A Deep Dive Into YouTube With Organic Growth Expert Marissa Romero

I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle Confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus a $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

00:50

Welcome back to the list building lifestyle. I’m your host Igor Kheifets and today I’m chatting with Marissa Romero. Marissa is actually one of the few people out there who I consider to be an authority when it comes to organic YouTube growth. She has grown her own channel to 275,000 followers with over 8.5 million views on YouTube and generated close to a million dollars in organic revenue. She is now focused to help in helping YouTubers establish YouTubers turning subscribers to sales and helping them scale their YouTube businesses. She’s a mother of one, a speaker, a YouTuber and a true digital nomad. Marisa, welcome to the list building lifestyle.

01:36

Igor, thanks so much. That was a fantastic intro. It’s an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

01:43

Yeah, its honor is all mine. I always love chatting with interesting people who have something that they’ve done in their life. And, you know, for the most part in this industry, people talk about things they’ve done, they don’t actually do these things. So it’s a lot of self-embellishment and self-promotion. So I like it when, you know, we can have some measurable metrics that we can go by. And of course, YouTube is a whole other area of fascination for me, because my relationship with YouTube is a bit like twofold. One on one hand, they spent a lot of money on YouTube ads. And if you spend time on YouTube, you’ve probably seen my ads. On the other hand, I am attempting quite well, I don’t want to say unsuccessfully because we’ve been seeing growth, but it’s been very challenging to grow our channel. So in general, YouTube is a fascinating topic for me to just kind of talk about. But before we get into that, can you maybe share a little bit about how you managed to grow your channel? What was the secret sauce? How did you end up kind of penetrating YouTube, if you will, and what made you so successful on that platform?

03:03

Yeah, yeah, let’s, if I take a deep dive into the past, my journey started. Let’s see, a little bit before that the journey started. Kind of a prelude to that. What happened was I was a bridge engineer for seven years. So I had a career as an engineer and a bridge engineer. Yeah, I was a bridge engineer, mostly like bridge inspection. The inspection part was actually fun. Like, I enjoyed that part of my career, but there were other aspects and I’m like, I don’t belong here. So I, you know, I felt that urge I had no clue. I didn’t even know entrepreneurs. Ship was for me, like, I had no clue that I could be a business owner. And I didn’t know that was possible. So what happened was, I left my job. I took the leap of faith because I was going to start network marketing. I was going to build an Amway business, I was like, let’s do it. I am all about it. I read the books I read. I went to the meetings I’m like, let’s do this. And then shortly after that, like you know diving online and researching and how to get leads for my Amway business I found you know, things

04:24

Are holding them way out of all things. Wow. Isn’t it like the biggest company, the biggest MLM in the world? Or is Herbalife bigger?

04:32

I don’t know. It’s close. I mean, they’re old school.

04:37

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, the guy who built that way, you know, he’s, he’s a hardcore entrepreneur and got some big wins. Big wins. Dan Kennedy writes about him a lot. I didn’t read his book. Probably should but Amway is a testament of mlm success that you can actually do something like that and be extremely, extremely successful.

05:00

Huh, right, right. And I mean, the meetings were incredible. I went to a meeting back when I was interested. And there were like, 500 people just, you know, celebrating their milestones like, this is awesome. So that was kind of my first taste of entrepreneurship and thinking like, wow, because I what my main goal when I left my, my career, and I left at a point that was crazy, like, I just got my master’s degree in construction engineering. You know, I moved up pretty well in my position, and everybody was like, you’re doing what? And I’m like, Yeah, and I was just, I had this overconfidence just like, I’m gonna kill it, make six figures in, you know, 90 days attitude, right. And I really, my main goal was to be able to travel because I got the whole thing inspired by my first trip to Europe, when I was 26. With my family, I’m like, wait a minute.

05:59

We went to London, we were there for a few days. And we went to Italy,

06:06

Rome, Florence, and we went to three places in Greece, the last place was Crete. And I just that trip was like, it just hit me in the face. I’m like, oh, my God. Like, there’s all this world out here. Europeans think way differently than we do about work. I’m like this. I need to see more of this. I need to see more of the world. And I’m like, How do I do this? And so that kind of sparked my curiosity of like, what am I doing? And so anyway, then, when I was

06:37

Saying that a bridge engineer would travel for work, no.

06:43

Around the states, yes. But around the world. I mean, there are different opportunities. But it would have been, it would have been pretty tough. But I was like, I would have done anything. I looked at the Peace Corps, I looked at the Army Corps, I’m like, give me a job in Pakistan, like, I just want to travel.

07:05

In Pakistan,

07:06

I was literally, database on USA Jobs, because I worked for the federal government. And I’m like, oh, there’s position positions in Germany, high risk and Pakistan. I’m like, I’ll take it, that’s fine. You know,

07:22

No, but to think, you know, you probably went to school to become an engineer, you probably spend a lot of time and money on it. I don’t know if you still have any student loan debt. Like most people would have. I mean, I think we know, we have a mutual friend. I know if you know him. I’m assuming you do. Because it’s also quite, you know, he’s spending a lot of time on YouTube. Jonathan Montoya, he wasn’t on the show. He was an engineer so I went to the Israeli Air Force Academy with a specialty, they had specialties like The Macan, there were mechanical specialties and other specialties. So my specialty was electrical engineering. So I’m seeing this thread that, you know, people who invest a lot of time, money and effort and I got lucky with the money part because it was mostly subsidized by the Israeli government ended up leaving these lucrative on paper, right? lucrative jobs because, you know, ask any parent nine times out of 10, you know, if you ask them, would you like your kids to become an engineer? You know, yeah, of course engineer or a doctor or a lawyer or anything. So it’s so easy to walk away from that, like, how come? What was the reason it was so instant for you? Like, why didn’t you say, you know, what, I want to travel but I’ll stick to my engineering job or something.

