390: The Secret To Growing A YouTube Channel Fast, Organically With Jake Thomas

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. And today I have an amazing guest on the show, Jake Thomas. And Jake is the founder of creatorhooks.com where he analyzes the secret psychology behind what makes people click on YouTube videos and how to come up with engaging content ideas. And I’ve been using many of his techniques in the past 60 days and my YouTube channel this month is up 40%.

00:26
So today we’re gonna talk about the elements of a great YouTube video headline. But before I begin, I wanna thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce and you can segment your audience just like email.

00:52
It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash div. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash div. I also want to talk about Klaviyo, who’s also a sponsor of the show. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store, and I depend on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another email provider. Well, Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores

01:21
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01:50
And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner, Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interviewed successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the profitable audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now on to the show.

02:19
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today I’m really happy to have Jake Thomas on the show. Now, Jake is actually someone who I met virtually at a mastermind run by our mutual friend, Antonio Centeno. And he is the founder of Creator Hooks, where he analyzes the secret psychology behind what makes people click and how to come up with engaging content ideas. And I’m on this guy’s newsletter. It’s actually one of the few that I look forward to receiving every single week. And in this episode,

02:47
we’re going to discuss the elements of a great headline, how you can blow up your YouTube channel, podcast, TikTok, or any content related site with the power of copy. And with that, welcome to the show, Jake, how are you doing today? I’m doing excellent, Steve, how are you? I am good. So happy to have you on. Like I said, so one thing I didn’t tell the listeners is that I actually was not able to make it to that meeting, but I saw a recording of our mastermind meeting and everything that Jake had to say was amazing. So I knew I had to have him on the show.

03:17
Thanks. But Jay, give us, give us a background story and your motivation for creating creator hooks.com. Yeah. So, uh, creator hooks was, you know, was working for a fishing company. had my dream job. I was doing marketing, uh, lots of content. So we were publishing, uh, two videos a day, two blog posts a day, and I was writing two email subject lines a day. So I just needed like a lot of, a lot of, uh, headlines, a lot of copy. And I was, you know, after two years of that, I started kind of running out of ideas.

03:45
So needed some outside inspiration. then around, kind of earlier this year, we were a fishing company and my boss was talking to this guy who had a hunting company. And he’s like, yeah, we did this podcast about newbie hunting gear. did really well. So we use that same exact framework and we did a podcast about newbie fishing gear. And of course that did really well for us. was our most downloaded podcast of the month, our most open email. And that was kind of like when the light bulb went off. There are frameworks

04:15
that people love, kind of no matter what industry you’re in. So, you know, and I’m a perfectionist. I like to do things that work. like for everything to be perfect. And just like the thought of being able to model something that is already proven to work that can greatly increase your chances of getting someone to click on a video or open up your email, which just like, you know, that was like the best thing ever for me, you know, as opposed to making, coming up with something out of the blue.

04:44
and hoping that it works. So I started doing that a lot for myself, just looking through other industries, looking for frameworks that people love. And then I was like, hey, this is working for me. This could probably work for other people. So I started a newsletter and it’s just pretty much presenting five frameworks, kind of reverse engineering them like, hey, this is why these work. then just, this is how you could use it for your industry. And that’s been awesome.

05:12
met a lot of people like, I met you through this, you know, I’ve met some consulting clients. And since then, I’ve actually quit my job. That was my dream job. So I’m all in on this and kind of another little side project I have going on. But but yeah, you know, just it’s opened a lot of opportunities for me. know, I get this news that I think you said, is it on Monday? Yep. Yeah. I actually just want all of the formulas all at once.

05:39
I was like, if you just put this all together in some sort of course or book, like I would have picked that up. Yes. That’s, that’s great that you say that. That is something that I’m working on. Nice. They’re kind of two options, like, you know, an ebook, you know, kind of explaining all the underlying, like reasons why people are clicking in, like kind of the, big, the big patterns. And then also like, I have this big swipe file and I’m not really sure what to do with it. I love it. And I use it.

06:09
Um, and it seems to me like that only really like kind of high level people like swipe files. Cause I’ve, talked to, was at bid summit last week. I talked to a lot of people and it seemed, this is like kind of, you know, being a little judgmental, but the people who really are on top of their game, they wanted to swipe file, but it seemed like maybe the people who weren’t really sure what they were doing, they wanted like a title generator. Um, so, you know, I’m, I’m

06:38
I’m monetizing the email list through consulting, but I’m looking for a product that I can sell. so it’s great that you said that. Yeah. you were doing six titles per day at your job? Yeah, we were doing two YouTube videos a day and then two blog posts a day. And they were the same. The blog post was pretty much modeled after the video. But Google doesn’t really like it when you have the same

07:06
title for the blog as the video. So I tried to switch it up a little bit and then we were emailing those out every day, every morning and night. So yeah, we were publishing a lot of content. That’s crazy. So did you guys have like a framework back then or is this framework something you came up with after you quit? So I started using these frameworks before I quit. And like that was like my kind of original testing ground. I was like, you know, if this works here,

07:34
if it works for fishing, it’ll probably work for something else. I use that as a lot of inspiration. then since then, I’ve used the same underlying theories. one is contrast. So there’s this one video, it was five strange things your vagina does that are normal. So it’s the contrast between strange things and normal. I actually used those, I was doing some consulting for a client.

