How To Guarantee You Lose Money on YouTube

When you were growing up, what did you envision your first car would be?

If you were to ask 10-year-old Adam what he thought his first car would be, he definitely would have said a bright red Ferrari.

Sadly, if you ask 32-year-old Adam now, he’ll tell you that he’s hoping his third or fourth car will be a bright red Ferrari, as 10-year-old Adam didn’t exactly realize the cost of these very prestigious cars.

Now, don’t feel sorry for me just yet—not that you probably did.

In all reality, it’s probably a blessing that my first car wasn’t a Ferrari. Even though it would have made me the coolest kid in school, the reality is that at a young age, with little driving experience, being behind the wheel of a 800-horsepower car would have probably ended very poorly for me.

Sadly, many channel owners end up taking the Ferrari approach when starting off their own channels and end up making a grave mistake.

What do I mean by this? Let me explain.

When most people want to start a YouTube channel, they try and emulate channels that they’ve already watched and enjoyed in the past. They want to copy the channel’s ideas, style, presentation, etc.

And while emulation is an important part of the growth and monetization of a channel, knowing what to emulate and what not to is critical. This is particularly the case when it comes to a channel’s format.

Many beginners create an elaborate plan around the format that they’re going to use for their videos. They spend weeks or months putting pieces in place until they’re ready to start outsourcing the creation of the videos.

And then reality hits them—they may have bitten off more than they can chew. They go to hire a freelancer to make their sophisticated animations or high-quality edits and realize that they’ll have to take on a second mortgage to do it.

For instance, people come to me all the time telling me that they’re going to start a channel like MagnatesMedia.

While it’s great to aim high, the reality is that their budget doesn’t exactly allow for this format to be put into place.

When I tell them that the cost of these videos is more than $1,000 each, suddenly their tune changes, and they’re back to the drawing board, setting themselves back weeks or months in their YouTube programs.

It’s for this reason that understanding the implications your formats have—not only from a growth perspective but also from a channel finance perspective—is critically important.

As you can imagine, if you’re spending hundreds of dollars per video, then your videos will have to perform quite well for you to be able to profit on a monthly basis.

This is why I always preach to those that I work with that learning how to create high-quality videos that don’t rely extensively on high production value is the key to YouTube profits.

It’s much easier to enjoy YouTube profits every single month when spending $50 per video than it is when you’re spending $500.

Therefore, sometimes life gives us blessings—like me not getting a Ferrari as my first car.

The reality is that taking a more reasonable approach and getting a Volkswagen instead was probably what suited the bill best.

And the same goes for your YouTube journey.

Taking on a format that is aligned with both your time and financial budget is critical to your overall channel success.

Get this piece of the puzzle right, and your subs will be inevitable.

Until tomorrow,

Adam

P.S. Tomorrow is the last day to buy a guest pass to the Format Mastery Workshop, where I'm teaching my Tube Academy students the most effective format selection strategies for YouTube. If you don't want to miss out, you can sign up here.