--- title: 'YouTube Monetization and AI Tools for Creators' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=5yFkkdeJ230' video_id: '5yFkkdeJ230' date: 2026-07-14 duration_sec: 0 --- # YouTube Monetization and AI Tools for Creators > Source: [YouTube Monetization and AI Tools for Creators](https://youtube.com/watch?v=5yFkkdeJ230) ## Summary In this podcast episode, YouTube Shopping head of content Lauren Selinsky interviews creative entrepreneur and YouTube educator Roberto Blake. With over 600,000 subscribers and two decades of experience, Blake shares insights on monetization strategies, the power of YouTube Shopping, and how creators can leverage AI tools to streamline their workflow and boost revenue. ### Key Points - **Introduction to Roberto Blake** [00:00] — Roberto Blake is a creative entrepreneur, author, and YouTube educator with over 600,000 subscribers and 1,700 videos. He has been coaching content creators since 2017. - **Diversifying Monetization Methods** [01:30] — YouTube offers 10-12 native monetization methods including AdSense, brand deals, fan funding, memberships, and YouTube Shopping. Blake emphasizes the importance of using multiple streams. - **YouTube Shopping as Passive Income** [03:00] — YouTube Shopping affiliate program allows creators to earn passive income by tagging products. Auto-tagging features make it easy to monetize back catalog content. - **Misconceptions About YouTube Shopping** [04:30] — Many creators think their audience won't click affiliate links, but Blake shares a story of a homesteading creator with 30,000 subscribers who earned $300 commission on his first sale. - **Streamlining Monetization** [07:00] — Creators can turn on multiple monetization features (ads, memberships, merch) and let YouTube handle automation. Auto-tagging for shopping is a set-it-and-forget-it feature. - **Using AI to Reduce Burnout** [10:00] — AI tools like Gemini and YouTube Studio can help with content planning, brainstorming, and analyzing audience preferences. Blake recommends using AI for mechanical tasks to free up creative energy. - **Planning for Sales Periods** [15:00] — AI can help creators plan content around seasonal sales events, create storyboards, and optimize product presentation. Tools like Gemini and Notebook LM can assist with research and idea generation. - **Repetition Builds Trust** [20:00] — Repeating successful content formats and products is effective because most viewers are new. Consistency breeds familiarity and trust, which leads to higher engagement and sales. - **Teaching Audiences to Shop** [25:00] — Creators should educate their audience on how to use YouTube Shopping, especially during live streams. A short micro-tutorial can normalize the shopping experience. - **Overcoming the Fear of Selling** [28:00] — Blake advises creators to reframe selling as being helpful. If a product solves a problem for the audience, recommending it is valuable. Creators should capture the value they create. ### Conclusion Roberto Blake encourages creators to embrace YouTube Shopping and AI tools as ways to generate passive income and reduce burnout. By focusing on audience trust and leveraging automation, creators can build sustainable businesses. ## Transcript Hi Insiders, I'm Lauren Selinsky, head of content at YouTube Shopping and we are back with our podcast talking to creators like Roberto Blake, who is a creative entrepreneur, author and YouTube educator with over 600,000 subscribers who has produced over 1,700 videos and has been creating on the platform for two decades. He's been coaching content creators since 2017 and helping them turn their creative work into thriving brands and businesses. Roberto, how's it going? It's going great. Thanks so much for having me. For the folks at home who may not know the type of content you make, give us some background on on what you make as a YouTube creator. Well, where I started was I actually helped content creators and freelancers who were learning different software. So, basically video editing, graphic design, that sort of thing. That got me from zero to 100,000 subscribers. Then I actually started getting a lot of questions because I got 100,000 subscribers with uh I think in 2015, February 2015, I had 20,000 subscribers. I woke up in April of 2016 with 100,000 subscribers. They were like, "How did you grow so fast?" So, they started asking me those questions. So, I started shifting my focus and that's been uh my content for quite a while now. So, I help content creators who want to go full-time, take this seriously, go from hobby to pro and make sure that they become owners in their own creative business. And I think as being an educator, you are really on the pulse of all the different ways to monetize on YouTube, which is why I'm so glad you're here today. >> Oh, yeah. So, let's talk about that for a second, right? Obviously, your experience as a creator and as an educator, you see all the different ways to monetize on YouTube. Can you talk to me a bit about how creators should be diversifying their methods? And then, of course, specifically about YouTube Shopping. Sure. I mean, there are a lot of ways to actually make money as a content creator. YouTube natively actually has uh 10 to a dozen now different actual monetization methods. Well, some obviously the big popular ones everyone knows are AdSense, brand deals and sponsorships. You guys integrated even YouTube Brand Connect. We have dynamic brand insertions coming to the platform. Most people are familiar with fan funding, supers. You guys introduced gifts with vertical live streaming. So, supers and gifts now. And, of course, uh memberships, which has been tremendous. And there're just so many ways that like there are at least at a minimum 15 main specific ways people could be monetizing as a content creator, or at least 15 flavors of it I want to say. You could probably break those up and find 50 unique ways to monetize. So, I just think it's like really great and what I really love is that with YouTube Shopping, it's introducing a more passive income style of, you know, revenue for content creators with the affiliate program. Instead of just YouTube Shopping merch, you now have YouTube Shopping affiliate. And so, I think with things like uh the automation around tagging, things