08:04
and I was writing a title about war weapons. So I used that same contrast of this failed weapon that the military loves and that killed it. That was the best title that I’ve ever written for them. So I’m really on the hunt for what are these underlying things that make people click. Let’s talk about that one because that was one of the things that you presented at the Mastermind that particularly caught my attention. This idea of contrast.

08:33
when you read a title that has two conflicting words in it, it really does catch the attention, but it’s actually hard to do. I actually tried to do it for my last couple of videos and I failed. So can you give me like an example of how you come up with that? So you had that one about vaginas, but can you just give me another example? I hope I don’t get screened out for that, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, that’s a, I think that is probably like, probably one of the hardest things that you can do. You know, there are a lot of,

09:02
these other frameworks that are just really easy, but using contrast, you know, so I have kind of a theory like, you know, when you’re writing a title, there’s like the art and the science of writing a good title. So like the science is like, all right, these are the frameworks that work, like, you know, use authority, use curiosity, use, you know, fear and negativity. And then the science is like, or the art is like, how do you actually frame that in a way that makes people want to click? How do you write good contrast? So, you know, strange things that are normal is one.

09:31
you know, cheap things that are expensive. like, you know, maybe like five cheap ways to, you know, five cheap upgrades to double the price of your rental home, you know, something like that. know, okay. You know, maybe doing something like slow and fast, like, you know, how to, you know, slow things like to get rich fast, you know, something like that, just thinking of opposites. And then how do you kind of pit those two against each other? You know, cause I think that if you’re

10:00
You’re scrolling through YouTube and you see strange things that are normal. It kind of makes you do a double take and you’re like, wait, what a minute, like, what is that? And then with that double take, that brings all your attention to that title. And that just gives you more time to read, understand like what it is. And it opens a loop. Like, you know, how, what are these strange things that are normal? don’t understand. And like, in order to close that loop, you have to watch that video. So, so it does a lot. One, it makes it catches your attention.

10:28
So you pay attention to it too. opens the loop. So you have to watch it. So it’s just a, it’s a great tool that you can use. It’s really hard to pull off, but if you can, it’ll work well. So you mentioned the words open loop just for the listeners out there who don’t necessarily know what that means. Can you just kind of define it? Yeah. So like opening a loop, like, um, you know, is just kind of like starting a story, but not ending it. So, you know, like you might say, you know, here’s how you can, here’s how you can, uh,

10:57
get more views on YouTube that that opens a loop because like, I know like, oh, this is like, I want to get more views on YouTube and like, here’s how like, but like, I don’t know how so I need to close that loop. I need to get the rest of the story. So so I have to click. So let’s go down some of your favorite formulas that have worked for you. mean, obviously, you’ve done this for many years, and you’ve probably written a ton of headlines. You must have your go tos.

11:27
Yeah, I’ve got a few. like, you know, we just said contrast is pretty hard to pull off. But a couple of these are really easy to pull off. like one is Sonny Leonard Duzis, the ugly truth about entrepreneurship you don’t see. So like the truth about something like that’s like an easy one that anybody could do that opens a loop like and the ugly truth like has a little bit of like negativity, like a little bit of scandal. So you’re like, oh, like, you know, what is this? Like, you’ve got to know.

11:56
So you could do the ugly truth about anything, the ugly truth about podcasting, most people don’t know, the ugly truth about e-commerce you don’t see. That’s a really easy framework that anybody could use. It’s got a lot of curiosity, some negativity there. And curiosity and negativity are the two most popular themes. You can exchange negativity with fear, loss aversion, FOMO, anything there.

12:22
So yeah, so the ugly truth or the truth about something is a good one. Can I ask you a quick question before we go on? So when I write a blog post and it’s different from the way I do YouTube, I’m often doing SEO keyword research before I write a blog post, less so with YouTube, but I still do it. How do you include like the keyword and yet still create a compelling headline? Yeah, so that’s a good one. So I have my main source of income right now.