08:47

Yeah, no, that’s interesting. It’s a great question because most normal people would have probably not have left as soon as I did. I think I just, you know, I was single I didn’t have a husband or kids I know, had money saved up I had access to capital. So I was like, let me just do this and but as I was leaving, I kind of so that’s the point when I found like network marketing, but also when I found affiliate marketing online and also ecommerce and so there were those interests on like, Whoa, there’s so many ways to build an online business. I can for sure figure this out. So I had this, like, really great confidence in myself that I was just going to go get it. It’s so yeah,

09:35

No, I’m sorry to cut you in again, cutting again. But you say you have confidence to figure it out. I think that’s a really important point. Because as an engineer, or somebody who’s coming from that profession where you’ve, you went through some tough education, like you had to study a lot to become what you became. All of a sudden you gain the car’s confidence to be able to solve difficult puzzles. You know what I mean? Like, because, as you said, normal people, you know, when they think in terms of being able to figure something out, they most of the time have very low self-esteem, and they don’t have this unreasonable, if you will, confidence to figure something out. And here you are, you’d be like, Wow, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, YouTube, face, whatever. It’s like, this is an exciting, big, exciting world. And I can go in, but I’ll have to figure it out. And I have the confidence to do it. So I think that’s an important element to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

10:41

Yeah, no, I agree. Because there is, I was listening to a video, by minority mindset, you’ve probably seen him on YouTube. He’s huge. But he said, The reason I’ve gotten to my success and where I am now is because I’ve made stupid decisions, like everyone would think that that is a stupid decision. And I didn’t at the time. And so that’s how I’ve gotten to where I am. And it’s and I could resonate with that, because it’s crazy. I mean, I you know, so that first year and a half of my going into entrepreneurship and dabbling with affiliate marketing, I took EECOM seriously first, so I did Shopify drop shipping, all that I had a print on demand store, I had a baby store, a gadget store, like I had these stores. And so that was, I was decent at it, but I wasn’t profitable. Because, you know, super shiny object syndrome. I was investing in training and mentors and things I definitely should not have spent my money on. So that’s when I racked up a big huge six figure, Bill that bill and I’m like, Oh my God. I was in trouble. So then, like that year and a half, I’m like, okay, here I am. I have my stores. I’m like, I don’t even want to do ecommerce. I don’t like it. It’s so hard. And Facebook ads are going up and I’m like this shipping, and it was just a mess. So I was like, let me get rid of these. So I sold them for like this super cheap price. Like it was like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it. But I didn’t know.

12:21

Hmm. You sold your stores.

12:23

I sold my stores. And then at that same time was when I was in Thailand. So I booked a one way ticket to start my digital nomad because this whole reason why I did entrepreneurship was to travel. So I’m like, why am I still in the US? I booked a one- way ticket to Thailand for $218. And this was from Phoenix. So I booked a one way landing in Phuket and was there for like three or four months, but it was in Thailand. I’m like, Okay, I had no stores. I had no clue what I was going to do next and I had all this debt. And I’m like, crap, what am I going to do? So I tried a couple of things. I just stuffed it to hold me over. I was doing some Facebook ads coaching. But then it came to a point I’m like, Okay, this is do or die, I really need to make something happen. Or else I was gun

13:16

To the head. Now all your decisions are catching up with you. Now, you pretty much forced to strip all the bullshit and narrow it down to I guess one thing that can make your money.

13:28

Yeah, so that’s when I started. YouTube had to work for me. It had to make me money. So the reason I started was because I saw other people that I had kind of known around. And that’s when I first found you actually, like I’d seen your YouTube ads or something of you. And that’s when I first got to know you in space. So it’s crazy how five years later, we’re here,

13:51

Isn’t it? The other week, I was interviewing Rich Schefren. And, you know, I felt the exact same way because he’s a legend. He was literally a living legend in the industry. And I used to download his reports and be like, oh, wow, I wish one day I can be like him. And now it’s like we’re speaking on itI level and you know, we texting back and forth discussing different ideas. And he likes recommending books to me. I recommend books to him. And it’s like Unreal. It’s almost a surreal experience to be able to track back where you start to be like, really? I was all the way over there. No way and how do they get here one day at a time? Oh my god, this is incredible. So you get on YouTube. Did it resonate with you right away? Was it like love from the first video? Did you be like yeah, I couldn’t really see myself doing this or was it more like a desperation play? Be like, look, if this doesn’t work, nothing will work. I’ll have to go back to inspecting bridges.

14:59

It was a little bit to both it was I, back then I uploaded every day. Like I just literally grabbed my phone. I grabbed my webcam, and one of the two made a video that I uploaded . I didn’t care how it looked, I didn’t care about the good optimization I just did. And I was like, I think it was around the 30 day a little after the 30 day mark of uploading, I started gaining subs, I started getting views. And I started and I made my first commission. It was like $33.50 and I’m like,

15:33

That’s the best commission. Wait a minute.

15:36

This 100% came from my YouTube channels. That’s the only place that this affiliate link is that so I’m like, Okay, this works. So then what do you promote? Honestly, I have no idea. It was something on JVZoo okay, it was a JVZoo product and so you went around launch sniping

15:57

I was doing a little bit of launch jacking. What else was I doing? Oh, I did a big launch jack for when Carter launched because like I still use Carter so Karcher back then launched. And I got a lot of good sales from that. So it was just like, you know, I made $33 a day. And then I was like, okay, cool. Then I got monetized on YouTube. I’m like, great, this is great money to pay my bills. Like, I can eat. So YouTube.

