Intro: Hey, Joe Casabona here. And I'm just letting you know that How I Built It is now Streamlined Solopreneur. So if you're seeing a new artwork and a new name in your podcast player, that is expected and by design. The new name better reflects the mission and really what has been the mission of this show for the last few years, and I'm really excited about it. All the links in the show notes and [howibuilt.it] will still work, but the show also has a new home over at [streamlined.fm] if you wanna check it out. Thanks so much for listening.
There's an old adage in construction that you should measure twice and cut once. The idea being that cutting is the permanent action. If you cut a piece of wood, you can't put it back together. So you should measure where you're cutting, make sure you're measuring it right, and double check your work before you take that permanent action.
Now, on the Internet, things aren't necessarily as permanent. Sure. Things that are online could be online forever. But as far as setting up a YouTube page or a podcast or a website, well, you can change them pretty easily. Maybe that's why I've always been a measure once, cut twice kind of person. I get an idea in my head and I run with it. I don't measure twice. I barely measure once, to be honest with you.
My friend Brian tells me that I'm really good at getting that first draft out there. It's a talent that a lot of people don't necessarily have. And while that is true, it might do me well to spend a little extra time on that first draft to make sure that it becomes a better final draft. And I'm telling you all of this because when it came to my YouTube presence a couple of years ago, when I decided to move from the WordPress space to the podcasting space, I didn't measure. I just kinda made a decision and I ran with it. And now I'm kind of regretting that decision. But because nothing is permanent on the internet, I am rectifying that and that's what I want to talk to you about today.
Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur. A show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy. So let's get started.
All right. So today, I'm gonna tell you about how I am approaching the rebrand to my YouTube channel. I think there's a lot of things to think about here. And, honestly, when I made this decision at the beginning of March, it was largely due to the fact that I had killed or sunset my membership, which you can hear all about in episode 408.
See, I wasn't publishing a whole lot to my YouTube channel because I was really focused on the podcast. I also had a lot of analysis paralysis around whether or not I should publish this for members only or for the general public and things like that.
On top of that, I'm really maintaining three different YouTube channels that don't really have clear missions or at least not in my head. I have my main channel, the Joe Casabona channel, which has been around the longest. It does have a lot of WordPress stuff on it, but it has the most subscribers, the most watch hours, and it's monetized. And it makes me, you know, a decent chunk of change every couple of months. This is where I usually livestream to and this is where all sponsored videos are posted because they have the most viewers and purportedly the biggest reach.
I also have my Podcast Workflows channel. I set this up because I didn't want the WordPress baggage associated with my new podcast endeavor. But I didn't put the right amount of effort towards that channel. And like I just said, when I got sponsorship opportunities, they always de facto went to the Joe Casabona channel.
Finally, I have the How Built It channel, which is the smallest channel of the lot, and that's really just a place for these episodes to be sent over to YouTube. I don't do a lot with that channel.
So in March, I decided I should only have one podcast channel. I no longer wanna be a house divided on YouTube. I don't wanna be known for WordPress anymore, and my most popular videos on the Joe Casabona channel were YouTube videos. However, I need to weigh that with well, that channel is monetized, and I have sponsorship videos over there, so I can't just, like, wholesale shut that channel down.
What am I gonna do? So I took the road maybe least traveled and worst traveled, and I decided that the podcast workflows channel is only going to be for my Podcast Workflows podcast similar to How I Built It. Maybe I will have some videos that I'll have, like, unlisted but posted over on [podcastworkflows.com]. But everything else, anytime I talk about podcasting, that's going to go on the Joe Casabona channel, which means I am essentially retraining YouTube and its understanding of my YouTube channel.