12:50
is a blog about golden retrievers. I make money through affiliates and through ad revenue. And one of my better blog posts is about black golden retrievers. So that’s a surprisingly popular search term. the title for that is the truth about black golden retrievers. So black golden retrievers is the search term there. then the truth about…

13:18
the truth about. So that’s only three words. you’re not like, you know, the, the topic is still kind of forefront in that, um, you know, in that title. So it’s really just thinking about what is, what is someone trying to figure out when they’re searching for something and then how do I deliver that to them? So like in this case, the truth about black gold retrievers makes a lot of sense because people are like, like, you know, do they really exist? Like, you know, what’s going on here? So that’s one way to do it.

13:48
Another way is to, know, timeliness is another, what I’m calling them like the 10 spiciness factors. So like you’ve got your blog posts, you you want to write about something. I’ve been using these 10 spiciness factors to kind of make them a little bit more click worthy. So timeliness works really well. So if you might be talking about, you know, e-commerce SEO in 2021.

14:17
So that in 2021, SEO is always changing. So people are always, they always want to know what is working now. So timeliness is a great way to tell people, hey, this is working right now. And this is how you can get more clicks. Another thing that works really well, especially in the fitness is like timeframes. So like, how to get a six pack in 22 days or like, how to rank your store on Google in 30 days or less.

14:47
So, timeliness and timeframes are two easy ways. You can just kind of tack them on at the end of like your kind of your search term. And that’s going to give you a little bit of an edge that’ll make people want to click more. So just curious, why isn’t it the ugly truth about black golden retrievers? So actually I wrote this like a year ago. So I didn’t, I hadn’t started a creator hooks yet and I didn’t know the ugly truth. So it was just the truth about and

15:16
It’s been working, so I’m not going to change it. So here’s what I’ve noticed about Google. And you can tell me your experience on YouTube. Google doesn’t like negative headlines as much. Like if you look in the front of the search results, at least in my niche, which is kind like the make money e-commerce niche, you’ll, you’ll rarely find any negative posts out there. But I remember you saying in the mastermind meeting that on YouTube, negativity tends to work better. Can you talk about that a little bit? Ah, yeah, that’s a, that’s super interesting. And that’s.

15:46
I have a theory. if you’re searching for something, because you’re right, and I didn’t really think about that until now, but you’re exactly right. I think if you’re searching for something, it would be better to, want a positive answer. Like, all right, this is how I do something. So slapping something in there like the timeframe or like timeliness or something, that would be good. And then…

16:11
YouTube is a, it’s yeah, it’s a search term, but it’s like most of the videos are watched through discovery and people are drawn to negativity more than positivity. So I think that’s why I think, you know, most, uh, you know, most negative kind of frames work well on YouTube because it’s, it’s a discovery platform more than a search platform. Can you give me some examples of

16:40
where you tried a positive headline and a negative headline and the negative. Well, just give us some examples of negativity first of all, just in case the listeners don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah. So the guys that pay it forward, it’s a YouTube channel. It’s like P A Y E T T E. They are like a technology channel and they talk a lot about like iPhones and they just made a video. I think it was like a week or two ago. It was about iOS 15 settings and the

17:09
iOS 15 settings that you need to turn on did really well. It got like 240,000 views and most of their videos were getting like, I don’t know, 20 or 50 or a hundred thousand views, but iOS 15 settings you need to turn on did really well. got 240,000. And that a lot of that is because of Timely. know, iOS 15 just launched, so that’s great. But then they made a video the very next week about iOS 15 settings you need to turn off.

17:39
And that one, I believe it’s, might be at 2 million views now. Oh, wow. And like, so 240,000 was really good for that channel. Now this one, this settings that you need to turn off is at 200. Is that like, I think it’s 2 million views. When I looked at it first, it was like 1.2 million views. Then I looked at it again, I think it was last night. It was like 2 million. And so we got like another million in like a week. Um, so that’s just like, uh, that’s like the purest example of negativity that I’ve ever seen.

18:09
You know, it was the exact same formula iOS 15 settings that you need to turn on or off right now. Um, and also like the thumbnail was pretty much exactly the same too. Um, except, know, the, the facial expression was, you know, a sad or like, or versus happy. So that was just like a, just a cool example of like right there in your face, back to back, like, you know, they proposed it a week apart. So that’s negativity. What is your theory on why negativity works better than positivity?

18:41
So let’s say like you and I, we’re living 10,000 years ago and I’m like, hey, Steve, there’s a couple berries in that field over there. You might be like, oh, cool. I’m going to go pick them later. But if I say, hey, Steve, there’s a saber-toothed tiger over there. Don’t go over there. You’re going to listen to me for sure because that’s life or death. Yeah, a couple of berries, that’s cool. But if you’re talking life or death, if you don’t listen to me, you’re going to die.

