Last updated on March 3rd, 2023 at 08:36 pm
Dane Golden was interviewed by Dusty Porter on the YouTube Creator’s Hub Podcast Ep # 135: “Where Do Your Views Come From With Dane Golden From VidActionTV”
PLAY PODCAST HERE:
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Dusty Porter:
Hello everyone. Welcome to this week’s conversation. I am so excited … as I have already mentioned in the opening here of this show … to be joined today by Dane Golden from VidAction.tv. That’s right he has a three letter domain name which is by itself amazing and astonishing because those are basically nonexistent nowadays. So he does work over there at VidAction.tv. He is one of the veterans in the industry. Dane, how are you doing today?
Dane Golden:
What’s up, Dusty? It’s exciting to be on this podcast.
Dusty Porter:
Man, I’m just ready to have you on here. Talking all things YouTube, online video. And you never know what we might get into. So Dane, if you would, let my audience know a little bit more about who Dane is, what you do and kind of where you fit in the whole YouTube space.
Dane Golden:
Right. So, VidAction.tv is both the name of my website business and my YouTube channel. And what we do is we help businesses get viewers and customers coming back to their videos again and again. And it’s as simple as that.
And we emulate what great what I call tutorial vloggers like you and others do. And we try to teach those lessons to businesses that may have not started on YouTube.
Dusty Porter:
And so with that being what you do now, how did you get into that? What led you to that space as far as working with the creators that you do in helping people with their spaces and working on VidAction.tv? How did that come to be? What’s the origin story behind VidAction.tv and what you do currently?
Dane Golden:
It’s a very long story and I’ll get you the high points. I’ve been doing video on the internet for some time. What might be most interesting to your listeners is that the first time I did YouTube at any extent was probably starting in about 2008 where I managed a company called This Week in Tech or TWiT.tv for the owner called Leo Laporte who was pretty much the early podcaster and live streamer.
And so we saw YouTube as just another place … we were putting our videos everywhere … and that was just another place. And there was a lot of things that followed after that.
When I left that company I worked for an agency. We created a YouTube series for a major automotive brand and it went horrible. Not that the series wasn’t great. As you know, there’s a lot of great video creators who don’t understand how YouTube works and we were one of those. And I basically dedicated my professional life at that point to understanding why some videos did better than others.
There’s a lot more in it. I’ve done some influencer marketing. But right now I really believe that there’s a gap for businesses about how to get people to come back organically again and again. And I believe that’s through helpful videos.
Dusty Porter:
Okay. So you just mentioned helpful videos. I was about to ask you the question. I know as well as you that there is no magic sauce. There is no get-rich-quick scheme on YouTube. You and I both know it’s about hard work, consistency and it’s also about exactly what you said, helpful videos. Quality content. Value.
And so with your research, with your study and the work that you do with your clients, what are a couple of value things that you can give to my audience about what you’ve learned over the years, over the time that you’ve been doing this now that really can help creators, people who want to do video content online, get their work noticed? What are a few things that you can just off the top of your head that you can say, “If you do these things this can really help you take a jump or a leap where you are in your current YouTube channel, I guess you would say, lifecycle.”
Dane Golden:
Yeah, and I want to say that while I’ve been doing YouTube and online video for a long time, this particular approach is new for me. And I came to this because with working with brands so much of it I believe is done wrong. Or it’s wrong in the framework of what’s working for today.
It came from a lot of pain. That’s how YouTube really started to grow as a platform certainly creators but they were paid by the pre roll ads, right? And those pre roll ads were run by agencies who did the exact same thing they’ve been doing on TV for decades. They just said, “Well, this is a smaller platform. It looks exactly like TV. Let’s do it just like TV.”
And what’s happening now is that brands and businesses are taking their video in-house with all sorts of social video. And yet YouTube is still a hard platform for them to really understand because it is unique. It’s different than what I call the feed based platforms … the Facebooks, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn has video now … because it’s more long tail. And as you know you can have videos that do well years after you’ve posted them. That happens on your channel, correct?
Dusty Porter:
Those are my favorite kinds of videos, Dane.