16:29

So YouTube paid you for ad views.

16:33

Yeah, that’s why I got monetized really fast. I got monetized. Let’s see, June the end of June. And I started like the beginning of April. So I got and then I got my first AdSense check in July. And I was like, wow, this is great.

16:51

Thailand, your bills weren’t really that high.

16:54

No rent was like, let’s see, 200 bucks a month and just food. I mean, it was really, really great. So in the west, the dollar went away longer. And so I finally felt like, okay, cool. So then I just kept doubling, down, doubling down. And at the time, I was promoting a higher ticket program. And I made my first like $1,000 commission that July as well. And I was like, wow, I cannot even I cannot believe this at all. And so that’s just kind of, you know, how I just continued to build and then I was affiliate marketing is great, but it’s just kind of the gateway to really creating your own product. I mean, it’s, it’s not, for me, it’s not sustainable to just do affiliate marketing, like you gotta create something of your own. Because I did affiliate marketing like 90% for that first year on YouTube. And then I’m like, Okay, I really, really want to create my own product. Like I don’t, all these

18:00

engineers like to build, there’s really nothing. No wonder engineers like to build and you seem like a creative person, like somebody who’s got a lot of creativity. So usually that ends up resulting in you kind of looking at what other people are doing with their products. And you’d be like, well, if I can promote their products and make a commission, I can probably create products and hold the money.

18:26

Yep, exactly. And then you, you create the rules, right? You create, like what the environments like and the customer experience and just things and I’m like, Yeah, this is, this is where it needs to be. Because one thing that being an engineer, I think that was frustrating was I couldn’t really be creative. You know, I was having all these ideas, and it would be very much so like, like, no, let’s, we can’t do that because the headquarters or you know, whatever. So like, this was just like a free, blank page. And I could do whatever I wanted. And so that’s when I started to transition less or have less like affiliate income. And then it transitioned more to like my own product creation, and brand deals and just other things. So Right. Yeah.

19:14

Right. Yeah, that’s awesome. So you then go on to skyrocket to a much larger level of success with YouTube. And then today, you’ve decided, okay, now I’m going to help YouTubers scale. So walk us through that decision. What happened there?

19:35

Yeah. So it’s really, really interesting how that happened because I, well, just so the audience knows I left my original Marissa Romero channel, which has 212,000 subscribers. To start fresh, to start brand new and ever again. Everyone was like, Oh my God, you’re crazy. See what you are doing. And so I left for quite a bunch of reasons. That’s like a whole nother episode. But essentially, I felt like I was extremely burnt out, pigeon holed again, my creativity was being squeezed. And the YouTube algorithm only wanted one or certain topics from me like making money online, the passive income from zero, and my work from home side hustles. And I was so done, I was just done. I could not talk about it for another moment, I use

20:33

burnout, eventually burnout when you have to say the same thing over and over and over and over again, just because the algorithm wants you to upload a new video. But it basically has to be the same as the one you’ve uploaded last week. Right? Yeah, it gets on like this repetitiveness with algorithms is quite annoying,

20:53

Right. And then the other piece of this was I wanted to serve like a different type of client at another level, like I was ready to serve and teach the advanced things that I was learning in my business things that no one teaches like customer service, bookkeeping, advanced funnels, like webinars, sales, but like all these things that are like, that aren’t talked about, like on beginner YouTube videos, like I wanted to teach that. And I also wanted to teach about how, like, I was able to take a maternity leave on my business and do systems and automations. And the things that allow a solopreneur and freelancer to step into those CEO shoes, and be able to work on their business and not in your business that

21:44

If this is wrong, this time is when you’ve had the baby.

21:51

Okay, so I had my son in May 2022. And then after that I left the channel in December, but it kind of after he was born, I’m like, I was this weird, like, what am I going to do? And then after that, I’m like, you know what I’m like, something is just not right. So I went back, and I continue to post on my channel, but I’m like, I can’t do this anymore. So I navigated that, like, you know, while I was on maternity leave, I had a lot of thinking time to figure out what I wanted. So then once I got back and got into the flow again, I’m like, this has to stop. And I decided, like, I wanted to start a brand new channel with my team as CO creators so that I wasn’t the only creator. And so we could speak and teach this higher level content. So it was an evolution. But I think the reason why I wanted to stop it was because I knew that if I stayed on that path, it wasn’t going to allow me to evolve and be true to my creativity. I mean, that’s the whole reason I’m a creator, I genuinely love creating. Right. And so that’s what was the motivation behind the switch.

23:08

Right, right now it makes sense. Yeah. Um, what do you think, so when you walked away from the channel, you know, that was before AI came along? That was before the algorithm changes again. These days now, I’m seeing a lot of people teach, like, oh, YouTube automation, you don’t have to talk to them to show you your face on camera, you don’t have to have a personality, you don’t have to have a face or a brain, you know, here’s a take a chat, GPT text and loaded into a B roll video and do some voiceover using a different AI tool and just upload that stuff all day long. And you make money on YouTube. How do you feel about where YouTube is going these days?

