What is the Fastest Way to Grow your YouTube Channel with Jessica Stansberry

Ever feel like content creation is a hamster wheel you can’t escape? You’re posting daily, showing up everywhere, and still not seeing real results. My guest today, Jessica Stansberry, has built a business that works for her—24/7. In this episode, we talk about how she uses YouTube to create evergreen content that generates leads and sales on autopilot, how to overcome your fear of showing up on video, and why the right title and thumbnail might matter more than your content.

Key Takeaways:

• Why YouTube beats short-form platforms for longevity

• How to overcome fear and insecurities on camera

• The real “rules” for video length, titles, and thumbnails

• Jessica’s SEO strategy for being found months (or years) later

• Tips for building a freedom-first business model with content

Sign Up with Metricool today!

https://metricool.com/katie

Try Keywords Everywhere:

https://keywordseverywhere.com/

Visit Jessia Stansberry's social media pages:

Website: https://heyjessica.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicastansberry/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicastansberry/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jessicastansberry

Katie Brinkley (00:05.471)

I get it. Sometimes it feels like we are just on the never-ending hamster wheel of content creation, right? Like posting every day, showing up constantly, and we're still trying to go out there and make sales, right? Well, what if you could make all your content once and have it work for you 24-7? Yeah, that's exactly what today's guest does.

And she is breaking down her entire system on how you can do it too.

Katie Brinkley (00:39.659)

Welcome back to this week's episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. Today, I'm sitting down with somebody who's not just built a business, she's built freedom, freedom. So today's guest is Jessica Stansberry. She is a digital product queen, a YouTube content machine, and one of the best when it comes to teaching everyday entrepreneurs how to market smarter, not harder. We are drinking the same Kool-Aid, girlfriend.

Jessica (00:51.022)

you

Katie Brinkley (01:09.775)

And if you've ever dreamed of waking up to Stripe notifications or building a business that doesn't require you to be on 24 seven, you're in good hands. This is your episode. Jessica, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jessica (01:24.224)

Yes, of course. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Katie Brinkley (01:27.127)

Well, and you and I got the opportunity to meet at Social Media Marketing World. so tell us a little bit about your background, like what got you into the YouTube world and kind of this smarter, not harder bandwagon.

Jessica (01:31.15)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (01:38.242)

Yeah.

Jessica (01:42.772)

Yeah. So, when I, so I have a 14 year old and a 12 year old. and when I was pregnant with my 14 year old, I was like 23 years old, you know, and then corporate and I was miserable. And when I had him, I just, all I wanted to do was stay at home with him. Like I, couldn't fathom like leaving him with somebody else and then going to a job I hated like that.

You know, just didn't work for me and we couldn't really afford for me not to work. So, I found a way to work from home and basically, after a few, failed attempts at other random things, I kind of used, so I have a degree in, advertising. And I used like a lot of my graphic design skills and I was like, I'm going to teach myself how to design websites and how to, you know, do all of this thing. And I'd been doing business cards and things like that for years. So I kind of just leaned into that.

and started doing web design and that was in 2010. And then in about 2015, I was like, know, I feel like I could do more. And that's when I really like went online, online, know, like really like, oh, I'm gonna like do this thing and, you know, try and create content and all of that stuff. And through that, I was like, oh, I've...

Like I like video, I like doing things on video, like let's go. And in 2016, I put up my first YouTube video. So it just kind of snowballed from there. Um, and then I realized the power of YouTube, right? Like YouTube is so, so evergreen. Um, and I mean, I still have videos to this day from then, from like 20, 2016, 2017, that get me views like now. And so it's just like, it's just this really cool platform that I love.

Katie Brinkley (03:30.977)

Well, and I think that one of the things, like I've been so afraid of video for years. And that's one of the hardest things for me is like, man, I gotta be on video. But since I do the podcasts, I was like, you know what? I'll just turn on the camera. And it's made a world of difference because there's so many people that do consume their content via video. And YouTube, you know, it is owned by Google. It's amazing to me how many times I see something that

Jessica (03:48.334)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Brinkley (04:00.181)

I type into Google and it gives me a YouTube video as the answer. So for someone that's brand new to YouTube and they're saying, are you sure I should do YouTube? Like, why not Reels or Instagram or why not TikTok? Why YouTube and what would be the first step that they should take?