Dane Golden:
So what is this new marketing approach, this long tail marketing approach, which has been happening on blogs for brands for a long time? But how do you do it with videos?
And so the idea that a video asset is almost like building an employee as an asset or a building as an asset or machinery in your business as an asset that can last and be useful for you for years, I think it’s a very unusual approach. So that’s where I come from. But I have more. Should I continue?
Dusty Porter:
I would love more, yes. I want to know as much as you can give us in this space because I think that where you differ from a lot of my guests is that you are actually working with creators. You are not just a creator yourself but you’re also working with creators. You’re doing this research, you’re on the ground floor. And so I want to know as much of this stuff as you can give me.
Dane Golden:
So my creators that I focus on are business creators. People that their main business is not AdSense or affiliate business. But really they have this other business. Maybe it’s a SaaS platform, maybe it’s an offline business. And they want to understand how to use YouTube but they’re afraid or don’t understand or it’s just they’ve seen great viral videos and that’s all they know. Or they’ve seen great gamer videos and that’s all they know. And they don’t understand that they can use some of these same tutorial techniques to grow their business.
And what I suggest is that businesses can share their expertise and give away their expertise in order to build loyalty and trust and business. And what do I consider their expertise? It’s not just what you sell. It’s a sphere of knowledge around what you sell. It contains what you sell. But I want brands to give away what they know that their customers are searching for. And that maybe tangential, it maybe adjacent. But it is generally not exactly what they’re selling.
Dusty Porter:
So with that being the case and you’re working with these different types of creators, maybe expound upon that a little bit because a lot of my audience don’t … That may not be where they are right now in their current channel progress. And so with that being said, what are some conversations that you’re having with these creators?
Dane Golden:
Right. And forgive me if I’m topic when I think of my creators as business creators. Is that okay?
Dusty Porter:
No, that’s absolutely perfect. That’s fine.
Dane Golden:
Okay. All right. So I want to give a couple of examples that most people can understand. And in business generally you’re broken up into two categories. Businesses that sell to consumers and some that sell to other businesses. So those are B2B and B2C.
So if you’re selling to a consumer and let’s say you’re a soccer ball company, right. Well, you can talk about how awesome your soccer balls are or you could make a huge expensive video that goes on in the World Cup and so forth. And those are great. And I don’t want to detract from those. But I really believe that these companies have knowledge that their consumers want. And it may be something like, well, how do you manage a kid’s soccer league? Or how do you coach a kid’s soccer team? Or how do you do drills?
Now these are adjacent because most soccer balls are sold to parents of very young soccer players. That’s where most of the business comes from. So what are these things that these soccer parents are searching for? If you can share this expertise and give it away and build this loyalty and trust then when it comes time to buying a soccer ball are they going to go with a person that has been on every week helping them with their kid’s soccer team? Or are they going to go with a person with a really exciting video about Reynaldo? I think the one that you built a very friendly relationship with is the one that’s going to get your business. What do you think, Dusty?
Dusty Porter:
I agree with everything you said there. I want to ask you this though. I think this is a fun conversation to have. How do you think these business clients that you work with on the YouTube side of things, how do you think you can relate that to just a creator who wants to grow their YouTube channel and that’s not a business?
Dane Golden:
Okay.
Dusty Porter:
What are the relations there? Give me that. That’s where I really want to dive in.
Dane Golden:
Okay. Well, creators like yourself and a whole host of others have created a methodology … yours is very specific on your channel … whether it’s around gaming, whether it’s around beauty, whether it’s around tech and a whole host of other how to tutorials, that’s created a process where you share your information, people search for it and it grows value over time.
Sometimes it’s a big hit overnight. But very often it’s search based which leads to other videos being watched. So I’m guessing on your channel for instance, you probably have about a 30% to 35% percent of your traffic is coming from search.
Dusty Porter:
See the thing is though …
Dane Golden:
That’s not true?
Dusty Porter:
… with my channel I’m almost solely a search channel. That’s almost how I’ve created my content because all I do is educational and tutorial videos on technology. And one day I may be covering how to use Google Drive. The next day I may be covering how to handle or set up a Discord server.