like that, it's just going to be a really good way for content creators to make passive income. Do you think there is a misconception for a lot of creators about utilizing something like a YouTube Shopping uh as part of their monetization strategy? Oh, absolutely. For a lot of creators, one, uh so many creators actually just don't think their audience would care or would click on affiliate links because maybe they're not a product reviewer, but you'd be surprised how much of your audience sometimes wants to have something from your background or your setup, your aesthetic, your furniture, your clothing. You'd be surprised how much they have this connection to you, they admire you and that you could incorporate that. Uh YouTube Shopping also incorporates into community tab posts, so it doesn't always even have to be just in a video for you to monetize with that. I have creators who sometimes want the same gear as me, even though yes, I'm a creator educator. Like, you know, we're kind of gearheads. And uh YouTube Shopping style, you know, if I actually have a story about a creator I work with. Um you know, so this creator that I work with, he does homesteading content, this tiny home content. He did a big commission with YouTube Shopping. His first YouTube Shopping sale ever was almost $300 of commission from something he showed off in a video. Amazing. And he wouldn't have done that otherwise. >> Oh, no. And he's not even the largest like creator. He recently just got close to 30,000 subscribers. You know, I've been working with him for a little bit here. And I yeah, I really did encourage him to say, "Hey, incorporate a little bit more YouTube Shopping. You don't know what could happen. Why not just try it?" And he was really blown away that he got that kind of commission off of his first sale. I'm really glad you actually mentioned that because I think there's a misconception that you have to have a ton of subscribers to be able to work within YouTube Shopping. And we'll touch on this in some other episodes, but specifically since you brought it up, you know, I think we find on YouTube, which is so interesting, is that it doesn't matter about the size, it's the engagement. >> Yeah. And specifically with YouTube Shopping, the higher engagement you have with your audience, the higher discourse trust, the more likely they are to be engaged with something like YouTube Shopping, right? Cuz it's enhancing their experience with you. Absolutely. And a lot of times people also feel this internal guilt in terms of how they directly monetize their audience or asking them to buy anything. Economic times can feel challenging, but you have to remember, even in those economic times, people are still buying things. You don't know what your audience situation is one way or the other. And there are people that are happy to buy or spend money. The question is just whether you're going to be part of that process or not, whether you're going to get some value out of that or not. There are people in your audience who are happy to buy things and are ready to buy things. It's just a matter of whether you're going to be a part of that journey. So, you just mentioned a ton of different ways that creators can monetize on the platform. And I have to imagine that may feel overwhelming. So, what recommendations do you have on streamlining the process for a creator? Well, YouTube actually helps a lot already with that process. It's just that creators are telling themselves that it's overwhelming when it actually might not be. So, for one thing, you already have ad revenue built into the platform. Now, you can do auto placement with that or manual placement with that. You can decide how much bandwidth you have in terms of wanting to make decisions or whether you want to just let YouTube take the wheel here. So, that's one thing. You already have built-in YouTube Premium revenue without having to do anything. So, that's great. If you make Shorts content, you're also getting Shorts, you know, ad revenue and Premium revenue from that as well. Same thing with your live streams. So, additional monetization is if you're going live, whether it's verticals uh in terms of vertical live streaming or the traditional horizontal live streaming on YouTube, then in those cases, fan funding is there and available in addition to the ad revenue and that's already activated. So, just expanding on that is a matter of did you make sure to turn those things on in the back end? It's kind of set it or forget it. So, this doesn't have to be that overwhelming for you to add another layer of monetization there with fan funding. When it comes to memberships, you could just mention it and then it's over. How overwhelming is that? So, just to get up to four or five different opportunities to earn is not that overwhelming if you don't want it to be. And you can also pin something for the memberships uh directly, the link to that in pinned comment if you want. So, same thing for your merch. Your merch store is already activated as long as you went ahead and set it up and you made your merch. So, you're up to probably five or six ways of monetizing. They're just already there. If you want to take it further, it's not that much more effort if you want to do YouTube Shopping, but YouTube is going to take the wheel if you just turn on auto tagging anyway. I'm glad you brought that up cuz that's what I was getting at. >> Yeah, cuz like AI is going to take the wheel and it's going to monetize and this is why I said it's passive income because as long as you opt into this, as long as you turn it on, it'll go ahead and it'll auto tag, it'll go into the back catalog, it'll find mentions and visual representations of when you did the products and so on and so forth in your Shorts, in your videos. I I think it might do it in your live stream replays once they became VODs. So, how much more effort is that really? It's not that much. And if you wanted to still manually tag, you could. And it's a it's a 5-minute process that gives you the ability to earn forever off the back of it once it's done. So, I think we tell ourselves this is overwhelming. I don't think it actually is. But you did bring up automation, which I think is a talking about overwhelming. Are there misconceptions around utilizing