Doug: Hey, it’s Doug here, and this is a rebroadcast of an interview that I did with my buddy, Ron. I actually do a proper, real interview. Good intro before we get started with the interview, but it’s a rebroadcast of a live stream that we did together. If you read the title, you already know that it’s about pivoting from content websites to social media, mostly YouTube and Ron’s case, but we get into all the details and he really opens up quite a bit.
Ron was an, YouTube producer, a blogger. He published income reports for many, many years. I think he ranked number one for a little while with income reports. And he has pivoted quite a bit. He’s worked on a lot of different things over the years, and we just So this is a candid conversation between Ron and I, we try to trim out a lot of the sort of chatter that might happen when you do a live stream, but we also keep it pretty tight.
And I don’t think it should be any issue. It’s not like we have a one sided conversation with the chat, but I just wanted to let you know, in case you hear us talk about. Questions that were asked. There was actually a live audience out there. And if you do want to participate in that sort of thing, you can make sure you’re subscribed to my YouTube channel.
And then you’ll probably be notified who the hell knows if YouTube lets you know or not, but they try to, or they think they try to sometimes those messages come out after you get started. Anyhow, Ron’s a good guy. Check out his stuff. We link up to his channel and you can see exactly what he’s working on, on his new channel with his wife.
Without further ado, let’s get to the interview with Ron.
Intro Music
Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show live. This is a fun one. I. Invited my friend Ron Stefanski and we used to chat all the time. We’re in a little bit of a mastermind group for a bit. We actually met in person at least once, but we haven’t caught up very much lately. And we’re going to, we’re going to dig deep.
We’re going to talk about pivoting from authority sites to YouTube and social media, which is what Ron has done. And we’re also going to talk about how Ron forecasted. A lot of the fall of niche and authority sites, probably about 18 months ago, maybe a little bit more. And we’ll, we’ll just kind of talk about the past a little bit in the future.
So Ron, how’s it going today?
Ron: It’s going good, Doug. Always a pleasure.
Doug: So for the people that don’t know you, can you give a little bit of an intro about what you do now and maybe a little bit of your path? You could make it kind of quick and I’ll, I’ll pry a little bit, but yeah. What’s your story?
Ron: Yeah. So, most people know me from one hour professor, which is my site, which I still have one hour professor.com
That’s where most people know me. Basically I built up a portfolio websites built and sold a bunch of different websites, yada, yada. As we all know, Google has just absolutely laid the hammer on everything. And kind of adjusted quite a few things. So as of late, my wife and I have been doing some YouTube stuff, kind of a Renaissance man, do a lot of different things.
I don’t know that there’s just even one thing that we’re focused on. Well, right now I’m focused mostly on YouTube, but I’ve done a ton of different things. I’ve gone offline businesses now I’ve done some of that stuff online, et cetera. So there’s, yeah, there’s a lot to unpack in terms of what I’m doing.
Doug: Yeah. And I didn’t even realize some of the offline stuff, but we can get into that as well. How long have you been working online?
Ron: Oh, uh, I think I started in like 2000, I want to say 2012, 2011, maybe even 2010, something like that. I don’t remember some somewhere around there for so quite some time,
Doug: long enough for You to have a hard time remembering and you’re getting older.
Yes.
Ron: Yes. Yeah. That doesn’t help either. Yeah.
Doug: All right. Well, one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on is because there are a lot of people in our space that are either pivoting or they’re trying to figure out what to do. The other thing that is always a constant, like. Forget the internet, but even before that, people were looking for side hustles.
People want to work for themselves. It turns out some people like you and I, like we don’t have the skills to do really well. I’m speaking for you, Ron, but we don’t have the skills to work in a big corporation and be really effective. And that, that makes us end up in this entrepreneurship space, which actually fits us really well.
But. We often face these decision points where like external market factors or a shift in like where money is going as far as ad revenue or affiliate revenue. It forces our hand and we have to figure out what to do. What the fuck do we do? So when AI was getting better, I would say about two years ago, year and a half, we started changing what we were doing.
Cause we were building content websites for many years and I was slowly kind of getting out of the space because it was. More competitive. I was just exiting my positions. Basically, I was, I was moving away. So I had less dependency from Google traffic because it was harder, more competitive. And it looked like they were lying to us.
It turns out they were fucking lying to us. With the, we got that confirmed with a Google leak. About a few weeks ago at this point. So Ron, I remember we, we had a call and you were just like, I think some big things are coming and I don’t think this business model is going to work moving forward. Can you talk about what you saw and what you did after that?
Pretty wide open, but I’m going to turn over the floor to you here, Ron.
Ron: Sure. So I’m not, I’m not too wise, but basically this is, this is, you gave me too much credit. So here’s what happened. I had a whole, you know, like I said, I had a whole portfolio of sites and I saw, this is when Google or when, um, chat GPT, I think it was 3.
It was either 3. 5. I can’t remember. I think it was 3. 0 though. Kind of rushed onto the scene. And at that point when it hit. I looked at the content and most people are like, Oh, the content’s garbage. It’s AI. I was like, it’s not that bad. Like I’ve had, I’ve had writers that aren’t that great. I’ve had writers that are better.
It wasn’t that bad. And it was enough to where I was like, Ooh, that’s not good. You know? So I’m looking at that and essentially I realized like the biggest thing I’ve been saying to so many people about AI for so long, and now I listen to podcasts. I’m all about AI just cause I’m trying to stay at the forefront of it.
It’s exponential. Okay. So what we see today is absolute garbage in two months. Like it really is. It’s actually insane how quick this stuff is evolving. So when chat GPT, again, I don’t know if it was 5, one of those, I don’t remember which one it was when it hit the scene and kind of got big in the industry and people were all talking about it.
It was like, it was the oh shit moment. I saw that. And I was like, cause. You know, I, I was just like, okay, well, Google’s going to try to basically compete with us and figure out something. And now we’re seeing that they’re putting the AI, you know, above the serps. They’re going to have to do something here because chat GPT, would just eat their lunch.
It wasn’t going to work. So I saw that I looked at the sites that I had some of them, you know, better than others, and some are more difficult for AI to do than others. But basically looking at it, I thought this is, this is the end of this business model as we know it. Because even though the content isn’t great right now that chat GPT can create in, you know, two, three years, maybe it’s going to be way better than what we could do.
And then it’s just a numbers game. It’s just how many pieces can we publish? Right? So at that point I got super nervous and I, as you did, exited most of my positions, almost all of them. In fact, I really have like two wet, well, I have probably like four or five websites yet left, but I have two that I’m like somewhat interested in still.
Right. So I pretty much exited all my positions. Right. And then we saw, which I didn’t call. So I expected it would be AI. I didn’t think it would be Google. Completely just absolutely self destructing in my opinion, it’s been absolutely awful what the way that they’ve been doing it. So I didn’t, Think that that would happen, but I did think that AI was going to come along and basically crush the whole business model. So that’s why I essentially sold out at that time was because I just saw it. And I knew it wasn’t great then, but I knew it would be great in six months to a year.
So,
Doug: okay. And I remember I was like, I don’t, I think it’ll be easy. slower to happen. And, you know, when we’re thinking about it right now, we’re like, Oh, it was over the span of 18 months, but when we zoom out in, and I would say in a year or two, or even let’s say like further out, like five years, it will seem like all this happened, like right at once.
