5 Ways to Increase YouTube-Driven Profits (Blackman)

You love YouTube.

AdSense is great.

Sponsorships can be amazing.

But what if I could share with you five different strategies that would help you with your products, your services, your coaching and your courses to be more profitable, all without having to chase new customers?

Well, hi, I'm Craig Shoemaker and I'm a coach and advisor to six and seven figure entrepreneurs.

And my job is to help you by seeing the things that you can't, by revealing the missed opportunities and the blind spots in order to help you grow and become more profitable.

You might recognize some of my clients, like Mr.

George Blackman, Kieran Drew, John Brozio, Tessa Davis, and many more.

Now, I'm going to share some client stories with you, but I want you to know there's no guarantees here or claims for the same results for you.

It all comes down to market conditions.

It comes down to your offer, your pricing, and really your effort.

All right, sound good?

Let's get started.

Now, this first one is something that is so incredibly easy to do, overlooked by almost everyone, and incredibly effective.

And that's to learn to pitch within your thank you pages.

Now, what we often do is create an opt in where we're capturing people's email addresses and then after they opt in, they fill out the form.

We send them to a blank, plain, generic thank you page.

Now, of course, the email gets kicked off in the back end, but this confirmation page that you're showing people, you don't want it to be just the default blank page.

In fact, I saw this on one of my friends funnels.

I went to go.

I like to dig into funnels from time to time, check out people's welcome sequences.

And I opted in for his lead magnet.

And I got this page.

It was just the default convertkit page.

And so I immediately texted him and I was just like, friends don't let friends use default thank you pages.

And he was like, yes, I'll get right on it.

Because he knew he was missing out on a big opportunity.

Because here's the thing, when someone shares their email address with you, this is an incredibly strong buyer intent signal.

This is when people often first come into your world and they're most curious about who you are, what you have to offer, and the transformation that you can provide.

And so by missing out on an opportunity to be able to pitch people when they're at their peak of interest is something that you don't want to do.

It's an incredibly strong signal, so don't waste this opportunity.

So here's what it should look like instead.

So we have the same opt in.

You're capturing email addresses the same way the email gets kicked off in the back end.

And now instead of just a generic thank you page, you get the opportunity to make a sale.

Capturing a credit card number in order to make the sale.

Or you book, a call.

And it depends on your offer and your sales process of what is best for you.

But you want to have that opportunity to engage with someone in a meaningful and powerful way the moment that they first encounter you, you're pushing up the buyer opportunity to as early in the process as possible because this is a huge opportunity for you.

You're going to get 100% page views on the thank you page for your opt in.

Everyone who's interested in you is going to see this page.

It's a huge opportunity that you don't want to miss.

In fact, George is one of the guys that I worked with.

In order to do this, he had a leaky funnel.

He had leads coming in in a number of different places.

They were going to default confirmation pages, they weren't getting followed up on, being redirected to weird places.

And so what we did is we added a pitch into that process.

And so he now is pitching his course when people come into his opt in and he uncovered an entirely new lead source that he hadn't had otherwise.

And trust me, this is very easy to miss.

So take a look at all your opt ins, look at the confirmation pages that you're using and at least make sure that they are branded to you, they have custom content and if you can add a pitch or at least a way for people to book a call with you.

Now, number two gives you an opportunity to increase your average order value by a ton.

Plus, it helps you frame how people think about your offer.

And so this is adding tiers in to your offer.

Now, the problem is usually what we do is we have a coaching program.

You might have an online course, you may have a community.

And when you only offer one option, it completely limits your options, your ability to make money.

It caps it, number one, to a single price point.

But the other thing that happens is when people start evaluating, they start deciding whether or not they want to move forward with this thing.

They'll start having this internal monologue, is it too expensive?

Is it too cheap?

I, know that sounds weird, but I had a friend who had a course before we were actually friends.

I went to go buy this course.

It was $37.

And based off the transformation he was providing, I was just like, this doesn't make sense.

Is he going to give me a huge pitch on the back end?

Is it going to be a high pressure sales situation?

And it was none of that.

And so when you have a single price point, there's all kinds of different thoughts that people can have.

But the, the cool thing is that when you add in options, you get a chance to help control that narrative because they can also be thinking about, well, if I have this one thing, I might want to buy from from you, but what about your competition?

And so when you add in options, you can help control that narrative a little bit.

So what you'll see is that when you have multiple options, you can provide different price points, you can highlight different benefits and features of what you're about to offer, and you give people a chance to see what fits for them and what resonates for them.

so instead of thinking, should I buy your thing?

Instead of the competition's thing, they begin thinking, well, which one of these options is right for me?

Plus, you get a chance to do something that I'm sure you've seen hundreds of times in SaaS companies is you can add in a nudge.

You can say, this is the most popular option, this is the most effective option.

This is the one that provides the quickest transformation.

Whatever it makes sense in context of what your offer is, you're able to do that.

And so options are incredibly powerful.

