How To Get Clients From YouTube (Greatest Hits)

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1:16What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show because your earning power doesn't have to stop at five o 'clock when you check out. I am excited to welcome Joshua Lysak back to the program. Joshua, what's going on, man? Hey, I'm pretty stoked to be here today. Thanks for having me on again, Nick. You bet. So you might remember Joshua from back in the archives. He was a guest on episode 201, which aired in late 2016, where we talked about the OPA plan. So it was other people's audiences. An excellent episode, an episode I still refer people back to all the time. Classic side hustle show.

1:51In any case, today, Joshua is back on the program. He is a sought after ghost writer. You You can find him at entrepreneurswordsmith.com, who over the course of his ghostwriting career, his freelancing career, has gone from$1.67 an hour from his first gig, a Fiverr gig, to over half a million dollars in sales in a single year. So I want you to stick around in this episode to hear how Joshua is generating high-value leads on YouTube, of all places, from a channel that, at the time we're recording this, has less than 300 subscribers. It's an innovative marketing strategy. I think you can apply right away.

2:32Notes and links from this episode, plus the full text summary with all of Joshua's top tips from the call are at sidehustlenation.com slash Joshua. So Joshua, how about catch us up, figure out what happened in between our last conversation and where we're at today? Well, the OPA strategy that we talked about almost four years ago, it worked. Through that and several other marketing methods, I was trying to get the word out about my services. I was tired of doing$5 projects,$10 projects,$100 projects. And I wanted to get a lot of high-value clients. And for me, I found that specializing in one of the most profitable freelance writing niches that there is, ghostwriting, made the most sense for me.

3:14I had ghostwritten several books, e-books. But that was kind of one of my types of services that I'd offered. I'd done writing sales letters, writing web copy, writing autoresponder emails. And these are$100 projects here and there. But I found that I could add the most value if I were to package all of those services together into a single offer where I would ghostwrite your book. I would take you through the process of getting published, whether that's getting a traditional publishing deal, which I help authors do, or go the path of independent publishing. and then creating all of the content that they need to market the book.

3:51So I'm still able to leverage the copywriting expertise I've brought, but I package it all into a service that launches the book and then converts the readers of that book into high-ticket clients. And it's by using a YouTube marketing approach that well over half of my clients have found me. And as you've said, it doesn't require millions of subscribers or even hundreds of thousands of views to convert people who are ready to buy, searching for information about services like yours, find a YouTube video. They get to see you as a three-dimensional personality. Wow, I like this person's energy.

4:29I'm going to check them out, maybe watch a couple more videos. And pretty soon, they click the link to book a discovery call, and there I have another client. Yeah, this is really important because if you're going down the traditional path of YouTube monetization, you're going to need hundreds of thousands of views just to make these pennies per ad dollar on everything. This is interesting. So freelance copywriting first, and then kind of by virtue of the work that people were asking you to do, you kind of said, Hey, maybe there's an opportunity to niche down here in the world of ghostwriting.

5:00And so it was almost developing this skill first and then niching down as a result of that. Or was it work that you found yourself enjoying doing? Was it particularly lucrative? What was the light bulb that said, this is what I'm going to focus on? I think it was the depth of the relationship and the value that I was able to identify. So for example, over three years ago, I worked with a client whose book generated over$300 ,000 for her business several months following the release of the book. That became a stellar case study that still brings me clients to this day. Now compare that result to, hey, you know, he helped me rewrite my LinkedIn profile.

5:39That's kind of cool. A few hundred bucks. Or, hey, he wrote the copy for my website. It's kind of cool. So it was the excitement of the case study I found. Well, I want to create more of those success stories that my work was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It literally was worth more than, oh, you know, we're launching our business. we'll pay you 500 bucks to write the copy for the homepage of our website and a couple of emails. So it was really the value of the outcome I produced that made me say, you know, I want to start working with people on months long books, projects and book launches rather than for a couple of weeks on just a website.

6:17There's a lot more value for both of us. Do you ever get the feeling of I'm trying to think of like a ghostwriter not getting any credit, like it's somebody else's name on the title on the author bio. You're just kind of like, you got to be content being behind the scenes. Yes, yes. About 80 % of my author clients, we have that confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement, but that other 20 % make up for it. Most of that 20%, they're digital marketers or are least familiar with kind of social proof and realizing how important recommendations are. So I said, Joshua, your book made me a lot of money, so let's put together a testimonial video and case study.