And then everything shifted. But, but I didn’t think that it would shift as quickly as what we talked about or what you predicted. And in, for me, like I, like I said, I was exiting. I was just going through the, the normal course of what I would be doing. But as I, you know, I started a new site most recently in like 2020, which is obviously a little while back.
All the normal things that we did, it wasn’t working as well. Like certain things would kind of work. And then a new algorithm update would kind of shake things up. And I was like, you know what, this is actually, this This is some of the best work that I have been doing, but it’s not working as well. So obviously something was changing.
It coincided with like, for me personally, like my interest was shifting to more content production like this in more like overall communication versus like starting a niche website. Hiring writers. I didn’t even, I’ve never published at scale, any AI written content because I was like, this will have a short shelf life, like regardless.
Now, did you get into any AI content production? Are you doing any, anything like that now, as far as the written word?
Ron: Yeah, so I, I test, so at first I was really, really hesitant to do anything with it. Just because even when Google said, yeah, that’s okay. Cause I haven’t believed anything Google has said for a good three or four years now.
I’ve been, when you’ve been around long enough, you’re very skeptical to anything that they announce publicly. You’re very skeptical because they say one thing and then it goes the other way. Like you just know that. So I was really skeptical to really do any of it. I decided to try it. I, I built out some pretty, pretty awesome like, you know, prompts and templates, et cetera.
I was doing review content versus kind of like, you know, this software versus this software, some roundup stuff, some pretty good stuff that I think ended up pretty well. And then I had another site that I started that was all AI content. So both those sites since then, they were actually doing incredibly well.
For quite some time, they’re growing both of them, especially the one that was all AI content. And I tried to do like human AI content and then. They’re just dead basically right now. Although I heard recently that people are talking about the algorithm is adjusting things and maybe some bumps or how you haven’t even looked at analytics today, but I just don’t even care because I’m so tired of the black box.
That’s what I’m really tired of with the business model is that I feel like Google’s just screwed up a lot and you never know what to do. So yeah, at this point I don’t do anything at all. I’ve essentially just abandoned them for, I want to say it’s been like three or four months. I do absolutely nothing.
I don’t even pay attention to them. They just, they still make me some money, which is nice, but that’s about it.
Doug: I was chatting with Ricky Kessler from income school basically like both he and I, and it sounds like you, it’s like, we were skeptical of some of the information Google was saying anyway, because it didn’t actually line up with our experiences or logic of what they would be trying to do.
But at this point, it’s like, even if Google adjusted things and they were like, Hey, traffic’s back. It’s just like it was, I know people like you and I. We’re not going to trust that. Like we have no confidence that there’s not going to be volatility and they’ll pull the rug out from under no matter what, any comments on that?
No real question.
Ron: This could be a clip for you. So I am actually disgusted in the way that Google has treated the publishers, not because the publishers created Google. That’s not what we did, but we supported Google in their mission to serve the best content by creating the best content and spending hundreds, if not thousands of hours, some people building businesses off of it, and then they literally, and I know because I own their stock, they’re literally trying to squeeze every dime.
Out of any revenue that they can. And they have thrown all publishers under the bus. Well, not all the really big sites are okay for now. They’ve thrown most publishers under the bus. But the thing about that is that, as you just mentioned, even if they come back and say, Hey, traffic’s back, I don’t care.
The thing is they had the trust and everything with the publishers. They don’t have that anymore. They have, so what I find funny here, because I pay a bunch of attention to the stock, etc. I think that they’re banking on using Reddit to get user generated content and bringing that in and using other user generated content sites to bring in answers.
There’s going to be a point where they really don’t have much and they’re gonna have to source that data and there’s not gonna be a lot of great data out there anymore. With, you know, hundreds of thousands of websites to scrape, they’re not going to be able to do it as well because there’s not going to be as much content.
So, I think it’s actually going to blow up in a really big way. You know, another prediction, if you will, give it like five to seven years and Google’s going to be in a lot of trouble because they’re not going to have much sources for data. Because so many people like me, like you, that supported Google, they turned their back and now we’ve turned our back.
And just to be clear, I should say this, some people talk about websites aren’t dead. They’re dead. Authority sites aren’t dead. I actually agree with that. If you want to get into the situation where you’re focused on Facebook, Pinterest, and all these other traffic sources, it is still possible. It’s not like it’s impossible.
I have zero interest in that because I’ve also, I remember when Pinterest changed their algorithm. I remember when Facebook changed their algorithm. I’m so tired of being beholden to just one algorithm, one business model. They change it and you lose 70, 80 percent revenue overnight. It’s just, it’s sad that that’s where we’re at, but that’s just the business that we’re in.
So yeah, diversify. I’ve always said diversify. So.
Doug: And we’ll talk about what you shifted over to. And one thing I’ll point out, as you mentioned, like websites aren’t dead necessarily, but you kind of have to like build a brand. And from where I sit, the thing I shifted into. Was like digital products and one, one plug, I have a free guide as we, uh, have our lead magnets and such.
So we have create your six figure funnel with digital products. It’s just an example. I’ve been able to do that. I know other people that have been able to do it too, but basically it’s a little free guide and you could go through and answer some questions to figure out. What kind of digital products suits you best.
So if you just follow the link in the description, you could download that. It’s like a page or two, something really easy that people can check out. So again, for me, digital products have been awesome. And did you have courses or other digital products in your sort of overall business plan or a monetization plan?
Ron: First thing I’ll say is everyone should get your download, because I know you’ll create good stuff. Uh, but other than that, I do want to say so I did, I did some courses. Honestly, I wasn’t, and even you know this. I wasn’t great at courses and I’ll like selling my own stuff. I’m not great at that. I’m, I’m good at affiliate marketing.
I’m good at creating content at, at scale, doing things like that and pushing it out. I got, I got pretty creative in ways, basically partnerships and affiliate things and things like that. Selling leads, things like that. I’ve gotten creative, creative with things like that, but like just selling my own products.
I’ve never been that great at, I get frustrated cause I try a funnel, I build something out. You know, I spent a weekend doing it doesn’t work. And I’m like, and I just focus on other things. Like, I don’t know, probably not a good thing, but yeah, so I did it a little bit, but not to great success.
Doug: And I think, I mean, it’s not necessarily easy.
It’s a simple business model, especially if you listen to, I don’t know, you just listen to one of my podcasts or other people podcasting. It’s like identify a problem, solve the problem with a digital product, sell product. It’s like three steps, super straightforward, but it’s pretty tough to do. And you, you know, I know you put a lot of, it definitely works, right.
A ton of
Ron: people make a ton of money doing it, but like it is that easy. But it’s the details within there that make it difficult. That’s, that’s the thing that really makes it difficult. Cause there’s so many little itty bitty things you might. You know an email may go out that doesn’t say it right or whatever So, you know, you just got to keep testing and testing and iterating which i’m just so impatient.
So
Doug: And that was one of the keys for me and I know we talked about it i’m like I had my initial launch and I think it was like a 10 to 15k launch which is great I mean, that’s like a huge chunk of money coming in like within a few days like five days or something like that but the real money Was after like 18 months of iteration, I would launch every quarter and it was like, change one thing, monitor, adjust, do it again.