In fact, the power of options is really what's helped you drive profits because it helps people compare you against you.

they're trying to figure out what among your different options are the best fit for them.

And they're not necessarily thinking about what's available elsewhere.

So tiers drive profits.

The next one is another big missed opportunity.

I see a lot, because if you're not intentional about how you design your checkout process, you can really leave a lot of money on the table.

In fact, when you do this, you have the opportunity to increase your average order value and customer lifetime value by quite a bit, depending on how you design it.

And so what you want to do is be able to add in order bumps and upsells.

All right, so what's the difference between the two?

An order bump is something that you add in before the checkout process.

So people come in to buy your community or your course.

You have maybe a checkbox there where you can say, add in, a bonus interview that you have With a famous author or maybe it's a checklist or something like that.

Oftentimes these are impulse buys.

And don't make the mistake of thinking that just because it's an impulse buy, it has to be super cheap.

Yes, often order bumps are $17, $27, $47, something like that.

But depending on your market, depending on who you're marketing to, I've seen order bumps even be a couple hundred dollars.

So it, it really depends on how you're positioning yourself and what you're offering.

But the whole idea is, is that someone goes to checkout to buy your thing, and, and they can make it a very easy process through a checkbox or selection box or something like that, very easily just add something into the order.

On the other side of the coin is an upsell.

And so after they've completed the purchase of something that they came to buy initially, you have an opportunity to then repitch them something else.

And so what you're doing is you're saying, okay, you've bought that one thing, now I have something else that you can buy in order, to keep going in order to strengthen the transformation, in order to deal with the next problems that people have.

Now, this harnesses buyer momentum, and this is an incredibly powerful force for you to tap into.

Because once people are in the mindset of being excited about knowing that whatever transformation you are able to provide for them and the problems that you're going to solve for them, this product, this service, this community, whatever you're, you're offering them is going to help do that, when you give them a subsequent offer that helps solve other problems for them, they're often very motivated to keep going.

It's the importance, though, is to deal with congruence.

You want to make sure that you're solving the next problems that might be the very next problems they encounter after they learn the first thing that you're trying to teach them, or after they join that community.

Or it could be side problems that, you know are going to emerge as they begin the journey on this transformation.

So when we look at the things that I've talked about so far, one of my clients, Tessa Davis, tripled her business's income by using upsells, order bumps, and adding in tiers.

Now, all of this was working together in concert in order to have such a dramatic effect.

And again, I can't guarantee that the same will be true for you.

But for her, it was because she knew exactly how she needed to speak to her market, how to add in the pricing and add each one of these elements specific to her audience.

And she had some amazing results from it.

Now, this next one I want to share with you is so incredibly powerful that you could ignore everything I've told you up to this point.

And if you do this one thing, you could see some, some pretty powerful changes in your business.

I hope you don't ignore everything, but you could.

But the idea is that if you build in genuine urgency, you give people a reason to take action.

It's just in our human nature, when we don't feel like there's a chance where we could miss out on something, we get lazy.

We take all the time allotted to us.

It's just who we are as people.

Now, when you don't have urgency, what ends up happening is you kind of suffer from the frustration and the pressure of lackluster sales.

You just kind of don't know when the next ones are coming in unless you have a very strong process based off of, you know, ads, content marketing, something like that, to where the demand is so powerful that you don't need to add in urgency.

I don't see that very often.

Usually what ends up happening is that when you add in a deadline, you give people a reason to take action.

Because once they know there's an opportunity that they could miss out on something, people behave very differently.

It's just human nature.

Because the fact is people need a reason to act.

If they know there's always a chance or an opportunity to do it tomorrow, next week, next month or whatever, they'll put it off until the pain is so intense that they're motivated to move.

But when you add an urgency, what you do is you give a stimulus to help people make the choice that they need to do in order to get the transformation that they want to receive, that they want to enjoy.

But here's the thing, and this is key.

You have to keep it real.

It has to be genuine urgency.

There has to be a real reason of why this thing might not be available after card close, or why you're capping your community or, whatever.

It has to be honest and it has to be done with integrity because you don't want to put on those dumb countdown timers that just reset as soon as they're done.

People see right through that.

And so when you can build in genuine and real urgency into your offers, then that resonates with people.

Now, one of my clients, Matt, he had an Evergreen course.

He had sales that would trickle in.

They were doing well, but it just wasn't what, what he wanted.

And so he took a brave step and he created the ultimate urgency.

He decided that he was going to move to a launch model.

So he closed his cart and then he was able to see some dramatic results.

So instead of just having these trickling in sales, he had a launch that was just shy of a six figure launch.

For the first time that we did this, I just helped him through a beta program, an initial launch, and then his launch based off an entirely new program that he was working on was a six figure launch.

It takes a certain amount of courage to be able to do things, to be able to tell someone, no, you can't buy my thing right now.

But the weird thing about it is that people respond knowing that they want to get the thing that they can't have.

Now, Matt's situation is not going to be the same for everyone.

