In this interview, Justin Brown from Primal Video shares his strategies for building a 7-figure YouTube business.
He breaks down his $1M+ annual revenue model, including affiliate marketing income.
You'll learn Justin's tips on finding a niche, researching winning topics, optimizing videos with analytics, using AI tools like ChatGPT effectively, producing consistent content, and leveraging income streams like YouTube ads, memberships, and affiliate marketing.
Whether just starting on YouTube or taking your channel to the next level, get actionable insights from one of the platform's top creators.
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00:00 Introduction: How Primal Video built a Million-Dollar Business using YouTube
00:14 Meet Justin Brown: The Success Story Behind Primal Video
00:29 Justin's specific strategies that work on YouTube and in Business
01:27 The quality of ChatGPT’s outputs are a direct function of the quality of your inputs
5:11 What's the ideal YouTube Upload Frequency
8:57 How to find video topics that resonate with your audience
12:58 How to use Youtube Analytics to assess Topic Ideas
14:07 Is it ok to deleting YouTube videos (& renaming videos)?
17:28 How to use B-rolls effectively
23:37 The secret to repurposing Long form Video
27:15 How the Affiliate Revenue model can work for you
30:24 How to build a Personal Brand with Integrity
33:54 A bit about Primal Video Accelerator and Community
Ash Roy and Justin Brown's Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Ash Roy:
Is it possible to build your business to 1 million off the back of a YouTube channel? What does it take to build a business? Is it pure talent? Is it hard work? Is it luck?
Justin Brown:
We now have a business that generates seven figures a year.
Ash Roy:
That's my friend Justin Brown, the co founder of Primal Video. Justin Brown has built his business to over 1 million in revenue.
And Justin's the founder of the widely successful channel Primal Video, which has grown from zero to 1. 5 million subscribers. In this episode, you'll learn Justin's exact strategies behind his meteoric rise on YouTube and his astounding success as a business owner. He explains how he found his niche and what he recommends to others who are looking to do the same.
He breaks down his 1 million annual revenue into its various components and shares their percentage contributions. He shares the strategy he's used to build his affiliate income and his membership community. He reveals his specific topic research and topic selection strategies. When creating YouTube videos, including the specific tools he uses, he reveals how frequently he publishes videos and what he recommends to people starting off or looking to grow their channels.
And he also shares a very surprising story where a person purchased an 8 microphone through one of his affiliate links, and he ended up receiving commission for it. On a subsequent purchase, which was much larger. So tune in and find out the answers to all these questions. The quality of the questions you can ask chat GPT determines the quality of help it can give you.
Would you agree?
Justin Brown:
100%. And this is where a lot of people right now, they'll put in a surface level question, they'll get a surface level answer and go, eh, it's not that good. It's not quite there yet. I mean, we've all heard that the people that can master those inputs, master the questions are the ones that are really going to be Uh, ahead when these things become so much more popular, but there's also an element of training for these things as you probably found as well.
Like if you're just asking a question without giving it much context or training, or people are getting it to try and write an article without it, even learning their voice or without having context, then yeah, you're, you're gonna. Be hit and miss, I guess, with your results because it doesn't have the data to pull from in terms of what you're actually after because there's so many different ways you could write an article, right?
And you can actually pick a voice of different people, and it would mimic that for you. But if you're not giving it that information or you're not giving it your voice, then it's going to be very hard to get something that you'll be Absolutely pumped on as something that you could use without a lot of tweaking and adjustment.
A lot of people aren't going to that level and I think that's probably the biggest mistake, but it's also that this thing is still so new for a lot of us, right? There's been a few people that have been playing for a while, but for This is the first time that a lot of us have had access to something like this.
So I do think it's really powerful, but I love your approach. And this is kind of how we've been using it to more like a sounding board. Like if I am going to restructure a course, what could it look like? So let's just go back to absolute basics. Let's see what it says. All right. Oh, well, that's interesting.
You know, yeah, maybe we've gone too advanced. on this section in our current course or whatever it is, you, it's a great sounding board, but also that you can just keep diving deeper. So it's not the surface level questions, as you said, it's like, cool, what's, what's the next question? What, what, if we looked at it from this way, what, what else could be missing?
