, right? what’s What’s the latest trend? A couple of things. Like we, we took our content from three videos a week down to two videos a week for COVID. Cause we literally couldn’t get in the barbershop to film. So we had a little queue built up, but we didn’t know how long that was last. So to just kind of make sure that

45:39
the content lasted, we took it back. So the first thing I’d like to do is get the channel back up to two, three videos a week and try to build a little more cadence. We have a lot of new barbers. So, you know, sometimes things just take time. Like people just got to get to know the barbers and we got to get more content produced with the barbers. And then we we’ve got some ideas to try to like make it more entertaining, like a more of a show format, like kind of reality TV or focus on like

46:09
the storytelling and the barbershop five and less about like tutorial how to style. But again, like we haven’t really done a good job of that. But it’s basically a better job of getting clients in the chair, like the appropriate type of interesting styles like transformations and things like that. And then getting the right barbers, you know, on camera, which is can be challenging as well. So it’s just a lot of production management. When you’re

46:38
talking about your products in your description, you put the link to your product, presumably, right? Is that where most people are clicking? I don’t think anyone looks in the description. I want to really, I mean, you put a little bit of information, but what we like to do is pin a comment. A lot of people will go and read the comments. So in that first comment, you have a link to. see. Okay. So it’s not in the description. Well, you probably put in the description also. it’s in the description, but no one reads it. Right.

47:06
So you pin in the first, ah, okay. I didn’t think about doing that. Oh yeah. Shoot, man. That’s an easy one. We’ll see. I didn’t know. You probably want to show man. There’s probably all these things that you do that. Yeah. the knowledge. And then do you, do you still try to reply to all the comments and everything or? I try to like on my videos, like, so I’ve got the advantage of having like three other creators and a whole bunch of barbers. So I’m not in all the videos.

47:36
And I don’t really reply to the content that I don’t watch like oh like if Greg does a video I’ll comment for Greg I think that creates like a little community for for us and then he’ll he’ll kind of comment on my videos as well and then Where possible, you know not all the comments you can reply to they’re like a great job and you’re like, okay Thanks, you know, but sometimes that that’s all you need to do is just like I appreciate it man Thanks for commenting. But yeah, I try to

48:03
were possible, but that’s just who I am. I enjoy that. I enjoy talking to people. think comments and thumbs make your video more visible? Uh, nah, nah, I don’t think, I don’t think those really matter. I think, um, what matters is the amount of people who are subscribing to it. I do think if it’s a video that gets like abnormal amount of subscriptions, it really drives people to engage. That’s probably good. The thumbs. And I think like those are just easily manipulated.

48:30
Uh, and I’m sure like the whole subscription thing can be manipulated too. So I want to really place too much emphasis on, you know, telling people to click on the bell notification. I don’t want people clicking on the bell notifications, right? Because if, you’re not going to watch every video, don’t, don’t click on the bell notifications. Only do that if you want to get notified on all of them. So, okay. All right. Let’s, let’s summarize everything. Uh, top three tips for someone starting from scratch. Yeah. I mean, action actions.

49:00
over perfection. You just got to get shit out there, like produce as much content as you can as quickly as possible. And you know, filter them by views and figure out the ones that are hitting the hardest and then create more in that style. And then your is like research and figure out to the best of your ability, how to create an engaging thumbnail and title spend like 90 % of your time early on figuring out that strategy that’s really going to hit home.

49:30
And, uh, and then that content, you know, like there is ways to just refine and rehun your content, like tell a story better, get rid of all your arms, cut your stuff a little bit cleaner, have a story, like have a way to tell a story where people don’t want to skip around, you know, like you’re like dropping nuggets throughout the, the way, like that’s going to help increase the amount of time people are watching your video. The role, you know, is a great way to do that. We don’t do a lot of it, but

49:56
uh, B Royal can kind of keep people in there just like scene changes and well scripted out stories. Cool. Well, Eric, thanks a lot, Yeah. Very insightful. I could be back every week. You could, but I see you, you’re already on TV every day. So what more do you want, man? I want it all, man. I want to be like, I want to be like you. I want, want, Oh, I got a shamelessly plug. Mike, my show. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that was my next step. That was my next step. was going to let you shamelessly plug whatever you want. Go for it.

50:26
Oh, good. Yeah. Well, you guys all know about beard brand already. So why don’t you like come on over to e-commerce conversations and you can, you can see how the tables were turned. And I interviewed Steven when he’s like to be a guest. The guy knows obviously he knows his stuff. So we’ll have to link that one up. Actually. Is it out yet? I don’t, I don’t think so. I think we’ll be out in a weeks, but okay. Send me the link. I’ll put it in the show notes for this one. Okay. Cool. Yeah. All right, man. Thanks a lot. Yeah.

50:57
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now Eric really knows his stuff when it comes to YouTube and he’s been helping with my channel as well. So be sure to subscribe. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 334. And once again, I want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash div.

51:25
That’s P-O-S-T-S-C-R-I-P-T.I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for eCommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog.

51:53
If you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.