I tried to build a repeatable process for cranking out high quality YouTube videos.
I completely failed.
I began to suspect this a long time ago, when I kept running into roadblocks. I cranked out a number of quite poor videos. And they performed poorly too.
Then the other day I got a flash of inspiration. An idea I thought was good. An idea I thought people would click on, watch, enjoy, and engage with.
So I just sat down and started working on it. I spent many hours on it. I didn't use my system at all. I broke all of the rules that were designed to keep me on track.
And that video performed better than any of my others by a huge factor. In its first two days it did 4.4 times the views my median video has earned in its lifetime. Click-through rate, watch time, even comments, all better too.
So I think a system for cranking out YouTube videos, at least for me and what I'm doing, is kind of a false promise. Something I thought could work because I like systems. I like processes. I like building repeatable things.
But I don't think creativity works like that. At least not this kind.
So I'm tearing down my YouTube machine. Instead, I'm just going to work on ideas I think are good.
I get ideas all the time. Not all of them are good. But most of them are better than what research is telling me to make.
Ideas that come from talking with my clients. Ideas that come from reading comments from people who watch my videos. Ideas that come from trying to answer the question: why is money so hard for so many people?