Jessica (04:02.72)

Yes.

Jessica (04:13.538)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (04:21.794)

Sure. So YouTube, because it's evergreen, like that would be like the thing. Well, there's so many more reasons and we'll talk about them, but the biggest thing is because it's evergreen. mean, think about a real or an it's or a Tik Tok, right? How long does it take before it dies? It's like you got at max a few days. It's like a fruit fly or whatever they are that to only live like a couple of days. So you don't have long, right? And so you're creating all of this content and then it dies like really quickly.

With YouTube, but like I say, I mean, I have videos from eight plus years ago that still get views and that's amazing, right? Like they still get views. They still get leads. They still get sales. And so it's like why, you know, if you're going to put in the effort, like I personally am like, okay, let's put in the effort to do the thing. That's going to work the longest, the hardest for me. And yes, is it more effort? Absolutely. Like I'm not going to sugarcoat that at all. Right? Like a YouTube video is going to be way more effort than like a 30 second.

you know, however, it is worth that effort. yeah, so what was your next question? What was the first something?

Katie Brinkley (05:27.767)

What would be the first step be for someone that's, let's say they're like, all right, well, I've been focusing on Instagram and I'm not really seeing the ROI of it. And you keep saying that like, this has a lot longer evergreen. What would their first step be? Should they just start with shorts? Or what would you recommend to somebody that's brand new to creating for YouTube?

Jessica (05:30.529)

step.

Jessica (05:36.43)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (05:51.648)

Yeah, so you could start with shorts. I'm not a shorts fan. I do shorts and I've experimented with shorts and I've come to that conclusion by my own methods. But I'm just not a shorts fan because it's kind of the same thing. In the algorithm, they don't live very long. And then also, they're not really attracting your people. So you really need somebody to watch a consistent amount of your content.

before they're ready to like take that next step with you, whatever that is, like the lead magnet or a sailor, whatever. And you know, getting like, how many shorts are they going to have to watch before they're like, this person and how many are they going to get served before that's the case? So I'm not a big fan of shorts. You could start with shorts though, if it's really comfortable to you, if you've been doing shorter form content somewhere else. but what I will say is what's really interesting is the content that does well on Tik TOK that does well on Instagram and it does well on shorts is all different.

Katie Brinkley (06:27.115)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (06:46.83)

So even though they're like the same format, if you will, in the same timeframe, the same, whatever the content itself is different on what does well. And so I don't know that that's what I would do. The first step for me, honestly, what I would say is just to start, like go ahead and come up with four or five topics that people, you know, come to you and they have like reservations of working with you, or they have reservations of the thing that you talk about.

and see if you can come up with some videos that really inform them and help them see that like these things are not the roadblocks they think they are and do those as long form videos. So you can use your phone. Like our phones are such good quality now, you know, are like use your phone and put up a video on YouTube that like you say sits in the algorithm with SEO because it is owned by Google. It will get found on Google. And so see what you can do there. That's what I would recommend.

Katie Brinkley (07:29.431)

Hmm.

Jessica (07:44.608)

and understand that YouTube is a marathon, not a sprint. That's my biggest, yeah.

Katie Brinkley (07:48.609)

I love that. I love that. because it's, we've gotten so used to this instant gratification of, know, like, did it go viral? How many likes did it get? And there's been some of my videos that somehow have like gotten a little bump. And I'm like, this one's being seen a whole bunch, like getting comments on this one. Why? And it's crazy to me. So if someone's, if someone's just, like, I keep going back to just starting on YouTube because I, for some reason, even though

Jessica (07:54.85)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (08:06.508)

Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica (08:16.398)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Brinkley (08:18.135)

You said you went all in back in 2016, and I definitely feel like you were ahead of the curve with the content creation, especially in the video form. And there's some people that I think that maybe because of short form video, they're willing to be on video now because of it. What if they're jumping over to YouTube? How important is it to really like...

Jessica (08:24.354)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (08:35.586)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Brinkley (08:43.243)

like the length of a YouTube video? What is an ideal length that they should be shooting for? Should we be doing Joe Rogan three hour long YouTube videos here or are we talking like three minutes?

