Video Transcript – How I Built A Successful YouTube Channel – Russ Gries

How I Built A Successful YouTube Channel – Russ Gries – original post here

Russ: What’s up, everybody! My name’s Russ, and this . . .

Jim: Hey, welcome there, Rankers. Sorry about that . . . weird opening, who this bloke is, I’ll get to in a second. Where am I?

Russ: I don’t know. You’re somewhere in California.

Jim: Somewhere in Southern California. I actually drove through Death Valley just to see this man . . .

Russ: Just to come here.

Jim: . . . and I’ve used that joke like five times already since I’ve been here.

Russ: And he’s not dead, so it must not be that bad.

Jim: It’s terrible! I’m never allowed to drive in the US again, according to my wife. Wrong side of the road, wrong side of the car. I wanted to have a chat with this guy ’cause I’ve known Russ-, we’re talking about, it’s probably eight years?

Russ: It’s probably close, yeah.

Jim: Close to something like that, eight years. And Russ has got a massive following on YouTube. Well, massive compared to a lot of people. You’ve been just putting stuff out there every week . . . heaps of comments, great community. And RWJ Research is Russ’s personal site, where you do a lot of experimental research.

Russ: Dot com.

Jim: Dot com, sorry. You’re working with QuantumGravityResearch.org?

Russ: That’s correct.

Jim: I think it is. Dot org, I had to look at the card. Basically, research scientists, and working on alternate energy?

Russ: Alternate energy, different theories of what we’re trying to do, and apply them to that combined theory and actual research together to create a whole, ’cause you need both.

Jim: Yeah. And I’ve just had a tour of the workshop and the lab, and it’s just blown me away. There’s some amazing stuff going on.

Russ: I am very blessed. That’s all I have to say.

Jim: No, it’s incredible stuff. The YouTube channel . . . when did you start that? It was about that time, it was eight years ago?

Russ: I started that in 2006, and I didn’t really get popular until 2008, so it just floated for two years. Random little bits of silliness going on, but it actually got some publicity. I did some iPhone videos when the iPhone first came out, and that got me a lot of views. Probably not a lot of subscribers there anymore, from that event, but slowly building on this research stuff. Probably 2006, 2007. It started around there.

Jim: Incidentally, I was going to Periscope this, but we’re at a secret location so I can’t do it. No live video this week. The reason I want to talk to Russ is because I think it’s really important for a lot of businesses out there to get into content creation, obviously, in their blog, but if you’re going to do a video, it doesn’t have to be hard. So, an iPhone, and now I’m just looking at another camera you’ve got, you just pulled it out of a bag and stuck it on a tripod.

Russ: Yeah, and you’ve strapped your iPhone to my tripod! It’s just dangling; my camera’s actually up there.

Jim: It is. So we’ve got Russ’ camera up here, mine down here, it’s just an iPhone.

Russ: [laughs] Mine’s facing the wrong way!

Jim: I’ve just got to really grip around your tripod.

Russ: But it works! You can just grab your iPhone. My new LG, it’s an LG 3G. It’ll do 4k video, that’s silly.

Jim: One of the hardest things with the big videos is handling the big files. I brought the Canon 7d with me, but I wasn’t going to traipse it up here and try to upload those big files. I have a . . . 4G, essentially. When the channel started, did you do anything active to try to get viewers, or it just happened because of the content?

Russ: No, act-, I’ll tell you how it started. I posted a lot of really good content that I was just doing on my little projects and stuff like that. But there was one video that I posted, and I happened to hit a key word in Google. Google took that key word and sent emails out to people waiting for that key word, and that’s . . . actually where, I think, the initial bang went. It went ‘boom!’ And then I got 10% of the people interested in that email, interested in what I’m doing and got subscribed. From there, people got really interested in that subject, and so even now, I post all kinds of content.

Jim: What was the key word? Do you remember what that was?

Russ: I think it was ‘Stanley Meyer water car’, and just happened to hit a key word randomly. I remember that point, because that video is not even on my YouTube anymore. I removed it and I posted it other places, but, with that one event. I see that happening later; where I’ll post a video on something interesting, and it’ll just go crazy, and sometimes I don’t even know why. The one video that I sent you has over a million and a half views now; it’s only a year and a half old? I have it right about ten million views total. That one video has a million and a half. It’s not even anything amazing. It’s just . . .

Jim: YouTube analytics will tell you where all of that traffic is coming from.

Russ: Well, sure, but it’s not like I tried to publish one thing to make it go viral, it just . . .