AI features to help streamline, to help plan content? Do you find that creators you work with are hesitant to utilize AI? Only until they talk to me. >> [laughter] >> Well, we had IRL Shopping experience that we did together where we were in a room with I think 70 or so creators plus um you know, my co-panelist as well as members of Team YouTube. And we did talk about that and the misconceptions. And one of the things that came up, at least from my perspective, is when I tell people about AI and how to use it, I'm doing it from the perspective of assistive AI. How can we use this as a performance enhancer? How can we make this easier in our lives? There are plenty of mechanical tasks we just don't even like doing. Like, why am I worried about doing a task I don't even enjoy, that I don't even like and that I have to do over and over? There's no challenge, there's no novelty, there's no actual creativity in it. Those are the things we should automate. No one's telling you have to automate or use AI for things that you enjoy or that are creative. You don't use it to replace yourself in things you enjoy and that you're passionate about. You actually do the opposite. You use it to get rid of all the things that you have to do, that you don't want to do. And then that makes all the difference in the world. So, if something's mechanical, give it to a machine. If something is creative, you can choose to reserve it for yourself as a human, but you could still find mechanical or tedious processes in the creative, you know, system that you're going through and say, "All right, I like this part of it, but not that part of it." Give AI the part you don't like, spend more time on what you enjoy. With automation, I'm glad that you brought up some of the features that we've built specifically for shopping, like auto tagging. Um, talk about some of the ways that auto tagging can be additive to monetization. Well, if you have a deep back catalog of evergreen content, something like with me, I work with content creators all the time around content strategy and monetization specifically. I've been doing that for a number of years now, and the thing that I always tell people is that they don't always have to chase trends. There are things that are seasonal and things that are evergreen and things that they can anticipate in their industry. And when you have that opportunity, auto tagging is great because you have this back catalog that's still relevant, still getting views, and still getting ad revenue. We can add the layer of YouTube shopping affiliate on top of that so that you can get commissions on sales on top of the passive YouTube ad revenue and the passive YouTube premium revenue that you're already getting. So, I think that's the benefit of the automation on that side. This is going to go even deeper when you also have dynamic brand insertions in the future as well. So, between those, you now have this really great passive income layer where content keeps earning money and is still relevant to viewers and still drives buying behavior for affiliates or for brand partners or sometimes brand partners and affiliates are the same company. Cuz we've even heard that where a creator said, you know, I'd back tag something from 10 years ago and I was shocked I made money on it, right? Because people are still viewing it. It's still a video that the audience goes to to research, right? A product or a review. So, back tagging it now they can actually make income on a purchase being made. So Yeah, a lot of people underestimate this. Uh, they don't realize how much of a lifespan content has on YouTube compared to every other platform. YouTube has the best lifespan for your content, especially if you're in lifestyle content or education content. I know a lot of people are entertainment-based creators, but like I said, if you build a connection with your audience, they might still care about aspects of your brand in terms of wanting something like the style of clothing that you were wearing or something that might have appeared in your set. There may be updates or new versions of a product that might have existed in your videos, even if you're not product-centric content creator. There's still just these things where your audience admires you, they want to be more like you, and sometimes there's a purchase involved. So, going back to fears around AI, right? I think a lot of creators might be worried that utilizing AI as a creative assistant tool may make them inauthentic or may take away from, you know, the purity of their content. How would you utilize AI for creative and content-based help? I think sometimes we don't like to admit that some of our fears around this come from a place of our own ego or how we will be perceived or how we think we'll be judged. And that's a big fear for content creators. Building in public is hard. You feel judged all the time, and you think, well, if it's not me or if it's not 100% me, then maybe they'll reject it, and that's going to hurt. Would you feel that way if you hire somebody and they add something of value? Will you feel that way about your team members? Well, that's different, they're a human. But yes, but it's not still 100% your project now, is it? So, for me, while I do understand there's a difference between a human being and a tool tools add value to us all the time. It's not less inauthentic because you used a tool to help you with your thumbnails. It's not less you, it's still your face, it's still your photo, it's still what you had to do in order to make that happen. If I take a photo or I have or better yet, I have a photographer take a really good photo of me for a thumbnail. And then we don't have the person we wanted to maybe do the retouching, you know, uh, clean up any like blemishes or like sharpen my eyes or a little bit or something like that. Then if we just run that through Google Nano Banana, right? We run that through Gemini. We can just go ahead and have that photo retouching and we can have it instantly and we can have it exactly the way we wanted without having to go back and forth and maybe even frustrate uh, a photo retoucher because we're doing something at the last minute or something changed. So, we're not inconveniencing anybody, and then we're also not inconveniencing the