Jessica (08:50.958)

Right.

Yeah, that's such a good question. And it's probably the most asked question. Honestly, like when I start talking about YouTube strategy, people are like, how long is the right? There isn't one. so what I like to say, there's two things I want to say. One is your video needs to be as long as it needs to be without fluff. So you don't want to extend your video just for the case of making it longer when what you extend it with is garbage, right? Like repeating yourself and like, whatever.

Katie Brinkley (09:19.915)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (09:21.998)

Um, so get to your point and do the things, but make it as long as it needs to be. I don't care if it's five minutes. Well, I do care if it's five minutes. I'll get to that in a second, but I don't care if it's five minutes or 25 minutes, you know, um, as long as it gets to the point, because the viewer is going to care that you helped them, not how long they sat there to watch that thing. That all being said, um, so right now what is doing best on the platform is

TV watchable content. So we're talking 20 minutes plus. And so this is, you know, content that someone can pull up on their TV and feel good about like leaving on. They don't have to like switch it in a second or whatever. In addition to that, the minimum that I would do is about eight minutes. And the reason for that is because with like when you're monetized, you cannot put mid roll ads unless your video is eight minutes or longer.

And from my experience and like the channels I've assessed and things like that, it seems like YouTube wants your videos to be at least eight minutes. So, I would say eight minutes is your minimum for a long form video. And honestly, if you can make it really entertaining and really informative and fun and exciting for 20 minutes, that's what I would push for.

Katie Brinkley (10:39.415)

So what are some of your tips that you have on making it entertaining? You said the E word, you know, and it's a lot of times, one of the most common things I hear from people when I'm trying to get them to turn on the camera is, well, what I do is so boring. I'm boring. And so what are some of your tips to make it entertaining?

Jessica (10:44.524)

Yes.

Jessica (10:56.982)

Like I'm boring. Yes, yes.

Jessica (11:04.267)

Yeah. So I think a lot of times people think that they're boring and they're not number one. Number two, you have to remember that the camera sucks your personality out. So I like to tell people that there's like a little gremlin in the camera and he is his whole job is to like make you look like you have no personality when it comes out the other end. And I don't know why he lives there and I wish he had a better job, but here we are, you know? And so you kind of have to take things up a notch. I would say like when you're filming, try and take your personality up a notch.

stand up, see if that really helps you like, you know, have more of a personality or project a little bit more. But honestly, the biggest thing would be the format of the video. If you can hook somebody in the beginning and get them to stick around and then have like personal anecdotes and then talk about the thing you're talking about and then, you know, talk to the video as if it's a friend, not as if it's 80 people that are watching you teach them, you know, this random thing.

Katie Brinkley (11:57.835)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (12:03.712)

and then give them a call to action and get them to want to watch more of your videos, that's what's going to keep them there, but also keep them watching more and more things. So it's the difference in, you know, hi, welcome to my channel. Today we're gonna talk about, I don't know, bananas and, like I don't know, random topic. Today we're gonna talk about bananas.

and how they're yellow and like, here's why bananas are yellow. Like that is boring as hell, right? Like, okay. Whereas if I showed up with like a banana and I was like, do you see this? Is this yellow? Is this green? What color is this friggin banana? And like, I just leaned into my personality and I leaned into how I would have this same conversation with a friend. That's what's going to make it more entertaining. Yeah. My random.

Katie Brinkley (12:52.651)

Well, I think we will all be on the lookout for the banana video. And how can you bring that back into what you do? Well, I know that you have, I bet you could. mean, like you hooked me in there and you're not even holding the banana. I'm like, well, I don't know what color is it? Is this like the dress video where it's like, the picture like is like blue or is it white or whatever or gold? Well, okay. So making it entertaining. And I think that that's one of the things too, where a lot of people

Jessica (13:01.068)

Yeah, I could probably get there.

Jessica (13:11.96)

Yes.

Yeah.

Katie Brinkley (13:22.591)

are afraid of people rejecting them because of who they are. Like, well, I know I need to be more professional or I know I need to be like this. I mean, for me, one of the biggest holdups for me creating video was I make weird faces. If you notice, I kind of talk out the left side of my mouth when I talk. And it's because of the microphone. And when I started with radio to talk out left side of my mouth, it reduces the popping sound. But I still do it to...