And it was a real motherfucker to deal with. But like once you. Once you hone it in then it’s like this works really well for a pretty long time And well, let’s talk about where you shifted because it does fit in so I leaned into youtube again. I was chatting with ricky from income school and they leaned into youtube around the same time he and I collaborated and met probably for the first time like almost a decade ago We were I think he mentioned we were like under both under 10 000 subscribers on youtube And I felt like we were getting started late, but you know, as time goes on, the compound interest of like our efforts like paid off and you have shifted over to YouTube.
So I’m going to share your channel here and I’m going to display it on the screen. You may not see it run, but I’m going to display it. I’ll put you up here. What’s your channel about? What are you trying to do?
Ron: So the review family is the name of the channel. It’s been, so I used to have like the one hour professor YouTube channel, which is focused on online business for a while.
I just got tired of talking about it. Like, you know what I mean? So doing it for so long, it’s, I could talk about it till I’m blue in the face, but I just don’t want to anymore. So my wife and I have always wanted to do a YouTube channel. And there was so many times that we thought about it and couldn’t really execute because we had to find an interest that worked for both of us.
So this actually started, we, as one of the side hustles, which did okay. We got into the, um, what is it? The Amazon, Amazon influencer program, I think is what it’s called. I know some people are talking about it was okay. It’s super competitive. We make some money from it, but nothing like crazy. Right. But we’re basically in that you’re reviewing products and we just found it was so competitive.
And it’s just getting more and more competitive. And it’s like, eh, whatever. So we did that, but in doing that, uh, and kind of testing out that as like a side hustle, if you will, we realized like, Oh, like we could just review products. Like that’s not that difficult to do. Right. So we started to get into doing that and then realized that the Amazon influence, the thing was to.
So we moved into a channel where we, as of right now, are essentially doing almost like roundup reviews of different random products. Like frankly, just entertaining stuff. We’re trying to be entertainers, which is not necessarily easy for me. My wife’s a better actor. I’m not necessarily an entertainer, but it’s a different skillset.
And it’s been actually fun to film the videos with my wife, which is such a nice thing to do. Change of pace from the stress of websites that I was dealing with. So basically what we’re doing is we’ll buy like, you know, five to 10 products and then make a review on like, I remember there’s one that’s like, products for people that hate their jobs or products for, you know, products from TEMU.
That’s a big thing. That’s, you know, trending around the U S right now, products from TEMU, et cetera. So we’ve essentially built that out. We’re not even monetized yet. The channel isn’t monetized yet. But it’s something that we have had just a lot of fun with and kind of, you know, actually working on the business model and I know that.
The cool thing, and what I’ve said to a lot of people, is that your skills and websites will transfer over well to a lot of other things. You don’t realize it until you get into it. But right now, we’re just doing these things. I’m learning more about YouTube. I’m understanding it, understanding how their algorithm is, etc.
And focusing on that. And there’s a lot of ways to monetize this beyond that, right? There’s a lot of sponsorship things that can happen. We eventually could do our own e commerce play. There’s a lot of things that can come out of this. So this is a slow, very slow, steady grind essentially right now. Right now.
I just had to look, we have 834 current subscribers. Uh, once we get to a thousand, we’ll be applying for monetization. But yeah, we’ve gotten like some decent views. It hasn’t been. Doug, I don’t remember how long it’s been since I actually started this. You know, I told you when we were starting. I don’t remember.
It’s been like three, four months maybe. I don’t really remember. I think it was around the beginning of the year. Yeah. Like around the beginning of the year. So it’s been a slow and steady thing. We were doing two videos a week. Now we’re doing one video a week because my wife is very, very pregnant.
She’s a month and a half away from having our big boy. So I just had to kind of slow down and we agreed it was best to do that. But yeah, it’s been very interesting. One thing that I love about it is that the feedback loop on YouTube is much faster than Google because you publish a video and their algorithm, it picks it up.
It starts showing it. And then you can quickly see what’s going to happen with that video. Right. And that’s something that with content, you know, on a website, you don’t necessarily get. So it’s been an interesting experience. So we’ve done that. Can I get into the other things that we’re doing with it as well?
There’s quite a bit.
Doug: You know what? I have a follow up question, which might like follow along. Yeah. Ask
Ron: now before I, before I jump into a tangent,
Doug: what’s the monetization plan? I, you, you were like, ah, like ad revenue. And you were like, there’s other things you could do. So what are the, whatever the top three things you’re expecting to earn money from, and when will you be doing that?
Ron: So first thing is going to be making money from just the ad revenue on YouTube. Right? Most of the, the earnings per thousand views, we’re predicting around five to 8 per thousand views, which in a more general niche like this is pretty typical. I don’t know what that number is going to be yet. I have no idea until we’ve actually done it.
So I assume that that’s going to be the first thing. And that’s the real passive, easy stuff to do, right? The second thing that we know will happen and, and has slowly started to happen, brands are reaching out to us and saying, Hey, can you feature our video? Can you feature our product in one of your videos, right?
That’s slowly starting to happen. We’re also working on different video formats too which we haven’t even published yet, but different video formats, like 1 versus 100 item, et cetera, things like that to bring in more. Potential for reviews, right? So that’s going to be the second part of it. Third part of it that I’m most looking forward to is the e e commerce play.
Most of you probably haven’t watched the channel, but if you would, you’ve noticed that every single video, I am wearing like a, I want to say kind of dumb t shirt like just like a creative weird quirky type of t shirt I eventually actually want to do t shirts as a whole brand and probably do like a dad t shirt brand thing that’s something that i’m eyeing.
It’s so far off. I mean you’re talking about wanting to get like 50 000 subscribers, right? So we’re waiting on that, but those are probably the three main ones and then There’s also the possibility of getting into an email list and then selling different products that we actually recommend that we’ve reviewed, that we like, things like that.
Those are all things down the road right now. We’re strictly in growth mode. We’re just focused on that. Not even really monetizing right now. And each video costs give or take around 200 to fully produce. That’s kind of where we’re at.
Doug: 200. Okay. And when do you think you’ll start getting? Let’s say the just add revenue, which sounds like the lowest barrier to entry.
Ron: Yeah. So that, so we’re 834 subscribers. Basically for YouTube, you need a thousand subscribers. And I don’t remember what, how many hours of watch time. I don’t remember what that number is, like 2000 or something like that. We already have the watch time. We just need to get a thousand subscribers. So once we do that, then we’re going to apply to get accepted into there.
And then at that point, we’ll start making that ad revenue. And I will say, if anybody’s doing YouTube, one thing that we found. Um, It’s very difficult to get subscribers on long form videos, right? So eight, 10, 12 minute videos. It’s very difficult to get those. You’ll get them, but it’s very difficult. Short form, which is just the shorts that we’re all familiar with.
It’s very easy. The problem is, is that their algorithm, I’ve learned this, the shorts, if they subscribe for shorts, they’re only going to see more shorts. If they subscribe for long form, they’re only going to see more long form. So you have to be really careful not to publish too much shorts. Because then it can hurt your overall, you know, engagement for the channel.