And so for me I’ve really structured my channel, Dane, to basically really … I want to help people obviously with every one of my videos. And so with that being said, the majority of my traffic comes from search.
Now I have a good bit of subscribers but they’re coming from people who are like, “Okay, this video helped me. I’m going to subscribe to Dusty because he was very helpful in this video and he may do something related to this that’ll help me in the future.”
Dane Golden:
And that level of number of searches is really off the charts extraordinary. And when you can do that that is great because most traffic does not come from subscribers. It comes from people who are either searching. But more so they’re coming from suggested videos.
Dusty Porter:
Can you say that again? I feel like my audience doesn’t understand that.
Dane Golden:
Okay good.
Dusty Porter:
They really think that subscriber number … and you and I both know, that’s just a vanity number, right. That’s just a number to say, “Okay, I’ve had this many people say they’ve watched one of my videos or they’ve liked this or that.” But at the end of the day, it’s about how your videos are performing. Yeah, having a higher subscriber count is going to help naturally. But in the grand scheme of things it’s not the most important metric.
Dane Golden:
So I do believe that growing your subscriber base and continuing to grow subscribers is an important metric because it’s showing that a number of people are newly agreeing that you have value. But if you think about the number of views you’re getting on an average day of a video, it’s not going to be exactly the same number of your subscribers. Just because you have a subscriber doesn’t mean they’ll ever see the video, they’re not necessarily going to get pinged about it. Even if they sign up for notifications they’re not necessarily going to get pinged about your video. It’s a tendency that you will be more likely to get notified.
But if you look at the number in your analytics … which I know a lot of people don’t look at … but if you look at that you’ll see that most views don’t come from your subscribers. They’re a very good thing to have but most of them for most channels come from the suggested videos. And that’s of course what comes up in the right hand column or if you’re on mobile it comes below the video. Because Google and YouTube have worked to find the exact video you want at the exact time. And that is regardless of whether you’re subscribed or not.
So that being said, there are indicators that are super, super important. If someone, for instance, comes to your video and is searching on let’s say it’s not something you do. But let’s say how to make a great cup of coffee, for instance. And they find your video in search and then they watch it for a long time. Not only will your videos start to rank higher for them … regardless of whether they’re subscribed or not … but other people who have done searches for coffee in the past or watched coffee videos, your videos will start to show for that type of person in their suggested videos. And that’s where the actual majority of YouTube traffic comes from. Not from search, not from subscribers.
Dusty Porter:
So with the suggested videos and everything that you just spoke of, how do you convince creators to create content that is going to, not really game the system, but that understands that what you said is true, that suggested videos are the way to grow a channel quickly. And that when people are searching of the best soccer ball or how to do X or who to do Y, it’s normally they’re kind of bouncing off one or two videos to actually get to their final destination of the video that actually is the one they watch all the way through. How do you convince creators that this indeed is how the system works?
Dane Golden:
I’m not trying to convince anybody. If the want to know how it works that’s great. And if they don’t that’s fine.
Dusty Porter:
Yes.
Dane Golden:
I’m happy to share with them how it works. But to convince them, let’s see. Well, let’s talk about how most people end up getting to videos. Just look at your own behavior and you want to know how to do something let’s say. Well what do most people do? Maybe they search on YouTube. But often they search in Google first. And maybe they find within Google a video or a group of videos and they say, “Oh on the first page. You know what? This video A is pretty good. All right that looks interesting. I’ll click on that.”
Ten seconds into it you’re on YouTube and you’re like, “This video’s terrible. I don’t know why this was ranking. But you know what? There’s this other suggested video from Dusty Porter, I’ll click on that. See how that goes. And that is the one I want.” And I think that I’m not the only person that has this type of behavior.
Dusty Porter:
No you’re not. No you’re not at all. And children and kids … it’s funny watching kids with iPads and YouTube. And I have a three year old daughter and we try to not let her watch that much. But when we do allow her to watch the iPad and she goes to YouTube kids, it’s funny how quickly she bounces around. And my wife’s like, “Man, what if we watched stuff like that?” And I was like, “Realistically we do.”