19:07
So think that we’re like wired to listen to negativity and like loss aversion, moving away from pain and like FOMO. I think we’re just wired to listen to that more because the cost of not listening to that is a lot greater.

19:25
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19:54
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20:23
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20:34
I actually come to think of it when I’m looking like I don’t do this all the time, but sometimes late at night, I’ll read some gossip stuff and I always click on the negative ones. Oh yeah. Yeah. So maybe it just kind of your brain’s wired to look for like scandal or something like that. Yeah, no, exactly. And like, you know, the kind of old saying like if it bleeds, it leads like in news, you know, there’s all there’s that. But but yeah, and I

20:59
I’ve always loved titles and like what makes people click. And I stumbled on like a really old swipe file that I had like NeverNote. It was like six years old. And it was just titles that like made me stop my tracks. There were only a few, but every single one of them was negative. All right. So we’ve talked about contrast. We’ve talked about timeliness. We’ve talked about negativity. What else is in that playbook of yours? Yeah. So, um, so curiosity.

21:27
is a big thing. There are three emotions that make people click, curiosity, fear, and desire. Most good videos have a combination of curiosity and fear or curiosity and desire. With curiosity, that’s pretty much the most important one. There are so far, like my working theory, there are seven ways to build curiosity. One is to open a loop.

21:57
Um, which we already talked about, uh, two is negative lists. So like, you know, 10 iOS, 15 settings that you need to turn off like that, that builds curiosity. Like, Oh, why do I need to turn those off? Um, so negative lists, uh, another one is FOMO. Um, so one really good title is the number one skill you’re missing to make running easier. Um, you know, so that just like, you know, hits you square on the FOMOs right there. Unveiling a secret is another one.

22:25
No. like you know, top 10 hidden, hidden, you know, windows 10 apps or like, you know, 10 hidden somethings, you know, just when you’re unveiling a secret that kind of, there’s a little bit of scandal and you’re like, what is this? It kind of draws you in stopping doing something that’s common or beneficial. So another good title was, it was on, it was about YouTube. was, I stopped asking people to subscribe. And that just kind of like, kind of challenges your assumptions. You’re like, wait a minute, like,

22:55
Why would I stop asking people to subscribe? It’s best practices right there. And another one was from a wealth channel and it was, stopped telling people we’re debt free. So that’s one of those things where it’s the exact same framework, but just tailored to that industry. And both of those videos did seven, eight, nine times better than the channel average. So there’s obviously something there. So stopping doing something common or beneficial, contrast we talked about.

23:24
And then also talking about the future. know, like inflation is coming, do this, you know, so do this like opens a loop. like, when you’re talking about the future, you know, people, people want to know what’s happening. They want to know like, how can I, how can I be prepared? And it’s also like, you know, that builds a lot of curiosity. You know, what is, what is happening? So that’ll drop people in. So that’s, those are a couple of ways to build curiosity right there. the one that you just gave, I stopped asking people to subscribe.

23:54
That has curiosity and that also has contrast too, right? In a way. Yeah. And, negativity, you I stopped you, stopped doing something. Um, so yeah, I mean, you know, these, they, there’s a lot of overlap in all these, uh, and, know, as I’ve got a list of right now, like 127, you know, titles that have proven to do really well. And, uh, that list is growing every week. Um, and a lot of these, they’re, have a lot of these elements, a lot of these titles have a lot of these elements overlapping.

24:24
and they’ll have multiple of them. So one thing I like about your email newsletter is that you give these hook scores for each of the types. How do you come up with that score? Like how does the score work? Yeah, so the score is a multiple of how well a video did compared to recent videos. So it’s kind of tough because, you know, with my, the fishing company that I was working at, we were publishing two videos a day. So, you know, so if,

24:53
If in a week we’re publishing 14 videos, so that’s different to like kind of compare that to, let’s say like if, uh, you know, someone posts like every month, you know, um, the frequency is a lot greater. So, you know, it’s, it’s hard to compare apples to apples. And then also like, let’s say you have a channel that, that has like a million subscribers and they get a million views. Like that’s cool. But like also, you know, it’s, it’s not unheard of.

25:21
But if you have a channel that has a hundred thousand subscribers, and they get a million views, that’s a lot different. So the, the, uh, the hook score is just to help you compare apples to apples across different channels. It’s looking at, you know, kind of like the most recent videos and it’s taking an average and then it’s saying, all right, this video did, you know, 10 times better than the average. So for instance, if a video, if a video or if a channel all like they’re, you know, 10 or 20 recent videos have.

