481 – A “Short” Episode with Big Results: Tom talks YouTube Shorts

Episode 481 – YouTube Shorts
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode four hundred and eighty one of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about YouTube shorts. Now, before I get into that, I have kind of a I don't know, a bittersweet announcement. I got word today that screw the commute, this is the good part, was the number 42 most popular entrepreneurship podcast in Kazakstan, even know how to pronounce that was the good. The bad, the bad news is we dropped two spots last week because we were number 40 in Kazakhstan last week. So so I have to work harder in that market, I guess, anyway, today I'm going to tell you about the relatively new YouTube shorts. These are short videos where you make vertical videos up to 60 seconds long. So we'll get into that in a minute. Hope you didn't miss Episode 480. That was Frank Furness. He's spoken in 65 countries. He's got online courses. He's a LinkedIn expert. And all this work has allowed him to purchase his dream car, a Bentley. I'm not sure the model, but he's he's all into it. So how would you like me to send you big affiliate commissions? Well, email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com and I'll give you details. We can send you PayPal. We could send you a check. Gold bullion, silver.

[00:02:11] I don't care whatever you want, but if you refer my stuff, which we never get returns on, by the way, then you can make a lot of commissions. Even one individual commission can be more than 5000 bucks. All right. So this is a serious thing that can make you a lot of money. So check it out, pick up a copy of our automation ebook at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. We sell this for 27 bucks, but it's yours free for listening to the show. And you will thank me because it will save you tons of time and allow you to steal ethically steal customers from other people. Too slow to get back to everybody because you're not fighting with your computer. You're using your computer to make things go away faster. There we go. screwthecommute.com/automatefree to pick that up. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app. screwthecommute.com/app. You can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. All right. I really want your help on this pilot program I'm doing in my school for persons with disabilities. They have been dealt a hand much more difficult than most of us. And I really want to help them out. I want to change their lives for the better. So this pilot program is to train five persons with disabilities at home with a highly in demand skill, Internet and digital marketing, and also get them hired or start their own business or both.

[00:03:49] And then I want to roll it out really big and help loads and loads of people. So I need your help with this. If you go to IMTCVA.org/disabilities. That will be in the show notes and go to the top of the page. You can see our Go Fund Me campaign, see how it's going. You can meet some of the people in the program and they really are appreciative to the help you've given us so far. And we're going to hire some people to help run the program to do so. And when I say some people, I'm saying persons with disabilities, we're going to really do whatever we can to help them out.

[00:04:30] All right. Let's get to the main event. So short videos are all the rage. Now, way back, there was a thing called Vine, which was only six second videos. So and, you know, this is easier for you, but it's harder in one way and easier in another. Easier in that. You only have to come up with fifteen seconds to 60 seconds worth of material. Harder in I think it was Mark Twain or something said that, you know, if it's a three hour speech, he can start now. If it's a ten minute speech, it'll take him several weeks to prepare. So I don't know. I think they're pretty darn easy myself.

[00:05:12] So they're all the rage. These tick tock kind of swept the world with this. And then Instagram said, hey, wait a minute, people are leaving us and going to tick tock. We can't have that. So they started a thing called Reels, and it was pretty much the same thing. But now YouTube said, hey, wait a minute, where's your buddy going? We better get on this. So they started YouTube shorts. These are videos up to one minute that either entertain, they're bizarre or they teach something. Now, you probably want to teach something or do something that promote your business now if you want to see some of these. You go to your YouTube app on your cell phone. I'm going to show you how you can do it on your desktop, too, but if you it's much faster to watch, to look at a lot of them on your cell phone. Now, if you don't have the YouTube app installed, just go to wherever you get your apps and install it. And then you're now going to see an icon at the bottom labeled shorts. You click it and then you swipe up to scroll through the different shorts, make sure your audio is on, too, because a lot of them have music and or or dialogue. Now, you can still watch them on a desktop. There's two ways that I have found to get to them. The first is you go to just your browser window and you type in YouTube.com/hashtag/shorts.

[00:07:02] Now, if you're already in YouTube, just put the hash tag symbol, the number symbol shorts, no spaces in it, hash tag shorts in the YouTube search box. And we'll have these links also in the show notes or at least the long link, because the other one, you got to be in YouTube to use the hashtag shorts in the YouTube search box. But like I said, this kind of video is really designed for mobile and is shot and watched vertically, so if you want to watch a bunch of them quickly, it's like I said, it's much faster on mobile because you can just keep swiping up really fast on desktop. It's just like looking at any other video you have to click. Hit your back button. If you want to see some more, click on that one and so forth. So it's faster on a desktop. I mean, excuse me. On mobile. Now, if you want to record a short write on your cell phone. Right next to that little icon that says shorts you just hit, there's a plus button, a plus sign. And at the time of this recording, there's a red Beda notice signifying that this is pretty new, although new to YouTube owned by Google, there's already 15 billion users. OK, so yes, it's new, but there's still loads of people there.

[00:08:37] Now, this podcast is not a complete tutorial on all the things you can do to jazz up your shorts and you can shoot them offline and you know, you can make them in all different kinds of ways. But one thing I do want you to know is YouTube shorts are not YouTube stories or Instagram stories or anything like that because stories disappear in YouTube. I believe it's after seven days and you have to have 10000 subscribers before they even let you use them. So these are anybody can use their kind of pushing it, they want people to get involved and keep them from going to to take talk and real's. So what can you do with them? Well, if you aren't just entertaining with them, you could do. A super short version of a larger video that's already on your YouTube channel, you could take a portion of it and turn it into a excuse me, I call it a real because I've been to a lot of Instagram stuff, so you could take a portion of a longer video. Make a YouTube short out of it and then the YouTube short gets people excited to go watch the whole video. So that's one thing that you wouldn't even have to create anything new. And you can use videos that maybe you have already made for tech talk or Instagram Real's, but they will be watermarked if you just download them from Instagram or ticktock. So it's better to go back to the raw video and upload it directly because there's ways that they can tell if you just put up a video that's got to tick talk or or a real watermark on it and they'll give you a lower ranking.

