YouTube as a Flywheel for your Business using Substack.

I started building on YouTube is 2023 and my goal was to get monetised. Me and my husband started at the same time as a fun experiment.

My channel got monetised in Summer 2025 and here's what I've learnt...

• You want to keep your name and branding consistent.

• YouTube is a search engine so you need to know what folks are searching for in relation to your videos.

• Thumbnails are important - I design mine in canva and usually batch change them once a quarter since it feels a faff to do it every-time...

• Viq IQ changes EVERYTHING - it's such a useful tool to look at competitors and your SEO, it also provides great titles and your tags too. Well worth the subscription if you're serious about building (aff link) It plugs into your channel and was transformational for me.

• Short videos work well - I usually go for around 20 mins but if you want the money from ad sense ad account (which will be small at first) you want longer videos.

• I use Substack live to pull through videos (and shorts) at least once a week and then record fresh content too.

• I also have all of my courses and my membership listed as unlisted so the 'watch hours' clock up there.

• You can link out to special offers and other classes to take people deeper and build as a sustainable part of your business.