6:53Through the NDA, I'm going to tell the world because that's confidentiality expires when the client decides to say, oh, by the way, this is my ghostwriter. Let's do a 25 minute video together. So that's made up for that 80 % who haven't. Yeah, that's always going to be hard because I imagine you get people coming to you and saying, well, what else have you written? Can I see your portfolio? And you're like, well, so not really. It's all under confidentiality. So these guys are, once you have some happy clients, they're singing your praises and they say, I want to spread the word. Yes, yes. And also to help make up for that question of, well, I don't necessarily have all of the clients I can share in my portfolio.

7:28This next tip is going to be useful to everyone who's maybe in that same situation. You can't share because of confidentiality or you're just getting started and don't have case studies out the wazoo. And that is creating YouTube videos that allow me to demonstrate my expertise where I talk about how to write a memoir that's not boring, how to write a nonfiction book that's entertaining. And so I would share in five minute, 10 minute snippets, bits of my expertise. And so people have found me from those videos and say, hey, I love what you're talking about. And so most of my clients don't actually ever ask to see a portfolio.

8:06Strangely enough, it's all the videos that demonstrate that credibility and expertise. Yeah. And I've watched a few of your videos. The personality really shines through and you can tell you know what you're talking about. You're excited about that stuff. and it shines through so much more than it would if it was just like a webpage where it's like, hey, these are the services that I offer. These are the prices. It's like, no, there's like, hey, there's a real guy behind this business. How do you figure out what content to create on YouTube? I'm curious like how the channel started and where this idea came from.

8:35Yeah, I started the channel about five years ago, but I was not really at all serious about actually using it to create clients out of it. It was soon after you and I had had our last conversation talking about the other people's audiences strategy where I wanted to find ways to create clients online, on demand, essentially. And I tried advertising. I tried Facebook, Instagram. I tried the LinkedIn sponsored. And I just didn't find a lot that was really working. And then I started trying YouTube videos, not just, oh, I want to create a YouTube video, but I want them to get found. Because that's the whole point of search engine optimization is you're creating content that people are already looking for.

9:14So I might as well find you. That was my idea. And so I have kind of a multi-step process I've used over the last three years or so to get noticed at the top of search results for very competitive keywords. For example, I have one of the top videos for all things related to writing book proposals, which is how you get book deals, traditional book publishing deals. So people who want to become an author traditionally find one of my videos. So let's just take a sample there. Let's say I'm writing, I want to offer my book proposal writing services to get a traditional book deal. So what I do is I use a tool called Keywords Everywhere.

9:52It is a very low cost Google Chrome extension that tells you how many searches a month the keyword you just typed into Google gets. What's the competition like? High competition, low competition. And then here's the really cool part. It tells you the suggested keywords or what other keywords people search for. So maybe the one you typed in gets zero searches a month, but then the keywords everywhere box on the side of your Google search results tells you that there's an alternative version that gets 1 ,000 searches a month, 9 ,000 searches a month. And so that's how I would put together, here's all of the keywords that relate to the expertise I could talk about.

10:32So it's just kind of a sifting process of what do I know about? Put that in a spreadsheet. Next column, what does Keywords Everywhere tell me that people are actually searching for? And I found that the sweet spot for monthly searches for my business is 100 to 1 ,000 searches a month. I think that part's critical because if you put in a keyword that gets 10 searches a month, even if you're number one for that keyword result, you're not really going to get a lot of results. On the other hand, if it's 40 ,000 searches a month, like maybe how to write a book, you're going to see big publishers and big channels have already clogged up the first five pages.

11:11There's not really an entry there or a chance to get much attention. So it's that sweet spot of 100 to 1 ,000 searches a month I found works really well for me. Now, that's the first step. Keywords everywhere. It tells you what are all the different things that people are searching for, but then how do you decide? Maybe I type in book proposal and I have 50 different keywords that I could potentially have as the title of my video. Which one do I pick? I only have so many characters for the title of the video. That's where the second Google Chrome extension comes in called TubeBuddy. I also use this as a premium tool.

11:47I recommend the premium versions of both Keywords Everywhere and TubeBuddy. They're still very inexpensive. I think if you have fewer than 2 ,000 subscribers, TubeBuddy is like two bucks a month. So very, very affordable even for side hustlers. Keywords Everywhere is even less than that. So here's what I do. I've got my column of 50 keywords related to writing a book proposal. I take each one of them and I go over to YouTube and I type them in to the YouTube search box and I hit enter. And then what TubeBuddy does on the right hand side of my screen, it tells me a keyword score, meaning how likely are you to get the number one search result for that keyword.