23:51

No, that’s, it’s um, I think it’s, it’s, it’s getting abused. I think people are creating these poor quality channels. Because of the whole faceless channel of what’s the word phenomenon? You know, like everyone talking about just creating a faceless channel and, and creating video from scripts to upload to publish within 30 minutes. It’s like, okay, I mean, they’re not to take away the quality of some YouTube channels that have amazing animated videos and faces content, but it’s not associated with chat GPT like their real cinematic videos like it I just think that the whole YouTube automation cash cow channels, it’s definitely an abused field. And it just lowers the quality of content on YouTube, in my opinion. I don’t, I don’t like I’ve never taught that specifically. I love teaching, you know, go-getters, entrepreneurs, like how to be the brand and how to, you know, drive quality traffic and lead to your business from the value you give out there, right and to grow your legacy. And just I don’t know, that’s, that’s not really my I don’t, I don’t really run a true fan of the whole cash cow automation channel. So, yeah, but

25:17

We’re seeing that more and more now. And across all the different fields now people are trying to I mean, there’s a saying marketers ruin everything. And as a marketer, I wholeheartedly agree, it’s, you know, any, anything that comes out is immediately being abused to make money in some way. But the problem is, as soon as everybody starts doing that, the game changes, again. And so, you know, with SEO with AI, obviously, now there’s AI content checkers, so you can’t really do just pure air have to adapt. But, you know, when it comes to real creators on YouTube, now, I think they’re up against a bigger issue. Because even if somebody’s got, like this faceless automation channel, they’re still producing a lot more, they’re still giving you what it wants, and that is frequent fresh video content. It might lack original or creative thought. But it’s frequent. And it’s going to rank for the keywords. And I think that’s terrible. I really do like now it takes me way more time. And I kind of use YouTube as both for entertainment. And for research. Now, it takes a lot more time to find good information in certain industries. Again, in certain industries more than others, for example, I was just looking at, at some surgical stuff, the other day, there’s a procedure where you can go in and you can remove a ruptured disc tissue, I get a lower back issue. And see, like, there was an actual video of a surgeon explaining the procedure and then doing it and the screen was kind of half and half. And you could see him drilling through the tissue and everything. So that was amazing. And I really appreciate YouTube for that sort of content. But a lot of you know, educational content these days is getting diluted or whatever. And I’m not liking that trend. I really hope YouTube does something to identify the trend, and maybe we’ll maybe not kill it, but maybe suppress these videos that are purely done for the purpose of, you know, abusing the algorithm.

27:32

Yeah, well, I think it the technology, if it’s used, right, it’s amazing, right, I think it’s a great way to for YouTubers established full time creators to leverage chat GPT, and other AI tools for help with scripting, to save time during their workflow and during optimization. And it also can help in other areas, on a company level, for example, analyzing customer support, responses, and it all helps, like it’s a very useful tool for other things. But again, like if it gets abused, and there’s just like, you know, trash B roll automated content on YouTube, it’s like, come on, it’s, it’s again, right, it could take away other true creators, positions on that home feed that really, you know, I have took the time to think and to produce and put like real human being content on there. So yeah,

28:35

Yeah. And it’s funny, you use the word think, because I’ve noticed, like, I used to think that most people don’t think now we see it even more with AI. Now I see there’s even more laziness when it comes to content creation. Like, even five years ago, you could already tell that original thinkers and people who have something interesting to say, their stuff stands out. But today, today, so much content sounds exactly the same. Whether it’s produced by Chet GPT or not, that, you know, if you truly have creative, original or contrarian thought, you’re way more likely to stand out again, there’s more noise. Yeah. But it’s also easier, I think, today to be contrarian. Now, of course, there’s the other part of that argument, maybe the other end of the stick where people are trying to be contrarian, whether it makes any sense or not just for the purpose of getting, you know, clicks and views. So what are you seeing in terms of contrarian content out there right now? Is there more of it than before? What are we seeing?

29:48

Now, that’s a great question, because I actually feel like on our new channel, we’re making contrarian content because we’re creating content that a lot of titles don’t really exist right now. Because before, typically, when you start a channel, it’s really easy to model after a viral topic, something that’s already proven a viral image on a thumbnail, etc, and remix it on your own, which hopefully most people do remix it on their own. But it’s really easy to copy a title, change one word or two, and redo the video to make it longer and make it better. But right now, like literally, literally what we’re struggling with is we’re making this content that there are no proven titles, like the biggest title that we have to model after is only 33,000 views are like, well, dang. So I think it’s an interesting space where you are the Pioneer if you’re doing a topic that’s maybe higher level, or that hasn’t really been like, hounded to the ground, and proven in the YouTube algorithm. So I think there’s, I think there’s pros and cons. And I think that right now, it’s really testing all of us as creators, because, I mean, specifically talking on my channel, because we’re like, man, like, this content is so good. But it’s not really getting picked up by the algorithm. But we know once a video pops off, then everyone’s gonna want to model after us. And so it’s kind of being the pioneers in a specific niche. Like, if, if your topic isn’t very well known yet, or established or super viral? I think that’s totally okay. Because eventually, it definitely will be on the platform.

31:44

What do you think? Like, how, how big or how small? I guess Yeah, how big does a topic on YouTube have to be, has to be for it to be a viable topic to go after? Like, if somebody’s wanted to start a YouTube channel? I know you work with established creators, but you know, many people listening probably don’t have a channel yet or are trying. So how, like, if they choose a topic, and they do the research, and they find out using the tools like to buddy, for example, how many monthly searches this particular keyword gets or whatever? How would they know if it’s big enough to be worth it?

32:27

Yeah, no, great question. I actually don’t use it as a buddy. But I don’t use it for keyword research. And I actually teach not to do it. And I love to buddy because I use it to save time in my workflow. And we use it for so many other things like A B split testing, etc. But I

32:49

Research on YouTube was: what do you use for keyword research? For YouTube?

32:55

I don’t. So what I do is I’ll look at the virality of recent videos that have gone viral. And I will kind of remix it into my own title that I believe just based on my experience sounds good. So I look for a couple of example,

33:13

Like going, I’m going to try and open up. I’m not sure if I have to buddy up here at all, but let’s see. I Okay, I do. So let’s see a Keyword Explorer. Okay, so what’s trending? Right now we’ve got an earthquake. Tyler the Creator Lamar Jackson, Nashville shooting. Caitlin Clark, apparently a basketball player. Bachelor finale. Wow, that must be exciting. Celtics first citizen bank to acquire troubled Silicon Valley Bank. Bakery, G clippers seems like it’s mostly sports and celebrities. Jon, week four is trending. So how would you like to play on any of this stuff? If I don’t know if at all.