He built up, a lot of trust and a very thriving community around his brand.

And so he was able to do something like this.

So I can't guarantee the same thing will work for you, but I do know that this principle is incredibly powerful.

So don't ignore it.

Use it to your advantage.

Now, this next one might have you scratching your head for a second.

And that is to plan for profits.

And you've got to be asking yourself, craig, what do you mean?

I don't do this for fun.

I run my YouTube channel in order to, you know, run a business.

Of course I'm planning for profits.

Well, not everyone does.

And so what ends up happening is usually we get money coming into our bank account.

We see that balance, and then it's like, okay, well, I have to pay taxes, and then I have to pay my operating expenses, and then I might have something left over at the end of the month, the quarter, the year as my profits.

And the problem is, is that what we do is we calculate profits, usually as revenue minus expenses equals profits.

Like you probably heard that in any sort of accounting class you ever took or anyone who even talked about money.

But that's not how we want to run businesses.

No, that is a recipe almost, for disaster.

What we want to do is think about revenue minus profits equals expenses.

And when you have this mindset shift, when you understand that you, can be profitable in either from day one in your business or from starting from now on, that you allow your profits to come out first and you allow that to dictate your expenses, everything changes.

And this philosophy is put forth in book Profit First.

And I want you to have a copy of this book and I'm going to tell you how you can get it in just a minute.

But before I do, let's talk about ratios as well.

Because as you start spending money, sometimes you'll not know.

Well, too much is allocated over here, not enough is allocated over here.

And there's a way that you can have a sense of clarity and an understanding of knowing based off the type of business that you run of where you should be spending money in order to remain profitable.

And that comes in a book called Profit Pillars.

Now, something really powerful about this book is that it was literally written for you.

It was written for online solopreneur small businesses, usually we have to read accounting books, financial books.

They're built for enterprise organizations, they're built for huge companies and we have to kind of pull out.

What part applies to me that's not true of this book?

What this book does is it's written specifically for Internet based businesses, small businesses, so that we can know how we should be spending money in order to be as profitable as possible.

So to recap the five things are learning how to pitch in.

Thank you pages, adding tiers to your offers, Adding order bumps and upsells, building in genuine urgency and planning for profits first.

So I have a question for you.

Do you feel like these systems, if you use them in your business, would be helpful to you?

I mean, do you see how if you change your offers, change your mindset, change some of your practices, how you really could become more profitable in the products and services that you're selling attached to your YouTube channel?

well, it's definitely possible.

And so let me tell you a few things about some of my clients.

I've introduced a few of them to you already.

So Tessa had significant growth in her business when she understood what it meant to implement order bumps, upsells, tiers, and adjust her pricing and messaging specifically to her market.

John Brosio is one of my clients.

I helped him take take his cohort based business, put it into an on demand course and have a very successful launch from there.

Everybody knows George, we took his offer, fixed his leaky funnel, help him launch a high ticket program and he's enjoying his business so much more after we've made these changes.

Kieran Drewes had blockbuster launches all based off of the feedback that I've given for his course and and and how I've helped fine tune the offer that he makes to his audience.

Matt Holmes has completely transformed his business.

Working together, we've tripled his average order value, astronomically increased his customer lifetime value, and he has a high ticket program that he's working in now.

And plus he's working even less so he has more time to spend with his family.

So my question to you is, do you feel like you could go farther and faster if you were working with someone who came alongside you one on one to help tailor all of these different techniques and strategies specific to your business?

Well, I have a special offer just for George's audience right here.

And so the first part of it is $1,000 off a coaching engagement.

So from now until the end of December, if you contact me and we put together something, you'll get a thousand dollars off an engagement of us working one on one together.

But I don't want to just do that.

I want to make sure that you have the foundations that you need.

And so I'm going to send you copies of Profit Pillars and Profit First.

I'm just going to Amazon them to your house because I want to make sure that you have the correct mindset and the best understanding possible in order for you to have a profitable business going forward.

Now, this is only available until the end of the year, so until December 31st.

So if you feel like this might be a right fit for you, make sure to click the link below so that we can talk this out a little bit.

Now, the way you'll know if you're a good fit is that if you're earning $35,000 a year in your business minimum right now, or if you have a launch or an upcoming beta that you're working on and you'd like some personal help in order to make that happen.

So from now until the end of December, you can get $1,000 off a private custom engagement with me as well as the fact that I'll just send you copies of the book Profit first and Profit Pillars.

your YouTube based business is very specific.

You have an intimate relationship with the people who come to your channel and watch your videos over and over again.

And so when you're providing coaching, if you're selling a course, you want to make sure that it's done right.

And so I'm here to help make sure that happens for you.

So click the link below and we'll get started.

Also, at the same time, make sure to check your inbox.

I sent a quick reference cheat sheet based off of this mini course that's already available right there for you.

And for the next couple of days I'll be sending you emails that unpack everything that I talked about here in greater detail.

So I hope you enjoy and we'll talk soon.

Thanks.