So, how did I go about this, and what am I doing in the future to ensure that my channel continues to grow without taking a giant hit? Well, there are a few things I'll talk more in-depth about this. But first, I do want to mention that while this episode is not going to be extended, this full episode is for everybody. You can become a member to get ad free extended and bonus episodes. So as I record this, the last bonus episode that's out is my March month in review episode where I go into my time tracking reports, my income, my spend, my achievements and goals, and what I'm what else I'm working towards. So if that sounds interesting to you, if you wanna get a behind the scenes look at a busy solopreneur parent like myself, then you can become a member over at [howibuilt.it/join]. That's [howibuilt.it/join].
So, here are the things. I made a little project in Things 3, my current and possibly favorite task manager, that would help me figure out everything that I needed to do. And for some context, before I created the Podcast Workflows channel, I did have podcast related content on the Joe Casabona channel. The whole reason I decided to separate them in the first place was because I had a coaching call with a youth or a consulting call with a YouTube consultant, and he told me that your YouTube channel should really only be about one thing because then YouTube will understand what you talk about and recommend it to the appropriate audience. And he also said, if there is a video that would go viral and you don't wanna keep creating more of those videos, you should unlist them. And so I thought, okay. Well, if I'm trying to not confuse the YouTube algorithm, I should clean up this channel a little bit. So I went through and I hid videos that I wouldn't wanna keep doing if they went viral. And then I also unlisted all of the podcast related videos because, I'm going to move them over to the Podcast Workflow channel, which I had my VA do. Then I started publishing intermittently on the Podcast Workflows channel.
But mostly, it turned into a place for the Podcast Workflows podcast to be. And then for a while, I kinda decided I'm not really gonna publish to YouTube at all. I have my, I had my Be Everywhere Strategy, which was an epic failure, or, I guess it was an epic failure, but in a good way. You can hear all about that in Episode 413, where I talk about why my Be Everywhere Strategy failed. But once I rolled that out, I figured, all right. Well, I can do memberships on the Joe Casabona channel. So if people wanna become a member there, they can, but they'll only really get, like, some behind the scenes videos. And that didn't really work out because most of my members were not on YouTube, so I had to find another way to share videos with them.
Anyway, it was a whole big mess, which is another reason I had the analysis paralysis. So if we're keeping track at home, I tangled this confusing web of where I should publish stuff, who I should publish it for. And, obviously, with all of those things, I wasn't going to publish because I just didn't, there was enough of a barrier for me to not want to publish. So what I did with all of that context, what did I do to fix it, and what am I continuing to do to fix it? Well, that's what I'm going to tell you after a quick break from our sponsors.
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I've had a sordid past with membership platforms. I've never really been happy with one because I've always had to jump through hoops to get things working. Then I found Memberful.
Memberful has everything you need to get your membership program up and running quickly, content gating, newsletters, community spaces, private podcasts, and more. I love the private podcast feature. Since my host doesn't have a payment gateway, I need to figure out a different way to sell it.
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My membership is on pause, but you can bet that when I launch it again, it will be on Memberful. You can get started today for free at memberful.com/streamlined. You don't pay until you start collecting payments. That's memberful.com/streamlined.
Hey. Real quick before we get back into the episode, I want to tell you about my free newsletter, Podcast Workflows. If you are wondering how I can successfully run this show, plus two other shows, plus run a business, plus run three children, Podcast Workflows is for you. You will get weekly emails with behind the scenes look at how I produce this show, experiments I am trying with other podcasts, and general advice to start, grow, and monetize your podcast. You'll also have the opportunity to become a member and get ad-free extended episodes of this show as well as bonus content. You can do all of that over at [podcastworkflows.com/join]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/join]. Sign up for FREE, today.
Okay. We're back.
So I told you I made this project and things. Let me run through the tasks really quick.
1. Hide all WordPress videos.
2. Unhide podcast and creator videos.
3. Reupload the Podcast Workflows Channel videos to the Joe Casabona channel. Update the channel name and description and artwork. Update my Twitch information (I have that in this project for some reason), create a new database and Notion for videos. That's just for tracking. Review analytics to see which videos are doing well, and update thumbnails and descriptions of the videos so that I can juice them a little bit more and get some more recommendation. Because as many people at this point know, the biggest impact on click-through rate is going to be the title and the thumbnail. Frustrating but true.