34:09

So I’ve never had a topic that has a lot of trending things. What I would do is let’s say you have a channel on marriage or something like that, and you want to make a video about how to save your marriage from getting a divorce. Like, what I would do

34:26

It brings that into the search. Okay.

34:30

And I don’t know how vital it is right now just for an example. But what I would do is see what comes up on the first page of YouTube. He would the most viral really what

34:39

Come up. First video uploaded four years ago, half a million views How to save marriage on the brink of divorce. Second video, How to save your marriage and stop divorce complete guide 600,000 views seven years ago well, no one’s been updating this. Save marriage on the brink of the horse, no one tells you this 5.5 1000 views one month ago, while looking at the drop off in views. How to save a marriage when only one is trying 57,000 views four years ago, I don’t want to divorce five brilliant ways to defeat divorce 56,000 views one year ago.

35:21

So the sweet spot for me would be to find the most viral video in the most recent amount of time or since the publishing date. So I don’t think any of those are super recent. But let’s say one of those, let’s say the first one that popped up had five,

35:39

By regency maybe. To see Yeah, yeah. So upload the last hour today, this week, and this month this year.

35:50

Preferably within the last six to nine months is

35:53

Last year. So then you’re looking at very few views, 5.5 1000 views, 540 views, 100 views? 200 views? 8.2 1000 views eight months ago? Six 6.5 1005 months ago?

36:15

No, that’s interesting. Yeah. So that’s not the greatest example. But what I would do is probably model after that one title, even though it’s older, it’s four years old, I would probably model after that title, the one that popped up first, because it’s proven right? So I would remake it again. And then I would also

36:34

Say you model what does that mean? So I would

36:37

You use that same title, and make my own video with my own, you know, key points of my own intro, so it’s just the title is the same. But the video is completely different. So that’s what I mean. And I would also probably take the key metadata, like the secondary keywords they use and their tags, their description. Put that on my video. So that’s how, like my direct strategy and getting suggested traffic because within YouTube, there’s like eight different traffic sources you got suggested you got browse feed, you got channel pages, which means your community tab YouTube stories, like there’s all kinds of stuff YouTube search, right. And so I prefer to have my channel be very dominant, most dominant for either suggested or for browse fee, meaning the homepage and showing up on the homepage. So that’s how I do my quote, keyword research. It’s not, I don’t even use a keyword research tool at all. Because just after doing this for so long, like I know what type of title pops and what doesn’t also at all, more important, or equally as important thing is the thumbnail title or the copy that goes on your thumbnail, so that could make or break a video as well. So that’s equally as important. But again, what I would do is just take a couple of titles from what’s on the first page and model after them the titles and then just do a completely different video.

38:12

Interesting, how much do you think adding visual effects and stuff like that helps with a video? In other words, like if it’s just me talking into a microphone, maybe it’s an interview like this? Does that get ranked worse than like a professional video with B roll and transitions? Like how does that work?

38:34

Yeah, no, that’s a great question. Because I think that the audio is the most important out of everything, right? Good audio is no matter what type of quality you have, you have to have good audio or else no one will watch. I recently want to test a video without any editing and see how it goes. Okay. But I do believe that it is important to have, especially when you’re getting started, it’s important to have some editing and to take pride in like your body of work and develop like how your brand feels when somebody first lands on it. Because again, first impressions are so important from new viewers and want them to want to stay and be a subscriber, but again, in the beginning, I think what’s most important is getting your first 100 videos on the channel as fast as possible. And that’s how you develop a style and that’s how you get better at working with your editors and you know, learning how to take meaningful roles added to the video and have pattern interrupts and all those things. So my I guess overall Yes, video good video editing is important. However, it’s not the end of the world because the most important thing is the value because there’s been so many creators that are now testing out no editing, and they’re doing really well because they just get to the point. There’s no intro there’s nothing they’re like, Hey, guys, let’s talk about this today. And they just get into it. And I think that’s also refreshing as well, because YouTube is so competitive. And there’s such beautiful cinematic work on the platform that it’s refreshing to know that my videos with no editing still have a really good chance of and most importantly, they’re helping that viewer on the other side of the screen.

