I had a client send me a thumbnail of a video he had found on YouTube and wanted me to explain it to him. I honestly wish he’d sent me his actual thumbnail instead. I was very hesitant to watch the video, but these are the sorts of sacrifices I make for my clients in order to help them grow (as well as telling them to do 2 more reps). I realised that a lot of people might benefit from a breakdown of the video to show you what kinds of tricks are being used. I could spend pages and pages breaking these things down (and reading those is fun to me) but I’ll try to keep it short.
How to Make Money on YouTube:
First of all, you want a video which gets lots of views of course – because more views equals more money – not exactly the best incentive to create factual, scientific videos. As a creator, you have access to which words are commonly searched for, and you then create a video based on those search terms. So there is a high search rate for “how to lose belly fat” “how to lose chest fat” and “love handles”, making a video with those words in will mean your video has a higher chance of being seen. Cha-Ching!
The Video – The Fastest Way to Shrink Visceral Fat:
Let’s look at the specific video my client sent me, to which I won’t be sharing the link because 1.6 million people have already watched the video and now he’s rich enough to buy a block of Cathedral City without his Clubcard.
Call to Authority – this guy is a Doctor, I’m not. Because of that, his words carry weight and can suppress the actual argument being made. Essentially, it’s “oh he must be right because he’s a Doctor and an expert”. Please don’t get me wrong, expertise is everything, but just be aware it can be used to sell you things.
He opens the video with a montage of the successful clients he’s worked with, so I know this is trying to sell me something. There is nothing wrong with people trying to make money, but how they do it, matters.
Let’s talk about the before and after photo below. The guy in the before photo has a significant amount of muscle from being in the gym for decades, he clearly trains – you can still see his six pack! From that, we can surmise that he has chosen to do a “bulk” and the after photo is him doing a “cut”, which just means he reduced his calories to drop body fat. Most people watching this aren’t starting off like this.
Studies:
The client who sent me the video said it cited studies, and I asked if he read the study. I knew the answer would be no, and so did the creator of the video – people do not click on studies (59% of links shared on social media are never clicked). I’ve seen such egregious examples where a claim has been made in the video with “study linked in the description box below” which says the exact OPPOSITE of what they stated as true. A middle finger to the real scientists because the creator knows it doesn’t matter, once they have their tribe, they can exploit them. Even if my client did read the study, the required expertise required to understand the full context is a totally separate field of education.
My favourite screenshot for its hilarity, being that he’s a Doctor himself:
They don’t? Why not? Did they get into the profession to cause me harm? I do know what Doctors don’t want me to know, and that’s what time the phone lines open on a Monday morning. Is it 08:00 or 08:30?
My favourite Quotes:
“Toxic sludge” – meaningless without specifics
“Double results with 0 extra time commitment” – If only. It takes time to make change
“Look at my client and their proof” – We don’t know anything about them from looking at their photos
“Studies show” – They show a lot of things, but do we have the required expertise to draw conclusions from them?
“Destroying joints from running” – This is fear mongering, running is a fantastic activity which comes with some caveats to reduce injury
“Japanese style” – Anything from another country sounds like it must work. Although admittedly, “English style” is a much harder sell
Nebulous, scaremongering, sciency sounding terminology, all carefully designed to trick you.
Don’t get me wrong, there are loads of amazing educational videos out there, but unfortunately it’s the bad ones which float to the top. Keep your wits about you and if you’re unsure you’re going down the right path, send me a message to book in a complimentary video consultation to discuss it.