Jim: It just went ‘boom’. The thing that we learned with-, I think I showed you the super awesome micro project a couple of years ago, which was the big yellow LEGO® car, do you remember that? And the thing that we learned from that was just . . . be awesome. Do something super awesome, and it’ll go viral.

Russ: It’s true, it’s true.

Jim: So you’re at up to nearly 30,000 subscribers now on the channel. . .

Russ: It just rolled over 25, several weeks ago. 25,000.

Jim: Right. And you actively-, I don’t know if you do this so much anymore, but you used to actively say ‘please subscribe’?

Russ: Actually, I do not recall ever actually using-, I’ve never used the word ‘subscribe’. I don’t remember ever using the word ‘subscribe’. I just leave it up to the audience to judge whether my video is worth subscribing. Why am I going to tell somebody to subscribe?

Jim: Yeah. Fair enough.

Russ: If they’re interested, they’re going to subscribe. I actually haven’t done that, which is one of those things that most people do, that I don’t. However, I see a lot of other people doing that, and I think that’s okay. I think that’s helpful. If you like this video, thumbs up. If you don’t like this video, thumbs down. If you like it a lot, you can subscribe. I don’t do that, but I see that it’s a good point.

Jim: Do you not do it because you forget? ‘Cause I don’t do it. I sometimes do it, if I remember.

Russ: No, I don’t do it because I just feel that if they’re interested, they’ll stick around. Which is-, I’m fine with that.

Jim: I went to the Pro Blogger Conference a couple of weeks back. There’s a lot of techniques and all the rest of them in there about gaining readers and finding readers. You’ve got a massive community now. How much time . . . ’cause your YouTube channel . . . every time you post a video, the comments it gets . . . you wouldn’t have time to maintain that, would you?

Russ: No, it’s really difficult. Right now, YouTube has a fairly nice thing you can set up to get rid of the spam comments, and I do all links. If you post a link, I have to approve it, and I usually do if it’s something good. So that’s one way of keeping the comments nice. As far as communication, lately what I’ve done is I’ve started a thing that I call an RWGCRV. RWG, that’s me. Comment, Response, Video. So every month-, I just only did one, I need to do one really soon. Instead of replying to all of the comments, ’cause it takes hours . . . it’s important, but it takes hours.

If you can just make your community realize that you’re trying to communicate back to them, which I do through a video. I found out over time that it’s very important to do video, but it’s also very important to do text. So text and video together is the best way to build a network. If you only do video, or you only do text, you’re going to lose half the audience. I only do video, and so I know that I’m losing some of this text audience, so I try to do more of that, but it’s really interesting, because that’s my response.

I created a response video, and I asked people, would you like this? I did one and had an amazing response, because a lot of people were like, “This is the most response that I’ve had out of communication between a YouTuber than most people ever do.” ‘Cause you have a comment, it’s okay, but when you post a video, then everyone gets to see the response to the comment. I find that beneficial because everyone sees you’re trying to communicate.

Jim: I think that’s one of the things that YouTube does badly, is you don’t get to see, or alerts to other comments that you may have read and may have been interested in. You don’t get those alerts back, whereas the video, if you subscribe to it, you’re going to see that. When you were building the channel-, and I sort of asked you this a bit earlier, too. Did you ever get approached by . . . because it’s such a massive audience, and a lot of the bloggers at the Pro Blogger Conference, they get approached by companies all the time, and they produce what are called ‘editorials’? Which you know-, do you ever do anything like that?

Russ: Yeah. I’ve done a few, and I’ve only done it because I thought it would be fun. I don’t do it because I’m interested in helping them; I’m more interested in helping me, and having fun with something. For instance, a company contacted me, and this company . . . I think it’s called Ockley. Oakley? Ockley?

Jim: Oakley, the sunglasses? Yeah.

Russ: No, it’s Ockley. Some guys at YouTube came together and created this thing, and I think it’s called Ockley. It’s kind of under the radar, but it’s out there if you want to find it. They contacted me and said, “Hey, we’ve got some free merchandise if you want to do product reviews.” And I thought, “Eh, I’m not really interested in that,” but I went and looked and they had some Parrot mini drones. I like this stuff.

So I’m like, “All right. Fine. I’ll give this one.” This is the first one I’ve ever done like that, so I’m like, “I’ll give it a chance and see what it’s like.” They give you no rules, no regulations. They say, “Here you go, do what you want with it, just make a video. We don’t care what you do, just make a video.” So, with that, I’m like, “All right, I can make a video.” I did something really fun and unique with it. They may not even have liked it, I don’t know, I haven’t heard any responses from them, but they reach out and help people do that. So, it’s a different way to look at it.