[00:10:29] They don't like that. They want you to they don't want you promoting those other things. So take the original video, upload it directly. And there's tons of YouTube videos to show you how to do this on a desktop, but you can do it directly from your cell phone. Now, these short videos have no cards. You know, those little pop up boxes near the top that give you more information. They have no end screens where, you know, you see other related videos popping up. Maybe they will in the future, but they don't now. But see those in screens, they show up 20 seconds before the end of the video. Well, a lot of these shorts are going to be less than 15 seconds long. So, I mean, you would be covering up the video with the end screen. So I don't know if you'll see those in the near future. Now, one trick or hack is to pin a comment that you wrote to the top suggesting other things of yours, either a link to your website or to something to buy or other videos that you have. So you pin that comment near the top. And I admit that a lot of these short videos are just funny, but they certainly can be used for business.

[00:11:50] So I got some examples for you. The links will be in the show notes, but there's a guy that I suspect is trying to sell vending machines. And he showed you how much profit he made from one machine in one day in a very short video. And then, of course, he wants you to link over to buy his video things or his vending machines. The other one, this guy's selling tips for starting your own business. And he his his little short talked about doing small outdoor events for money. Because everybody wants to get out of the house now and then, they don't like, you know, big indoor gatherings, so he's talking about having outdoor gatherings. Good idea. Then this other girl, check this out. This girl did a 13 second video of packaging up her first order. She's got a store called FireflyShopOnline.com sales lady, a young women's clothes, I think. And I got that link in there, too. She's got three hundred ninety eight thousand two hundred ninety nine views for free on a 13 second video. OK. Probably took her less than five minutes to create and look at that amount of free advertisement. Three hundred ninety eight thousand views. How many? Even if 10 percent click the link to her shop. That's forty thousand people. For free. All right, so this is the time to jump on these kinds of things, because all the I kind of remember all of these platforms give you incentive to use their new features.

[00:13:43] Look at that number of views she got from a relative. You know, she's got less than half of the subscribers I have. I don't even have a lot. And she got three hundred ninety eight thousand views. So so that was an incentive from YouTube to, hey, use this new feature, you do something good, we're really going to promote it for you. So so now's the time to get on it. And I made one for you, which took a total of maybe five minutes to create the link, will be in the show notes, just a quick thing to promote my podcast and to promote the fact that I teach this stuff and have been doing it for, you know, 252 years. You know, so so it promotes me. And it took five minutes to create. Now, these shorts are free ways to monetize your business, but there's another way, if you do a good job at this, YouTube may invite you into their monetization program, which to be in the monetization program. You normally need a lot of subscribers in so many hours of use and a bunch of stuff. But that's all out the window for this. If you just do a good job and start creating some of these shorts that, you know, get a lot of attention, you may get invited into their monetization monetization program. And like I said, this is a perfect example of how they're given incentives to get people to really use this, keep them from going to realise, keep them from going to tick tock.

[00:15:17] I remember when I did my first real, it went semih viral. It was funny, it was good, but it wasn't I mean, it wasn't millions and millions of views, but I couldn't believe how many people saw it because Instagram wanted to give me an incentive to keep doing it because. They were pushing that those rails to keep her from going to TicTok. So my personal opinion is it's much more reliable and helpful to you and your business if you just make shorts that promote your business rather than hoping that you get enormous views. And YouTube invites further monetization program, which you'll still get a pittance. I mean, they did a lot of hundred million dollars and that sounds like a lot. But for a multibillion dollar company, it really isn't that they are they're going to distribute this money to people that are using these shorts and really doing well at it. So you could get a small amount of money for that. But that's an iffy proposition. Your best proposition is right off the bat, just like that. That young girl that promoted her Firefly shop, hundred ninety eight thousand views and I said 10 percent maybe clicked to that's 40000. What if 20 percent that's 80000 people visited her Web site. How many sales would that be? Say so. And I have a special report coming out on this shortly to teach you all the ins and outs of doing it.

[00:16:50] But for now, you can watch YouTube videos or whatever, but just get making these shorts and it's a perfect time to jump on the bandwagon because you'll get incentives and you'll have a much better chance of YouTube pushing your your videos higher and higher and higher because they're really promoting this platform. So even if you don't get invited to the monetization program, who cares if it's send in direct targeted traffic to your Web site and buying your stuff and making you a big shot? Do it. All right. So that's my story on shorts. Now, please don't forget to go over to IMTCVA.org/disabilities. Help out any way you can on this pilot program. You'll really be doing something that really will help a lot of people totally change their lives. And you can be real proud of being involved in this. I'm certainly proud. And I got to tell you, it's a lot of hassle and work because I have to really go overboard making my site accessible. And that's a big thing on in the Internet. World news nowadays is to make sure your stuff's accessible. So I'm learning how to do that or testing things with people that are blind and almost blind. And, you know, so we're doing all these things to to make the world better. And that's what I need your help with. All right. That's my story. And I'm sticking to it. Catch you later.

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