You could have 10, 000 subscribers and barely get any views. And that’s why, cause you got all your subscribers from shorts. Very weird. Maybe YouTube will fix that. I don’t know, but I have noticed that as well. So yeah, that’s one of the things I picked up on as I’ve been kind of diving in.
Doug: Okay. So you were going to go into a different direction.
So you want to launch into that.
Ron: Yeah, so so okay, so that’s that’s the main thing that we’re doing right now And like my wife and I are very focused on that And for those that don’t know my wife was really big in Brazil millions of subscribers on YouTube She really knows us YouTube stuff. She’s a creative side on the more analytical side Perfect match for us.
So beyond that I’ll just name off all the things that we’ve been trying and doing, and then you can kind of riff down whatever you want. So, so I started to do a proper, basically property flips essentially right now, uh, we’ve been doing property flips. I’m in the Las Vegas area. So we’ve been doing some of that.
My neighbor is a general contractor. So that’s actually been like pretty much super hands off. Uh, it’s actually been pretty easy for me to do because I’m just basically coming in with the money and some of the numbers behind it and he’s doing most of the work. So we’re doing some of that. We’ve done two of them so far.
They’ve gone swimmingly well, because I don’t have to do much. I just have a guy that does pretty much all. So that’s been like super passive and kind of easy. And we’ve made some money there. In addition to that. So we’re doing our main YouTube channel. We’re doing I’m doing faceless YouTube channels.
I’m testing the model. It is so early on that I have no idea how it’s going to pan out. It’s just so early on, like I really don’t even know, but that’s something that I’m starting to get into. We did the Amazon influencer thing. Like I said, it was decent for a little while doing okay. And then it just got so competitive.
That’s like, eh, so we’ve definitely kind of, you know, scaled back from that. Trying to think of what else I still make money from the websites. My wife has been doing in her Portuguese followers. She’s been doing Instagram and things like that. She’s starting to make a little bit of money there as well.
She still has, I don’t even know, like almost a million followers between all those. So yeah. And then I’m also still teaching on the side as well. That’s the other thing I’m still doing. I’ve been doing that for years. Uh, and I’m teaching courses on the side.
Doug: Okay. I’ll we, yeah, we could definitely unpack each of those.
So with the Amazon influencer program, everyone was really excited. There were several. Folks in our circles that were like, Oh yeah, like get started with it. I started earning money in under a week and I’m like, all right. Either it’s not that much money or it’s going to be so saturated. If the barrier to entry is too low, it’s just going to be bullshit within a few days.
So are you saying, you know, even though you’re an experienced creator, your wife’s an experienced creator, you guys were like, Hey, this is not worth our time right now. Basically.
Ron: So it started off when we first got into it, it was, they were more selective about quote unquote influencers. And we just were able to kind of piggyback off of my wife’s influence that she has on YouTube, et cetera, or on, on Instagram, et cetera.
Cause she has a lot of followers across different social media, just from what she did before. Right. So we were able to piggyback off that got accepted. And then just basically created a ton of videos. It went relatively well at the time. But it was kind of just this weird side hustle thing that we were kind of doing a little bit.
My wife started with it. I jumped in, did some of it. And then what’s happened over time is that now it’s, it’s very easy for anybody to get in. And because of that, it’s very easy to, uh, for people to create videos, right? Because you don’t even like, these aren’t, I mean, us, we weren’t even showing our faces on camera when we were doing it, right?
Like, that’s all it was. It was just talking about the product. So that, like I said, in the beginning was going kind of well. And then it was like the situation where we saw, cause we’re in a Facebook group of people who do it. And it’s got like tens of thousands of people. So you could just see how many people are flooding in and talking about it and this, that, and the other.
And then it’s just like, Ooh, like that’s not really much of a rock to stand on. And so it’s kind of been one of those things that like, it still makes some money. My wife and I still do a little bit here and there. What I will say is. And I am not a tax professional, but I do want to mention It’s pretty much a tax advantage thing because some of the products that you buy What we have been doing after consulting with our accountant do that yourself Is some of them we’ve been able to write off as well and also have been able to kind of keep uh, Which is you know an interesting thing with that.
So we’ve been able to do that as well So there’s some tax advantages there, but yeah, so it just got really competitive and they’re just letting anybody in is essentially the problem with it. And with that, the flood of videos. And the other thing is. There’s, it’s, it’s worse than Google. There’s, there’s no insight into how anything is right.
I mean, it’s really, really a black box. Like you don’t know anything. So it’s kind of like, you know, things will go up for a little bit down. It’s, you know, it, it, it hasn’t been terrible, but it’s not something I’d really jump into now. Cause it’s just so competitive and there’s so many people.
Doug: Got it. That makes total sense.
And when I was first hearing about it, say two years ago, I think. You probably could have made some good headway, but once something is saturated and just like Google, Amazon has proved to not be a great partner with the folks that they work with to create content, because once they have the content they need, they’re going to readjust the program and all the normal issues you have when you don’t control like your own digital products that you’re selling.
So one. Other thing before we hop back to the real estate. So you mentioned the faceless, YouTube channels and funny enough, Ricky and I from income school talked about it.
But, um, I was like for the faceless YouTube channel, is it just people that are lazy? But the thing is, I know you’re not lazy, Ron. So like, is it just like, why, what’s the play on that? Like, why do a faceless YouTube channel? I’m all about create a personal brand. Then I could, I could just do whatever I want.
But if you have a faceless channel, I mean, how are you monetizing that? You just have to get a fuck load of views. Like, is that the play? Like. Why even waste your time on this?
Ron: Yeah, so it’s, it’s interesting. So I originally approached it in that same way, like, Oh, you could just get a ton of views and then like display ad revenue.
So I’ve started and if anybody goes to my ex Twitter, whatever profile, you’ll see pretty much everyone I follow is in this YouTube, faceless YouTube space. And I did that because whenever I’m trying to learn an industry, that’s all I do. I just go in there and you get the stuff. It’s unbelievable feed that you can kind of curate, look at everything.
So yes, like most people think, okay, you just get a ton of views and then you from there will just get money from the ad revenue, right? That’s what most people think. But if you’re thinking a little bit more strategically and you’re good at monetizing, which I’ve been pretty good about with websites and such, you look at these things and you say, you know what?
There’s more opportunity here. Then what we have, right? Like then just, then just to display it. So for instance, I’m not doing this, but to think of like an example channel. So if you did a faceless YouTube channel you could do something like if someone was doing makeup, like different makeup compilations, which I’m, I’m just coming up with something else down my head.
What you could do is you could actually find an individual who can do virtual makeup, I don’t know, coaching or something like that. And then what you could do is you could partner with them. And then, you know, if a session costs 150, you can make 75 every time, not a crazy amount of money, but if you can get a lot of views on your channel and make that the call to action across the whole thing, you have the ad revenue and then you also are able to.
And on top of that, that potential conversion, in addition to that, you can get them into an email list. You can then take the email list and tell them about your favorite makeup products, like things like that can get much deeper into it. The biggest reason. So I’m doing, I’m doing the personal, you know, the review family, the personal YouTube channel and the faceless ones.
