Paige Brunton

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My 2024 YouTube Growth Strategy

Paige Brunton

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This is the year of YouTube. I just hit 10,000 subscribers, but I would like that number to be significantly higher.

So I spent days researching, learning, observing, and strategizing to figure out exactly how I'm going to grow on YouTube in 2024.

And today I want to share that exact plan with you.

Now I thought before we actually get into my 2024 growth plan, I'd share some behind the scenes statistics of the growth of my YouTube channel last year and how much I'm in on the platform because I know that's one of your favorite things to hear.

So in 2023, we got 314,000 views and just over 5,000 new subscribers.

Now, when looking at YouTube growth, we had about 5,000 at the beginning of the year and 10,000 at the end of the year, which fits in line with what I've often seen.

And that is about a doubling of a channel per year is definitely possible if you work at it. And that's obviously small in the beginning, going from 5,000 subscribers to 10,000 and 10,000 to 20,000. But once you get a few years in, going from a hundred thousand to 200,000 or 200,000 to 400,000, that doubling becomes really impactful on a business.

So I'm planning with a long game here in mind.

Now, the next stat, which I know you all love to know is the money that the channel made.

So we made $10,516.68 in 2023 from YouTube AdSense.

Now the videos that which generated the most in AdSense revenue was all of our Squarespace tutorials, which I'm not at all surprised by because website software companies have big budgets and therefore they spend heavily on every single website related video that they can get their hands on on the platform.

My most popular video this year was the $1 million selling website templates, how Erica did it.

So Erica and I actually felt that on a business trip in Mallorca. It obviously did really well because the people of the internet love a title with money in it, even though it's a little crunchy sometimes.

The topic of selling website templates and passive income is very hot right now and probably always is.

In 2023, I posted 63 videos.

We started with two per week, but with our move to Switzerland, which took up, I'd literally say at least like four months of my work time.

Overall, I dropped down from two a week to one a week partway through the year. You'll notice from the backgrounds that these videos were filmed all over.

I spent at least two weeks or more living in five different houses this year, one in the UK, one in Spain, one in Canada and two in Switzerland, meaning that filming consistently was very challenging.

Of course, we're super happy to have ended up in Switzerland and it was well worth it, but I'm so looking forward to what I can achieve in a year without a move!

There are definitely days where I fear I'm going to accomplish work when I have a child one day. And then I remind myself of the constant international moves, that I've done which take up about as much time out of my work time as most people's maternity leaves. And the business has done well regardless of that.

So that a little bit gives me a peace of mind that even international moves aside when I'm in the back end of my YouTube analytics there is a lot of green and upward arrows.

See this gallery in the original post

But it wasn't all good news this year.

The channel had some fairly random content on it this year, mostly because I was honestly getting burnt out on my topic by not allowing myself to take a break.

I have stayed so, so niche on my topic for the past seven years. And if you're wondering, does that get boring sometimes?

The answer is absolutely yes.

So many times I would sit down to film a video and just feel like I can't, I literally, I just can't. And that feeling of burnout led me to wanting to talk about literally anything else.

So I experimented with that this year, which was definitely the right thing to do instead of just continuing to plod along until you actually can't anymore.

And I even created a second channel and posted three videos on it before determining. I don't actually think I need a second channel.

I just need to one, give the channel and my business a bit of a rebrand so it feels more like me.

And second, to expand my niche ever so slightly.

Instead of just Squarespace and web designer content, I'm expanding a bit into creative entrepreneur topics, let's say.

And also after a bit of research, I totally noticed I didn't even need to be keeping myself in quite as tight of a niche either.

This little teeny tiny content cage that I put myself in wasn't even necessary.

Other business-related channels or podcasts that you'll see, have a bit more variety than just the tutorial, tutorial, tutorial, business advice, business advice, business advice, which I had been doing.

They'll do behind the scenes of the business, finance, marketing, productivity, efficiency, updates from the entrepreneur's life, etc. And I'm definitely planning to go in that direction to keep myself from feeling totally burntout.

Now, if we're getting really honest here, burnout on my topic wasn't my only challenge this past year.

I'm honestly pretty good at putting on my blinders and not looking at what other people are doing and who is launching what and comparing myself and all those things.

But I couldn't help but notice that there's been a few entrepreneurs this year who've been growing a bit faster than me on YouTube. And they have similar numbers of videos, but a faster growth rate and therefore a higher return on investment.

