0:00 If it feels like YouTube is getting harder than ever, you are probably not imagining it. This is an email from a channel with over a million subscribers, asking me if anyone else has seen their views drop so much. This is another channel, the biggest in their niche, asking the same thing. The reason this is happening might be why you're putting the same work into your videos, but your views are just harder to get. So, I wanted to try and find out what's going on. And the good news is, I think I did. I spent days researching 44 of the most popular niches for service providers, consultants, and course creators. And then I got access to sales data from 198 channels and I have put it all into a report below which you can get inside. You will discover whether or not your own niche has changed, what your views could look like by 2030, and how to earn more if they keep going backwards. Now, I just need to warn you, you might not
0:45 like the answer because the top earners are not doing the same as everyone else. that. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to break down the biggest discoveries from this report and what they mean for you. Starting with why this is all just so flipping confusing. And the best way I can explain this to you is to think of YouTube as just a traditional street with shops on it. And your channel is a shop. Now, the confusing thing about this whole thing is the high street right now is booming. YouTube is replacing TV. Shorts are doing hundreds of billions of views a day. Advertisers are spending more than ever on it. YouTube just consistently reports record numbers. So, if the street is so busy, why is your shop so quiet? Well, it's because a lot of their data relates to short form and entertainment content. When I looked at
1:31 the 44 niches businesses often reside in, two things have happened to your shop. Neither of them is your fault. First, I found that fewer people are walking down the street looking for what you provide. For example, if you're in the growing agency niche, demand is down 65% since 2023. Marketing is down 45%, business growth down, property down, trading down, fat loss down, music production down, graphic design all down. I'm not going to sit there listing all 44 of these niches. You can check demand in the report below. But 42 of the 44 niches that info businesses, consultants, and service providers work in were searched significantly less on YouTube last year. So where did everyone go? Well, I think you can probably guess people have stopped walking to your
2:18 shop. Instead, they go to the new hot shop on the street, AI. And this is the graph for AI adoption. This is the graph for average niche demand. Kind of just makes sense, right? This is what scared me. Only 24% of adults in the USA right now use AI daily. So if AI keeps spreading at the current rate of adoption, some of these niches could be down 71% from their peak of interest by 2030 if AI adoption speeds up, which I think it's more than likely. We could be looking at a drop of over 80%. Why do I think it's more than likely? My car broke the other day. I didn't go to YouTube to work out how to fix it. I just took a photo of my engine bay with AI and then it sent me back an image. It showed me what to do. You also have to factor in other technology too that is
3:03 hitting views that most people aren't really considering. For example, a Zmpic means people don't need to learn about fat loss when they can just inject their butt with something that stops them from eating. Longevity is going to stop being as big a problem because people are popping peptides left, right, and center that make them feel 21 again. Breakthroughs in medicine are currently meaning less people are experienced pain and problems. So, they're not going to go to YouTube looking for the solution like they did. There is some good news, though. Some niches are actually growing in demand, like drawing, hiking, and retirement. So, if you teach around real life experiences, are you safe? Well, I think you are for now because those channels are usually made up of viewers who are older. The thing is, only one in four of the over 65s have even tried AR.
3:50 So, when that number goes up, we might just see a drop there, too. The second problem you have no real control over is what I kind of find funny about this. So the niche that has boomed the most other than AI niches is growing a personal brand. Searches for that are up over 400%. I mean, have you noticed how many videos tell you how critical it is? You got to start a personal brand so you can survive the looming AI death spiral. And this has caused a huge amount of people to jump in and make content that educates to grow their personal brand. In fact, in 2021, there were only 2 million channels in the YouTube partner program. These are monetized channels. By 2024, there's over 3 million. I didn't couldn't find the exact dates for
4:36 today, but we can probably assume it's around 4 million now, maybe more. Interest in growing a personal brand has absolutely exploded, meaning more people are putting education on YouTube to grow their personal brand. So, the second problem is there's less people on the high street looking for your shop, but there are more shops fighting for your attention than ever. Now, take this with a pinch of salt what I'm about to show you, but I ran the numbers to see what might happen to the growing agency niche. If competition and AI adoption increases at the same rate, and if you are getting 5,000 views a video right now, by 2030, you can expect 300. We've got our answer to is YouTube working like it used to? And it's quite simply no. But why are some shops claiming that they are doing better than ever when it
5:22 comes to sales? Because if it's harder to get the views that you used to be able to get, it doesn't make sense. But on top of that, why did multiple people email me telling me, "Ed, my views are down, but my sales are booming." Well, to work this out, I track sales from 198 channels and 9,641 videos using my software company, Rev Track. All of these channels sell a course or coaching or some sort of service. And the first thing I discovered was mind-blowing. The top earners got roughly 4,800 views on average against 3,800 who were the bottom earners. Putting it simply, the people who earned most didn't actually need more people on their street to earn 20 times more. So, how are the top earners earning 20 times more? Well, it
6:08 was because their shop sells more expensive things. In fact, the top earners average sale was over $658, whilst the bottom was 59. In fact, offers at $5,000 or more made about 95% more from every view they got than offers under 100. Meaning, a channel with a $5,000 offer can get 10,000 views and earn about the same as a channel who gets a million views selling a cheaper one. And this is the bit I found really funny. So many people right now are telling you you don't need to do sales calls. People don't want to take them. But the data says people who took calls earned three times more. And 14 of the top 20 earners we found still take them. Meaning the shops doing the best despite
6:53 the changes to YouTube still have someone behind their counter taking orders and helping people make buying decision. But what does this all mean for you? You can check this out in the report that I made. It's a little calculator and it's going to show you how to earn 10 times more even if your niche demand drops 90%. And to show you how insane this is, let's say you now get 250,000 views a month and your offer is $50. Let's just say you decide to come up with a new premium offer that's five grand. Look at what happens. Your views can drop 90% and you will make 10 times more. So, all you need to do to protect yourself against a platform that's not working the same as before and that is only likely to get harder
7:39 and harder is charge lots of money for something. That's the solution. But it's not really a solution, is it? What if you can't provide a premium offer? Or what if you just don't want to? What if you want to sell cheap ondemand stuff, digital products? Is this game over for you? I don't think it is because although the data is telling us charge more, what I actually think the shift is is this. The old way of doing YouTube for businesses was make content to get as many people into your shop as possible, hoping that a small number would then want to buy your thing. But with less people on the street, it's not going to be an option in the future. The new way, however, that all of the top earners were focusing on and anyone can do, no matter what they sell, what price point they sell at, is to work out how
8:26 to convert more of the people who do enter their shop to buy it. That is the pattern of all of the top earners. The people making the most have just figured out how to come up with something to sell that when their viewers do discover it, it's so irresistible, they can't say no. So, YouTube still matters. We do need people to find us. But I think we do have to get real here and to future proof yourself. It now makes more sense to focus on what you sell in your shop by spending all your time on figuring out how to convert viewers once they have landed on your sales page. And I am now going to take that exact approach in my own business now too. It just doesn't make sense to try and put so much time into getting more attention when it's easier and more effective and more profitable just to convert what you already have. How do you build a premium
9:12 offer that's so good people can't say no to it? And how can you come up with something that converts 1 in 10 people instead of one in 1,000? Well, I'll teach you for free in this video here. You will learn how to come up with the idea, how to sell it, and to future proof your business against what I believe is the biggest shift that YouTube will ever
