Nov 2 • General discussion
Welcome to Videos with Learns
My name is Colin Goh, and I run a video production and digital marketing company called Learns Marketing. Since 2016, we’ve been helping our corporate and small business clients produce close to 1,900 videos. We’ve also covered over 450 digital marketing campaigns during this time, helping our clients close in excess of $60,000,000 in sales.
During these years, while we have produced videos for sales funnels, websites, Facebook ads, TikTok and Instagram reels, and even short films, we never really did venture into longform YouTube videos. All our videos were at most 5 to 7 minutes, and those were considered long-form by some of our clients already.
It wasn’t until 2021, during the pandemic when everyone ventured into doing videos, that we started our YouTube channel. To be honest, we didn’t really know how to do YouTube videos then. I mean, we are good in our video production quality, and we just put up the best-looking videos on YouTube, in the style that we are good with all that while. Our product review videos were top-notch in terms of production quality. My education videos can compete with videos from professional ads agencies. We even did videos with showdowns, vlogs, clones visual effects, even a spec ad that had the brand commended us in. But you know what? Nothing seemed to work. Most of our videos get a few hundred views… Well, maybe once in a while, we get a video with 10k views, but we can’t reproduce the results.
So we persisted for 4 years until September 2024 when my producer then was proposing to change direction to do a video of my new EV then. I was like, “What has an EV gotta do with our channel?” He told me, “Why not just try? What’s the harm?” So I agreed, and we devoted 3 days for the shoot of the BYD Seal car review. So when the video was ready and posted in October, lo and behold… we got a few thousand views within the first 3 weeks. It was nothing excited to most content creators, but for me, this was promising. And within a month, that video clocked 10,000 views. But then, I was thinking it could be a fluke again, so we never really thought about it until towards December.
Then, I was thinking of doing another video, which was closer to what we normally do for our clients. And so, we did a storytelling video entitled “Retrenched at 50 Years Old”. Now storytelling videos are more of our fortes, so I was more hopeful it could do better. And when the video was published in early January of 2025, voila… 10,000 views within 2 to 3 weeks! It got so widespread that WSG and e2i saw this video, and almost wanted to feature us on Prime Minister’s Mayday Speech during the GE period in 2025.
And so, with renewed hope, we decided to create another video, with my EV. But instead of doing another car review, we did a storytelling video instead, disguised as a car video. You know what? 20,000 views within a month! And the previous videos – the BYD Seal review and the retrenched ones, they continued to grow in viewership. So, what did I do after that? We came up with a 4th video, leveraging the formula that was used in the first 3 videos. And this time, this one blew up! The video, entitled “Real Problems of Owning An EV” hit 50,000 views within the first month of posting!
And so the story continues. Knowing that we have a formula, a proven formula, we quite replicating content after content. In the midst of it, I was doing some testing of new elements. Some didn’t do well, some improved the views further. And so today, our best performing video has clocked over 200,000 views.
Oh by the way, the views are one thing. By itself, views can’t pay the bills. Well, actually it can. But more of that later. What I want to bring up are the other “perks” that come along the way… perks that I’ve never dreamt of getting. First, sometime during the 4th video, I started getting emails from interested sponsors. They want to send me car cams, car mats and air fresheners to review. I get to keep the product, but they want a fresh video from me. I decided not to go for these as it could be too much work for the value of the products. But these product sponsorship deals kept coming week after week.
Then the collaboration deals started coming in. First, it was… no surprise, BYD. So one of the 5 dealers here contacted me to help them feature their models. No money would be paid, but I get to keep the car for a few days. Then Tesla did the same. Their marketing department wanted me to review one of their flagships, and they offered me that car for a week! And then other dealers started approaching me. And then platforms like sgCarMart too. And I forgot about LianHeZaoBao – our national Chinese newspaper, also asked me for an interview. Then finally, the bigger paid deal came in. It was a very popular insurance platform who wanted to partner with me with paid sponsorship deals – meaning, if I mention their service or product for 60 seconds, I get paid a few Ks.
But that’s not all. Remember what I said about views not paying the bills? Actually, YouTube is the best platform to be paid for views! Once you get your channel monetised, which means you’ve clocked 1,000 organic subscribers and 4,000 organic watch hours, you will start to be a YouTube Paid Partner where views of your videos will make your cash. Currently, since my channel’s monetisation 6 months ago, YouTube has paid us mid 4-figures of AdSense money. It’s not a lot, but the number will continue to go up as our subscriber count increases.
And speaking of subscribers, I personally think this is the most valuable asset in my YouTube journey. Sure, the collabs and sponsorships are great. But my subscribers – all organic who subscribe to my channel because they want to watch my future videos, are where the big opportunities lie. At the time of this filming, we are close to 10,000 subs. By the time we reached 10,000, collaborators and sponsors will see us in a different light. Not only that, for you the biz owner, imagine what you can do if you start offering them your quality products or services? On top of that, you can do affiliate sales to your community. Yes, it’s your community who had willing requested for you to show them your videos – every new one that is posted! Now imagine when you have 100,000 subscribers, what level of authority are you at?
You can sense from my tone that I was excited. Things like that never happened to me before. I felt like a star! And even at the comparatively early stage where I am, I still get paid a few Ks per month while producing videos that we’re doing regardless anyway.
So anyway, guess what I did next? Yes, I wanted to try to replicate this formula to other industries. And first on the list was my wife’s business as a property agent. Long story short, she gained 2,000 subscribers within 4 months, and clocked 5 videos with 5-figure views. What’s more valuable are the leads she get – dozens of quality ones whom she’s currently serving. And if she manages to close all of them, her potential sales would be in the 6 figures.
So now… it’s your turn I’ll be attempting to help. It’s going to be an exciting journey. But I need to bring you back to reality – this won’t be instant success. It took us 9 months to see results… and for my wife’s channel, it has been 3 months since we put up the first video with our formula, and around a month since her channel was monetised. So you shouldn’t expect that you’ll be able to get your channel monetised with 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in just one video. It will probably take months. But no worries, every journey to success starts with the first step. And I’m so excited that you’re taking your first step here with what I’ll be sharing with you in this workshop. And starting today, now, I have confidence that you will be on your way to create your own Youtube Content Engine to attract collaborations and sponsorship deals, make money from AdSense, and build your own community for your business.
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Welcome to Videos with Learns
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Learn about Video Production on YouTube and Digital Marketing with Colin - Director of Learns
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