The child mind approach with it, because they say to treat it like a child, even though it's got all this information. But if you, you approach it as a kid, like anything's possible, let's assume the answer's in here, but the questions that I'm asking it might not be the right ones yet. Or how else can I ask this or give it information or context?
That's really where the power is.
Ash Roy:
You know, I saw this awesome video on TubeBuddy's channel, by the way, I'm an affiliate for TubeBuddy. You can learn more at ProductiveInsights.com/TubeBuddy. They. Took the top five performing videos. They went to their advanced analytics on their YouTube channel. It took five or six top performing videos, put the titles of the videos into chat, DPT, and said, my channel has been doing well for these particular titles recently.
Can you recommend more titles? I tried it on my own channel and it was amazing. It gives you some great quality suggestions that you might not have otherwise thought of. My point being, again, the quality of the information you put in there and the level of detail you put in there has a direct correlation with the quality of the output that you get and the specificity of the output that you get, which is what you need if you want to make an impact and you want to gain attention in a very attention deficit environment.
Justin Brown:
I agree a hundred percent. And think of it as like a conversation that you're having with someone that you've never met before, right? It's like, someone's asking what's the best camera. My first question back to them is what have you looked at so far? What have you narrowed it down to? Because there's that many options and they're not just asking out of the blue like, Oh, I've got to get a camera.
What should I get? They've probably given some thought or there's some requirements, restrictions around budget, their use case, the types of videos they're making, their experience. I would treat it the same way is that there's extra context to your questions. How do we provide that to this thing? Cause it's not going to know.
Ash Roy:
Let's switch over to frequency. That's something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time. So I've seen different YouTube creators for a long time, Ali Abdaal, Gillian Perkins, yourself, and they've grown at different rates. How frequently should we publish and upload content to YouTube and at what consistency?
I know the two are different things. You're probably going to say be as consistent as you can comfortably manage. But what is a minimum frequency of upload to be competitive and for the algorithm to notice that you're around?
Justin Brown:
I think you're a spot on with the answer that you thought that I would say.
Uh, but we can dive deeper into that because look, you want to look at it and say, it is again, going to come down to the types of videos you're making. And, and for some niches, if you're constructing something, you're in an art and craft niche, you're making something or. You're working off sharing results from a project, uh, or from your client's success.
Like you can't necessarily make those every week. They could be, you know, once every other week, it could be once a month. Now, some of the biggest channels, they upload videos once a month. Some of the biggest channels on the platform upload a couple of times a year, but those videos. Our strategic, they are very well optimized and they are amazing videos.
So without trying to put all your eggs into one or two videos a year and try to have that sort of success is not a game I'd want to play. Uh, we, we landed on one video a week. Now, back when we started, people were saying that you need to do three times a week, or you need to go daily for success. I mean, yeah, you could have success doing that, but it's not a game that I want to play.
I love making videos. But I love not having to make them every single day or three times a week. So the answer really is, as you've said, to find what works for you. But the more consistent you are at uploading good, optimized content, the faster you can see results. And good, optimized content Are the three things there.
Don't just upload stuff. Cause you're like, Hey, it's been a week. I haven't put anything out. I'll quickly shoot a video. No, waste your time. It's unlikely. I mean, it could take off, but come from that place of if I really want to add value and I'm a strategic business owner, strategic marketer, uh, entrepreneur here, and I am respectful of my own time and other people's time that are going to click and watch this video.
How could I make this video better and release it better? Then when it's ready, so for us, that works out as one a week because I'm never on that hamster wheel. We're able to film them in batch. I'm filming a minimum of four at a time, which is four weeks worth of content. Um, we've done as many as eight or 10 in a time, which is eight or 10 weeks worth of content, right?
But it's going to come down to the individual videos. Some videos will take me longer to make than others, especially if I've got to learn how to use something or do all the research and everything for it. So you might find that there's some videos you can do quick. Others long, and you'll, you'll get to know that the more that you do them.
And yeah, that's, that's, that's my take on that.
Ash Roy:
And, you know, just to your point, I've got to say like people like say, Mr. Beast, I heard, I don't know if this is true, but I believe he spent something like a million dollars on producing some of his videos, a lot of money away. That's a big investment and that's a lot of risk and he's built up to that.