The only reason I’m doing faceless, to be honest with you. So I had, I had been contemplating it, but I was like, I don’t want to distract myself, et cetera. And my wife turned to me and she said, no, do it because as you do that, you’ll learn more. So I’m just basically fully engulfed in this whole YouTube ecosystem at this point.
So economies of scale, I’m learning everything from all of them at the same time. I’m learning over here. Why, why was the retention so good over here? Why did this thumbnail work so good over here? I’m learning all these different things about it, right? So when I’m fully immersed in something, I’m learning from all these different facets.
I already built one channel that did not work and it was a total and utter failure, right? Which is good because I knew it was a failure pretty early on. I thought maybe it would work. It didn’t. Right. So knowing that I think is a good thing and it’s just a good skill to have. So it’s more than just the faceless thing.
The reason why faceless is more appealing. It’s a lot like websites with content where you can just scale, scale, scale, scale, right? That’s a nice thing. Personal, you’re always going to be stuck to, I have to film the video. I have to do this. It’s just slower, right? We’re doing both because like I said, I just wanted to be fully immersed in the whole ecosystem.
I do think that faceless YouTube channels, I will say it right now, have a limited time that this is going to work for because eventually AI will also, and they’re already talking about it with Sora. There was actually, I can’t remember what company just did it, I think it was maybe Coca Cola. Someone just created a commercial just using that software, a big company.
I don’t remember, I don’t know if you know which one, which company it is, but a big company. Yeah, a big company just did this, created a whole AI commercial with just AI video, right? So the end is coming for that. I think video is a little bit harder. I think maybe three to five years on the, on that whole scale.
So, kind of like websites, I’ll just make faceless YouTube channels, build them up, build them up, build them up. Hopefully sell them, get a few in before it all kind of falls. And then, yeah, it’s still have the personal channel on the back end of it. That’s why we’re doing the personal ones.
Doug: Is it okay if I challenge you on this?
We can have a little debate.
Ron: Go ahead.
Doug: All right. So number one, do you think you’re actually learning more by working on the two channels or are you just. Convincing yourself that you are learning even faster.
Ron: I genuinely think that I’m learning more because I’m Building out the channels in a way it’s hard to explain without giving away the niche But i’m building out channels in a way and videos in a way and i’m testing things So there’s so many different approaches that you could take in video.
There’s so many different calls to action There’s so many different things that you can do in video that are Not more difficult to do with text, but with video, you don’t really necessarily know how people are going to react. Right. So I think that I’m definitely learning more from that perspective.
I can tell you what a good retention is for a personal channel, what faceless is. And. Looking into the ex Twitter feed, I’m seeing people that are doing some pretty crazy things, frankly, where I’m like, how, like, how do you even do that? But there are of course the, you know, the fringe cases of the situation.
So yeah, I’m definitely learning more a hundred percent. I have no doubt about it. Uh, because I’m just involved in the whole thing.
Doug: So the review family, which is your channel, and the link is in the chat for people, they could check it out. So you have 835 subscribers, 63 videos, 144, 000 views. You don’t have to reveal the other channel.
That sounds like it’s a big secret, but how many subscribers do you have there?
Ron: That’s the thing. It’s so early. That’s why I was saying it’s so hard to say because. It’s well, I have multiple, I have, I’m going to look, hold on.
Doug: So not many. You’re saying not many. It does. Okay. So, so one of,
Ron: okay. So one of them, yeah, I have under basically under 10, but I literally started this less than a month ago, like probably like two solid weeks.
There is one other channel that we’ve actually had that we stopped before. So this is an interesting thing too. So we had another channel that has 2000 subscribers that we stopped before. The reason why we stopped it. Is financially, it wasn’t viable. It just wasn’t a viable business model because you’re talking about script writing, voiceover, editing, very expensive.
Now, because AI has gotten so good, we’re able to outsource some of that, not the entire thing. So we’ve been able to do some things with that that get pretty creative that has brought the cost down. So that one we’re building back up, but yeah, that’s, that’s the hard thing with this is that I have two other channels that we’re basically doing that are faceless and it’s so early that I can’t, I can’t even say if they’re definitively really successful or not.
I can say we’re getting views, but subscribers, that’s the thing. I don’t focus on subscribers anymore. I’ve kind of learned what the algorithm, the way it is. You focus on the views. That’s the thing that matters. So
Doug: yeah, subscribers are bullshit. I grew my channel just with ads and it’s just to get the plaque, you know?
So. I’d be an idiot if I didn’t ask you. So you’re learning at a, it sounds like a three times rate because you got so many channels going on, right? So what are your biggest takeaways? Like what do you, what should I do? Right. I’m always trying to learn what should I do or what should someone do with a channel because you’re, like you said, you’re testing and you know, shit.
Tell me the
Ron: biggest, the biggest thing is your first 30 seconds and they even have it as a metric in the back of YouTube, your first 30 seconds. We don’t, so we don’t script on our personal channel. We don’t script the first 30 seconds. Your first 30 seconds are so crucial to the success of the video.
If you can get it between, I want to say 60 to 75 percent in terms of retention for that first 30 seconds. Uh, your video is going to probably do pretty well, right? So that’s probably one of the biggest things. In addition to that, thumbnails matter so much more than I ever gave it credit to. I like, I could, I did, I never cared at all.
It matters so much. There’s also ways to do AB testing for your thumbnails. A lot of people do it. Well, not a lot of people do it. Some people do it. Um, it’s very new creators.
Doug: It’s very new. Yeah.
Ron: Yeah. So, well, so they launched it on, they launched on YouTube new, but there’s actually a software that you could have done before this, which Spencer Haas over at niche pursuits, he had shared.
Then I found that. So it’s actually a very big thing. Your thumbnail. So many people are like, ah, it doesn’t matter. It matters. And I was one of those ads good enough. It’s not good enough. Like it really does matter if you’re trying to not focus on SEO. Okay. So YouTube, there’s the SEO side and then there’s the, you know, let’s try to go viral.
So I mean, I don’t know what you want to call it. CTR
Doug: side. Yeah. So let’s talk about that. Title thumbnail. That’s it.
Ron: Yeah. So, so I was focused a lot on the SEO side before, focused just on the title mostly. And like, I was like, Oh, the covers don’t matter. They didn’t matter. Not that much because I was focused on SEO.
What I’m coming to learn is in order to really be successful and do well on YouTube, it’s not about SEO, which is really contradictory to how I built websites. It’s more about let’s get the click through rate. You know, like you just said, that whole, that matters a lot more than anything else that you could do.
So of the biggest two takeaways, I’d say that a third thing is always trying to direct people to another video of yours because. Not just the watch time in the first video, but overall watch time on your channel. Overall time session time, if you will, is also crucially important. So that, yeah, so those are some things that I’m learning for sure.
And I would say anybody can probably take to any channel. That’s a universal best practice. So,
Doug: and as it was, um, Um, perfect insights. I was gonna say through my research and I, I watched a lot of like YouTube tutorial type channels for several years. It’s like, those are the, the things you just described, those are like the top things.
It’s like thumbnails are huge as a visual thing. Sure. You can do SEO, but you know, we were coming at this as SEOs and it turns out like. Most of your views, like, like huge majority of your views are going to come through like suggested videos for most people, most of the time. And if you got a good thumbnail, if you have a good short title, that’s probably going to be most of your views.