40:25

Yeah, that’s actually refreshing. Because I find that part daunting, like, I’m a talker, so I’ll talk as much as you need me to, but I find it very difficult to, to sit there and edit. Now, thankfully, I can afford, you know, a great video guy. And big shout out to RV to the guy you’re from. But that part is daunting to me, like the moment I need to go and sit there for hours and refine it. That’s the part where I’m sort of checking out mentally. But as far as you know, talking to a subject, like for example, the same thing like marriage and divorce and things like that. These are fascinating topics to me. And we just had, they’re gone from the show, we spoke about communication and marriage and things like that. So I think there’s definitely room for creators out there. There’s plenty of niches, great niches that haven’t been penetrated yet. And there’s new niches coming up all the time. And I think, a big takeaway for me personally, from what you said is that I think most hardcore YouTube creators, they’re trying to abuse the system, and I think what they’re going after is they’re going after these things, right? Where they’re looking for whatever is trending, and whatever is like a hot topic on YouTube. And they’ll go and make as many videos about it as possible. Like, there’s this guy I can recently be with, we haven’t had them on a podcast, but I spoke to him. His name was Thomas Garretts. Or some, I think, Oh, yeah. Yeah, so if you go on his channel, like all of his videos, is a thumbnail, it goes like this. And above, you know, it says something like $300 a day, which adds up at $5,000 a day, which adds up to a million dollars, which adds up at basically insert number here with Chad GPT. And every video is like that. I mean, is that like, and it works? I guess it does, if he keeps doing it, but it’s pretty crazy. And, you know, my preference is to follow creators that are a bit that have a bit more substance than that, for example, Mark Manson, and Mark Manson. Obviously, he’s an established and accomplished author, he wrote the subtle art of not giving a fuck, in the sequel, and everything is fucked. And then he also wrote Will Smith’s book. So his blog is amazing, extremely contrarian ideas on personal development. But his videos are awesome. Like, his videos are not only great on the content and the delivery, but they’re also great on the editing part, then you can see he’s putting a lot of work into those. But I wouldn’t be putting a lot of work into a video if I had as big of a following, you know, as Mark mentioned, because we’re talking to a guy who sells millions upon millions of copies of his books. Yeah, but I think to sum it up as far as YouTube goes, How big can someone truly expect to get if they are trying to build on trends on these fads? Right, so they like to say the checkup T trend on YouTube right now, anytime you put your ads up teen to headline your video, you’re gonna get some views. So how do they even last?

43:44

So what I would say to that is, I think that there’s a little bit more risk if you put too many trends on your channel. So the reason I say that is because there’s no ever greenness to the video topics, right. So like a video topic about how to save your marriage from divorce versus, you know, Carol G and S. S, the banks failing SBC s, BB bank, and all these things like it’s a trend and it goes up really fast. Yes, but it also goes down really fast and isn’t searched anymore. So I think there’s a sweet combination of evergreen that people are going to be looking at forever. Trends, capitalizing on trends, and also putting things that are controversial out there because I used to be scared of this personally where I would feel a strong way about whatever I would say like short form content, like short form content will not get you leads. Like if I made a video on that it’s controversial because there’s millions of people who think otherwise. It’s intriguing like oh, they won’t get Lila Well, well, what does like what is she suggesting? So I think there’s a sweet combination of those types of things where you’re bringing relevancy, you’re bringing your strong opinion and like, what you do what you know, your expertise, trends, and also like evergreen forms of content, I think that’s where a channel really thrives for longevity, and not just trends.

45:20

Interesting. So is it? Is it important to keep your channel within a certain scope of topics? Or is it okay to have a channel that talks to different people because like, say, Joe Rogan, or Lex Friedman, you know, these guys talk about all sorts of stuff. There’s no one thing that they’re famous for, Joe Rogan will literally have like an historian. Today, as scientists tomorrow, a movie star the next day, a UFC Fighter The next day, then a pickup artist and a stand up artist and then somebody like you just found on the street in Texas, like, it’s so diverse. And yeah, these are super famous YouTube channels and YouTube influencers?

46:06

No, that’s, that’s a great question that I’ve been wondering since day one as well. I think my strategy is okay, so I want to actually relaunch my original channel, Marissa Romero, into a no niche channel. And I’ve never really said this publicly on any This is the first time I’m saying it out loud on the internet, but

46:30

I worry about it, no one’s listening to this.

46:32

Okay. So I want to relaunch it. And I want to make it like a, you know how magazines have a feel when you open a magazine. That’s kind of how I want to make my channel like Joe Rogan have a feel for all of these big channels that don’t have a particular niche. It’s like a vibe, you go there, you’re like, Okay. And I think now with all my experience, I can have a successful channel like that. But basically, the idea is the channel is going to be something along the line of like an online journal of a high achiever. So I’m going to touch on things that have to do with business, motherhood, travel, whatever I want. But the whole foundation of it is that high achievers, if you’re a high achiever, you would like my content. So there’s that strategy. If you’re a brand new, if you’re starting a brand new channel, that way, you have to know what you’re doing, you just have to, because you have to know, you have to be able to, I think, deliver great content on each of these topics. But also, like, you just have to, you have to have YouTube experience. And so as far as how other people have grown, like the really big people that post about whatever, I think it’s a combination of that. They’re just really good creators. Also, it’s common, it’s a combination of luck, literally, there’s just some YouTube channels that get luckier than others. And we cannot figure out why. Right? And that’s like, the, you know, that that has some narrative of like comparison, like that’s a big killer of people stopping is just comparing upward like, oh, my gosh, someone so got 50k subscribers, they’re only three months old. I’m posting consistently this, this and this, like, I’m crossing off all the checkmarks and best practices. Why don’t I have 50k? Yet? It’s, honestly, that’s just the algorithm. And so