That's the first thing, but he also has spent years researching the channel. Or you look at MKBHD, he's in a different niche. He's in the tech niche. But his videos are beautifully produced and he's got a massive team. That's not something that a small starting YouTuber can manage at this time. But if you go back and look at his earlier videos, he was just a little kid creating content about tech and he had a passion for it and that's still there today.
So I think, you know, what moves you and what do you feel passionate about? Is an important thing, and that should drive a lot of your decisions about what content to create, and that will hopefully have a positive impact on the quality, the frequency, and the consistency. Let me ask you about topics. So one of the biggest challenges, a lot of my members in my membership program say is, well, that's fine.
Ash, you're telling me to create a YouTube channel, but what am I going to talk about? Where do I get the topics from? How does Primal Video find their topic ideas?
Justin Brown:
So we find our topic ideas by knowing what are the pains or problems and things at a high level that we want to talk about. And this is where, you know, people say things like the riches are in the niches.
Um, I agree with that to the point, and it is easier if you're just starting out. To go super niche on your audience because people can then know what you're, what you're interested in or what your niche is and know when to come back, right? So they can look specifically. I want Justin's thoughts and opinions on this because I've seen other content.
Right? So you don't need to be restricted by that either. So with us, with our channel, we actually started before primal video. It was video editing coach, and we were just doing video editing tutorials or videos that would help people level up their editing. Um, because the way the, the whole in the market I saw was that no one was really teaching editing for people.
Business owners for, you know, they're teaching for film school students and for people to go and create their own documentaries and films and these high level productions. But as business owners and entrepreneurs, we don't need that. We just need to get our message out there. That's where we started. And we went more broad with that.
So now we don't just teach the editing piece. We teach the filming piece cause you're editing something that's not that good. You're only polishing. That thing instead of leveling up at the time that it matters, which is filming. So we teach the video creation. Now that we're at the point where we have an audience, we're now teaching.
How to grow an audience on YouTube, how to get views on there right through then to the monetization off the back of it, but it's been a growth there. Now you could definitely start a brand new channel where you are covering all of those topics, but it might be slower to grow because the audience doesn't know what they're tuning back in for.
If one week it's about editing, say, and the next week it's about growing your affiliate marketing. Now it fits under an umbrella because we've been talking about these things for a while, but if people don't know you yet, there is value in, in staying more niche. So from that, we know that I want to fit into one of those three pillars.
Now, this is where we are going again, back to YouTube. We're doing some keyword research. We're going to that top search bar and I'm typing in around those three pillars. Pillars around those niches, video editing, and seeing what comes up. Oh, that's interesting. That CapCut is searched for 90, 000 times every month.
So I'll do a CapCut tutorial because it's adding value. It's something I'm interested in. I love talking about editing and showing people new, cool apps. And it's also something that people actually want. So I'm not just saying, Hey, you know, I'm going to teach this program CapCut in this example to video editing app I'm looking.
Is there demand for it first? Is it worth me investing the time and energy in that? Or if I did come up from the other side and say, Hey, this is really awesome. New app crisp, which removes the background audio, uh, background noise from your video, I'd validate that and see what would people search for to find this?
Is anyone actually looking for crisp? Do people know what it is or what would people search for to find this? How to remove background noise in the video? Oh, well that has a hundred thousand searches per month. Maybe we'll look at that. So I'm throwing some numbers out. I'm not saying you need to look at things that have 90, 000, a hundred thousand searches per month.
Um, in some cases we make videos that have some around a thousand as well. Knowing that there's going to be less views on those videos, cause there's less people want that, but it's still something that we want to show up for. For those topics. So things like email marketing and inherently much lower search, but it's a big piece of what we do.
It's also something that we're very passionate about for our business and that we like helping people with as well. So we know that those videos won't have the traction as some of the bigger ones, but it doesn't need to, if we get a few people through, we help them with their buying decision of which email marketing platform to use.
And some of those have affiliate programs. It can generate revenue for us, but also help people with their buying decision.
Ash Roy:
And if the video is really useful and solves a problem, as Seth Godin said, maybe they'll tell their friends and their friends will tell their friends. Yes. You don't need to capture the entire universe.
You just need to capture a small audience that you serve relentlessly. And at some point they will hopefully tell their friends. That's it. Do you look at your YouTube video analytics to inform your topic ideas?