So, um, and Chris does ask in the chat here about a B testing thumbnails is, is now integrated. I believe in YouTube studio, there used to be external software, but you could just use the software in YouTube studio now. Is that right?
Ron: The only, yeah, the only problem. So they just released this like a week ago.
The only problem with it is so you could do up to three variations. So the original and two more the only problem with it is, is that you can’t test the titles, which I know some people are like, Oh, the titles don’t matter. It matters way more than you realize because you have to get the click so you can’t at present anyway test the titles with third party software you can test titles so that’s something to consider but yeah it’s in actually youtube they just released i think for all channels all my channels have it i’m not a hundred percent i can’t say if it’s every channel out there but for all my channels
Doug: Right.
And what is the software that you used before where you could test the titles? Do you know? If you don’t know, it doesn’t matter. We’ll just keep moving here. Hold on. Keep
Ron: going and I’m going to pull it up because I have it here. I’ll interrupt you in a second. Keep going.
Doug: Let’s talk about real estate just briefly.
So I fucking hate real estate. Most of my friends around here are into it. One of my good friends, she’s like a podcast host for bigger pockets. Have you run across bigger pockets yet? Are you familiar with them? I
Ron: have actually. Yeah, I was listening to them quite a bit. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. So, so they’re huge and I’m just, I mean, the market has shifted, right?
I mean, like real estate. Is it more expensive? Currently, interest rates kind of suck. And I know for a fact, like, because of that, like people are looking for other opportunities just because it’s prohibitively expensive. But for me, real estate is not the right thing. I am much more passive and I hate all the people that work in real estate, agents, brokers, insurance, like they all suck.
I just don’t like to, sorry, sorry to you folks out there that work in real estate, But real estate agents don’t realize this, but most people don’t like them. So just newsflash for your real estate agents out there again, sorry to offend you and I appreciate you watching, but what what drew you to real estate?
It’s just the sexy returns that you saw.
Ron: Okay. So first not to, not to pivot, but thumbnail test. com is the external software. I knew I’d be able to find it. It’s called thumbnail test. com. Anyways, so real estate. So. Okay. Here’s what happened. So I, I, so I sold a bunch of sites. I had a bunch of money.
That’s what, and I’m not like bloating. That was the situation. I had a lot of money. I started to definitely invest into all the different stock, et cetera. You know, mutual funds, all those types of funds, everything like that. But I’ve actually, I previously owned an apartment, previously had a house we sold.
We kind of flipped that ourselves. So I’ve always had kind of an interest in it in general. It’s just been one of those things that I’ve kind of always been interested in. That’s probably the main reason. So, and I’ve done pretty well when I had done it myself. So. When I was looking at the money in the bank and the money in the stock market and mutual funds, et cetera, had a good portion, have a good portion, still a very good portion inside of all our investment accounts, et cetera, but had some extra cash.
And I was like, man, I really like, I really like, like real estate because usually because of the equity. And all that sort of thing, but it was a situation where it doesn’t make sense to really buy and fix up and hold because of the reasons that you mentioned. So we started to get into flipping with our neighbor.
He did some of the work for our own house. Really nice guy. He did some of the work for our own house in like, Fixing and I mean, completely gutting our kitchen, living room, et cetera. He did. And it was like top notch work. And then I looked like online, cause I was like, Oh, this is really good. And like, I know him personally, but I looked online.
He’s got really good reviews. So it’s like, he knows what he’s doing. I talked to him. He said, yeah, I’ve already flipped a few houses for this guy. And this guy, cause we just were mentioning, like just talking, like not even trying to sell me anything, but we had talked and I just went to him one day. I said, Hey, are you interested in potentially partnering?
Where I could fund like 70 percent roughly of what is needed to actually go and flip some houses, things like this. He said, yeah, of course, he’s got a friend that’s in real estate that has lowered their commissions. So we’ve got some advantage. I’ve, I’ve got a significant advantage because I have a general contractor and a realtor that doesn’t charge a full price.
That’s basically why I went into it. And I was like, yeah, we could do it. We could do it. So like I said, we’ve gone through two smaller houses now. I think that the Vegas market is very unique because all that California money is piling over. I don’t know necessarily this would work everywhere, but that’s one of the things that’s really unique about our situation is that there’s just so many California transplants that have straight cash.
So we’ve been doing that. And you know, with the split and everything, it’s been pretty good. It’s been mostly passive for me. Like there’s been a few times I’ve had to Invest a little bit more money, but it’s come back. Right now we don’t even have anything. We’re presently looking for one so it’s been one of those things that he’s just basically look able to look at something say, okay This would cost about x amount of dollars to fix.
He does it fixes it all up. We split it And that’s pretty much it.
Doug: What return are you getting?
Ron: We have, yeah, I mean, if you’re talking about percentages, I can’t necessarily give you that because I haven’t even done the math behind it, to be honest with you, but in two, in two flips 42, 000 is what we made, what we made together.
And then basically split that. So about 24. So nothing crazy. These have been small houses. I’m starting to kind of lower risk, et cetera, if I can.
Doug: So that’s profit that you made? Yeah.
Ron: Yeah, yeah, so so half basically half of 42 so 21, 000 roughly
Doug: 21. How much did you put in
Ron: In the first one? 31 I think it was and in the second one.
That was a smaller one. I think it was 26
Doug: do some quick math so that’s 57 so you made No, total, you made 42, 000 on 57, 000?
Ron: Yeah, but he also is investing. I’m doing, I’m doing 70%. I’m doing 7%. 70 percent of the funding, of the purchase cost. So, whatever, add 30 percent to that. If that makes sense. He’s doing, he’s doing 30 percent investment.
I’m doing 70 percent investment.
Doug: Okay.
Ron: Does that make sense?
Doug: The number 31, we’ll figure it out later. People are like, come on guys. So the point I’m curious, cause like you’re flipping it, you’re adding value. So you’re in a great position where you can like fund it. Everybody wins. Everybody takes some profit.
But one of the things, so. We owned a house in Bozeman and we moved from there in 2019. We had the option to keep it and I could have like rented it out and it turned out like the market has really blown up all over the country. Bozeman really went up in value. So I think we bought it for a little over 200, 000 and then After we moved like a year after we moved I think it was like houses that size like it was valued On zillow for like 450 or something like that So obviously like, you know, you can’t predict like what’s going on However, one of my friends did mention obviously there’s a headache of like renting it out across multiple states So that’s an issue a little bit of an issue.
You got to get a property manager a couple other things But the other thing is Is instead of right, the opportunity cost instead of keeping our money in real estate, which on paper, we’re like, Oh, crap, we could have like doubled our money and blah, blah, blah. The stock market has gone up quite a lot over the past five years anyway.
So when you actually look at the opportunity costs, it’s like, actually. We got rid of this thing that would have been a lot of work and we actually got pretty awesome returns over the five years. So I was just like, Oh, I wonder, I wonder how it looks when you compare, like if you would have invested 57, 000 in the market over the last few years.