48:34

It’s funny, you get this question about YouTube, I get the question about having an email list, you know, I can go and I can crush it with a list much smaller than some of the people that compete with that affiliate competitions. But then, you know, a student of mine will be building a list, and they’ll get to my size, and they’re like, how come you’re making all this money? And I’m not. And, you know, I can pinpoint a few principles. They’re not following. But, you know, oftentimes, I’m left wondering, you know, there’s, there’s some things that are just escaping me, some things that are invisible to the eye. It’s not always a science, not always an exact science, right now, with YouTube, of course, a little bit different, although it is similar, because you’ve got the algorithm. And, you know, we don’t know what the secret recipe of the algorithm is, we don’t know what’s, why would it push this and not that we don’t always know most of the time. We don’t know, sometimes we can guesstimate, but let’s face it, we don’t have a manual. And the same way, email deliverability. Or why would a list respond to this person mailing this offer, but not that person mailing the offer? It is, you know, there’s still a lot of lots of unknowns. When it comes to marketing stuff on the internet. It’s not inexact science, like you know, the laws of physics that are, you know, a lot more predictable than what we do. There is a certain element of law luck. There is an element of art. There is an element of timing, you know that because if you’re in the first wave of YouTube influencers, it was easier to rank than today, right? It wasn’t as difficult. Yes, there weren’t as many tools like a buddy back then. But guess what, you didn’t need the tools, because ranking was as simple as uploading virtually any video of any quality. And just getting your title correctly. Same with SEO, SEO game today versus Seo 20 years ago, 10 years ago, completely different game. Yes. Do we know what the big strokes that we need are? You know, content? Yes. Backlinks. Sure, you know, websites laid out a certain way? Yes, the code has to be clean. Yes. Has to load fast. Yes. But there’s absolutely no guarantee that we’re going to rank. And so it’s, it’s, it’s one of those risks that we have to take as entrepreneurs online, to know that we don’t have control over every aspect of it. But what would you say then, if we were to turn this conversation to be a little bit more optimistic, what would you say are the commonalities for the channels that you’ve seen, that are successful or semi successful, your own channel that grew, which I understand there could be part of it as luck, part of it wasn’t under, you know, entirely under your control, but you still contributed to that. So what would you say are some of the things that are like quote, unquote, best practices for people who want to start a YouTube channel? Or

51:39

Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind is just being resilient. If YouTube is going to test you, the most out of any other traffic source you’re trying to build, you are going to face haters, you’re going to face slow growth, and you’re going to face all kinds of things. You know, I, we didn’t go over this, but my channel was, was hacked and deleted. And I feel like, as a YouTuber, all the crazy things that you fear as a YouTuber has happened to me. And so I think the very first thing is, you have to be resilient, you have to keep posting and doing these best practices, even when you see all the analytics pointing downwards, even when you feel like giving up, it’s you really, really have to be resilient. And that’s why a lot of people don’t see success, because they can’t handle months of just being on a downward trend. So yeah, and then I think the other thing is, is consistency, and also just having their own evolving into their own style. Because they’re the bigger creators that are doing really well and continue to grow. They just develop their own style, and people continue to come back to your channel. Because of that. And really, it’s the when I say style, I’m talking about personality, I’m talking about yes, the effects that are on your, your, you know what your editors do behind the scenes, but really, it’s just to me, though, those things just like keep going, like, even if you have to take a break for a month or six weeks or whatever, get back up and keep going. But I Yeah, the consistency is a huge part. Resiliency is what I find like how the creators win, and just keep on keep on growing.

53:37

Right? So he talked about, like, being able to ignore the analytics. What I mean by that, like, the analytics could be pointing that we’re going in the wrong direction, but in reality, it’s just a matter of time before such catching up or

53:51

Yeah, so the analytics are who that will be a huge what’s the word? That’ll screw with your mind? Like, like crazy, right? Because you’ll put your heart and soul into a movie. Yeah, movie. Basically, you feel like it’s a movie. After it’s all said and done. You put your heart and soul into it, you script and it has a good hook. It’s great information and you post it. And then it receives a 10 out of 10 on your YouTube studio. You’re like, and then you have the negative self-talk. You’re like I’m the worst creator in the world. I’m like, why am I even doing this? I thought I knew the algorithm but I don’t know anything. And then so and then there’s the extreme opposite where you post a video and it just goes crazy. It’s number one. YouTube shows you celebratory confetti when it has number one out of the last 10 videos and you’re like, yes, like I’m amazing. Now my ad revenues are going up, views are going up. Everything’s going up and it’s just like a digital dopamine hit literally is and so I forgot the original question, but the point is the analytics can really screw with you. And it’s, they’re, and they’re addicting to look at because you’re like, what did you see in a video you posted two days ago? You’re like, where’s it at? Now? How many comments? Does it have one? The retention, like, How’s How did my retention do in the intro the first 60 seconds. So the analytics can get crazy. And you really have to be mindful of, you know, having the app on your phone and not checking it all the time. And knowing that you’re, you’re an amazing creator, no matter what the analytics say. So,

55:35

You know, sometimes analytics do kind of mess with me, because we’ll post the YouTube short, and we short to expect fast results. And then we’ll be looking at the stats for the next five days. Now we’ll be showing zero or very little traction. And then, you know, once I get upset, I check a few days later, and I see a spike all the sudden, this short got 2000 views, which for me is actually a lot for my channel. You know, most of them get a few 100 views. So like there’s this delayed effect as well. It’s like it takes a while before the algorithm starts pushing it or something.

56:10

Yeah, no, that’s, that’s a really beautiful thing when that happens, because you never know when your video is gonna go viral. It could be a month from after you post it could be six months. And the great part is now if you’re doing split testing, like on your titles, your thumbnails, the video can literally just come alive out of nowhere, well, not out of nowhere, but because you changed out the thumbnail. So that’s the beauty of it is even if it only gains 10 views a month or whatever, like literally out of nowhere, one day, you can start to get 1000 extra views a month for your channel, and you know, grow exponentially from there.

56:50

So what makes a great thumbnail? Like if it’s so important, we should probably talk about it like what are some of the best practices for thumbnails.

57:00

Best practices are a very bright face I see a lot of times like an image of a face like half the face is has a shadow and like it’s whatever it is if it’s a hamburger or whatever you’re showing like hamburgers like if you’re showing food or ice cream or a cake or like six pack abs or whatever like it has to be well lit like I when I do thumbnail I literally do thumbnail photo shoot so I will have all my lights I have one time I had a friend who’s like I’ll do this for free I’m like really amazing. He came over and we set up a studio in the house. We had all the lights, he had his camera and we just shot like 1000 images, reactions, props, things so that way it’s like one thumbnail photo shoot for the entire year or more. It could

57:57

Show how that looks? Like what phase do you make for a thumbnail to be

58:03

So can you prepare for this shoot? Like just make a list of emotions like sad, anxious, depressed, shocked, happy wandering in deep thought like literally anything you could think of just make a list and just go through them over and over

58:22

Bitcoin crushed. Consultation. So yeah, so basically you want to, you want to show you want to, you want to show emotions with your face. So you need a descriptive face.

