Derral Eves remembers the first time he learned about YouTube. He was scrolling Craigslist, looking to snag a free desk for the new guy he hired at his web design company, when he saw an ad for the brand-new website. This was October 2005, and Derral was blown away. It was the first time he saw a video that didn’t constantly stop to buffer. Plus you could embed these videos on websites. He began creating videos for his clients’ websites, and they were a hit. “It was very disruptive at the time,” Derral explains. “Nobody was doing it, and I got really good at seeing what people would respon ..read more

How does marketing your local small business on YouTube translate to real life? Can you actually get people to pick up the phone? Visit your store? Book an appointment? Sounds like a big leap, right? But it’s quite doable. Take it from Roger Wakefield, a world-famous plumber. (He prefers to just be called a social media-savvy plumber, but I think he’s being a bit too humble.) Really, Roger is the poster boy for getting customers from behind a computer screen and through the door of a brick-and-mortar business, whether that’s a vet clinic, plastic surgery office, boutique, salon, market — y ..read more

As a YouTube channel manager or video creator, you understand just how many tools are out there at our disposal. This is great and all, but sometimes it makes things a bit tricky. How do you know what you actually need? Not to mention, can you really afford them? In this article, I’m pulling back the curtain and  revealing all the YouTube tools I use as a pro channel manager Resources Mentioned In This Episode Check out the VidIQ tool  Take a look at TextExpander it's a great way to create text shortcuts. Microsoft Office has lots of tools essential for channel manageme ..read more

If you’ve stumbled upon this article, chances are, you’re familiar with YouTube affiliate marketing. If you’re not, here’s the gist: You get paid when you make recommendations for other people's products and services and they purchase. Need an example? You generate a unique Amazon affiliate link for a product you recommend and drop it in your video’s description. (There are more affiliate programs out there than Amazon, but that’s just the most popular.) Then, when someone clicks the link and purchases something (anything!) within 24 hours (it’s all about the cookies), you earn a commissio ..read more

When it comes to YouTube optimization, there are always two questions I get from both aspiring and pro YouTube channel managers: Should I go back and optimize my (or my clients’) videos? Is it even safe for me to do that? The CliffsNotes version of the answers: Absolutely yes and yes. This is called retrospective optimization, the process of going back into your YouTube archives and cleaning up your old videos so they have another shot at success. As a pro channel manager, I’ve seen retrospective optimization make a huge difference in performance. I’ve optimized old videos that were hardly ..read more

For many of us, when we talk about making more money on YouTube, we immediately think AdSense. Sure, AdSense revenue is great, but it’s certainly not the only way to monetize your YouTube channel. If you really want to be successful in the YouTube world, you’ve got to think about ways you can diversify your income streams beyond AdSense. How? Well, you’ve got plenty of money-making options — but have you ever considered selling a physical product? I’m not talking about your typical YouTube merch. I’m talkin’ the ideation, creation and release of your own product line. This isn’t as far-fetche ..read more

If you’re launching your freelance YouTube channel manager career, first off: Congratulations! That’s a big, exciting move. I’ve been working as a professional YouTube channel manager since 2012, and I’ve been doing my own thing as a freelancer and the owner of Channel Fuel, a YouTube management agency, for nearly three years now. It’s been a fun ride, but I’ll tell you: Becoming a freelance channel manager requires some tact. One of the most important things you’ll want to do up front  is to determine what YouTube services you want to offer your clients. This will help you figure out h ..read more

Although at first it may not seem like it, working as a YouTube channel manager can be a great stepping stone in your career in YouTube (or otherwise) and can lead to even bigger opportunities. How? Well, it’s simple. As a channel manager, you gain a lot of transferable skills — skills you can take with you no matter what job you want later down the road. Don’t believe me? I caught up with two old friends, Oli Martin and Luke Spillane. We met when we worked at BBC Studios as YouTube channel managers back in the 2010s. Since then, each of us has continued to grow our YouTube careers, but ..read more

When I started my YouTube career back in 2012, I had very little experience. In fact, I had never even uploaded a YouTube video. But that was a very different time, and now big media companies, brands and independent influencers are on the lookout for highly skilled YouTube channel managers.  The only problem? There’s a lack of talent in this space. That’s good news for you, though. Once you have the adequate training and experience (you can tap into plenty of resources in the Pro Channel Manager community), there are plenty of places you can look to launch your YouTube career. Reso ..read more

Whether you work independently or on a team, there’s a good chance you’re feeling the effects of YouTube burnout — especially after the year we’ve had. Josh Zimmerman knows this feeling all too well. In 2014, he joined YouTube Nation and fell in love with YouTube. He went on to launch his own YouTube management company only to start feeling the effects of burnout a few years later. This was around 2017, when people were just starting to talk about this idea of “burnout.” “I noticed something really interesting, which was that everyone was talking about the problem, but nobody was doing a ..read more