Versus investigate real estate. It sounds like you guys did awesome because of the, it’s
Ron: my guy. That’s it. So I, so I have a really unfair advantage because of the general contractor and again, the realtor that doesn’t charge full fees. I have a very distinct advantage and I saw that we haven’t gone into anything too heavy yet.
Right? Like. We’re doing the investments in that it’s smaller properties, things like that. I’m basically testing out the waters. Maybe I’ll do more in the future. Maybe I’ll get bigger. Maybe he’ll get really busy. I don’t know, but it’s something that we’re doing. It’s gone definitely well so far, but I’m super picky about any of the properties.
And you know, with him, I’m like, let’s get an itemized list of every single thing. And then we still account for, you know, the, the overage, which is like basically a guarantee. So it’s gone well so far. We’re two properties in, do I think I would do this full time? No, because it is nerve wracking. It is definitely nerve wracking.
And yeah, the stock market, like my own stock portfolio has done really well as well, but it’s just, I’ve always lived a life of diversification. Like I’m always nervous. Like what if the stock market goes down 20%? I’m always like that. I’ve just been built that way. So like, it’s just another thing that I’m kind of testing out, I guess you could say, but no longterm rentals at the moment.
I’d love to get into that. But like, especially in this market, that’s difficult to do because you’re competing against casinos. And you know, there’s not like a ton of, I mean, there’s, there’s colleges and stuff, but it’s not a great market for that type of thing here, frankly. So yeah, so we’ve gone, it’s gone well so far, but I credit the guy across the street.
For most of that, because he’s really good at what he does. So
Doug: two quick notes the stock market a hundred percent will drop by 20%. It does it every few years. So, you know, no one freak out. It just drops. No, it’s like, if you go look at the, uh, the charts, it does like, I think it’s every five years or something.
It’ll drop. That’s why my, my
Ron: favorite saying time in the market is better than timing the market. It’s one of my favorite things. So yeah, yeah. Dollar cost averaging big thing on that.
Doug: That’s a good one. And the, I had some other point that was relevant, but I can’t remember what it was. So let’s talk a little bit more about your channel.
Cause we were talking about pivoting is the main topic. It’s called the review family and people could check it out. There’s a link in the. Chat currently, but you are going for sort of a longer play and I, I wonder what would you recommend if someone was like, Hey, I want to start a channel. I’m not in a super hurry, but I sure would like to earn money a little faster.
How would you advise them? To either structure the channel structure monetization. I’m not saying you should do this or anything, but if someone was like, Hey, I want to start earning money within like a year or so, what would you tell them to do? How would you advise them?
Ron: Yeah, so I think the biggest thing so ours is definitely a long term.
We found a niche that doesn’t have a ton of competitors And I think that’s obviously a big thing But if somebody was looking to get into it now like tomorrow or even you know a couple weeks or whatever a month I would say probably the biggest thing is don’t go at it with hey, we’re gonna make money from ads Don’t, I mean, yes, you will, but don’t focus on that.
That’s really not the best way to make money on YouTube at all. I mean, it’s the most passive way and it’s a great thing. And if you have a channel that can get pretty big, like our personal channel could potentially get to, it’s nowhere near that now. I think that’s something to definitely consider, but before you even get into YouTube channel like us, I said, okay, well, we have to have at least three monetization strategies before we even, you know, Think about launching this thing.
What are those going to be? And you asked me what the top three are, which is funny. Those are, that’s like, you know, a requirement you don’t have to. And I’ve seen, again, cause I follow a ton of people in the space. You don’t have to have a huge YouTube channel. You could have 5, 000, you know, 5, 000 people.
And if you have good videos that connect with the viewer, et cetera, you could sell a course for two, 300. You can make decent money off of that, right? You don’t have to, like. Like you just said, the subscribers don’t matter as much as people think you have to get them to get monetized. You have to get them to, you know, show people that you actually matter as a channel, but the way that YouTube is designed now is it’s just showing videos and it’s showing retention.
So the more you keep people on your videos, the more retention there is, the better it’s going to be. Right. So basically anybody that’s looking to start, I wouldn’t focus on the income from the, you know, the passive income display ads, I’d say, think of an offer or an affiliate deal or something that you can tie to your channel right off the cuff, you know, produce three, four videos, launch with three or four videos so that people can binge more than one video, uh, launch with three to four videos and then just get started with that.
I’d say that’s the biggest thing. So, you know, there could be a niche on anything. It’s just, it’s the second biggest search engine. A lot of times the YouTube videos are actually embedded into the Google server. They were, who knows what the hell Google is going to do tomorrow. But anyway, they were, they have been.
So consider that too. So you don’t have to have, you know, don’t think I’ve got to get tens of millions of views. That’s not right. You can have a small but mighty community. That can actually fund quite a bit of things just with, you know, your own product or a good affiliate offer. So focus on that more than just, Oh, I’ll make ad revenue.
Don’t focus on that as a monetization strategy. It’ll happen, but don’t focus on it.
Doug: It seems like things were a lot easier when you and I got started a decade plus ago, right? So do you, I mean, if someone was like, Hey, I think like earning money online on the side is kind of played out and it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear path here would you tell people, or yeah, what would you say if someone was like, yeah, I don’t think working online is like a viable option.
Ron: I’d say you’re wrong. There’s so many opportunities. Defend it.
Doug: Yeah. Tell us. That’s
Ron: it. Like, that’s the thing. Like you could say like, Oh yeah you, you can’t make it online. Like you can’t make money online. Okay. Just go, go anywhere and say, you know, how to make money online. You’re going to see, usually you’ll see, of course, like these are the 50 ways to do it, but then you’ll also, if they’re a good source, see examples of people that are doing it.
I have a friend that just, This is going to blow some minds. He just started an eBay store. Yes. eBay. Remember eBay? Right. Uh, and he’s selling just clothing. He’s buying stuff and then reselling it. He’s making 2, 000 a month. He was somebody who was in the website space, got absolutely eviscerated, and now he’s in that space and he’s making 2, 000 a month.
And it’s been. I want to say three months and he was making negative income from his websites because he was investing. Right. So he just completely shifted and there’s so many ways to make money online. The thing is you have to find the way that you actually like. You have to test things like usually when I go into anything.
So this is what’s happening right now with YouTube right now, this year, 2024 is the year of that’s all I’m focused on. I do it for a whole year. Okay. Because I feel like if you do it for one, two, maybe three months, you’re not really going to get it. You have to really immerse yourself and become obsessive about it.
And it’s so funny. Cause my wife is like, I love when you get obsessed with things. Cause she knows that things will work. Because when I really dive in and just that’s all I focus on, it really does work. So you need to get obsessive and just say, this is the lane I’m staying and I’m going to go. Right?
So anybody that says, yeah, you can’t make money online. You’re wrong. I’m sorry. Like you’re just wrong. You just had to find the right thing that you want to do. That’s the thing. Cause like, like I said, my friend has eBay. Well, guess what? He has to go buy all the clothing listed and then flip it. And so he has to go ship all that clothing.
That’s kind of a pain. Maybe that’s not for you. Maybe you want to do YouTube. Oh, wait, you don’t like being in front of a camera. Okay. Maybe you want to do blogs. Okay. Well now you’re going to have to focus on social media, no longer Google. Like there’s always ways to do it. It’s just a matter of figuring out what works best for you.