25:49
10,000 views, but one got 100,000 views. And that would be a hook score of a thousand because it did 10 times more views than the average. So it helps you compare videos across channels with different subscriber counts. Interesting. does it take into account that that includes the thumbnail though, right? So it’s not separated out the thumbnail and the title aren’t separated out. That is correct. Yeah. you know, there are

26:17
There are three things that make people click your video. It’s the thumbnail, the topic and the frame. know, so a thumbnail will definitely catch somebody’s eye. The topic, like, let’s say you have a physical therapy channel. If you talk about back pain, like pretty much all of your videos are going to do well about back pain. Then you’ve also got the frame, which is what we’ve pretty much been talking about this whole time. So like the ugly truth about back pain or, know, I quit my…

26:46
You know, I got rid of my back pain after doing these three things. So that’s like the frame and through, you know, studying just like hundreds of videos. Um, you know, my goal is to take out the effect of a killer thumbnail or a killer topic. Um, you know, I can’t, I can’t separate them out. Uh, but just looking at kind of the law of large numbers here, hopefully patterns will, uh, will arise after, you know, after looking at, at a bunch of them. Yeah. One thing that.

27:14
And I’m kind of curious how you do this analysis. You’ll notice that some channels, they’ll publish anything with a crappy title, anything, and it’ll still get like a million views, right? So are you looking at channels that are smaller? Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I’ve got a range of channels. I’ve got a list of a couple hundred channels that I go through every week. So it’s tough. if a video gets, or if a channel publishes like hit after hit after hit,

27:44
and they’re just not going to make it on the on the email list because you know, because there’s nothing that like stood out. that’s that is a hard thing. Like, man, if this if this channel is just crushing it, then there’s nothing that I can do. I can’t say, oh, this actually worked better because of this. So that’s that’s another kind of hard thing to to manage here. So how would you use these techniques in the e-commerce world? Like if you were selling physical products, how would you apply this?

28:12
Yeah. So, you know, there’s a couple of different ways. One, you know, we already talked about ranking on Google. So using, like timeliness or timeframes to help rank. There’s also email subject lines that I use, you know, so you can use these same exact formulas to get people to open up your emails. And then like in your product descriptions, you know, really thinking, how do I build curiosity or like, how do I

28:41
How do I kind of touch on negativity? So like in this case, negativity might be like loss aversion. So you might talk about how a product helps you avoid losses versus like get gains. Or if you’re talking about like the benefits of a product, you might say, here are the 10 reasons why you should buy this product. You know, cause lists work really well. And if we’re talking about like timeliness, you could talk about why a product can help you right now.

29:11
if you’re like a help you get abs right now. Like if it’s, you know, if it’s January 1st, maybe you’re changing your copy to be like, Hey, like in your fitness company, you might change your copy to be like, Hey, you know, for your new year’s resolution, it’ll get this ab killer 9,000 or whatever. Um, you know, because you know, that’s what’s on people’s minds right now. Uh, another one is authority. So you can be like, yeah, Elon Musk’s uses this, um, this kind of, this kind of thing. It is Tesla.

29:41
Can we talk about loss aversion real quick? Is that a form of negativity, I guess? Yeah, yeah. So negativity is just like a, it’s kind of like a catch all, catch all category. You know, there’s FOMO in there, loss aversion, there’s a lot in there. So yeah, yeah, let’s do it. I’m just thinking to myself now, it’s really good because listening to these things makes me really analyze headlines. I used to hide my ads in my Facebook feed, but now I actually watch them all because it’s fascinating to me.

30:11
Oh yeah. Loss aversion. I know for me, like let’s say I make a sale in my e-commerce store and then someone asks for a return. That actually hurts me a lot more than not ever getting that sale in the first place. Yes. So psychologically, and I’m trying to think of how to do this with headlines. You gave a couple of examples, like how to not lose X and X. So based on what you’re saying, should I make all my headlines negative?

30:40
Yeah. that’s a, all right. So I’ve got, I got some stats for you. So 36 % of these titles have negativity. Uh, 50 % of them have curiosity and then only 13 % have a deep desire. So I think it also depends on like your market. Like, you know, if you’re selling handkerchiefs, uh, you probably wouldn’t want to lean that hard on like fear and like negativity. You could definitely sprinkle it in.

31:08
But I think it’s surely something worth testing. Even if you don’t use it, could just try to, I think Neil Patel calls it like the evil twin. If something like how to do something is working well, then you might say the five mistakes doing that same thing. it’s just flipping it over and doing the negative version. So I think it’s definitely worth testing.

31:34
There are some markets where fear just works really well. like in finance, like the old Agora, like newsletters work really well, talking about inflation and the stock market crashing, people just eat that stuff up. then if you’re a spiritual holistic channel, you probably don’t want to talk about how the world is ending. Just stuff like that. I think it depends.