I mean our attention spans are so small, so short that if someone has an extremely long intro or if the first 30 seconds isn’t helpful or if it doesn’t seem like the person’s going to be very, I guess you would say well spoken, we quickly go to the next video.
And I think that in order to capture people it’s what we do at the top of our videos and kind of how we do that. And showing up in suggested search is important. What are some ways that my audience and your audience, Dane, that the creators can do better in suggested search … that’s really hard to say apparently … and do better in that metric?
Dane Golden:
Suggested search, right. Yes.
Dusty Porter:
Say that five times fast.
Dane Golden:
Suggest search, suggested search, okay. Well, you know the old adage is make better videos. But what is that and what are these other ranking factors? I will start with what gets someone watching longer? And those are the videos what get ranked higher. Now what gets someone to watch longer?
First of all you’ve got to get them through the first part. And one of the things that we did at VidAction.tv with TubeBuddy is that we did a study on 30,000 videos to find out if you said the word you … or a variant of it like yourself or whatever … in the first few seconds, would that get you more views? And we found that it did considerably. 66% more if you say the word you just once in the first five seconds.
But anyone who knows YouTube analytics is what’s happening is that people hear the word you, they end up watching longer whatever the video is. Then YouTube ranks their videos higher and thus it gets more views. If that makes sense. Does that make sense?
Dusty Porter:
It does make sense. But why do you think that word you …
Dane Golden:
Yes.
Dusty Porter:
What do you think is so special about that word? What is that word that makes the video … you know what I mean … perform better?
Dane Golden:
Yeah. And I did this coming from a business approach. But the same thing is important to anyone. The most important person in a video is not the subject. It’s not the person on camera. The most important person in a video is the viewer. The person watching.
Dusty Porter:
That’s critical. That is critical because sometimes we don’t think that way.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, we say it’s “You”-Tube, right. And they say it’s “You”-Tube but the you is not the person on camera. The “you” is actually the person watching. And most people don’t realize that because most people will never watch anything longer than one second if it doesn’t interest them. We’re very self interested. And if it’s something that can help us, if this person is clearly making it a demonstration that this video is here to help them, the viewer: “I want to know what’s helping me and I don’t care about all these great things you’re talking about. If it’s helping me I’m going to stay watching it.”
And when you say the word you and you look in the camera. Most videos have an intro with a person. And if you look at the camera and say you, you’re actually using a substitute for that person’s name because you don’t know their name. “I’m going to help you learn how to do X.”
And the person says, “Wow, they really do care about what I need to know.” And so creating that connection and recognizing that the most important person is the viewer I think is key. And a lot of people do that well and a lot of people don’t.
Dusty Porter:
It’s really taking the focus off what we’ve seemed to be trained and taught to do on YouTube. And understanding that when we’re creating a video a lot of times we need to think of it kind of backwards. And we need to think of it as the viewer first.
It’s funny when I do how to videos now … and obviously my system has changed over the years … but the main thing that I want to do with a how to video, Dane, is at the end of that video, whether it be two minutes or 22 minutes, I want the person who clicked on that video to leave that video saying, “Okay, now I know how to do what I came here to do.” And I want them to know how to do it maybe even better than I knew how to do it. So with that being said, I want to think about, okay, if you’re consuming this and I was wanting to do this task.
Like when my daughter was born … I always talk about this … but I had to look up … I’m very not handy. So I’m really bad at building stuff with my hands. My father-in-law is amazing at this. But every time I have to fix something in my house, Dane, I look it up on YouTube. And I find a video of someone showing me how to fix this pipe under my sink. Or how to install the kit in my toilet. Or how to do X or Y. And how I judge a good how to video is whether or not I can do the task when I leave the video.
And so we’ve really got to reconstruct how we think of the process of creating a video of thinking about the viewer first.
Dane Golden:
Exactly. There’s a number of other pieces of course to winning at suggested videos. And this incorporates every bit of channel and video optimization. From the titles to the thumbnails, descriptions. Tags are becoming a little bit less important. But playlists. And also just what is the topic.
I don’t want to tell people to just do the most popular topics but sometimes we say the … Let me start again.