Jessica (13:23.938)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (13:28.195)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (13:44.108)

Yeah.

Katie Brinkley (13:51.573)

to this day and it made me super uncomfortable to show up on video. Everyone's gonna notice and they're all gonna think I talk weird. But that's something that was in my head, you know? And so I think that that's one of the things where people are afraid to turn on the camera because we're gonna be judged. with all of this stuff that's online, like man, I think that you just need to...

Jessica (13:57.868)

Nope, I didn't know at all.

Right, yes.

Katie Brinkley (14:17.759)

understand there's going to be people out there that have nothing better to do with their lives other than judge.

Jessica (14:22.056)

totally, totally. And we're all, we're all self-conscious about something. So, when I was going to start on YouTube, I had been convinced of it. Like I had seen these or heard somebody on a podcast and I had like seen a couple of videos and I'm like, I know that I would be good at this. Like I know that this is something that I should do, but I had like, I was about 15 pounds over like my lowest weight. I had lost a bunch of weight after my second son and I was like rocking a bikini in Hawaii, right?

And I had gained about 15 pounds back, which now is insane. Cause I've gained like quite a bit more than that, you know, but I literally was like, yeah, I told, I tell people all the time, I was trying to wait for that 15 pounds to like, to lose that 15 pounds. And if I would have waited for that, I'd have never started still. Like I have gained more, know? And so my weight was a problem, my accent. and a lot of times I talk about this in like, like when I'm speaking on stage and stuff.

Katie Brinkley (15:08.213)

Yeah. Yup.

Jessica (15:19.742)

I had been told my whole life that my accent made me sound stupid. And to the point, yes, to the point where I actually took broadcasting classes in school, cause my degree was in communication and I was in at like my concentration was advertising, but it was the same college as like, broadcasting PR, you know, those kinds of things. And we had to like cross pollinate our major, you know? And so I remember I walked into a broadcasting class and

I went to college at a university that's only like 45 minutes away from me. And so a lot of the kids talk like me, right. Or worse. And so I walk into this broadcasting class and this professor walks in and he says, first things first, do you ever expect to be successful in TV or radio? You cannot have an accent like this. Like he just, that was what he said. That was like the first statement to the class. And you know, I grew up hearing you movies. If there's a stupid person in a movie, they're Southern like,

Katie Brinkley (16:15.255)

Yep.

Jessica (16:16.118)

That's just what it is. And so I just had this like limiting belief that I couldn't be successful because of my accent, because I sounded Southern. lo and behold, it's the thing that people remember me for.

Katie Brinkley (16:29.265)

Yes, I know. know. Like, it's so, I find it very endearing. And I'm like, I just want to go have a cup of sweet tea with you.

Jessica (16:33.09)

Yes!

All right. I love it. I would have a couple of sweet day with you. Yeah. And so I think, and I think a lot of the things that we are self-conscious about, like you just saying that about the left side of your mind, like I wouldn't have noticed to save my life. Like couldn't have paid me. If at the end of this interview, you were like, there was something that I'm self-conscious. I would have been like, I don't know the curtain. Like I literally wouldn't have, wouldn't have picked anything out, you know?

And so we have to remember that, like we're our own soul, like worst critics. And so we're noticing things that other people don't. Now that being said, are there mean people in the world? Yes. Are there people, like you said, that have nothing better to do? Yes. And we all have our own ways to deal with that. So I like to clap back at the haters. I'm a big fan of, you know, just getting my rocks off, clapping back. Like somebody said something mean. like, you know, mama didn't let you out of the basement today. Did she? Like,

You know? Like, oh, did she not bring you food? I'm so sorry. You know? So, or like I like to tell people, yeah, I like to tell people.

Katie Brinkley (17:35.368)

my God.

Katie Brinkley (17:40.087)

love that. Now I kind of want to have someone troll me just so I can say that back to them. I love it.