Justin Brown:
Yes. So part of this strategy that of always growing and evolving is more so we look at it for what can we do better next time?
Uh, where are people dropping off in our videos? Why did this video only have a 20 percent completion rate? Um, where did I lose them? Uh, or, or, or ideally like what, what can we take out of that video? Cause YouTube does have a built in editor. And if you've got all the content that's on your channel now, and there's a clear point where people drop off.
Could I take that sentence out? Could I remove that section altogether and just see what happens? This is an amazing opportunity with YouTube, not just editing your older videos, but going, having the ability to go back and re optimize all the content. Um, like if, if you've got videos that aren't performing, you can go back, you can change the title, you can change the tag, put a new thumbnail on and we've gone on and got some, some videos now that are some of the biggest on our channel that totally tanked at first.
It just disappeared into the YouTube abyss. So this is a massive opportunity with YouTube.
Ash Roy:
Now that's a great segue to ask another question I was gonna ask you later, but I'm gonna ask you now. Okay. That is, is it safe to delete YouTube videos that are not performing and to go back and change the title of a video once you've already published it?
Justin Brown:
So, the only time I would recommend to delete a video is if it's no longer serving your audience. Uh, as in it's something that is totally incorrect. It's going to, to do more harm than good if it was out, if you're, I mean. You have the ability to delete a video that you don't like either. Uh, right. We're all on this growth journey.
I, part of me wants to go back and delete some of our early videos where I wasn't blinking no energy and look like deer in the headlights kind of thing, but there's still value in those videos. And obviously it also helps us get people out of their comfort zone. Because this is a learned thing. Like I'm not an on camera person, but this is something that's been learned.
So yes, you can definitely go back and re optimize your content. You can remove it. But what we do is we put out a new version of those videos or a lot of videos every single year. So it's clearly dated that there's a 22, 2022 version. There's a 2023 version. Some people might watch the 2022 version and then YouTube's going to recommend the other one after it.
But unless it is. Going to be detrimental to that person watching the older one. I would leave it there. We don't want to cannibalize growth and impact and traffic from that previous video, even if there's a newer version of it. So one example of a video that we have deleted was, um, a video around how to download videos from Facebook.
The website that we recommended was no longer up or I got hacked or something, and it was serving ads and malware and viruses and stuff to people. We had to pull that down. Right? So that's an example of video I would take down. But outside of that, if there is a better way, two years later or three years later, then I would still leave the old one.
If it's still, you know, if most of those things work there.
Ash Roy:
Well, I've repurposed some old Facebook lives. There's. Got like two, three, maybe five views and I've got like 200 plus videos on my channel. A lot of which are just, just feel like dead wood. Does YouTube frown on you deleting those videos?
Justin Brown:
It doesn't frown on them at all, but it does take an overall look at your analytics and it does publish stuff like here's when the channel was created.
Here's how many videos it has and here's where it's at in terms of views and subscribers. So as an overall, it takes an overall look, but it doesn't mean that that's going to be detrimental or hold back your channel growth in any way. If you delete a video, you'll delete those views from your, from your channel.
Um, so that's probably the biggest thing, but also that I feel that. You know, if you've got unlisted videos, and this is a really common case in people in our sort of industry is that they've maybe got a previous YouTube channel that had some videos on there that may not be a fit for the new direction of where they're going, or it's got a bunch of unlisted videos that maybe they're using in a course or a program for their private clients.
Then in that case, I would either remove those videos or I'd start a new channel in that case. If it's. Not relevant to the, to the, to the bulk of your new audience, your new direction, where you want to go. There's no point really having unlisted videos on your YouTube channel. YouTube is going to count those and say, all right, these videos aren't getting many views in comparison.
It's not going to hold back your growth, but it's not a great thing to have on there.
Ash Roy:
Okay. But there's no harm in deleting a video, which has had like two or three views, for example.
Justin Brown:
No, not at all. No
Ash Roy:
question about editing. I'm seeing more and more B roll in videos because people are trying to find new ways to keep people's attention and, you know, entertain while informing how important is B roll and can you go and add B roll using the YouTube editor after you've already published a video?
