Why small YouTubers are Making Millions While Big YouTubers Make Pocket Change

A. 500,000 following on YouTube that pumps out entertainment videos 

B. 10,000 following on YouTube with a targeted audience for a high ticket offer

What if I told you that the one with the 10K subscriber base will make 20x the one with the 500K subs? 

This example is not theoretical.

Dozens of YouTubers with massive followings make a few thousand a month, whereas YouTubers with fewer than 10K subscribers are raking in multi millions every year.

How can this be? 

Targeted audience. 

If you create high-value content that only applies to 0.000122% of the world (10,000 people), you can make far more money than if you create content for views—even with a million subs. 

This is why before you make any piece of content I recommend you ask yourself three questions (every time):

1. Who am I helping? (If it's not your target audience you are wasting time.) 

2. What problem are they dealing with? 

3. How do I move them from struggle to solution?

At its very core, an entrepreneur creates solutions to problems and monetizes them. But the hard part is knowing what problem to focus on.

Here's a helpful guide: 

1. What problems have you founds solutions to lately?

This can't be any ole' problem. It must have a home under the umbrella of the main problem your product solves.

I guarantee that if it was a problem for you, it’s a problem for thousands of other people. That is why some of the best products are created out of the founders' struggles.

What makes your solution powerful is it's a problem you experienced.

You dealt with the frustration.

You felt the blows of disappointment until you dug up the answer.

And this makes your content relatable and powerful. 

Let’s say your product is teaching new homeowners how to train their puppy golden retrievers. 

You take your dog to a dog park and he goes nuts. He has to smell everything in sight and doesn't hear a word you say. So you take him to a quiet park and reward him with boiled liver every time he obeys. 

Then you graduate him to a slightly busy park and repeat. Gradually, you train your dog to obey even at the loudest parks. 

As soon as you figure out this solution, get in front of your camera, hit record, and film a video, "How gradual distractions and boiled liver fixed my dog's struggle to focus." 

(Yes, I'm YouTube biased but this works for blog-post writing as well). 🤷‍♂️

Every person whose dog struggles with distraction in busy places is going to gobble up your video like your dog when you accidentally drop a steak on the floor.

2. What problems have your followers run into lately? 

Every time a followers asks you a question on YouTube, social media, or through email they are literally you what kind of content they want. 

This is 10x more valuable than hiring a focus group who is somehow supposed to accurately represent a market open to 8.2 billion thanks to the internet. 

Your followers' questions will not just serve you an ocean of problems to solve, but an infinite stream of relevant content. 

And this frees you to stop guessing and start building since they are literally asking you for a solution.

This also creates precious feedback on your product, freeing you to optimize it until it's badass. 

When you scratch where people itch, people listen. 

3. Ask God. 

This is not some religious ritual to keep it Christian. This is as real as it gets. God knows everything and since He's way smarter than you and I, why not ask Him to guide you? 

He cares about your business more than you do. He cares about your future customers more than you do. So treat Him like it. Go to your knees and ask Him to fill you with wisdom as you create content for your target audience. 

After all the Psalmist wrote, "His understanding is infinite" (Psalm 147:5). It's hard to improve on infinite. 

And do you know what's really cool? If you consistently create content covering your hyperniche, it will teach YouTube (and any other platform you are posting on) to send your content to people hungry for it. 

And the result? A super targeted following. The kind of following who will become your customers. 

One more tip…

Do not make the mistake of covering random topics. I've seen channels like this. One day it’s about dog training. The next video is about our vacation to Bali. Nothing will confuse and kill your algorithm faster. Stay hyper-focused (kind of like your hyperniche).