Jessica (17:45.166)

Yeah. Yes. And I like to tell people like Google is free. You know, people will say stuff and I'm like, you're an idiot and Google is free. Like, I don't know what else to say about this. And I will say though, I feel like I got more hate comments five years ago than I do now, even with a bigger following. Um, because I don't know. I think maybe either people calm down or I hid enough words in my comment section to where the words they're using don't come into my comments.

Katie Brinkley (17:52.213)

No.

Katie Brinkley (18:02.103)

school.

Jessica (18:14.904)

So like you can do that. You can hide like if you wanted to hide the word fat or if you wanted to workout or lose weight or you know anything like if you had a a mole on your face and you were worried people were going to mention it, right? Like you could hide the word mole and these people can still comment it and they think they're commenting and they're like keyboard warrioring and then it never shows up anywhere. It's a super fun feature because I'm like you're an idiot. So I think

Katie Brinkley (18:23.797)

Anything.

Katie Brinkley (18:40.84)

Hahaha

Jessica (18:43.448)

Two things, one, understand that like you, everybody has insecurities that they're gonna have and like, you kind of have to push through that. It's something you'll probably always be working on, honestly. Like it's something I still like work on now. I'm really comfortable with the camera from here up. I'm not as comfortable with the camera when my whole body is showing, you know, and that's something I wanna get better at. And so we're all gonna have those things. And then also like,

Just let them. What's the girl's, the lady's name that's yeah. Like let them. I don't know what else to say. Like they're, they are quite literally likely like losers in their mama's basement. Like I don't, I just don't put any weight on their opinion.

Katie Brinkley (19:15.049)

Mel Robbins, yeah. Yeah.

Katie Brinkley (19:26.943)

I love that. with everything that you do, we've been talking a lot about this. You have that brand new course, right? Tell us really quick about it, because we were talking about it before I hit record here. And it sounds perfect for people who, whether or not they are just starting their channel or they want to take it to the next level and really, like I said at the beginning, see those Stripe notifications coming through while they sleep.

Jessica (19:34.402)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica (19:49.07)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (19:55.756)

Yes. So I have a lot of like individual courses. Like I have a course about YouTube. It's called YouTube Rockstars. I've had it for six years. I have a course called affiliate marketing mastery that helps people with affiliate marketing. I also have a course on digital products that helps people create digital products. And so this new course is called post to profit. And it is literally created to bundle all of my courses together and give you a roadmap, whether you're a business owner or a creator to create content that actually makes you money on the other side.

So I'm really excited about it. I was telling you, I'm not a membership girl. I tried and I just can't do it. So this is more of like a membership without the monthly fee, even though there are payment plans, but like, you know what I mean? So you get access to all of my courses. There's dozens of courses in there that are literally for content creation and how to take that content creation and turn it into money.

Katie Brinkley (20:38.06)

Yeah.

Katie Brinkley (20:48.887)

when you can kind of pick and choose and choose your own adventure sort of with the courses that you have. So I'll include a link to that in the show notes. I want to talk about how YouTube is full of SEO, right? how could, because we said at the beginning how, you know, all of sudden it lives for, well, for me, all of a sudden some video from a while ago is all of sudden being seen more and it has that longevity. So let's talk about how the SEO is.

Jessica (20:51.15)

Yep.

Jessica (20:59.884)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Jessica (21:10.456)

Yes.

Katie Brinkley (21:17.968)

so important for your videos. How do you do the keyword research for your videos?

Jessica (21:23.478)

Yes. So the biggest thing that I use is, well, I use two different tools. So I use TubeBuddy, which is a YouTube, yes, love it. It's YouTube specific. So you're going to be able to go in and put in keywords and it's going to be like, you can or cannot do this. You know what I mean? Like it's going to give you a score. But I love to kind of raw dog the, the key word.

Katie Brinkley (21:30.838)

I love TubeBuddy.

Jessica (21:47.534)

I don't know another word, the keyword research a little bit because I do think it's a little bit more precise. So I use a tool called Keywords Everywhere and it's actually, it used to be free, but now it's paid, but it's like very minimal payment. I don't think I've ever paid more than like $10 for it and I use it all the time. So essentially what it is is it's a Chrome extension and I think they charge you per like 10 searches or a hundred searches, I don't know. And

When you go into YouTube or Pinterest or Google or wherever you're going to search and you type in the keyword and you type in the thing, it's going to give you like metrics. It's going to give you competition. It's going to give you how many searches per month, and it's going to give you the cost per click, which I couldn't care less about.