And that realization was a little bit upsetting.

Just like anyone, it's hard to feel like you're falling behind and you aren't as skilled as the next person.

And so emotionally, that was a little bit of a hit to the ego this year.

But in a positive sense, it also showed me that I have room for improvement on the actual content that I'm creating.

Because if I've learned anything in business, it's never that the algorithm or clients don't hate you. It's that you're not yet producing good enough work.

So instead of getting angry at the algorithm, I set out to learn what I could be doing better, which led me to researching and uncovering exactly what I was doing wrong and what I need to change.

Now YouTube is so different from a blog.

I was thinking about YouTube from a blog-first mentality, produce content that will do well with SEO, create helpful content, use keywords.

And that did work somewhat.

I had okay consistent growth with that strategy.

But then I found the real true beauty of YouTube, public numbers.

This is such an advantage I can't even tell you and it is available to all of us. With the blog, you have no idea which posts are doing the best for others. I can only look at my own statistics and then redo what already did well.

But with YouTube, we can see other people's numbers and what works for them.

I spent genuinely two days over Christmas break, putting my mind to this. I pulled up every successful YouTube channel that I admire. Some in my industry, but most in totally different industries. So I was sort of getting the whole picture.

I put links to everyone's most successful videos into a google doc and then I categorized them.

And that's when something shocking revealed itself to me.

All of the most successful videos fall into just a few categories.

No matter the industry, no matter if the channel was on business or it was a personal channel or it was a lifestyle influencer type channel or a channel just about website design, all of the most popular videos started looking the exact same.

Specific topics and titles are basically channel growers.

The first thing I noticed with these channel growers, the most popular videos was just how unbelievably beginner all of the content was.

Tim Ferriss's most popular video is on how to peel an egg without peeling.

One of Martha Stewart's videos was about how to fold a fitted sheet (I told you I wasn't just looking at my own industry)

In the business world, Alex Hormozi, a guy who has built a hundred-million-dollar business, is often talking about how to grow an audience from zero.

Any guide to becoming a business owner or influencer is always from scratch or for beginners or growing and following from zero.

Which makes sense.

A lot of people start things but don't get very far in them and therefore beginner content does have the biggest potential audience pool.

Second, I noticed people love a video which falls under the category I called a “buying guide”.

Now I noticed this a lot in the lifestyle channels but also a lot in the business channels that I research as well.

Some people's most popular videos were

  • Equipment for YouTube

  • Everything I spend money on for my seven-figure blog

  • Lecture items you don't need

  • Lecture items worth buying

and a lot of influencer videos were on looking expensive which seems to also be a trend.

Which I actually love because I can totally make a video about making your website or brand look expensive for example.

See this gallery in the original post

So I hope you see you can draw inspiration and ideas from totally different industries to come up with really golden video ideas.

I also noticed a lot of what I will call controversial or unpopular opinions.

Now this is one that I struggled with for a minute because I don't want to start spreading off like hateful things just to get views. I'm just not going to do that.

But in a few of these videos I noticed this theme can be used in a really great way to tell people what they really need to know in order to be successful.

I created a video the other week on how to become a creative entrepreneur. And in that I got to share some unpopular opinions and mistakes that I see people make over and over again. It pains me to see people doing the same silly things in business over and over again. And so it was kind of nice to have a good reason to share those unpopular opinions because apparently the people of YouTube do actually want to know the hard truths.

Speaking of that video - there was another trend I noticed in popular videos.

Super broad general topics like how to become an influencer or how to start a business or how to grow on YouTube.

All those things do super well.

Now I never created anything like that before because there's so much nuance to every single one of those topics. But if that's what people are clicking on then that's the game you've got to play.

And honestly I'm sure I could find a way to streamline the process.

The next thing I did was create the list of criteria each of my videos needs to pass in order to earn its place in the editorial calendar.

This is those criteria.

  1. First it comes from or checks out with the popular ideas list that I developed.

  2. Second it fits well into the buckets that I determined and cycles through those buckets.

Let me explain this. So I have my content buckets in my business and sort of like main topics that I hit on. For me that's

  • Business strategy and advice

  • Efficiency slash productivity

  • Marketing

  • Squarespace / website design

  • Behind the scenes.

And I'm also testing a new bucket on finances, specifically business owner finances.