audience. They're not getting a less qual a lesser quality of packaging now. So, I think of it from that perspective. If you think about the value for the viewer and does this enhance value for the viewer? I think that's actually the only thing that matters is does this decision, whether I'm using a freelancer on my team, a permanent team member, or an AI tool, does this add value to the viewer? If it doesn't it's not necessary. If it is, it's completely legitimate, and I don't think it takes away from the authenticity of it at all. I think that the authenticity people are looking for is how you show up, how you deliver, how you perform on camera. Your authentic personality is what people are looking for. They don't really deeply, if they were being honest, care about the process that you used to get there unless you make it a thing, unless you make the process part of the brand. Then that's different cuz now you're not delivering on expectation that you set. But none of us have to make the process of how we do anything part of the value proposition or the brand that we're putting out there. A lot of the viewers, they just want to watch a great video. You know, we do hear from a lot of creators that burnout, it's a real thing. So, what AI tools are there to help with the creative process? I'm glad you asked this because every day, and I mean literally every day, Monday through Friday, sometimes I silly and I'm doing it on Saturdays, too. I'm talking to creators. I'm talking to small creators, I'm talking to full-time content creators, I'm talking to people with teams. So, at every level. And the constant conversation is actually around burnout, stress, cognitive load for the YouTuber, even for some of the team members. And one of the things that we have to look at, at least when I'm working with people, is we look at their systems, we look at the structure around things. We say, okay, content has to be right-sized in your life. And even if you have a team, you cannot always put the shortcomings of your lack of preparation or planning on your team and then overwork them. That's not fair. So, what we can do is we can use the tools to streamline the process and take less stress off of people, whether it's the creator that has to be the visionary of the channel and the ambassador of the brand or whether it's team members that have very specific tasks. We can streamline those, get them back more time for things they enjoy, things they like doing, things they're good at, get them back home to their families, anything we need to do. So, for example a lot of creators, a big part of their stress is, I don't know what to make or I'm trying to come up with ideas, and they're doing it a lot of times in isolation. They're doing it alone. Not everyone has a writer's room. So, what I found is that when people take Gemini, for example, or YouTube app studio, and they use that to help them with their content planning and to at least brainstorm ideas, one, they feel less insane like they're talking to themselves the way I do every day. And so, talking to the AI actually is very helpful and helps them get ideas going out of their head, helps them really brainstorm. So, that's like a really good one. And I have to imagine something like that is really helpful for YouTube shopping because you can go into your analytics, you can ask, you know, what are trends you're seeing around the top products that are being sold or which ones that I talked about that got the most views in the last 90 days. You can actually get that specific with YouTube app studio cuz it actually has, unlike any other tool, it has direct access to all of your YouTube data. If you want to then go in and understand more about your niche or even your competitors, you can use Gemini. If you want that and you want it to feel more conversational and you want to feel like you can absorb it better, I've actually got this really good hack. I'm using Notebook LM. And what I'll do is they'll take five different sources of something, maybe uh, a podcast or a couple of articles. I'll feed them in as different sources, and then Notebook LM will spit back to me something that's a coherent podcast that I can listen to when I'm on a walk or when I'm, you know, just trying to kill time or I'm on a drive, and I'll understand the thing better. I will understand it much more clearly than if I just read the outputs from the AI. It humanizes the context for me, and then I find that that's a lot better. So, it helps me tremendously. For the visual brainstorming, even just for things that I want to improve in my set design or the look of my studio. I've sat there and I've used Gemini with Nano Banana. I've taken shots of my set and had it help me just reorganize things or how something's going to look or help me improve the lighting. And tying it back to shopping it's also looking and prepping for those sales periods. We know they happen every year. >> You know, we can plan much further in advance. To your point, we can look at what's working competitively. >> The seasonality, the tentpole events coming up in the industry, you could use it to help you map out your calendar with your content planning as well as like, okay, here's what I'm going to do in spring, summer, fall, winter. Here are the things I'm going to focus on or help me find things that'll be more evergreen so that when I make them, they just have more value to my audience long-term instead of short-term, and people will still be interested and people will keep buying. They feel happy, I'm making more revenue, and they're also getting exactly what they want or what they need. And also a new feature worth plugging is that in studio now in analytics, you can see who are the top merchants that are driving the most sales for me. Uh, what are the top products that are selling for me? So >> commissions. Yes, exactly. To be able to analyze what are those products that are working for me to help you steer your content versus dictate. And I think >> Exactly. Yeah. I think having these things and looking them as ways that they inform your content instead feeling like they're taking over it. I feel like you're just better armed in how you can create value for your audience. Like I made a lot of product center content in the early days of YouTube. I