32:02
If you’re going for a hit and if you want to be a little on the edgier side, it’s tough to beat negativity. But I think it’s all about your market. Well, I’m just thinking for YouTube, where you’re not necessarily talking about your product, it just seems like you should skew negative on your headlines. I so I talked about that Pay It Forward channel earlier. And if you look at their most popular

32:29
their most popular videos, sort their channel by most popular. Every single one of them is about, is negativity. Like it’s, all about like iOS 14 settings that you should turn off. It’s iOS 13 settings you should turn off. Like turn these settings on your iPhone off right now. Like turn these Android settings off right now. They’re all negativity. So yeah, I mean, that’s it. Like, yeah, people love it. They can’t get enough of it. You know, and another thing is like, if you have a bunch of like positive stuff,

32:59
then you could just try to add some curiosity to that. If you don’t wanna add negativity, add curiosity, like try to open up a loop, try to use contrast there. So that’s one way to kind of not get around negativity, but like if you have a positive topic, instead of making it negative, try throwing in curiosity there. Can you give me an example of the desire headlines that did really well? Yes. Here’s a a negativity one and desire.

33:28
So it was from a channel that talks about like home stuff like DIY projects. It was never solder again, how to connect wires the easy way. So never solder again, like it kind of hits you with that negativity there and then how to connect wires the easy way. And the reason that this is a deep desire, I’m assuming I’m not like, I’m not this target audience, but like all of their top videos were about connecting wires. So I’m assuming that’s just like a…

33:58
That’s a deep desire in that niche. Another one was a five minute killer, lower abs and obliques home workout. like lower abs and obliques, like that’s a deep desire one. You’ve got five minutes in the beginning there. So you’ve got a timeframe, um, you know, and then home workout kind of, you know, it almost like refutes an objection of like, ah, like I can’t do this workout. Like, you know, I don’t, I don’t have a gym membership or I don’t have enough time, like five minutes at home. Like,

34:27
you kind of have to watch this video because you have no excuse not to. Another one was I quit my $120,000 job after learning three things. I quit my job. It’s like, boom, for me, that was my deepest desire for years. And then after learning three things, that opens a loop that’s got a list. There’s a lot in that title.

34:54
Can you walk me through like your framework? Like, let’s say you have to write about something. I guess this where the art part comes in. What is your process? Yeah, so, so I, you know, I think, I think like, all right, what do I, what do I want to write about? And then I’ll kind of go through the 10 spiciness factors and like, how, how do I, how do I, you know, what would be the most natural thing to add in there? So let’s say,

35:23
talking about how to potty train a golden retriever puppy. So I have a, that’s like my biggest lead magnet on my blog about golden retrievers is how to potty train your golden retriever puppy. And I think I rank like number one or two for that. I was thinking like, so you have your subject, how to potty train a golden retriever puppy. And then you go through kind of the 10 spiciness factors. I’ll just kind of walk you through this here. like curiosity. So how would I add curiosity to potty training a golden retriever puppy?

35:53
Never scoop your poop again with this secret formula. Yes, exactly. Or like, you know, the number one thing to to make potty training your puppy easier. Like, boom, like, you know, what is the number one thing you kind of that makes you ask that question? So that’s one way to add curiosity. I might say, like, all right, negativity, like the five mistakes to potty training your puppy. You’re kind of like what we said, like if this is a blog post that I’m trying to rank on Google.

36:20
I’m not going to use that negative title because it’s probably not going to rank well. And usually I make that decision when I’m looking at the top. Well, I’m looking at what’s ranking on Google already. And you can kind of see, all right, this is what Google wants. Google doesn’t want the mistakes to rank to potty training your puppy. So, okay, I’m not going to use negativity. So now I’ve got list. All right, well, 10 tips to potty training your puppy. You’re going to treat your puppy. That’s a good one. Authority.

36:48
How Zach George potty trained his potty trains a golden retriever puppy in two weeks. You got timeliness, how to potty train your Christmas puppy or something. That’s not gonna work. The next one is beginner tips. How to potty train your puppy as a new puppy owner. All right, that’s a good one. We got timeframes, how to potty train your puppy in five minutes. So I’m just, I’m gonna run through this list. I’m probably gonna write 10 titles, maybe more. And then to figure out, you what is natural, what is normal.

37:17
and then look at like what’s already worked in the past. If I’m trying to rank on Google, I’ll look at what’s on the first page. But just trying to figure out what would really satisfy my audience’s desire here. So if you got 10 headlines, how do you assign your own headline score or hook score, so to speak? So yeah, so the hook score is like a retroactive score. I use that to figure out how a video did.

37:44
And it’s pretty much on another channel and just so that I can compare how that video did to the other videos and also to videos on other channels. Got it. So when you had these 10 headlines, how do you narrow down the winner? So that’s, yeah, it was like you said, and that’s the art. it was just really thinking like, what is like my audience is like kind of biggest fear, biggest desire here. So the case of potty training, your gold retriever puppy, the thing that people want the most is they want to do it fast.