However when I looked back at my most recent 20 videos I realized I wasn't doing a very good job of cycling through those buckets consistently which was leading my content feeling boring.

It was just like business advice, business advice, business advice, tutorial, tutorial, tutorial, and I compared that to 20 most recent videos of another channel, and I realized she had a lot more variety and was sort of like cycling through the different buckets better which I think was leading to more interesting content.

3. The third criteria a video idea needs to pass is “is it an interesting topic that would build a connection with my ideal client who just so happens to be named Jessica”?

So I think about Jessica and ask “would she like this?” Yes great.

4. Criteria number four does it bring me joy?

5. Criteria number five does it feel on brand? And this is where although a video idea might seem great but if it's too bro marketery it's just not going to make it through or I need to find another way to do it that feels a bit more on brand for me.

So yeah that's the growth plan in a nutshell!

And if you're wondering what level of growth I'm actually going for here - let’s talk about that.

When I set growth goals I set the goal but I don't set the timeline because what I've noticed is I will set goals in my business and I've hit literally every goal which I've written down so far.

Except almost never on the timeline that I had set when I wrote it down.

So it pretty much always takes longer than you expect so I realized that it doesn't really matter when I get there if it is the goal it is the goal regardless of the timeline.

So my goal is to grow this channel to 100,000 subscribers.

Then when I've touched 100,000 subscribers we'll see after that if I feel like continuing it!

So in terms of getting me growing, implementing this plan the first thing I'm going to do is get all of the admin work related to moving my life in business done so I can genuinely bump back up the to the higher frequency of videos of like twice a week.

Now I don't want to do this too early and I don't want to do this until I finished everything related to our move because the most important thing to me is consistency but as soon as that stuff is done I cannot wait to bump up to two videos a week.

Second thing I'm doing is posting videos on topics and categories that did well for my research. If it is not in my notion document it's not going to be posted on my YouTube channel

and third and I haven't even really spoken about this one anywhere yet but the main metric that I'm focusing on inside of YouTube is views from subscribers. My actual priority is to grow my business and those things can sometimes be at odds if you don't pay attention.

For example I can think of a few video ideas that would do super well on YouTube but they won't bring me my ideal client to my business and therefore they're just not worth me making.

Now on the topic of finances I was just in London for my friend Catherine Morgan's event.

She is a financial advisor and I guess you would say like emotions of money and money mindset expert and I originally just went because I just wanted to support her with her first live event and she's a good friend of mine but going was extremely helpful to work out some of the lingering money mindset problems which I have myself and I want to tell you about what I learned while I was there.

You know you go to an event and you take like 12 000 notes of all the things that you need to do and think about in the future and everything and then you never actually get around to reviewing them.

I did actually review all of those notes yesterday and I took notes on the action steps which I want to do and I put them into my asana.

So the first thing that I noticed and had a conversation with a friend about at the event is the fact that I do not set push financial goals in my business.

I used to do this at the beginning of the year I'd be like okay I want to hit this revenue number and then I would feel so stressed out trying to hit that number and what I realized is what I need to know is like what does this business need to make at minimum to cover the team cost to cover the taxes to cover my paying myself and all of these things and I realize I need to know that minimum number and I don't need some big like push goal to motivate myself. I am just inherently motivated to do the work and if anything that big push number more stresses me out that it helps me so I don't have actually like big financial goal numbers every year in the business.

I just have like we need to hit this. If we hit this I'm happy and of course if we make more than that even better which typically since I've set minimum numbers we've hit the minimum and then gone beyond and so again it's just like a joyful thing as opposed to I didn't hit my goal type thing.

So if you also feel stressed out by these like big ambitious numbers that you're setting yourself maybe try that.

Another topic that was discussed was someone at the event who’d stood up and was talking about the fact she had hit six figures in her business but she was stressed out for the first time.

She was stressed out thinking about trying to hit it again and she was fearful that she couldn't do it and her mindset was just going crazy being like it was a one-time fluke you can't do that again

She was asking herself if it’s even possible to hit six figures again if she has all these money mindset problems happening in her mind.

The answer which I can say that from my own experience of having hit new financial numbers in the business and and having had that fear is that you just sort of set a new level of minimum for yourself over time.

So once you hit six figures your first year that question is probably going to be in your mind in the year after.