Justin Brown:
Yeah. So the YouTube video editor is subtractive, not something you can add something to. So if, if you've now got a new end screen, you want to show, you can't change anything in the video itself. Except for remove pieces. So you could trim a bit off. If you're doing a Q and a call, you queue off the, the, the, some of the questions or take something out.
If you didn't like your answer to it, B roll the, the B roll is just one tool to help you people have a better experience on your videos. It's one way to help with that viewer engagement, but it's not the only way. So it's not depends on the video you're making. It may or may not be important, but if it's a video like I make where I'm just sitting here talking to camera, I'm not moving the camera around.
There's not a lot of interesting things happening. Nothing's changing behind me. I'm not at a really nice shot at the beach. Then there's not a lot of interest for people. Once they've seen it, they're like, okay, this is the person that's speaking. That's the area that they're in. Um, then. What's the point and keep coming back to my face, or it'd be very boring shot if it was just that.
So we like to play a game with our editors, hide Justin's face. So, I'm on for the key points, and if I'm summarizing something, I'm on, I'm on for the, for a little bit at the start. But why are they there? They're there to learn. They're there to, to discover something, to go and take action. I want to show those things as much as possible.
And this is where B roll is a great way to do it. Now, another way that you could do it outside of B roll is to, to zoom in on your shot a little bit so that it feels a little bit different. Even though it's the same shot, it's going to feel like it was a little bit of a, uh, uh, you know, a zoom in a little, it's like you're using a second camera.
It's a pattern interrupt. It changes it up for your brain when you're watching it. It feels a little bit different. You could also use animated graphics. Uh, for us, we have animated text that, that That comes on the screen, doesn't just appear, there's like a little glitch thing. It's just some movement to break it up.
Or we'll be, we'll do a slow zoom in on, on, for some more, uh, key points on the video to grab people's attention, to feel like we're drawing them in. You really got to listen to this piece. So there's some different ways. B roll is just, just one way.
Ash Roy:
So the key though is, You've got to have something changing every three to five seconds on the video.
Would you agree?
Justin Brown:
Look, I mean, that's a good ballpark. As for whether that should stand for every type of video, I wouldn't want to put a blanket rule on it. But like, whenever you feel like you've been on screen for too long, we like to mix it up. Now, this is where, like, if you think of movies and TV shows and stuff, they run their pilot, right?
And they're doing a screening. If you have the ability to have someone who is your ideal audience, not your friends and family, one of your clients, your students, Watch one of your videos while you watch them. Like just see if there's any point where they check their watch or they pull out their phone or anything, you've lost them, right?
So that's, that's a great experiment. It's a big kick to the ego, but it's a great experiment to see where are we losing people now outside of that? Cause that's obviously not possible for a lot of people to do that. And obviously for every video either. Is YouTube gives us this information, but they give you this information after the video is out.
And that is your watch time. You can see how long people have stayed on the video. You can see where they've dropped off. And then again, we can't do anything with that except learn some lessons that we could then go and apply or, or things to test on, on our next videos. And this is where making new versions of those.
Previous videos, uh, is really beneficial because for us, when we, we update say best editing software, 2023, um, I can look at how did 2022 go? How did 2021 go? Right. I could see there was a drop off at the start. Maybe my info was too long. Maybe I gave too many options, but all of that, those sorts of insights, uh, we can then apply to the newer video.
So it does start to snowball over time because it's just learning. It's that 1 percent improvement over time. How do we keep leveling up? Okay. And YouTube gives you all of that information in your analytics.
Ash Roy:
Okay. Yeah. And that's why it's very important to keep going back and looking at your analytics.
We're coming to the end of that conversation. I don't want to keep you too long. Here's another question. Something that I found very entertaining for me was publishing the outtakes of my conversation with Amy Porterfield when I was talking to her about Digital Course Academy. And I think the audience often loves the outtakes.
Do you use those? And if so, how?
Justin Brown:
Yeah, so we do from time to time. Uh, we did experiment with in every video, uh, it would have the bloopers at the end. And look, I mean, there's pros and cons. Yes. People can see that it's real, that you're a human, that you make mistakes, that you may not be perfect on camera.