There’s a thumbnail click through rate that has become very interesting for us creators now. But there’s actually an unsaid part of that which is the topic. So even if it’s a great thumbnail and it’s a great title, the topic may just not be interesting to the people clicking on it. So there’s several pieces that make suggested videos but that’s why we talk a lot about YouTube optimization, right?
Dusty Porter:
No, it is. You’re exactly right. And the funny thing is, Dane, is all this changes on a monthly basis sometimes. You know as far as what works and what doesn’t. I just did a whole episode last week on this podcast about the algorithm. And I titled that episode What is a Freaking Algorithm. And it’s just things change all the time. You’ve got to be willing to pivot and to really change kind of how you do things.
Now let’s talk about money for a minute. You know creators obviously in order to do this full-time or maybe to take it from a hobby to a full-time gig, They want to know how they can make money. And so let’s talk about you. And obviously you do a lot of client work. But when you work with YouTubers and creators, what are you teaching them, training them in regards to helping them make money and monetize their content?
Dane Golden:
Well, top creators like you and others have really developed multiple ways. And certainly most of what I do is based on an agency model. And for the most part, believe it or not, people don’t even have to actually watch my videos for me to get business. They just have to see a thumbnail come across their LinkedIn or their Twitter because I’m already connected to the people I want to be connected with. Or I can hashtag it correctly.
They might watch 15 seconds of one video or see a few other topics and they’re like, “Wow, this Dane guy really knows … I met him at this one conference. He really knows what he’s talking about. I can’t handle this one person that came in. Let me refer some business out to him.” So you’d be surprised just by talking about a certain thing you can get business doing whatever it is you have an expertise doing.
So just the act of making a video … if people know you know how to do that, they want help doing that.
Dusty Porter:
Because just in nature of you uploading a video and having the confidence to do that it kind of makes you … and I tell people this sometimes … you’ve got to fake it till you make it. It sounds kind of bad but it’s true, right?
At the end of the day if you convince someone else that you are an authority by providing valuable content, whether it be through your thumbnail, your video, your website, your links, whatever you’re doing, in the end you’re going to be and authority to that person.
And so, when it comes to making money on YouTube people think the only way they can do it is through ad revenue and AdSense. And how bad of a mindset is that? Like just the only way that people think they can make money is through the measly pennies that they’re going to get with the ad revenue, which by the way I’m so thankful YouTube still provides that to us as creators because it definitely helps us kind of make ends meet. But how do we get out of that mindset that that’s the only way we can make money through our videos?
Dane Golden:
If I make a tutorial on how to use Photoshop and I keep making these tutorials. And somebody wants some help with Photoshop. And they’re like, “Do you know Photoshop?” And they ask me and they ask another person who just has some cool images, but I’m actually walking through all of the ways to do all of these great images, who’s the person that they’re going to want to hire?
Also, if you think about it, yeah, it’s great that you can do great images. But people also like to work with people that they know or feel that is in their range of people they feel comfortable with. There’s a lot of people that are going to see my videos and say, “I don’t like that guy.” And you’d think that that would be a negative. But I actually think of it as a positive because if I’m selling my service for whatever reason in this world there’s some people are going to like us and some people are not going to like us. And for the most part there’s not much we can do about.
But there’s going to be this other group of people that say, “That’s really my kind of guy. I understand his body language. I can really feel like if I’m talking to that guy once a week on a project I can work with him.” And think of how many bad jobs people have because for whatever reason they just clash personally.
But when we see each other on video we can really see how we work on a daily basis and these tutorials that we’re giving are actually tryouts for all sorts of types of consulting work. And I think that’s very valuable.
Dusty Porter:
Let me do this. And I feel like you and I could talk for hours about this stuff. I feel like you’re my kind of person as far as the research and the thought you put behind your videos. Sometimes people don’t like the deep dive into stuff like this but I love it. I absolutely love stuff like this.
If you could go back and someone could tell you one thing about YouTube that you wish you knew when you first started, what would that one thing be?
Dane Golden:
Share what you love to do even if you don’t know how to do it yet. Share what you love to do and keep talking, and keep posting, and don’t worry who’s watching and how much money you’re making on day one. Just keep talking because if you keep talking you will both share what you know and you’ll learn along the way. And your enthusiasm will carry you. That’s what I would share.