Katie Brinkley (22:29.719)

Do you have a TubeBuddy affiliate link? I don't have one. I use it. We'll include the TubeBuddy link in the comments here. I don't have an affiliate link for it, but I use it as well. do have to, everything that Jessica, that you're saying, I could not agree with more. It's been huge for helping me grow my channel, grow my clients' channels. I think it's great.

Jessica (22:32.876)

I do. I do. Yeah.

Jessica (22:41.463)

Okay, perfect.

Jessica (22:52.802)

Yes. No, I agree. I use TubeBuddy for so many things. They actually have like A-B testing for titles. Cause now YouTube has it built in for thumbnails, but they even have it for titles. Like it's, it's great. But I'm a big fan of, of keyword keywords everywhere too. And essentially what I like to say is you, you can't get too big for your britches. And like, that's what like it's pulling in a Southern saying there, right?

Katie Brinkley (22:58.059)

Yeah.

Jessica (23:18.434)

because a lot of people want to go after a keyword that's searched like 10,000 times a month, like, whatever, but your channel doesn't have that much authority yet. So I'm a big fan of saying like, let's match your authority with how many searches per month these keywords are. So I use keywords everywhere and TubeBuddy, but keywords everywhere. And let's say I want to search or I want to rank for digital products and I go in and it's times, but let's say my channel only has 10,000 subscribers. I'm getting, yeah.

Katie Brinkley (23:46.071)

Only. I'm happy with three. But yeah.

Jessica (23:48.382)

Right, right. But I'm getting too big for my britches at that point. So what you really want to do is try and match your subscriber number to how many searches per month there are. If you have less than 500 subscribers, you can go up to like 500 searches a month. but the thing there is what that does is it kind of keeps you on the level you can actually rank for in the SEO. So sometimes

Like people think, I'm going to go after the higher search levels, but you, if you have a small channel, you cannot compete in those searches. Like you just can't. So that's how I like to do it. Also nowadays, my strategy is much more get found in suggested and the home feed than it is being found in search. Yeah. Yeah.

Katie Brinkley (24:32.929)

How do we do it? How do we do it? How do we get found in the suggestive feed? Tell us, tell us the secret.

Jessica (24:40.052)

It is, it's going to be, it's going to sound so fluffy. I hate, I wish I had like a better, I wish I had a better answer, but here's my best answer. yes, still do the SEO, right? Like still try and like find keywords that you can rank for blah, blah. But the biggest thing is, is formulating a title that is SEO friendly, but also really clickable. So where people make the mistake here,

is they'll say like, how to create digital products. And that is an SEO heavy title, right? That's going to get you found in search and you might show up on somebody suggested, but like it's not a suggested kind of title. What you really want to do is, you know, 10 ways that I use digital products to grow my business. It's more personal, it's more clickable. It's more of something that YouTube is going to say, okay, let's show this to more people.

The other piece of being shown and suggested though, is the video content actually being really good. So if somebody is, so a lot of times what'll happen with a search is somebody will go and they'll search the thing and they'll click it and then they will watch a little bit and they'll dip out or they'll watch the whole thing but they skip through it trying to get to the answer, right? That tells YouTube that this video isn't very good. It just gives people information. So we want people watching our whole video.

and then that's gonna get it more in suggested than it is in search. I wish it was in this fluffy, it is.

Katie Brinkley (26:14.177)

Well, and I think that that really was a great segue into my next question because I wanted to talk about titles and thumbnails. Like, what is the role for both thumbnails and titles in getting more views?

Jessica (26:27.566)

Yeah. So probably these two things are the most important pieces of YouTube. And somebody might fight me on that, but I'd say most people wouldn't. I don't know. Like most YouTubers are going to be like, I agree. Um, and the reason for that is my big philosophy is if they don't click, they don't watch. Like that's so the only reason these people are clicking on your video is the title and the thumbnail. That's it. And so if they don't click, they don't watch. And so you can't ever get to those other metrics. You can't ever get to like,

watch time or whatever because they're not clicking. So titles and thumbnails are the most important thing, honestly. And I would say the biggest thing is your title again is going to be SEO friendly and clickable. So I like to say SEO and a little sass. Like that's what I always like to say, like a little sass on the title. So instead of saying like how to create digital products, it's, it might be how to create digital products.