12:29and most of them, most of my 50 different keywords are going to show zero out of a hundred, seven out of a hundred, 20 out of a hundred, meaning that's kind of my chances, like seven out of a hundred. Like you have a very low chance. Okay. You have a very low chance of getting number one. Okay. Interesting. Then I'll find the occasional 77 out of a hundred, 86 out of a hundred. Like, whoa, that's it. So for me and my business, a bunch about writing book proposal, how to write a book proposal, book proposal tips. Those were all like zero out of a hundred, but there was one book proposal sample that had a very high score.

13:07So I thought, wow, I could get the number one search result for this. So still had a decent search. So you're cross-referencing the TubeBuddy likeliness to rank at the top with the keywords everywhere search volume to say, okay, there's still a decent amount of interest in this keyword. That's right. That's right. So I know from keywords everywhere, if it's a hundred to a thousand searches a month and i know all the different alternative keywords that i could create a video about that relates to my expertise and gets 100 to 1000 searches a month but it's two buddy that narrows it down like a massive funnel down to that tiny little one two or three keywords that you should actually create content on and so for me that was book proposal template so i have a 10 minute video i believe it's still the number one search result on youtube for book proposal template, which gets, I think, 600 searches a month.

13:56So it's in my ballpark. I published it a few months ago. It's already got, I think, 1 ,200 views. I don't do any boosting or any promotion or any marketing, anything like that. And so that video has gotten me quite a few clients. I, of course, share in the 10-minute video a sample book proposal. So it's not like I'm trying to gain the system and I'm lying and, oh, I have this as my keyword, but I never mentioned that at all in the video. That's just not right. Yeah, then people downvote you and the algorithm stops working. Right, right. But that one process I've used for over 120 different videos now, the one-step keyword is everywhere, list of keywords, narrowing it down with TubeBuddy, that alone has been incredible for business.

14:40I'm still getting not just inquiries, but I'm getting high-ticket services business. People finding me from YouTube alone saying, oh, I saw you on YouTube the other day. I started binge-watching your channel. They'll say, I knew I had to talk to you to help me with my book. And this is while a lot of businesses are struggling. And I'm not having to spend any money on advertising to do any of this with YouTube. Yeah, this is, I'm taking notes like crazy because YouTube has kind of been a neglected channel for me. And it's like, this is a new content frontier. And this is a cool process to go about it, to set yourself up, not to rely on your existing subscriber base, but to attract new viewership, I guess.

15:18So you're targeting a keyword strategy rather than just like a channel strategy. So that's really exciting stuff. Oh, yes, absolutely. And it doesn't require thousands of views and clickbait or anything like that. It's just simply realizing what people are searching for. The most likely buyers, I should say. And that's the only people who are watching my videos. Not the masses, not tens of thousands of people. If I put out a video that's about how to hire a ghostwriter or what do ghostwriters charge if get 300 searches a month and maybe I'm the second or third video, I'll get a few dozen views and one or two of them are people who are looking to hire a ghostwriter and have a budget for it.

15:57And boom, they talk to me. More with Joshua in just a moment, including how he structures the videos and the calls to action that he found to work best. Coming up right after this. A lot of side hustlers suffer from what if-itis. What if it doesn't work? What if I don't have the skills? What if I pick the wrong path? But one thing 100 % of our amazing guests have in common is they took their shot. They phased down those what ifs and they got their answers through taking action. Our partner Shopify helps turn what ifs into why nots. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names to the very guests on this show.

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17:51There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Side Hustle Show listeners get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash sidehustleshow. Just go to Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Okay, so you're kind of targeting question-based keywords that are somewhat high buyer intent of like, I'm already thinking about hiring a ghostwriter. What do ghostwriters charge?

18:30How much do ghostwriters charge? How do I write a book or book proposal sample? book proposal template. They've already got it set in their mind. Like I would like to write a book and now I'm going down the next step. So that's cool. What comes after that? So you put out some of these videos, they start to sit in Google. And this is the other cool thing about this is the same thing with SEO is like you do the work once you set it up once. And then it, like you said, it generates passive views, passive traffic clients coming into the top of the pipeline month after month after month versus a social media post.

19:02It's like here today, gone tomorrow. Now, this is a little bit of a more evergreen strategy. So you put this content up and we can go check out some of your videos. We'll link up the channel in the show notes. Again, sidehustlenation.com slash Joshua. You see how he's kind of structured this stuff. But what happens? Actually, let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about the structure of the videos. I imagine, like you said, it's important to answer the question. But what else have you found effective in terms of filming and creating this type of content? Yeah, strangely enough, I have tried some of the most expensive stuff that regular podcasters use who are super committed to the audiovisual quality, the Logitech products, the lapel mic, all this stuff.