So, the easiest thing for me to do in this case, as far as the rebrand goes, was to update the title. I changed it from Joe Casabona, automated solopreneur to Joe Casabona podcast systems coach. I updated my YouTube banner to more or less say the same thing as well as save 12 hours per week. And then I changed the about to focus on Podcast Workflows and a little bit about me. So that information locked and loaded, ready to go.
The other thing I did was go through and hide any non sponsored content that had to do with WordPress. As you can imagine, that was most of my videos from certainly before 2024, before 2023. I had a bunch of courses that I had moved from my old creator courses website over to YouTube that are basically outdated now anyway. And so I went through and I unlisted all of those videos.
So now if you go to my channel, which I will link in the description and in the show notes for this page or for this episode rather, you'll see that it is all podcast content or at least podcast-related. So, you know, there's something about Notion that's not directly podcast-related, but it's my podcast planner. There's a sponsored video by YouScreen that is not necessarily podcast-related, but it's about leveling up your podcast membership. There's something about ConvertKit as it relates to RSS feeds.
So there is a lot of content that is maybe tangentially podcast-related, but it's not WordPress-related. That was my main goal. If it was only focused on WordPress and not how WordPress can help podcasters or creators who might have a podcast or solopreneurs who might have a podcast, then I decided to unlist it, or in some cases, make it private because I know it was embedded in some places, and I don't want those videos out there anymore. I don't want YouTube to think that's what my channel does. So hide all the WordPress videos.
Then, and maybe I did this in reverse order because it sounds easier to unhide videos before you hide a bunch of videos. So I unhid my podcast and creator videos. So I looked at all of my, unlisted (I keep saying unhide, but it's unlisted) Right? It's your YouTube videos could be members-only, private, unlisted, or public. Right? So I looked at all of my unlisted videos, and I saw which of those videos were podcast-related. And then I listed them again. I made them public again. And I went through some of the descriptions because, like, some of the links were super old. So I went through some of the descriptions, but that's gonna be something I do next. I'm gonna see how those videos are performing over time now that they're public again. And for the ones that are actually performing, I'm going to really optimize everything about them so that they perform a little bit better. Then I'll go to the ones that are not performing at all and see what I can what changes I can make. So that was number 2.
Number 3 was to get all of my old podcast content back onto the Joe Casabona channel from the Podcast Workflows channel. That's where I had my VA help. I had her go through all of the videos on the Podcast Workflows channel. And if the video wasn't already on the Joe Casabona channel, because remember now I'm sharing videos, then upload it, set it to monetize, and make it unlisted until I could review it. Because something a lesson I learned the hard way about a year ago was if you upload a bunch of videos over time and then make all of them public, they are listed on your subscriber's subscription page the day you make them public, not relative to when you uploaded them. So if you upload, I don't know, a 100 videos over the course of a week and then make them all public on the same day, all 100 of those videos will be on your subscriber subscription page. I lost a lot of subscribers when I did that as you can imagine.
So I was smarter this time. Instead, I went through the videos that were now private or unlisted that my VA had uploaded, And I tweaked the title a little bit for some of them, and then I scheduled them to be published 1 a day for a number of days. So that was a really good and important thing for me to do.
The third thing I did, which I didn't really mention here in the list, was I looked at all the members only videos since I don't really have a membership anymore, and I made some of those videos public as well. I thought if they were good enough, and not just like, you know, a quick me rambling kind of video, then I made them public as well. And I did the same thing for any podcast-related livestreams because if you'll recall, maybe you won't recall. I don't expect you to recall. What you should know is that the livestream archive was one of the perks of my membership. So anybody could watch my livestreams at the time I did them, but if they didn't catch them live, then they'd have to become a member to watch them. I thought that this was a really good perk. And when I was doing WordPress stuff, that is how a number of my members came through. Now that I'm not doing WordPress stuff anymore, though, that wasn't necessarily an effective method for getting members.