38:13
They don’t really care how like a professional trainer did it. They don’t care. Um, you know, like they don’t care about anything. They just want to do it fast. So that is how I would make that decision because I know that this is really what my audience wants. So I’m going to, I’m just going to give it to a right there in the title and they’re going to say, boom, this is what I want. This is what I need. And that’s what’s going to make them click. Got it. Do you do any testing a little bit? Uh, so I do testing. help with like my consulting. I helped them do testing.

38:43
I’m not really doing any testing on my blog posts. then I’m looking at trends with my email open rates. So I’m trying to figure out, this worked, this did not work. So really the testing that I’m doing is for consulting clients.

39:06
I just wanted to let you know that tickets for the 2022 Seller Summit are now on sale over at SellersSummit.com. Now, what is the Seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker that I invite,

39:33
is deep in the trenches of their own e-commerce business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the seller summit will be small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets will sell out fast and in fact we sell out every single year many months in advance. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year in revenue,

40:00
We are also offering an exclusive Mastermind experience with other top sellers. Now the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 4th to May 6th. And as of right now, we’re almost already sold out of Mastermind tickets and we’ll be raising the price every month leading up to the event after Cyber Monday. For more information, go to sellerssummit.com. Once again, that’s sellerssummit.com or just Google it. Now back to the show.

40:26
I’m just curious if you, for example, like split test email subject lines. This is something that I don’t really do, but I’m just kind of curious if other people do it and how in their process for doing so. That is definitely something that I plan to do in the future. Okay. Okay. You know, I know for me, like sometimes I’ll have like 10 headlines that I’ve written and I’ll pick one, but like I’m never right. Like the ones I think that aren’t that great sometimes do really well. And the ones I think are going to kill it.

40:54
end up doing that well. So I’m just wondering if there’s like a formula or some process that you’ve used to figure that out. that’s a really good question. Like, I mean, I’m with you. Sometimes I’ll think something will like kill it and it just kind of flops. So I mean, the only way to do that is to test is to try and is to just kind of lean on like, you know, this is what is proven in the past. Like, I’m going to I’m going to start with this and I’m going to take what information I get, you know, once I take my first step, and then I’m going to pivot if I need to.

41:24
Okay. You mentioned while we were talking kind of in passing, you said 10 spiciness factors. Yes. I don’t think we’ve covered all 10 yet. We’ve covered maybe five or so. What are the ones that we’re missing? All right. So 10 spiciness factors and these are in order of popularity. Okay. Like, you know, or frequent frequency, like, you know, like I said, 50 % of these titles have curiosity. So you’ve got curiosity, negativity, list, authority, timeliness, beginner tips,

41:54
timeframes, refuting an objection, comparison, and then daily habits. And if that’s in priority order? Yes, in in order of like, these are like, these pop up the most. Okay, so curiosity and negativity. Okay. Curiosity, negativity and list are the top three. Interesting. I’m gonna have to like become a pessimist now.

42:21
Usually my headlines are like in the past, they were kind of boring because Google forced me for them to be boring in a way, right? Because people sometimes are literally searching for how to do such and such. And if you look in the front of the search results, literally those are the first keywords at the front of the title. And they’re all vanilla. Like every single post on the front page has the same vanilla title. Yes. Yep. I mean, it’s like that kind of it stinks because it does kind of like

42:49
you know, straight, put a little strength, a hold on your creativity. But like Google has figured out that this is what people really want. So, you know, kind of your only shot there to, to, to differentiate yourself is to slap something on the back. Uh, you know, beginner tips is a good one, right? How to, how to rank your store, how to start an e-commerce store for beginners. Um, you know, beginners, timeliness and timeframes are really the easiest ones there. And then in YouTube and Tik Tok land though,

43:18
It’s fair game, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Those discovery platforms where it’s just like, you know, you’re trying to, you know, you’re, it’s not search. People are just kind of mindlessly scrolling. Like what’s going to catch their, what’s going to catch their eye and boom, that’s where your curiosity and your negativity come in hard. This is what I like about all this stuff that we’ve been talking about, Jake, every, all these hooks and all these titles, literally this can be like the first line of your video, whether it be YouTube, Tik TOK, your

43:47
podcast because it actually gets them to want to listen to the rest of the episode as well. In fact, I should have started this podcast episode off with a hook. Don’t lose all of your subs. Use these, you know, 10 spiciness factors. Boom. Exactly. There you go. Yeah. I mean, it’s cool because like you can use, like, this is just psychology. Like we’re just trying to figure out what makes people click and like what catches people’s attention. So you could use it in your video title.