19:41And to this day, the best video and audio quality is just using my freaking smartphone without any mics or anything like that. Don't overthink it. Okay. Best quality. So if you have a smartphone, you can begin getting clients on YouTube as of today. It's pretty simple like that. So I just set up my camera. For some videos, if I'm going into an elaborate topic, I will actually write out a very detailed outline of the video. Like, for example, I have a video on four and a half tips for working the language of hypnotists into your book to have a very persuasive effect on your readers. Now, in order to prepare for producing that video, I had to actually write out the four and a half tips and write out my examples and whatnot.

20:26And so I've just got those on my computer screen right in front of me, and I set up my smartphone adjacent to that so I can kind of glance back and forth at my notes as I'm talking through the video. I use a software called Camtasia to have my quick jump cuts or transitions, or if I kind of fall off the rails a little bit, I can just go and cut that out. Is it all you on camera, just kind of talking head style, or are you doing like over-the-shoulder screen sharing type of stuff? It depends on what it is. Sometimes I'll do a little mixture of both. If it's something that's really helpful to be visualized, then I'll use a recording software called Use Loom or Loom, useloom.com, it's called.

21:09And I'll give you an example of a video I shot. I had realized that no ghostwriter had ever demonstrated their expertise on camera before. Actually taking notes from a client and writing them into something that made sense, it sounded like them, and it was beautifully professionally written. So that's free money on the table. I'm going to go grab that money. So I record a video called Watch Joshua Lysick Ghost Write. And most of the video is me outside holding up my camera, talking about how I'm going to be sharing how I ghost wrote a passage for a client. So that's the video and audio. And so I'm kind of talking through it on the video.

21:46Then what I did is after I recorded the video, I went and I actually used the Loom screen recording software, free software. I'm a free user right now of Loom. And I simply am recording my screen share and I'm just typing. And I spend five, six, seven minutes on my own time recording myself, fixing this terrible passage I got from a client, just a bunch of random notes and sprucing it into something amazing. I download that video once it's recorded. I open Camtasia. I upload my Watch Josh, Flash it, Ghost, Right kind of draft video I'd recorded. and I upload my Loom recording of me editing that passage.

22:28And I overlay the screen share video on top of the part of the video where I'm talking. So it's very simple kind of sliding that video in over top of the video. And so you hear my voice throughout. It was very simple. No design of Photoshop video production classes required to figure out how to use Camtasia. It's really simple to be able to do. So I highly recommend once you're kind of getting used to recording and feeling a little more comfortable, that's when it makes sense to get a little creative and do some overlays and like that. And even with a video overlay like that, it's real simple.

23:06Yeah, I want to say I use a software called Screencast-O-Matic for most of my video editing. And it's like, I want to say, 15 bucks a year. It's like really, really affordable. And it's been kind of fun to play around with all the different edits and transitions and stuff and overlays that you could do. in that software. But this is kind of one part overcoming objections, like, is a ghostwriter going to be able to write in my voice? Like, how does that even work? And it's one part kind of like factory tour. Show me how the sausage is made. Show me how this actually works. And so it's like, I imagine somebody who is spending the time to watch this is a very well-qualified lead because it would interest nobody else.

23:45Right. And that's what one of the real points of my videos are, is if you're watching my videos, then I'm speaking like I have it in my head. I'm talking to someone who's about to book a discovery call with me. So everything I say is I'm imagining I'm saying it to one person, and that's the person who is going to be on my next discovery call. I like that. So that's the call to action in these videos. Do you save that for the end? Like, by the way, if you want to learn more about working with me, I'm a professional ghostwriter, head over to my website and book a call. Yeah, a lot of my videos in that way, but not all of them.

24:17It's probably a mix of a 50-50, I would say half the time I say, and if you'd like to learn about how to get your book idea turned into a commercially viable product, here's how we can book a free, and I don't say discovery call, I say book a free profitable book roadmap where we're going to get together for an hour and discuss how we're going to take your ideas for the book, structure them in such a way that there's maximum entertainment and educational value. And so I explain the value of the call in about 30 seconds or so. And then the link to book the discovery call with me is the first thing you see at the top of the video description.

24:53It's also the top comment. So as soon as I upload a video, I leave a comment, book your profitable book roadmap with Joshua, who's written over 45 books in his career. It's like, wow, 45 books. I can't, I haven't even written one or two yet. This guy's crazy. I got to talk to him. And so that's the simple call to action there. Okay, so that's the first thing at the top of the description. And you pin that comment just so people make sure to see it. Does that show up like in YouTube search snippets if somebody is searching for book proposal template and then they see like, I don't know if that's like the same as a meta description for Google SEO?