How To Build An Audience Of Buyers (Not Just Viewers)

        Your YouTube videos won't make you money if you are obsessing over retention and likes and subscribers. And I know this because I've helped over 700 businesses make millions on YouTube. And this year alone, my own channel pulled in over $4.5 million. So, in this video, I'm going to give you the five-step system that I use in pretty much every video I make that generates sales every time I post one. All right. So, to understand this system, you need to know how making money on YouTube actually works. Otherwise, it's not going to work for you. And the best way to explain this is I want you to imagine that you run a bar and your job is to get everyone inside to drink Johnny Walker's cheapest whiskey all night. Now, it doesn't sound that hard, right? But the thing you're going to quickly realize is there are two types of drinkers. The first are a very small group of whiskey fanatics. So, if you pour them a Johnny and Coke, they look at you like you've spat in their mother's face because they've had that basic whiskey a thousand times before and they think it's lame. And these people actually came to your bar hoping for something more unique with real depth. And the moment you don't give them that, they leave. And then the second type of drinker, these are the complete opposite. They can drink whiskey cokes all night, but if you gave them a neat 100-year-old single malt, they would take one sip and they would pull the face of someone who's eaten a bowl of bees because it would be too strong and it would overwhelm them. So, they'd spit it out. And that's why trying to make videos that get lots of views and then lots of sales at the same time doesn't really work. Because if you want views, you have to make more watered down content that the wider market here can consume without getting overwhelmed. But the thing is that watered down experience repels your buyers because they like the whiskey fanatics want something much deeper. The more serious viewers here are also at the stage where they're ready to pay someone to help them. Okay, so now I'm going to give you my five-step system for making videos that generate sales every time you post one. And then after I'm going to show you how to make videos that get views and sales because it is still possible. All right, so step one of this system works like this. If I want to make sales, I do not make a listical, I do not make an interview video or I do not make a news style update. The style of video is very good for views, but it's often terrible for sales. So instead, I choose one of four other video styles to then design my entire video around that are proven to convert buyers. So the first type, you see this on channels all of the time, and they often have hardly any views at all. And they're a story about how you help someone get a result your buyers want, and they're called case studies. So this video here, this is a case study about how I helped my editor, Greg, go from 0 to $20,000 a month in 4 weeks. And that generated $50,000 in four weeks for my business, which is astonishing. Now, your whiskey drinker viewers, they love this because if they've been thinking about working with you, this is kind of the proof that can get them over the line. The second style is where you give the whiskey drinkers the exact steps to take for the outcome they really care about. Now, these are videos that are usually 20 minutes or longer, and they are packed with value and frameworks and stories. I call them deep dives. And this one deep dive here generated $300,000 in 9 months. Now, the reason whiskey drinkers love these is because they prove you are an expert with systems and processes in place that could help them get a result, not someone repeating a generic blog post online with no credibility. So, they blow up your trust. And then we have the third style you can pick from. Now, this is also amazing for sales because your buyers have basically heard the same advice delivered the same way a thousand times. So, here you make a video where you coach a viewer to help them solve a problem. I call this a roast. is kind of a review, but a roast gives buyers a taste of what it's like to work with you kind of behind the scenes. And if they like that taste, they buy. So, this one roast video I made generated over $100,000 in the last few months. And then the fourth option, I'm a big fan of this style. They're pretty easy to make and you are watching one right now. They're what I call a short process video and all you do is lay out a five-step process people can follow to get a result they want. And some of my best short process videos have generated over $100,000 in the last 12 months. Now, your whiskey drinkers, they like these because it gives them a very quick fix to a specific problem. So, step one, all you do before you make your video is you work out the style of video you're going to produce because the data is overwhelmingly clear. Some styles of videos are more mass market friendly and get you views and some formats buyers love and get sales. So, you want to pick the right type for the job. And then once you've chosen the right video style, you move on to step two, which is all about using the right title to attract the right viewer. Now, to make this simple, what I want you to do is think of your audience as moving through a funnel where people discover you at the top, then they watch your videos, then they move deeper down it, and when they get to the bottom, it means they have made a purchase. And this funnel is kind of split into two halves. The top half is full of viewers that are known as problem aware. They basically know something is wrong in their life, but they don't really know the solution to get rid of that thing. So, they click on problem aare titles that talk about the results they want or the pain that they know they have. So, for example, 11 income streams that made me 200K, how I boosted my metabolism and lost 30 lbs. So, these sort of titles, they are optimized so they can get lots of views because a lot of people will recognize those problems and results the second they see them. Then once someone has researched their problem and they've watched a few videos and they've tried a few things on their own and they become more invested, they then move deeper down this funnel and become what's known as solution aware. So these viewers now click on content that promises the exact fix they think they need. So for example, this video is about breaking generational curses and this video is on a tutorial for green screen lighting. They're solution aware titles because you're only going to click on them if you understand why you need that solution. Now, the thing about people in the solution aware area of the funnel is they're much closer to buying. So, the basic rule here is if you want views, use problem aware titles cuz simply just more people understand the value of them. And if you want