Doug: I did an interview with actually a guy locally here named Paul. I hike with him. I didn’t even know he worked online very much. And then one day I was like, Hey, you got a YouTube channel. But anyway, he does drop shipping and he was like, yeah, drop shipping for tiktok is really great right now because they’re sort of sub Subsidizing it.
So he’s doing like essentially drop shipping from Amazon, like Amazon, like, and there’s just a markup and there’s a, you know, like everything, there’s a software and their systems, and there’s like certain products that do well. But they’re, like I said, they’re subsidizing the situation. So the economics will change.
Sometime in the future, but right now, like they’re trying to get people to do the, and it’s like you said, the same skillset that he was using on eBay, dropshipping stores, he’s now moved to Tik TOK and it’s, it’s pretty amazing. So, yeah, I, I. Agree with you. I think things are definitely harder to earn money online, but like there’s, there’s a lot of opportunity out there.
And at this point in time, it doesn’t feel like it, but because all these very skilled people that were like building content sites for many years, there’s a void, like people were searching for what to do, but it like leveled the playing field and there will be stuff that is starting now people sort of emerging.
So. The fact that Google pulled the rug out from under everyone, it’s like, Huge opportunity for a lot of people. So I think we’ll see big brands coming out of this or like new business models, like kind of explode. I don’t think it started yet, but I think things are going to shift a little bit. And I mean, for me, YouTube, it’s fun.
I just like it. Or do you enjoy video production specifically? I
Ron: do. I do. So I, so, Yeah. Like my wife and I, we’re just filming. That’s all we’re doing. So she has editors from before we, that’s the thing. We have these unfair advantages in all these areas. Like none of this happened overnight. My, my wife has put in her thousand hours.
Right. And I’ve put in quite a bit of hours too. So we are just starting this one and growing this one, but realize that we have years of experience in it. I enjoy the production. We have an editor, we have a virtual assistant to post everything. They do everything. We literally film, done, press a button.
Okay. It goes off and then we review it. That’s all it is for us. So it’s really not that time intensive for us. Some people like edit and all that. That’s madness. Like I would never do that. But if you have to, you know, you have to in the beginning. So I get it. But yeah, we definitely enjoy the production part of it for sure.
It’s actually fun, which I haven’t had fun in a long time.
Doug: So we’re going to start wrapping up here. So I don’t keep you on here all day, Ron, and I’ll, I’ll point out the channel again, the review family, and I’m curious, Ron, what are potential failure points that you’re watching out for?
With this channel. So you were like, I’m going to work on this for one year. So what are the metrics or KPIs that you’re looking at where you’re like, it is time to move on and pivot to something else, or this is successful and it is working and we’re going to double down on it. So what are you looking at?
What are the true failure points?
Ron: The biggest failure point with any YouTube channel, I can tell anybody that starts one, is burnout. Every YouTuber has dealt with it. Every YouTuber has felt it at points. Sometimes you just don’t want to film. You get really tired of doing the same thing over and over.
That is almost a guarantee that that can happen. So, we’re really looking out for that. We’re both very cognizant of it. That’s probably the biggest thing. In terms of other failure points I, I am 100 percent confident that this channel will work. Do I know to what degree it’ll work? No, I don’t know that.
I can’t possibly know that. But what I do know from YouTube is that a lot of it is publish, publish, publish. Eventually, one of your videos goes viral or semi viral. And all of a sudden, you get an influx of views. And then, influx of views to that one video, because of the algorithm, you’ll get it to multiple other videos.
And I only know this because my wife did it for so long. We’re going to do it for the whole year here. If this is going to be a personal brand, I really genuinely don’t see this being something that we’re stopping. We’re trying to do, like I said, different video formats now, like 1 versus 100 items, things like that to try to see about the virality aspect.
Cause we haven’t really gone quote unquote viral yet. I think our best one is like maybe 15, 000 or something like that. So it’s been kind of a slow grind. But that’s what YouTube is like. I don’t expect in this first year to get crazy, crazy good returns or anything. It’s just a year of learning and diving in.
When you’re talking about the Facebook channels or the Facebook or Facebook, the faceless rather channels those ones, it’s easy. You publish about 30, 40 videos and then you look at the numbers and you can say, Oh, this sucks or this is good. That’s what I like about it. It’s a quick feedback loop. It’s not that expensive.
It’s not that crazy. So yeah, this particular one though, we’re, we’re waiting. And I want to say one other thing before we do go Doug. So. The elephant in the room to so many people is. Okay, everybody’s like you like you said a lot of people are pivoting to a bunch of different things Which I I think you have to you can still do websites, but if you’re gonna pivot that’s fine Just know that if your worst case scenario if you’re in this and you’re like, oh, I had a website I was making eight nine grand a month and it was supporting me and my family blah blah If your worst case scenario is you have to get a full time job That’s everybody’s, most people’s best case scenario is that they have a job.
So realize that worst case scenario, getting a job for a year or two years, or three years while you do a side hustle is not that bad. Like I legit was considering that at a point like, Ooh, do I have to go back into the corporate, like, is that a thing I got to worry about right now? So far it’s been okay.
But like, if I have to do it, I have to do it. You, this is a, an external market factor that you can’t handle. Like Google crushed so many people in this. So don’t have too much pride to go do that. Like it may suck. It may be depressing, but it’s not that bad because you can still do this stuff on the side.
So I just want to say that to everybody, anybody that’s like really stressing about it. You have my permission and I’m sure Doug would agree. It’s okay to go get a job if you have to like, don’t, don’t have so much pride that you won’t do that. Like it’s not the end of the world. Most people do it anyway.
Just do it for a couple of years and keep building something on the side.
Doug: Well said. So we’ll link up so people can get to the review family. Is there anywhere else you want people to follow you or check out your stuff or anything like that?
Ron: No, I’m, I’m pretty boring nowadays. I’ve been, I’ve been kind of quiet.
On a lot of different places. I’m, I’m in observing, I’ve retracted back and I’m just basically observing everything that I’m doing. And I’m sure eventually I’ll share some stuff publicly, but as of right now, I’m just learning, just sitting back and learning.
Doug: All right. Well, this has been awesome, Ron.
It’s always fun to catch up. And like I said, we’ll link up so people could find your, your new channel out there. And yeah, you got, you got some other interviews out there so people could find. You out there on YouTube otherwise. And yeah, thanks a lot. We’ll catch up sometime soon and people should check out the, all those links and other show notes in the description here.
So thanks a lot, everybody. We’ll catch you on the next one.
Thanks for checking out this episode and thanks to Ron. Be sure to check out his new channel. You can see what he’s working on. You can see the number of views. I found it pretty interesting and the thumbnails are pretty amazing. Very interesting to see how the views vary based on the topic area and just the normal stuff that you would.
Be surprised about because it’s not consistent. Like you would think also, if you have any show ideas, if you have any interesting questions or, uh, just actually normal questions, they don’t have to be that interesting. Let me know. You could shoot me an email feedback at Doug dot show. It’s always good to have fresh ideas from you, the audience, and I appreciate you checking out this episode.
I won’t ramble on forever. So that’ll be it. Have a great day out there and we’ll catch you on the next episode.