did in addition to all the software stuff that I was training people on. I was teaching them about their hardware too and what to buy especially on a budget cuz I was on one. So I was doing that. I was doing budget laptop reviews, camera gear, best laptops for video editing, best laptops for graphic design, that sort of thing. And back then I had to do so much my own research. I had to go I had to walk into the stores and I had to ask questions and I had to get hands-on at Best Buy. I used to harangue them so much. It was so they were getting very little compensation for that too. >> several Best Buys in the area. >> Probably. Probably. Tri-state area. Probably at the time or or or I don't know if I was their most annoying customer or their favorite customer. I don't know cuz a lot of them were passionate. They like talking about this stuff. It's just I didn't wouldn't then I wouldn't buy anything. But when I would go back and make my content and I do all this research it would have been so much more convenient if I could have gone into a dashboard in YouTube and just saw what was what and then use that as my jump-off point to help me focus because I end up spending a lot of time on research that didn't go anywhere or wasn't meaningful or ultimately led to a dead end where it's like, "Okay, that's not helpful to my audience." This would have just made it a shortcut for me understanding where value is and how to present it. So now we've got an idea about maybe what products are working, what is interesting for our audience. Then how do you parlay that into content strategy and different creative directions to go? What tools would you use for that? For a lot of that, I think it's a matter of people should try their best to understand their audience more. What I usually call in coaching the audience avatar. And so when we use Google Gemini, we can put in things about our audience and try to better understand what the preferences are. So what is it they like more, what their prejudices are, what gives them the ick as the kids say, right? And also what are their problems and what are their priorities so we can get a sense of, "Okay, this is how you guys perceive value. Here are the things that make something feel less valuable to you. Here the things that you align with in terms of where your problems are this specific or it means you prefer budget products or you prefer premium products or this signals this to you, this signals that to you." So just being able to go back and forth with Gemini and say, "Okay, now that you understand my audience what would you recommend to me now that you know more about my viewer?" That makes it abstract and less abstract I should say, makes it more specific. And so you're not just oh typing into a what to make into a prompt, you're really having a conversation where "This is who I'm trying to help. This is what they're going through. What would you recommend or what do you think they would prefer given that?" And then you can go, "Okay, I feel like that works or it doesn't or hey, have you considered this?" So I use it very conversationally. I think everybody should. I think you could just use it to understand your audience more. That's going to lead you organically and authentically to what should I make because you will know why they will care. Why will they watch this? It's the biggest thing we always have to answer. It's not always about what you want to make. It's really about what they want to watch. And your goal and what I've always said is the content creator who understands their audience better is the content creator that wins. And if you can just use these tools to understand your audience better. And when I mean that, I usually just use the four P's, the preferences, prejudices, problems and priorities, it just helps you see what is relevant to them. And we heard from a lot of creators that it still has to be content first, right? You can understand what products they like, you can understand buying behavior, but if the content isn't good, right? If the content isn't what they want to watch, none of it matters. So I think that's worth also mentioning is that >> 100%. >> Yes. >> What one of the content creators I work with one of the things I told her, she does some homesteading content as well, very different than Mike. What he does is more of the tiny house retirement side of things. So what I told her was "Okay, your audience actually really enjoys and values these garden videos. They love this whole idea of having stuff they grew and then taking it to their own table. They like the pantry stuff. They like the canning stuff. When you want to do integrations, it has to feel organic and has to feel authentic and has to feel like something that they would enjoy watching regardless of what it is they end up buying or even if they don't buy, they have to still feel immersed in the content. Otherwise it'll just feel like a giant ad. And that's something that a lot of creators take for granted is a video can do more than one thing. It can be something that you enjoy, you like the journey, but maybe you wouldn't go on that journey. You just like seeing it from someone else's perspective, learning a little bit more about different part of the world in some way. And then there's the kind of person that desperately wants to go on that adventure or already is there and they might be looking for guidance or they might be looking for comfort in the idea of, "Oh, I've also found someone who's crazy stupid excited about the same things I am." So if you look at it from that perspective as long as that feeling is your priority, as long as the viewer is going to enjoy watching this regardless of whether they buy anything you haven't done anything wrong in monetizing that video. You just have to prioritize will somebody who isn't a buyer still enjoy this video and get some value from it. That makes a lot of sense. So when we talk about sales periods, right? Whether it's the holidays, back to school, things of that ilk how can creators use AI tools to help them plan those major sales moments? I think the best way they could do it instead of the just more mechanical technical way cuz I think the viewers watching this, they want to get more involved in what does that look like from a storytelling perspective? So