sales, use solution aware titles because these people are way more invested and closer to buying. The thing is there is something that makes this a little bit more complex. So let's go one level deeper. What you will find is sometimes solutionaware videos can get huge amounts of views like this video from Nero knowledge. So not that many people are going to understand what that title means but clearly there was a big enough demand for it. So what you have to do is you have to test both types of titles and then look at which ones are bringing you views and which ones are bringing you buyers. And you might get lucky and find that one of them does both. You then move on to step three, which kind of builds on what we've just learned, but this time we apply similar thinking to the content itself. So, most businesses make videos that can't generate sales because they try to solve the broadest, the most obvious problem, the ones that Johnny and Coke drinkers really care about. So, when the serious buyers click on their video about weight loss and they get told point number one is to exercise and eat less, they're like, "Yeah, we know that. Duh." because they've already studied the topics and they've tried all the basics. So, generic problems really turn them off. So, instead, what you do is this. So, this video here got 15,000 views, but it generated $60,000 in sales because the very first problem I called out was something only a buyer would recognize. Now, just to fill you in on what it was, the problem I discussed was known as warm audience depletion. And you only really ever experience that after you've launched a product and you made a huge amount of money and then a few months later you're almost back to zero and you're left going, "Hey on a sec, what's going on?" So the moment the Jack and Coke viewers hear that, which is the mass market, they leave and my retention takes a hit. But the whiskey drinker buyers, they are hooked because suddenly they get hit with the exact problem they have that they've probably been worrying about for ages. And then I explained it to them. And what was insane was when I posted that video, pretty much everyone who came in was saying, "Ed, I'm so glad you made that. I didn't realize that was the problem. I've been stuck on it for ages." So that's the power of calling out buyers specific problems in your content. So the rule for step three is if you want serious buyers, you have to call out the specific problems buyers are trying to solve but can't. And then step four of this system is where most businesses completely mess up. It kind of destroys all of the work we did in steps one to two. And that's mainly because a lot of people hear that your potential buyers, they want depth in a video. And that makes them think, "Ah, cool. Let me just dump everything I know into one video." But that doesn't work because whiskey drinkers, they don't want to walk into a bar and down 2 L of the stuff. It would completely wipe them out. And the same happens with your audience. If you hit them with too much information too fast, without any structure, potential buyers get incredibly overwhelmed. And when you do that, your credibility then drops and they are less likely to trust you and to want to work with you. So the real job of step four isn't to cram in every detail. You know, it's to work out what's the right amount of information to include in a video. So that by the end, the viewers sitting there thinking, "Wow, this is actually so much simpler than I thought. I think I can do this." And when you get that reaction, you inspire them. And an inspired viewer becomes a buyer. A confused viewer does not. Which moves us on to step five of the system and the part that can wreck your entire video and it can make you look like a dog because most people think they have to beg viewers to buy their thing with some sort of dramatic pitch in their video. So they suddenly switch tone and start selling and then they break all of the trust they've built with the viewer. But if you've done steps one to four properly, you don't need to pitch. The buyers will be so inspired, they'll sell themselves. Their natural next step is to go, how do I work with them? So, you just put your link under your video to your offer with a simple call to action. And so long as your content is rocking, that will happen. All right. So, now let's just address the elephant in the room. Does this mean you have to sacrifice your channel growth to make sales? Well, no. You can actually have both still, but there's a certain way of doing it. So, here's how I structure my channel to get both views and sales. So, all I do is this. Some videos I optimize for buyers and I only really track the business metrics they generate like clicks, emails, calls, sales, and leads. Like this video right here is about email marketing. And I know most people just do not care about email. They don't want to do it. They don't even like it. So, it's going to put off a ton of people. But I know that my best clients want that. And that video generated a huge amount of sales as a result. And then I have some videos that I optimize for views, meaning I don't really care about the business metrics as much. I just want new people to find it. So this one here, for example, it was just 40 short lessons. The video is problem aare. The advice is really simple. It never really goes into too much depth. It's very fastpac. It's a dopamine creating video. So it's just one quick lesson after the next after the next. So it works in the same way as keeping people hooked on a short form platform. And it's very easy to watch. so it gets more views. And then this one, I wanted more views. So I just made a contrarian video. And I knew that if I had a strong opinion about something, people would probably talk about it and comment and share. And it worked. James Smith, he made a response about it. And then that drove more people to the video. And then there was people on Instagram cutting it up and arguing with me, which then drove more people to my channel as well. So for every video, I ask myself one question. Do I want views or do I want sales? If my channel's growth stalling, I might just go, "Right, let's focus on views for a bit." If you want more clients, I might just focus on sales. For new channels, just make one in three of your videos a buyer video because you've got to focus more on views. For established channels, you can go 50/50. But in 2025, I actually went 75% buyer content, 25% viewer content, and the channel still grew quite a lot, and the business exploded. The thing is, if your overall channel strategy is wrong, then you can't get either of these things to work. So, watch this video next, and I'm going to show you how to set up a channel so it stands a chance of generating sales and views over the long term. The question is, though, is that video I've just pointed you to optimized for views or buyers? Why don't you go check it out? See if you can work it