Just like most people are like, cause in editing, we get to hide all of that stuff, right? Editing's there to make you look good, but it doesn't mean that I'm doing this in one take. I'm, I'm not editing is there to save me, to help me look good. Um, so in terms of the outtakes, look, I think the greatest supplementary content, uh, like it could be behind the scenes stuff that you're posting as stories, um, or, or, or reels, or those, or shorts, but, um, It can also, if it's in your regular YouTube video, it makes it longer, right?
So you, so you've got the value of the content and then you've given this extra piece on the end. Now, depending on how you do this, it could be a pro or a con, because what if someone didn't click on your video when they saw it in search results or on the platform, because it was too long, right? We don't know what that is.
What's their viewer expectation. If they saw, this is the thing I want to learn. It's a video here from Ash, but it's, it's, uh, eight minutes. But someone else has got a four minute version right underneath it. I'm not saying you need to make a four minute version, but what's the viewer intent at that point?
Are they going to try the four minute one? Or if Ashes didn't have the, the 20 seconds, 30 seconds of bloopers at the end, would that have been enough for them to click on that video? So it's something to consider. And again, it's got to come down to really a case by case basis. If it was a few seconds at the end of something funny that happened while filming for sure, add it in an experiment.
But if it's something that is going to drag the video on, then it could be the difference between the amount of people that are actually going to end up on that video.
Ash Roy:
Great segue for the next question. Short form content versus long form content. YouTube Shorts is all the rage right now. How do you use YouTube Shorts?
I often try and repurpose my long form videos into short snippets. Is that what you're doing? And if so, how?
Justin Brown:
So look, I mean, there's so many different ways and it is still new on YouTube. Terms like it's been out for a year now, which in like YouTube itself has been around for much, much longer. So most people that are still going to YouTube today are going for the regular videos.
It's not to say that you can't have success with shorts on there. I mean, you open the YouTube mobile app now, and it's now actually starts to play a short straight away. This is a test that they're running, right? So they're investing a lot of time, energy, and effort into. But for right now, most people are still consuming the regular videos more.
So the strategy that I would recommend now is to play with shorts. If you've got. The bandwidth, but that should be in addition to the one video a week, one video every other week, whatever you commit to as the stuff that is proven to grow on YouTube, the stuff where you can get views for, we've got videos that are over eight years old.
They're still getting thousands of views a day. They're still getting people click. They're still helping people. They're still clicking affiliate links as well. They're growing our email list eight years on with no extra input or effort from us. That's what I'm talking about here has been a strategic.
Business owner, entrepreneur, like we have that available to us. Now don't sleep on shorts either, because there is some big opportunities there. But the people I see that go all in on just shorts, very few of them have the long term success. Now with shorts, even for us playing with it, we'll get, we'll get.
Uh, some views on some of them. It's really hit and miss. And then they stopped. We have a couple now that are doing well. Our top ones, they totally tanked at first. And it wasn't until six or eight months later. That's how old these things are now that now they're starting to show up in YouTube search results.
So that to me is interesting because that's something that we can have more control over instead of again, uh, having something go viral. Um, so it's, it's interesting and I would say play with it, but it's not there yet to be, that is your sole source. In terms of the content. Repurposing is a good test, but then you've got to look at what are the videos you like to watch on there.
And we, we see a lot of people that are doing these repurposed from long form, cut down a short snippet. It teases the long form so it can work really, really well. I know some good friends that are having mixed results, like big, big channels. Um, some are having great success doing that and others aren't.
But they're doing it because they're seeing that's what other people are doing. So maybe at some point it'll hit. I will be trying different things as well. So I'm not saying don't do that. It's hit and miss like anything with shorts right now. Um, I would try. What if you recorded your long form podcast or, or live stream, and then you just grabbed your phone raw, real press record and said, if you're looking for the top three ways to do this, here they are.
And these are three tips from my long form podcast, right? Sat down with Ash and he, uh, he shared these, you can check it out. So you can still link off and reference the long form content, but it's something that's raw, that's real. It's not going to take much time for you to, to produce. You don't need to have someone go through and find those little nuggets of gold in, in your long form content.
Literally it's you. It's building brand you, it's summarizing your content, your thoughts, even if those tips came from someone else that you interviewed on your podcast. It's your take on those. And I think if you are looking to build your own personal brand of business off the back of this, it's all well and good to bring in experts and interview them, but you've still got to build your brand off that too.
So I would experiment with that.
Ash Roy:
It's testing. You need to be willing to test. Now I'm going to ask you one last question. I'm going to let you go. Thank you for being so generous as you always are with your time. Affiliate revenue model, Primal Video Accelerator has had great success over the years using not only memberships, but also affiliate revenue and affiliate products.
Could you talk to us about the affiliate revenue model and how that's worked for you? And if you're comfortable. Sharing how big a portion of your total income affiliate revenue is.
Justin Brown:
Yeah. So we now have a business that generates seven figures a year, over seven figures a year. Um, and affiliate is one of our three revenue streams at Primal Video.
So we have. Um, income from YouTube ads, which started very, very small, but obviously now given the amount of content that we have out there, it's not a small amount that's dropping into our bank account now. So YouTube ads is one. The second is our digital product, our Primal Video Accelerator membership.
It's a monthly subscription. 49 us a month. We currently have around a thousand members in there. So that's, that's a second revenue stream that we have. The third one is affiliate revenue. And this is my favorite. Not, I mean, I love our program, but this is my favorite in terms of it's almost passive income.
I say almost because it's driven from our YouTube channel and we're still going to make the videos, right? But this, I love this because it is a win, win, win scenario. And I think if anything in business, when you're coming from that place of adding value, if you can generate something that is a win, win, win, and I'll explain what I mean by that, then, then it is a great place to come from.
Um, because everybody wins. So a win, win, win affiliate marketing is a win for the viewer. You're helping them with a buying decision. So we're creating content that might, uh, be best camera for YouTube. Right. And maybe I cover the top five cameras. In my thoughts and opinions, but there's affiliate links for those.
I'm helping someone solve that pain or problem of finding the best camera for them. So it's a win for them. I'm then helping those companies. I'm not just sending them random spam links. I'm sending them then qualified leads from those viewers that are interested in those specific things. So they're much further along the buying journey.
Um, you know, they'll take it. They still might not buy at that point, but that's, that's up to them. Whatever. We're not, we're not, again, it's not spamming links. Only the right people will click those. So it's good traffic for the company and it's a win for them. And that means it becomes a win for us because if someone does click, they do buy and they have an affiliate program.
Then that's when we're able to receive a commission or a lump sum for sending that traffic over. That's why we love affiliate marketing. Now, this is something that can scale and does scale and grow. As your audience grows. So as I said, like earlier, we've got videos that are coming up on our YouTube channel, that are eight years old, still have affiliate links being clicked for no extra time or effort or input from us, and they're still adding value, they're helping people with a specific outcome or with the purchasing decision that's at scale.
So every year, so every, every week, we've YouTube channel, where it's a fit. We've got affiliate links in those. So affiliate revenue is one of the biggest for us. And in terms of your question as to which, what's, what's the priority of them right now, it's almost 50 50, uh, and it changes from month to month because it's variable as to the months that affiliate marketing is bigger than our digital product.
So the, the breakdown is almost those two, you know, Seem to move up and down, uh, because they're variables. Uh, but the third piece of revenue is, is the YouTube ad revenue.
Ash Roy:
I got to say, man, affiliate revenue is, as you very accurately said, the closest you can get to passive income. I don't believe there's anything such as a hundred percent passive income.
But the one thing I would like to add to that is, you know, I only tend to offer affiliate products that I have used. And that I feel a good value for the customer. I'm an affiliate with Primal Video, which is why we are talking today. And by the way, if you're interested in learning more, you can go to ProductiveInsights.com/Primal, and that will take you to the landing page. I'm also an affiliate with Kajabi because I use Kajabi and a whole lot of other affiliates have been reaching out to me over the years, and I tend to form partnerships where I've used the product. So I highly recommend if you're going to form an affiliate relationship, use the product, see if it works for you.
It may not work for everybody else that signs up. With you. But if you feel it's a good product, you're coming from a genuine place where you feel like this is going to deliver value, then you should become an affiliate.
Justin Brown:
So I agree with that wholeheartedly. I think integrity is the thing here. It's like, you wouldn't want to recommend to your best friend, to your family members, something that isn't good just to get a commission.
And this is where a lot of people give affiliate marketing a bad name. And it's got a bit of a. Slimy salesy, uh, kind of connotation because people are picking, all right, this product has a really high commission. I'm going to promote that to my audience. They've never used it. It's likely not good, but imagine if you bought something and someone had recommended it and you bought it, it wasn't good.
It wasted your time, your money. You're not going to take a recommendation ever again from that person. Like you've kind of burnt that bridge. You want to take this approach where you're coming from. Integrity coming from a place of look, this thing genuinely is amazing. This is how I use it. So we're very similar.
We only recommend products that we use, that we, that we think are great. Even if it's something that we use, that is not going to be of value to our audience, then it's like, well, you know, we could mention it, but how do we give Is going to help them on their journey with a specific pain or problem. And again, it's just my thoughts and opinions based on stuff that we've used.
So this is again, there's an opportunity for so many of you out there. What are the, the books that you recommend? That's a great one to get into, um, Amazon, right? Affiliate. If someone clicks and buys a book or in our case, we had someone buy. A 8 microphone. They then went on and spent 30, 000 on gym equipment because we sent them there.
And because it was in the one checkout, uh, we received the commission for the entire amount. So it's, you're essentially marketing for these companies, but it's coming from the place of. How do I help? Again, it's been a common theme throughout all of this is how do I help? How do I add value? How do I help people not have to go and watch a hundred different YouTube videos for them to decide which is the best thing for them?
How do we just share our thoughts and opinions based on our experiences and the research and knowledge that we have? And for some people that will resonate with that. And it can be a very good revenue stream.
Ash Roy:
And there are great affiliate programs out there. I'm a HubSpot solutions partner. Yes, you have to do some training to become a HubSpot.
A solutions partner, but I love HubSpot and I recommend it to people very often. I love this app called SunSama that helps me do planning. And that's a brilliant tool. So there's a whole lot of little affiliate things out there. You don't have to go and form relationships with these massive software companies and stuff.
But as you grow, you will find that people start to reach out to you and you get more and more affiliate pitches, but I'm very careful about who I accept. with because my reputation matters a lot to me, as Warren Buffett says, it takes years to build a reputation, but it can destroy it in minutes. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Justin, it was real pleasure to have you and I hope maybe we can do this again sometime.
Justin Brown:
Definitely pumped. Thank you very much for inviting me on. It was awesome.
Ash Roy:
How do people find out more about you? And about Primal Video Accelerator.
Justin Brown:
Okay, so, I mean, primalvideo. com is our website. You can obviously find everything on there, all of our content across filming, across editing, across then getting views on that.
And then through to the monetization. But, uh, Primal Video Accelerator is my baby. Uh, that is our monthly membership. And, and look, I don't want you to think of it as, as a course. Like obviously you're in there as well. It is a online resource and amazing community. We've all been in courses and we've all, I am a recovering course buying addict, right?
I love buying courses, but in every course we go through. There's normally those one or two nuggets of gold where you're like, you know what? That one thing, that one lesson, that one little piece that was buried in there somewhere just changed the game for me. Our goal with accelerator is to help you find those things really, really quick.
It's about helping you take action with your audience growth, with your video creation and monetization to help you build your business and brand online. That's what we're there to help you do. Um, so yes, there's training, there's resources. It's a choose your own adventure style program. So you don't need to sit there at module one, work your way through.
Um, it's, it's, it's where am I stuck? So Justin, you mentioned on the podcast here, um, AB split testing thumbnails. I'm really interested in that. Cool. You could jump straight into the AB split testing stuff, figure that out. And then what's next? You can backfill around the content, but the community. Is amazing.
And this is where you go on this journey with like minded individuals. It's not just what Justin says you need to do. You're hearing from other people that are in the trenches as well. And you hear the successes and and the struggles and things that they have and how we're overcoming them together. And there's also two group coaching calls every month as well.
So that's that's my baby. You can see I get passionate about that. And I'm sorry for speaking so long about it. But This is what I love, right? This is, this is what we do. We get to show up and same for you and your business. We get to show up, we get to help people. But if we love what we do and love seeing the results that we can generate, then that's what it's all about.
Ash Roy:
Absolutely. And that's what I love about Primal Video, about you, the generosity and the kindness. You know, this is something Seth told me about generosity and kindness. We don't see that a lot in business, but I think we need a lot more of it. Thank you very much.