in terms of things from a storytelling perspective, they could use it to kind of just build a system around their story brand and also plan their style scapes. Primary example is with the products in the content, it could actually help them with not just the thumbnail crafting, but individual shot planning in the storyboard in terms of creating different looks for how products are presented and what those segments are going to look like. You could generate that with Nano Banana very well actually cuz it's really good with products sets physical locations and getting those things accurate. So you could feed assets into that and say, "Well, here are my products. How could I arrange them in an overlay?" So in a top-down layout that has this really beautiful aesthetic and also helps tell the story and really makes people care or feel like it's organized. Because if you've ever done like top lay photography with products whether it's tech or beauty then you know >> not. >> Okay. Well, like well, you've consumed that content. So you like just think about how much thoughtfulness has to be put into arranging those products and by size or by category or color palette to make it look beautiful. Okay, that's a talent to do that. Somebody might be a very good content creator. They might be a very good photographer. They might be a very good speaker. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be a great product photographer or be really good at layout or organizing products in a group. But the AI can help you with the visual storytelling aspect of that and help you with your visual style scapes. A creator would just have to think about, "Oh, that's great. I don't have to be the greatest creative director of all time to still present something very beautiful and that's a little bit more thoughtful and that the audience will like more." And you can say, "Yeah, version A of this looks much better than version B or C." But seeing it and having those options before you go through the physical trouble and labor of laying this out on a table and getting it wrong or it doesn't look right, it's just easier and faster to just go ahead and mock it up really quickly. So that's just one example. And I'll jump in and say, you know, we've even heard from creators that are filming a lip gloss for example to always use natural light cuz it catches the glimmer of the bottle or what it whatever it is and it makes it more appealing to the viewer if it's lit well. Exactly. >> So just little strategy and nuances when it comes to to your point, products, it is a little bit of a different skill set than just maybe the content you're used to doing. So >> the AI can help give you recommendations on just lighting better for your skin tones and for skin accuracy. You know, if the audience really wants a clever way to use all these kind of different tools to like make considerable money one of the things you could do if you really wanted to is you could figure out what some of the higher end best-selling products are in your niche. You could look at which ones in the dashboard have the highest commissions. And then you could look at AI and you could help have it help you craft a specific organic story for your viewer avatar and you could actually plan and road map how can I throughout the course of my content even seasonally throughout the year make videos and target these products in a way that my audience will resonate. And you could specifically single out the high commission products. And you could do that. And the thing is it like people might think, "Oh, well, that's a little ruthless or that's a little strategic." Like yeah, it's very strategic. But think about it from this perspective. An example of this that I would probably do would be a cheap versus expensive video in like any category. I'm a camera guy. So I would love to just break down something, "Oh, this is cheap versus expensive." Or you do a here is every this camera gear, this thing under this amount. And you could have the AI help you strategically plan out those videos or you could look at a video that did really well for you in views, commissions, ad revenue, all of that. Take it to the AI, especially with YouTube ad studio or Gemini Pro, and you could ask it, "Help me develop a video series of six videos that recapture everything that worked for this video." You feed it all the data, you tell it what you're trying to achieve, you tell it the type of money you're trying to make, and you can have it, "Hey, help me produce a series of six more videos that kind of flow together. If they like this, they'll like that." And then I could prioritize these high revenue videos, and I can make them and still make them something my audience really wants, really enjoys, cuz I'm recapturing that lightning in a bottle. I want to duplicate it. Help me accomplish that goal. If you're A lot of people, they think that they can do that on their own. Sometimes you can. Very talented people can. But sometimes you're doing that, you're editing, you're coordinating with brands. The sheer amount of stress on you, the cognitive load, it's not your fault that you all don't always have the best ideas right away, ready and raring to go. Sometimes, just being able to have that second brain is really helpful when you already feel overwhelmed, or when you're bordering on burnout. And a lot of people take that for granted. They think that this is AI dependency, when actually what it is is this is just a mature way to help you deprioritize the most stressful aspect of everything you're putting on yourself until you get to the point when you have a team. The biggest content creators, the most successful content creators, everyone keeps forgetting. They have teams of five, eight, or even 20 people. They don't just have a second brain, they have a second, third, and fourth brain, and they have 20 pairs of hands. And that's a really big difference from a working class creator or a solo creator. And the great thing about these AI tools and how it can help you with revenue, especially if you're doing product centric content like shopping, is you get to compete with a scaled team without having to have that kind of budget. You also mentioned something that I think is worth doubling down on, which is if you find something that works, it's okay for that replication and that repetitiveness, especially with products. Some of our most successful shopping creators will mention the same product across multiple videos because it's something they believe in. And the more times their viewers are hearing it, the more that trust is is being built. It's I really like this thing. I'm going to talk about it again. >> analytics, we also see that every time we upload a video, often more than 50% of the viewers are new viewers. And if you got the thing you all really want, which is going viral, if you ever went viral, it mean that more than 90% of all the viewers would probably be first time viewers. They certainly aren't your subscribers. So, what are you really risking by being repetitive there? Because it's repetitive to you, it's not repetitive to the audience that's discovering it for the first time, or who just came into the niche, or just came into the hobby, or just came into the brand and started buying those kind of products, just started to be able to afford to buy those kind of products. The most people you'll find that if anything is growing, if the the niche you're covering, anything is growing, more of the people are new. And so, you're going to be reaching those new people all time. I tell creators I work with, make every video as if the majority of people watching this are perfect strangers, because if everything goes right, they will be. They will have never seen or heard from you. If you want 100,000 to a million views, that's only going to happen because, unless you're already mega famous and you have 10 million subscribers, the only way that happens is it means that everybody watching that video is watching you for the first time, maybe the second or third time. They don't know you, they haven't burnt out, they aren't There's not this viewer fatigue yet. There's nothing wrong with repeating yourself 10 times within a year, because I promise you most people are not going to watch all 10 of those videos. You'll have a very small vocal minority of loyal, die-hard fans. I pray for you for the problem of viewer fatigue, because if you have 100,000 people that are always showing up and are fatigued now, you've done something right. You've had the best outcome of all time. And then you can freshen things up a bit. But I think a lot of people put so much pressure on themselves to always be original in every single thing and start over from zero. They're thinking so much like an artist, and I think it's actually hurting them. I think that if they really just understood that show up every single time like it's the first time, that that would actually be much better because you are allowed to just be consistent. You are allowed to double down and triple down, and don't worry until the majority of the audience is telling you they're sick of seeing you, you're fine. And on the flip side of it, if it's a video that did really well, at least from a product perspective, products change. So, last year's haul you did around the holidays, people want to see the version for this year. >> Oh, they absolutely have a recency bias. Yeah. Even if something is only 6 months outdated, like it's very possible people will will where's the new version? Or constantly. Yeah, and and I think especially with YouTube shopping when it comes to the way that you are reviewing something or highlighting a product, if you find a format that works, the viewers are telling you they want to see it again. So, the repetition breeds trust right? >> Yeah. A lot of people are afraid of repetition and consistency. Repetition, consistency allowed you to breed familiarity, and that leads to trust. We trust what is familiar. It brings us comfort. It brings us continuity. It's not you being boring, it's you being reliable. And going back to trust, not this is not AI related, but going back to trust again, one of the biggest things we see on our platform is that trust in the creator and making sure that the products you are recommending are ones that you believe in, are ones that you really would use, so that you never lose that trust. >> Which is why I tell creators a lot of times the best way to establish that, even in the thumbnail, is to have the product in your hand. It's very hard to fake that, even in an AI world, very accurately. Have the product in hand so that people know that you have it and that you've used it, or at least that they see the representation of that. I tell them also, for product centric content, whether it's tech, beauty, lifestyle, try to make sure in that first 3 to 5 seconds that they see the product physically being represented by you in the real world, whether it's you using it or in their hand, even if it's in a couple of frames of the cut. Just make sure that there's there, cuz that breeds the immediate trust that we went from, "Okay, that was the topic, that was the title, that was the thumbnail. I clicked on that. Hey, don't make me regret it. Validate the video that I just feel like I clicked on from a title and thumbnail standpoint." Immediately do that in the first few seconds of the video for your hook. Even if it's with B-roll, because that just establishes that trust and says, "Okay, they weren't messing with me, they didn't clickbait me, they actually have it." And tying back to teaching and educating, right? It is still a newer feature. It may be new to your audience. So, teaching your audience how to use this feature, right, is paramount to them understanding and buying into the whole experience, right? So, I'm sure that a big part of people that are using it for the first time, creators using shopping for the first time, the advice would be teach your audience how to use it, how to shop with you. One of the practical things to do that, because people may not feel like they want to do that in this like evergreen video that they're making, or this video that they want to be polished, or as their little art project, I think that one of the best ways to do that is go live a little bit more often, especially if you're a product centric creator, cuz that brings trust, and those are also the people who tune into you the longest and have the most highest possibility of ever buying from you is going to be that live viewing audience. I think that interjecting