58:39

I yeah, that’s, that’s a big, big factor is the image the face being very shorter

58:47

Face? Are there other techniques or templates to use with no face?

58:55

Yeah, I think for the thumbnail well going to the copy they let people still are stuffing their thumbnail copies, like a big mistake I see is people trying to put the whole title and there’s a thumbnail. That’s a big no, no. My rule of thumb is no more than three to four words, very short words. Like instead of having the word beginner, like don’t put beginner on a thumbnail that’s like a bunch of letters that’s very long. Like, if you put on a thumbnail, like watch this now you notice like it’s very, three, three words, all very short words like only what? Four letters, four letters, three letters. That’s a good one. And so the title thumbnail, the title of the thumbnail copy was completely different in most cases than the actual title of the video. So that’s really important as well. But as there’s just all kinds of techniques, and you can even model after like, what’s going, what’s trending right now. With thumbnails. Is like a bit of a popular one. This isn’t really super new or anything but a popular one is putting like, before and an after, you know, and you have the divider in the middle like, the it is. And so yeah, I think it’s kind of a thumbnail on its own. It’s like a big thing, there’s science to it in my opinion, but they can get really fun. And that’s the whole reason why you see like Mr. Beast making like 30 versions of one stupid thumbnail. Because it matters, right? So yeah, you just Yeah, that’s what I would say are those things are really important the copy the image and just making it scroll, scroll, stopping. Click Beatty, literally. So

1:00:45

Interesting. So bright, colorful. If it’s a face, then we want to show some kind of emotion, like really excited, you know? Or sad or whatever, then text, we don’t stuff it with texts we use, like just a few words, and we make sure to use short words. Okay. Is there? Is there a tool that you like to use? For thumbnails?

1:01:13

Not really, oh, that’s a bad, bad answer. But my team does all my thumbnails. I mean, they use Adobe, but Canva is better. Really, I love using Canva. Myself when I create presentations and webinars or whatever, they have great thumbnail templates and it’s so easy now, like you can remove the backgrounds pretty easily. And there’s already some great templates on there that, you know, I could make. I could do a great looking thumbnail on Canva if I had to.

1:01:43

Okay, yeah, I would imagine you can now use things like mid journey as well, to create something that would that would be a good fit, especially if you have a lot of these people who do AI tools videos, they often have these beautiful, just stunning, stunning thumbnails

1:02:00

Where it’s like half face and have robot

1:02:04

Or just a beautiful scenery image that was generated with AI, all that kind of stuff. Like I really, really enjoy seeing those. Would you recommend using it? Like, like a fake play button or an arrow pointing somewhere?

1:02:18

Yeah, icons, icons could be helpful. I mean, if you want to highlight, like one of the recent thumbnails I had, like, they put a bunch of things in my head. So they chopped off the top part of my forehead, and they put in like a gear and an arrow and maybe a $1 sign coming out of my head. And so icons are definitely powerful if you can incorporate them for sure. And oh, I forgot what I was gonna say. But yeah, no, definitely I wouldn’t overstuff again. But if it’s like one powerful icon or image that complements that could definitely work.

1:03:00

Okay, well, if you do need to do some, some advanced work with the thumbnails, where would you? Where do you usually go to hire people to get like artists that are skilled at creating this stuff?

1:03:15

That’s a great question. I, honestly, I love Upwork because I make that description so clear and specific on what I want. So that’s a great place to get. Get somebody because Well, for me, and what I teach, especially to the established YouTubers is I think that your YouTube editor in thumbnail graphic person, and everything that has to do with video on your channel should be in the hands of that editor like they, you shouldn’t have a thumbnail person and an editor separate, like it should be both because that’s unknown. Like, first you’re going to slow down your workflow and progress and stuff. So that’s what I believe. There’s this other website called I think it’s like 99 designs where people compete, and they compete like to show you the best design of what they come up with. Indeed.com is a great place to find really good talent. Where else? I mean, yeah, you can go to fiverr as well. They’re still there. I mean, there’s just a matter of, I think, whatever platform you try on they’re all great platforms where you can find talent, but I think the biggest thing is you’re very clear on what you want your expectations and what this new editor in their position, what it’s going to do for your company, and why their role is so important.

1:04:38

Got it? Okay, well, we’re on, we’re out of time. And I wish I could spend more time picking your brain about YouTube because it’s a topic that is of personal interest to me. But if somebody wanted to find out more about you and what you do and follow you and work with you, maybe as somebody who’s got an established YouTube channel, where can they go? How can they find out more?

1:05:00

Yeah, you could subscribe to the new channel. It’s called subscribers to sales. So you can go and find that on YouTube. And if you want to check out things like what we’re about and other things that we do, and programs we offer, you can check out my website, marissaromero.com. And if you’d like to download our FREE blueprints, just marissaromero.com front slash blueprint, and yeah, that’s where you could find me. Those are the best places.

1:05:29

Awesome. So that’s subscribers to sales on YouTube. There’s marissaromero.com/blueprint to download the free blueprint for the YouTube creator who’s struggling to scale. So Marissa, thank you so much for taking the time today. This was a fascinating conversation. So till next time, we’ll chat. Have a good yeah,

1:05:55

Thank you so much for having me. I really had a lot of fun today. Thank you.

1:06:02

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic booklets go to www.igorsbook.com. Now to claim your free package.