But whether you hit it or not is kind of like irrelevant and doesn't really matter because once you've hit that number a few times suddenly it's not a big deal anymore to hit six figures.

So do know that you lose the fear as your confidence grows.

See this gallery in the original post

The next thing that I noted down was the 50 30 20 rule for budgeting.

I think it's 50 percent, needs 30 percent wants 20 percent savings.

Something which I struggled with for a while was that because I make great money 50 30 20 doesn't actually make sense for me because I don't need or want to spend 50 percent of my money on my basics.

For example I don't need to spend 50 percent of what I make on like the place that I live in my whatever else because I don't need to live in a place that bananas so therefore the needs category doesn't need to be 50 percent.

So I was like okay well how much of that then goes to wants or how much of that should go to savings and investing and like how do I determine the my new 50 30 20 if 50 doesn't need to be the 50.

I’ve found that that's a question which is kind of difficult because also I feel like a lot of financial advice out there is for you if you're just scraping by as opposed to if you're doing really well.

How do you redo those numbers for yourself?

I was looking for someone else to tell me like okay if you're an above average and you don't need 50 percent for your needs this is the percentage of which should go to savings or this is the percentage which should go to whatever.

But I came to the realization no one's gonna give me that and that's just a me decision and that's something which I need to look at a bunch of numbers and just figure out like what feels good to me.

What feels like a good mix of responsible and also taking joy of the hard work and reaping the rewards without going too crazy because that just doesn't feel like a good thing to do either.

The next thing that was discussed at the event was they were talking about the fear of selling and this is really interesting.

Catherine had asked for who feels fantastic selling their product, has absolutely no fears about it is just like thrilled to do it and there was just a few people in the room who put their hands up.

One of the the few of other people who did I know from knowing them that they have multi six figure million dollar businesses and I thought it was very interesting that the women who are were the most successful in the room didn't have a fear of selling their product or service.

I also realized that although that was not always the case for me there was a specific point that changed.

I remember I was on a call with one of our affiliates after we had just done a live to get people into one of our programs and I was having some uncomfortable feelings and I explained that to them that I don't want to be one of those like internet marketer whatever like do this job you can make 10k months because it just feels so disgusting to me.

And she said back to me “I'm just thinking about like the woman who's sitting at home who's a stay-at-home mom right now who's really dissatisfied who genuinely needs this like they need this job that can travel with them and everything and how this is just such an incredible thing for them”

It was such a big takeaway that actually sales is a service and when you're selling something genuinely valuable to the person and you’re thinking more about your audience and less about yourself you will get rid of the fear of selling

My fifth big takeaway from the event was about finding energy for a side hustle.

So one of my wonderful students was actually at the event and we had been chatting and she was saying that she's currently working a full-time job and she finds it difficult to have energy for her side hustle and her web design business in the evenings.

She shared that there is one specific person at her work who is really draining to her and so we were discussing how could she get around that and one obvious thing is as much as possible try to avoid the person if that is not possible then we move on to option number two it made me think of a story.

There's a book by Victor Frankl who’s a man who was in a concentration camp.

He realized in that awful situation how what was happening to him didn't automatically need to result in him feeling the probably very understandable feeling of awful and upset.

That there was actually a bit in between the action or the situation he was in and that was his ability to decide how he was going to respond.

So I also mentioned that this is another option when this person at work is draining you and making it so difficult for you there is a moment in time where you get to choose okay this person is taking this action how am I choosing to feel and react to this situation.

It takes a lot of effort and a lot of work and a lot of mindset shifting but it is possible.

My husband and i recently had something very unenjoyable just happen in our lives and the thing that I was so proud of was the way that we handled that situation.

Someone had done something to us that was very not cool.

I won't go into the details or anything but all i can say is that our automatic reaction could have been to get extremely upset, extremely annoyed, extremely angry but we both were just like okay that's what happened and there is nothing we can do about that and we are just going to not let this destroy our day or a week or a month and we're just going to decide that this thing which we want to happen is going to happen at some point in a different way.

In short, things happen in life and the more that you can manage your reaction to it the better off your life is going to be.

Catherine's live event was genuinely incredible - she is so good at what she does and I feel like there have been many mindset books that I've read over time that never really helped me solve the money mindset issues I have, but going to her event was a major major help for me. So if you haven’t had the chance to watch Catherine's interview we talked all about the money mindset habits that are keeping you struggling - make sure to check it out!

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