that micro tutorial of how to get these things that I'm showing off in the live stream is a really good idea and a really good segment where you just have something you maybe pre-recorded that shows them the process so that they just know, "Hey, this is how you get the things that I'm talking about in my videos." And so, if that is just a small segment that exist in your live streams, and you're going live every week or every other week, then you have your strongest audience that has the most loyalty, is the most connected. I tell people the live audience is the loyal. >> Well, what about for us, like with long form being the predominant way and and shorts for shopping? So, >> If you could just do a very short screen recorded micro clip where you voice over and say, "Hey, and to get anything that I mentioned in this video, you could definitely do that with YouTube shopping. Just click here, do this, do And just make it like a quote unquote micro tutorial, the same way that you would do an ad read for a sponsored video. And so, if this video isn't sponsored, you could think of it as, "Hmm, this video sponsored by my affiliate links today." And you could just think of it as anywhere from a 15- to 30-second ad read. It's no more interruptive than if you had a sponsor spot. The difference is you can earn from it indefinitely, unlike most sponsor spots, until dynamic ad brand insertion comes. >> And I think, you know, another way of looking at it, on the flip side of it not feeling like a sponsored bit or not feeling like an ad, is sharing that it's a new way for your audience to engage with you. "Hey guys, I know you always ask me about this microphone, this sign. Guess what? Everything is tagged in this video. If you want to buy it, now you can. All right, back to what we were doing." So, it can feel >> just did a perfect You did it perfectly. And what was that? Less than 5 seconds? Yeah, so I think the education component is is super helpful. What advice would you have for creators who, even after hearing all of this, are still a little wary about using YouTube shopping? They don't see themselves as a salesperson or they don't see themselves as someone who knows about products. What would you say to them? You know, I'd say to you, just think about the last time that somebody helped you get something that you wanted to have or that you wanted to understand more about or gave you a good recommendation. You know, if you're a content creator, there's probably somebody who helped you improve your audio, helped you get a better microphone. There's probably somebody who told you what light to buy that was going to really help your videos pop, help with your you know, your skin tones. There's probably someone who recommended a software that really saved you a lot of time. Did you feel sold to by them or did you feel grateful? Think about it from the perspective that I always say, value for the viewer. If your viewer can benefit from this in some way or there's a possibility that some subset of your viewers would benefit from this in some way, then you are not being salesy, you're being helpful. But guess what? When you're helpful, you're allowed to capture some of that value. That's why you're a content creator now. You're helping people watch videos that are part of their day and you're getting paid for that with YouTube Premium, YouTube ad revenue, YouTube monetization. So, you're capturing some of that value. But it's not the only way you can capture some of that value. If there are people who want the things that you show off in your set design or your clothing or a product that you're highlighting or product that was part of your big experience or experiment or extravaganza or whatever you're doing, then if you don't actually find a way to capture that, you've given away free promotion and you've done all this effort and you haven't captured any of it. That might be really great for your viewer, that's certainly great for the brand that gets that sale, but you're not capturing any of the value that you created for that company. And now you can. And so, I don't think it's about you feeling salesy. I would say that I'm more afraid of you underselling yourself and not capturing value that you created and doing more work and capturing less benefit from it. I'm more afraid for you of that and I think you should be more afraid of that for yourself than you are about feeling salesy. And I think that you just have to do it in a way that's natural and just remember, you're allowed to take pressure off your audience. You're allowed to say, "Hey, for those of you who want it, if anybody here can't afford these things, I have more affordable options a link in the description or something like that." You could always do that. If you feel self-conscious about oh, well, in this economy or people are spending money, link to an option. They might still need to solve the problem that a product solves for. Just help them maybe get to something that's in their budget. And by the way, you don't have to do that in every video. Another video could accomplish that. Hey, I covered this before. Some of you asked me for budget options that fit you, so I made this other video to help you out. Go watch it. It's linked here in my end card or whatever. You just have to meet your audience where they are and remember, you are there, whether it's to solve the problem of them being bored, whether there's something in their lifestyle that they want to improve, their health, their fitness, their well-being or even just their aesthetics or if there's something they want to learn that helps them become a better person, more educated or about their career, get more skills. You're facilitating solving some kind of problem for the audience. Meet them where they are, understand them, value them, care about them and realize that when you put something out there, they get to decide whether it's valuable for them or not and it's okay if some of them say no. And then you can use AI to analyze the comment section and understand sentiment for each of your videos. >> Well, yeah, absolutely can and everything. And you know, for some of you, you might want AI to take over the comment section at this point. Because it's a perfect place to end this. Roberto, thank you so much.