How Doug Cunnington from Niche Site Project Created a Successful YouTube Channel (18.4k subscribers)

Join Tyler as he interviews Doug Cunnington, owner of Niche Site Project and a very successful YouTube channel. Hear how Doug got started in blogging and YouTube video, and why he made the decision to focus on his video content. As a management consultant, Doug had some flexibility to try new ventures and entered into affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing often comes blogging, and Doug began creating a lot of how-to content. His favorite way to provide how-to content is video, which quickly began gaining traction. After looking through his data, he realized that users from YouTube were 5x more likely to subscribe to his email list than any other traffic. He says the two things from the beginning that are still helpful to him today are: 1) Have a strong mindset and follow-through 2) Be more specific and focus on niche material Doug warns about focusing too hard on SEO and keyword research to find "that perfect niche" and instead consider what people want to know or how you can help people solve a problem. To find a good niche or keywords to optimize for, Doug suggests typing inquiries such as "How to" or "Where is" into YouTube to see what sort of auto-completions appear. It is also helpful to see what others in a similar niche are discussing so you know either what you are competing against or how you may provide information others have missed. Such things to look at are the thumbnails, titles, length of video, and description. When creating content, it is important to provide information that is valuable and to focus on something you're passionate about. Video content--from filming to post-production to optimizing--can be a big project to take on, and you're more likely to stick with it if you really enjoy the subject. For Doug, he gauges the success of his videos if visitors sign up for his email list and view time, though he says "Like, Comment, and Subscribe" can also be very powerful if done well. You can find Doug at the following places: