The Business Of YouTube Content Creation

I’ve been reading a book about how to create a successful YouTube channel. And it’s fantastic! It describes a powerful technique to drive traffic to your YouTube channel: answer popular Google questions with short, compelling videos.

At the heart of it, YouTube is a search engine which is owned by Google. Ever notice videos coming up at the top of your search results in Google?

So I thought, why not answer a question about my favorite animal, the Giant Manta Ray? I already have a lot of beautiful videos to use.

I opened google and typed in “Do Manta Rays” and saw “sting” come up first in the list of suggestions. This means it’s the most common question about Manta Rays on google. And there were no videos to answer the question, although there were some text results.

People love videos. They hunger for them. Recent stats reveal that over 1 billion hours of content are being watched on YouTube every day. And that number is projected to keep growing.

I imagined the people who could be helped by my video. Maybe someone is on vacation and contemplating a swim with manta rays, but are fearful about swimming with such a huge animal (they get up to 22 feet wide!) so they ask google if it’s safe. Or maybe they heard about the unfortunate death of Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, and now mistakenly assume all rays are dangerous.

They search. They see a thumbnail of a Manta Ray and diver. They click.

And there I am. Smiling and telling them everything is going to be ok, because Manta Rays don’t even have a stinger. And they go and swim with my favorite animal, without concern. This makes me feel good.

I want to maximize the success of my channel and do projects I feel good about. And this Manta Ray video definitely fits. I hope you enjoy it!

Love,

Lisa