The Biggest Misconception About YouTube Success
The following is an edited excerpt from YouTube Secrets by Sean Cannell and Benji Travis
Being a YouTube influencer might look like it’s all fun and play. However, we can tell you from experience, every YouTube creator, influencer, and success story has one common attribute: an amazing work ethic. They hustle, hustle, hustle. The number one piece of advice we can provide is that everything comes down to how hard you’re willing to work in order to be successful on this platform.
People underestimate the amount of work it takes. The allure of YouTube success is misleading. If you reach success, you can earn money, get free products, travel the world, and live an exciting, exhilarating life. However, that’s just what it looks like from the outside.
After interviewing over a hundred of today’s top video influencers, we see a recurring theme. All of them put an insane amount of work into their channels. When we talk about hustle, we mean consistency — consistently creating and optimizing your content, consistently engaging with people, consistently improving.
Benji’s Vlog channel has over 1.6 million subscribers. Many people watch, and that has opened numerous doors of opportunity for us. He’s incredibly grateful for everything that has happened, but after fun days with the kids or traveling to cool places, every night the video editing must happen. Business is taken care of, and it all starts over every day.
When subscribers stumble upon our channel, they don’t realize we’ve been on YouTube for ten years. In that time, we’ve uploaded thousands of videos. In the last six years, we’ve vlogged almost every single day of the week. Across both of our channels we have uploaded thousands and thousands of videos. Through determination, commitment, and the right strategy, you too can experience huge success leveraging the power of YouTube. In this book, we’ve given you the steps.
Remember the Seven C’s, which you must do continually as you go through the stages of growing your influence on YouTube — always tapping into a new level of courage, always clarifying and refining your message and brand, always improving your channel, always improving your content, always engaging with your community, always finding new ways of generating cash, and always staying consistent, realizing you must hustle your way to success.
By this point, you’ll see that it takes a lot of work to build influence on YouTube, and that’s why we encourage you to build it around something you love. “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” There will be times when you’re tired, and it will feel like a grind, but devoting yourself to something you love will make it all feel worthwhile.
What Do You Love?
Is this what you want to be doing? Is this what you’re passionate about? For some, YouTube is a means to an end, a stepping stone toward their true calling. However, it’s so important to have a passion and love for the content you create and the people you help.
Despite how successful Benji’s real estate channel was, he’s no longer an agent in that industry. He left because he viewed it as merely a stepping stone in the right direction. It helped fund his true passion, which is helping people…helping you. That’s why we have become such great friends, because we share a similar passion and calling.
Sometimes, things might not work out. If you’re struggling, ask yourself if you’re truly doing what you love. At this point, you might feel overwhelmed. You’ve received a lot of information. Break it down and think about the next thing you need to do.
Maybe that’s setting up your channel. Maybe that’s posting your first video. Maybe it’s scheduling a day to shoot your next batch of content. A commitment to these small actions compound to big results. Little by little, a little becomes a lot.
For more advice on getting started on YouTube, you can find YouTube Secrets on Amazon.
Sean Cannell and Benji Travis are the authors of YouTube Secrets. Video marketing strategist Sean Cannell has helped clients generate over $5 million in revenue. He built his YouTube business into a multiple-six-figure success story in less than a year. Benji Travis has garnered more than one billion video views on YouTube channels he’s helped to start and grow. Through his multiple businesses, working with hundreds of brand sponsors, he earns a seven-figure income, while also raising almost $2 million for charity. Together, their Video Influencers platform was included on Forbes’s “Top 20 Must-Watch YouTube Channels” list, alongside Tony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuk.