This also helps because I wanna kinda have a presence on Twitch. I don't need to be like a super Twitch creator or whatever, but if I'm live streaming, it's good to be there. And when you can't, well, I think you delete old streams if you don't want them to be viewed, or maybe you can make them private. But either way, when I go to Twitch, I only have a few live streams. So I think if they're not I don't know how it works. I probably should've looked it up. But seems like if they are not live, they're not maintained. So or they're not publicly available. They're not maintained maybe. So, you know, I'm kinda starting from scratch there, which is good. I updated all of this stuff over there to kinda match the YouTube branding as well. So those are all the things I have done.
So what's next for me? Well, I am trying to livestream weekly again and so far so good. And I am producing more YouTube videos. They're not super highly produced. They're mostly like workflow y stuff or helpful tools and things like that. I'm not publishing at a specific Cadence yet. I'm just trying to build a presence there. I don't think the schedule for me is as important as putting out good content. And so I'm doing that. I'm live streaming. I'm trying to do, you know, 1 or 2 videos a month, maybe 3 videos a month if I'm feeling especially inspired.
And so next for me is review the analytics, see what videos are doing well, and update thumbnails and descriptions for any older videos to try to optimize those because that can have gains.
So as we wrap up here, I do wanna share a little bit. I won't share actual numbers. That's not really something that I do. But if I look at some of the analytics, so my Blue Yeti video, Blue Yeti microphone terrible or great for podcasters, easily the top performing video for me in a long time, with a 188 views. So, that is recent videos. Right? My most popular videos over the last 28 days, which as I record, this is probably when I kind of started that rebrand. How to make your Sony a6400 camera a webcam that is always and easily my most popular video. If I were to listen to the YouTube consultants, they would say, well, now you gotta make more videos about the Sony a6400 camera or production equipment. And honestly, like, with the blue I mean, the Blue Yeti is already performing on this list. Maybe it should be that kind of stuff that I talk about.
Number 2 is Sensei is back and better than ever. This was a sponsored video. The third one is also a sponsored Sensei video. Again, this was, like, through the lens of how it can help solopreneurs, which is what and they were sponsored, so I kept them up. I think I'm getting some help from Sensei there. I think they are embedding those videos in places.
Number 4 is the Blue Yeti microphone. Right? So if we're looking at non sponsored content so far, the hardware videos are winning. Then notification sucks, scheduled summary, and iOS can fix that. That's the iPhone video, so it's always gonna do well. Email, easy domain forwards with Hover, email with Hover, pointing a custom domain to ConvertKit, 7 mic shootout, and then a short, what is an RSS feed. Those are the ones that are doing well over the last, let's look at over the last 7 days since I did lose views and watch hours over the last 28 days because that's when I hit a bunch of videos, and they know they don't count for views or watch hours anymore.
Over the last 7 days, my views are up 12%. My watch time is up 18%. My subscribers are up 400%. My estimated revenue is still down, and I suspect it's because my top, my number 2 video is about Jetpack. It was strictly a WordPress thing, and so I hid that from the channel. And so that is impacting over the 28 days, it was impacting my views, my watch time, and my subscribers. That's still having an impact on my estimated revenue. But, this is really good. I'm really excited about this.
So that's what's next. That's the YouTube channel rebrand. If you have any questions about that, feel free to reach out. You can head over to [howibuilt.it/feedback]. And just a quick, as a quick aside, I am recording this ahead of time, but it may be the case that the show is now called the Streamline Solopreneur, so don't be alarmed. I'll probably roll out, like a pre roll ad campaign to let people know. But just in case you could be seeing new yellow artwork, the URL is [streamlined.fm]. All of the URLs for [howibuilt.it] should and will work, for a very long time at least. So just a little bit of a PSA there.
Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to our sponsors. And until next time, get out there and build something.