44:15
can use it in your intro. You can use it in your bullet points. I use these things in my subheadings and my blog posts. You can just use them anywhere. It’s really studying psychology. That’s what I love about this is that it’s not changing. An algorithm shift isn’t going to mess up why people click on something. So I love studying psychology just because it’s evergreen.

44:42
I wonder though, like sometimes on YouTube, I see a C of the same headlines. I wonder if at some point it makes sense to just kind of go against the flow and just give a straightforward title. Like if you see a C of negativity and you see one positive headline, I wonder if that makes a difference also. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. That’s where, that’s where the art comes in. The art comes in. I think it was, was digital marketer that they said one of their most opened email subject lines was just copywriting like lowercase

45:11
copywriting, like, boom, you have a deep desire there. But like also, it’s really stands out. So I’ve used that a lot. I’ve written emails like puppy biting or potty training. You know, and that’s, that’s proven to work well on with with email subject lines. And I’d be interested to see how it works on on YouTube videos as well. Yeah, actually, actually, there’ve been YouTube videos that I’ve watched. But granted, I know who the the person is.

45:40
where they just have like this one word title and I’ll watch it just because like, what the heck was this a mistake? Yeah. Yeah. So like Emma Chamberlain, one of like a couple of her recent videos, she has like, I think it’s like 10 million subscribers or something. Uh, but a couple of her recent videos are like one or two words. And I think the problem with that is it probably only works if you already have a huge audience that knows, likes and trusts you. And what’s here, you have to say.

46:08
So like, I think it was Jake Paul did a video. It was like, I’m so proud of my brother. And like, there’s not that much emotion in there in either of those examples. But because one, because he’s a Jake Paul brother, a Paul brother, and you know who his brother is. And two, because Evan Chamberlain has 10 million people that already love her. That works for people who have huge audiences. But if you’re just trying, if you’re getting started out and like, if you have a smaller audience,

46:36
then you need to write a title that evokes emotion. Yeah. Hey, Jake, we’ve been talking about this magical newsletter of yours, which I love. Where can people sign up for this? Yeah. So creator hooks dot com. And I’m just going to give you a quick plug here, Jake. It literally is one of the emails that I look forward to on Mondays because it just gives me a whole bunch of ideas. Copywriting is just one of these things like it’s almost like you have to write all these things down because

47:04
I might see like a really catchy hook, but then I’ll forget about it like a day later or an hour later, I’ll forget about it. So it’s almost like I need this whole list down. I’ve actually been taking your emails and then putting them down in a list. So every time I need to write something, I’ll just kind of go down each one of these headlines and see if I can like wedge one of my things in there. Yeah, that’s exactly what I do when I write headlines and email subject lines. I just, have this list. You know, I have a folder for my own emails. I’ll go through that, but then I also have a spreadsheet and I’ll just like,

47:34
know, zip through those and you know, as I’m writing a title for either a client or for myself, just like, you know, having a huge list of what’s already proven to work is super helpful. know, just for fun, I’m going to name this podcast episode something really boring. Hey, if it’s super boring, it’ll stand out and people are gonna play. Actually, no, I have I’ve got a good story. I want to tell you a long time ago, you did a podcast with Mike Jackness. Yep. And you guys, it was the same content.

48:03
You guys each published the same podcast and you wrote a better title than he did. And I clicked and listened to yours versus his. Really? What was that? What did I call it? don’t even remember. I don’t remember. And I like, I remember this was, this is a couple of years ago, probably like maybe three or four. And I took a screenshot and I almost emailed you, but I was like, I didn’t, I didn’t like have anything going where I want, you know, why isn’t it open this email? But, uh, but yeah, I took a screenshot and it.

48:31
because on my podcast, you guys published it like the same day. And so they were back to back. So, you know, I had to choose one and I chose yours because you, yours like made me more excited to listen to it. Ah, interesting. Well, thank you for telling me that story. I’m gonna have to rub it in. I’m like, I’m actually seeing him in a couple of days. So I’m gonna rub it in. Oh, good. Do it. Tell him to step up his title game. Well, Jake, hey, thanks a lot for coming on the show, man. I really loved this episode and I’ve learned a lot just from your news letter alone.

49:01
Yeah, thank you, Steve. This was fun. I love talking about this and I’m glad I finally got to meet you. All right. Take care. Thanks. You too.

49:10
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now if I’ve learned anything about YouTube these past couple years, it’s that the headline and thumbnail are the most important parts of your video. If you can get someone to click, that is 90 % of the battle. For more information about this episode, go to mywebquaterjob.com slash episode 390. And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce 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.

49:39
So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. I also 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. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash div. Now when we talk about how I these tools on my blog,

50:08
And 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.