Jim: That’s great. I don’t see enough of it anyways from brands and certainly not on YouTube channels. I’m sure there’s ones out there where you can reach out, start speaking to some YouTubers, and start a conversation.

Russ: That was through email. It was just, “Hey, here’s an email. If you’re interested, come check it out.” It wasn’t a pushy email. I’ve had a couple other emails where people wanted me to help them. Some companies in China wanted me to do some particular filament for my 3D printer. They were going to send me some filament and I’m going to do something with it. I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no, and I just let it be because if I change my mind later, maybe they’ll still be open for it. I might change my mind, I don’t know. But the thing for me is, if you start doing product reviews. . . I’ve done product reviews on my own terms, not with someone giving me a free product.

Jim: So you’ve done the unboxing videos?

Russ: I’ve done unboxing videos, but I do those because I searched the internet for something I want to see, and I can’t find it. I cannot find it. So I’m like, “Well, I’m going to buy a $1000 laptop and I’m going to buy software to run on it. If it works right, I’m going to let people know it works.” That’s the reason I make those videos. I’m not sponsored by that. It’s so helpful.

Jim: Businesses should be doing unboxing videos of their product, more and more. I know a couple cycling companies in Australia that do it, and a couple of brewing companies, as well, but those unboxing videos . . . Ever since we had an update from Google . . . was it last year? This time last year? Called Hummingbird, which is basically about people asking questions of Google, because that’s what people do now. They ask questions, and that’s what the Hummingbird update was about. “What do I get in Product X?” Well, guess what? “Here’s what you get in Product X, here’s the unboxing video.”

Russ: Yeah. Those unboxing videos may not be that helpful, but sometimes if you’re looking for . . . I was looking for Adobe Premier Pro and this laptop. Do they work together? That’s what I wanted. There was a little bit of talk on ‘that’s a good laptop for video editing’, but not for Adobe. I labelled my video, “This Laptop, This Program.” This is what I want to publish, and I did a review on just that. And actually, that has probably 40,000 views now?

Jim: Damn.

Russ: That’s a lot, for just a random, “I want to help someone else, because I couldn’t find what I was looking for.” You can do that. If you don’t publish a lot of videos, if you’re just hiding behind the wires, and you can’t find something, pull the courage out to get your cell phone out and shoot a short video, and watch what happens.

Jim: Yeah, it doesn’t even have to be on camera.

Russ: It doesn’t have to be great quality, just, “Here’s my results on something I couldn’t find.” And if Google will pick it up, then you’ll get . . .

Jim: Yeah. That thing in the corner over there?

Russ: 3D printer.

Jim: That 3D printer? Russ built, by hand. From scratch. Designed and built it.

Russ: With some help from the community, of course. The open source community and a friend of mine named Jeff, who actually sent me the parts, originally. But actually, all the parts on there now were printed on the printer.

Jim: Wow.

Russ: Because I had to redo them because I broke half of them when I put it together.

Jim: [laughs]

Russ: Yeah, but the open source community’s the only reason why I have that back there.

Jim: Yeah.

Russ: I found that online and I asked a friend to make parts for me, and he did, Jeff? And then . . . there it is.

Jim: It’s networking.

Russ: It’s all about networking, open s-, I mean, not necessarily all about open sourcing, but that is a full-blown open source project.

Jim: Definitely.

Russ: And the good thing about 3D printers? You can get online right now, you can ask a question, and you can usually find it. Because there’s that many people. So if you had that same kind of community on every little topic-, you already have endless information. But good endless information. Helpful!

Jim: You’re gonna talk forever. I’m gonna stop him, ’cause he’ll go on forever. Which is great, but my camera’s gonna go flat, only got four minutes left. So thanks very much. Hope that’s helpful. Get out there; get on YouTube, if you’re a business, start doing some unboxing videos. If you’ve got product, show people what it’s all about. See you next week, from New York.

Russ: Or reach out . . .

Jim: Yeah. Reach out. Reach out to people. Yeah.

Russ: . . . to people, and let them do the unboxing. If you do your own unboxing, some people won’t like that.

Jim: Yeah, true.

Russ: So reach out to people who are popular, and they might say yes.

Jim: Yeah, send them some product. Spend a few bucks. All right, we’ll see you next week from New York. Bye, guy.

Russ: Bye.