Katie Brinkley (27:01.687)

Mm-hmm.

Jessica (27:25.71)

that make you $10,000 per month. Like that's the SaaS, right?

Katie Brinkley (27:29.483)

I thought you were going to say that don't suck.

Jessica (27:32.46)

Right. Yes. Something like that's perfect. That is perfect. Or like one I've done before that did really well was something about digital products. And I was like, not on Etsy because a lot of people just think you can like create a digital product and throw it up on Etsy. that's the extent of it. So like, yes, like a little bit of sass to the title, like not just these like really straightforward titles. Then in addition to that,

If anybody hears anything I've said in this podcast, let this be the thing you hear and let this be the thing that you don't forget. Okay. And that is do not repeat the title in any way in the thumbnail. So a lot of times people will be like how to create digital products. And then the thumbnail also says how to create digital products. And it's like, what the hell are you doing? Sorry. Can I cause I'm sorry.

Katie Brinkley (28:22.06)

Yeah, yeah, no, but I mean, it's real estate that you're wasting right there, right?

Jessica (28:25.422)

Yes. So much real estate. Yes. I tell people all the time, like this is such valuable real estate. The thumbnail should be a partner to the title, not its twin. Right. And so it should help the title. The title should help the thumbnail. Thumbnail should help the title. These two things should work together to make someone say, I'm clicking that one over all of the other options that I have, whether it's showing up on suggested home or in search. Like they have to do that. And so a lot of people are like, well, what do I put on my thumbnail?

think about it like how can I convey like an emotion that is had in some way in the video or how can I make somebody ask a question? Like how can I add on to the title a little bit? So I just did a video where it's not live yet but it goes along with my launch of this new like program and the title of the video was going to be if they don't click they don't watch.

Katie Brinkley (29:10.142)

Okay.

Jessica (29:22.092)

But then I was like, you know, that's really not telling them what the video is about. I really need to like, you know, more so title it with something that's about. So the title, I changed it to eight years of YouTube advice in 18 minutes. Okay. Then my thumbnail, I said, if they don't click, they don't watch because it's a piece of that advice. And so these things, yes, yes, absolutely.

Katie Brinkley (29:43.617)

almost like a subtitle, you know, yeah. So like this is the title and then the thumbnail is kind of the subtitle, right? Okay. Okay.

Jessica (29:52.044)

Yes, or vice versa. You could even do it vice versa. I've seen people do that. The thumbnail should just add to the title. Like it should really make it more clickable. If you saw the title without the thumbnail, it should be clickable. But once you add the title or the thumbnail, it should be like very clickable, right?

Katie Brinkley (30:08.629)

OK, yeah, I love that. Man, Jessica, we only got through half the questions that I put together for this interview. No, I mean, this was so good. And I learned so much. I love talking YouTube. like I said, I love hearing your sweet, sweet southern accent. So if people want to hear more of your accent and learn from you, learn all the things in your brand new course, Post a Profit,

Jessica (30:14.552)

Sorry.

Jessica (30:27.918)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Brinkley (30:32.695)

We'll have the link to that in the show notes. Where can they follow you online? Tell us all the things, Jessica.

Jessica (30:39.03)

Yeah. So Instagram and YouTube are my like main platforms where I like hang out. So both of those are just my name, Jessica Stansberry. So youtube.com forward slash Jessica Stansberry. And then on Instagram is Jessica Stansberry. So, then, yeah, I'll have the like any kind of links anywhere are always on those two platforms. So you can find me anywhere there.

Katie Brinkley (30:58.109)

Amazing. Yeah, and if you've been sleeping on YouTube, man, I got to tell you, that was one of the best things I did in 2023 was really kind of start focusing in on creating YouTube content. it's been great. I love doing YouTube now. yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you again so much, for joining us on the show today.

Jessica (31:02.382)

Yep.

Jessica (31:11.81)

Yes, exactly.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.