Dusty Porter:
Yeah, sometimes we get frustrated and we want everything now. And it’s funny. Anyways, I don’t want to say anything that’s going to hurt anybody’s feelings because I get emails all the time about certain things.
Let’s talk about your strengths and weaknesses, Dane, as a creator. What are some things that you do well? Like what are your strengths when it comes to being a creator? And then what are things that you do not so well?
Dane Golden:
Even though it’s a sensitive topic, I want to go back to your last question. I’m sorry. Because I feel that there’s a lot of things that we want to be in this world and there’s a lot of things we want to do. And some people say, “Yeah, if you work hard enough you can do anything.” I don’t necessarily think that’s true. Some things you can do and some things you can’t. And some things it takes a long time after you think it would be very easy. It might take 10 years.
So I don’t want to discourage people but just because you think you’d like to do something doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a profession.
Dusty Porter:
This is true.
Dane Golden:
But that doesn’t make it any less valuable.
Dusty Porter:
Yeah, absolutely. I do agree. Sometimes you’ve got to kind of sit back and analyze kind of where you’re at and whether or not it’s something that you can take forward or not.
If you would I do really want to know because of the kind of person you are, what are things that you do well? Like what are your strengths? And what are some things that you do not so well that you kind of either have to outsource or work a lot harder on?
Dane Golden:
I have a whole host of things I don’t do well. The number of things I do poorly are too many to list. But I’ll try to talk about some of them.
I’ll talk about first some of the things I think I do well. What I think I do well is I learn and I adapt and I observe. And I try to connect the ideas of one group of people or one person to another and try to make it useful in my situation. And then I think I can sometimes explain those. And that’s what I’ve tried to do with this new video series I’ve started on VidAction.tv. It’s for businesses as opposed to the normal thing that’s thought of as a creator, which is the gamer, the beauty vlogger, the tech influencer. But what is a business creator? And so, that’s what I think I understand.
Now things that I do poorly. I am a terrible editor. Hate that. And yet I’m still doing most of my editing before I determine to outsource because I haven’t determined exactly what my format is. And I don’t want to let anyone else say what that is before I’ve determined what it is.
I’m bad with knowing anything about cameras and things like that. I’m trying to create something that is simple, a process that I can do and I can teach any business to do cheaply and quickly.
I’m also really bad at understanding what is a good idea for a startup.
Dusty Porter:
Okay.
Dane Golden:
I’ve been a part of a lot of startups over time and just because it’s a great idea that somebody needs, that makes it a fantastic business.
Dusty Porter:
Yes. Well, man, I feel like I have so many questions I want to ask you. Maybe I can have you on for a part two interview. I do like to keep these conversations to around 30 minutes. And so I want to close out this way. What’s next for you? What are you looking to do? You’re doing this new series now with kind of more businesses kind of centric thing with the video series that you’re doing.
And so, with that being said, what’s next for you as a creator? What are you looking to grow, and to evolve, and to do things even bigger and better?
Dane Golden:
My goals are modest. I’m just trying to help two people at a time because I want each of them to help two more people. And the people I’m trying to help are businesses that want to help their customers. So if I help them help their customers I feel I’ve done a good job. I’ve made my business world better by turning businesses into creators. So that’s all I’m trying to do.
Dusty Porter:
Well, I love that. I love what you’re doing. I love what you stand for. VidAction.tv is fantastic. Guys, go check that out. H-E-Y.com. Dane is D-A-N-E Golden G-O-L-D-E-N.
Dane, thank you so much for being my guest. Let the folks know where else they can get in touch with you online.
Dane Golden:
VidAction.tv is the place to go and that’ll tell you everything. But if you are interested in talking to me LinkedIn is actually a great place to talk to me.
But I would encourage you to comment on my videos whether you’re subscribed or not. Ask me questions in the comments on my YouTube videos if you find them relevant and I’ll respond.
Dusty Porter:
I love it. I absolutely love it. Well, Dane, thank you so much for joining me today. And we’ll talk to you later.
Dane Golden:
Thank you, Dusty.
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