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Greg Preece on the Two Types of Creator and Using YouTube as a Portfolio
70% of his revenue from 4.4% of his audience + refocusing down to just two platforms
Avi Gandhi
March 21, 2023
The Creator
Greg Preece
Greg Preece is a UK YouTuber and entrepreneur whose content creation and community efforts are focused on enabling other entrepreneurs aiming to build a business leveraging YouTube. He funnels potential customers from his content into his YouTube agency business, where he does all the trend forecasting, research, ideation, and pre-production for his clients’ YouTube content.
Greg has had several lifecycles as a creator, and has deep introspective wisdom from many years of content creation.
Let’s get into it!
The Business
Greg Preece - Business Breakdown
Observations
Greg books 70% of his revenue off 4.4% of his audience on LinkedIn, with YouTube as the key lever for driving credibility and trust. Let’s dig in to how.
Greg describes his business as a YouTube agency.
I'm basically a YouTube strategist slash channel manager. Each month I provide my clients with content strategy for the following month. I also provide them with support in the shape of coaching, but the the biggest value prop is that they get their time back, and I do the work in terms of coming up with video ideas for them, doing the market and competitive research in their niche, what's done well on their channel in the past …and I come up with a tailored content strategy for them each month which is really the low hanging fruit for them - videos they could make that following month to get the biggest exposure from their target customers and the most sales from their channel in the following month.
Now, if you go look at Greg’s channel, you’ll notice that he has 95,000 subs, but gets far fewer views per video - about 1k-5k on average. I wanted to understand the reason for the discrepancy, and if he uses the same tactics on his own channel as he does for his customers.
Even though I have 95,000 subscribers on my channel, in the six years I've been growing the channel, I've made the mistake of changing niches throughout its lifetime. As I developed as a creator and explored different topics and had different interests, I grew audiences with different interests as well….
I pivoted a lot and my channel would kind of cannibalize itself from having so many split audiences in the past. Part of the reason I started the agency was because I had all of my eggs in the YouTube basket, and when my views started to drop on YouTube, I needed to build a separate income stream. This is what I advise my clients and my audience: not to put all their eggs in the YouTube basket. So now I have a much bigger business because I now see my YouTube channel as a business tool….
The ROI on one view that I get now compared to three years ago is hugely bigger because that could convert to a client for my agency.
That’s interesting! It flies in the face of the conventional YouTube wisdom of “get all the views” - instead, it’s “get potential customers to watch”. This approach would be the wrong fit for someone who is looking to get a ton of eyeballs, but is the right approach for someone else - his target customer.
They’re 40-plus entrepreneurs with high ticket digital products in the early stages of YouTube. They feel like they’ve got a lot to learn still, and they're also successful entrepreneurs - they're running a business. They're busy, so they need someone to take the the workload off them.
His clients are other entrepreneurial creators (who may not even consider themselves to be creators). Their goal, in general, is to convert buyers for their digital products - and Greg has that methodology dialed in. It is, after all, how he makes a living.
I always say that there are two types of creators…one is 100% focused on as many views possible, by any means possible, for the sake of just earning as much ad revenue and maybe brand deals as they can. The other type of creator, and this is the creator that I am now and I relate to more, is the entrepreneur - a creator that comes in with a product or service. They want to sell on the backend and they are accepting much smaller views because they know they can make up their earnings and probably earn a lot more with the with the sales or work that they bring in from their views.
If Greg was aiming to build a views-based business - monetizing primarily off AdSense and brand deals - his metrics wouldn’t turn heads. However, his approach highlights a key insight for all creators:
Selling is a tradeoff against views. Creators who have lived off views-based revenue often try to sell something and then get spooked at how poorly it performs. It’s more rare than most creators or Creator Economy execs would think for a creator to promote selling something and for it to get both views and customers. Greg has made peace with this tradeoff, and in doing so, is able to make a meaningful living doing what he’s passionate about.
I’ve also heard a lot of creators talk about having separate channels for separate interest, and asked him if he had considered launching a new channel instead of pivoting from his old content focus.
I’m seeing a lot of people starting new channels afresh. They're bringing in 1-5 years of YouTube experience into a brand new channel and starting with the best possible foundations they can, and and they're growing really quickly. So I could have gone down that route. But when I when I think about it, I do think I made the right call, because so much of what I do like the social proof and the authority of me having a channel of the size I do really benefits my agency, and I’m be able to highlight that. Still putting videos on a channel with 95,000 subscribers, even if they're not getting 95,000 views every time, it works in my favor. Your YouTube channel is your portfolio. It's it's your authority, and and it's a tool for your business and and that's how I'm using it.
I love this part of his thought so much:
Your YouTube channel is your portfolio. It's it's your authority, and and it's a tool for your business
For Greg, the views aren’t the point. If they were, he likely have launched a new channel for his agency business. However, he is trading on his credibility as a YouTuber - his history of success - and so was willing to make the tradeoff against views in order to leverage his past success to build his current business.
I imagine many of us can relate. After all - that’s what a resume is, isn’t it?
Greg does make some money on ad revenue - about 15% - but it’s not from his recent videos.
It's a hundred percent the library for sure. Yeah, my recent videos are tiny earnings on the frontend but on the backend it can convert to thousands of pounds a month.
He gets a bit of recurring revenue each month from his library, but 85% of his revenue from bookings to his agency business.
Greg doesn’t post much anywhere except YouTube and LinkedIn.
I was spreading myself too thin and trying to be on every platform I could possibly be on, and I realized that you just don't build traction by doing that. Your efforts don't compound and you don't build momentum if you're trying to do too much at once. So this year, I've really narrowed down my focus and my presence on platforms, and I'm committing myself to solely putting my focus on YouTube and LinkedIn. Those are my two main audience-building platforms.
I’m a big fan of focus. It’s why I started on LinkedIn, and then moved on to launch Creator Logic only once I got my LinkedIn system down. I launched a podcast for a while, and my readers loved it, but ultimately the ROI was low so I sunsetted it. Greg takes a similar approach to his social programming. For example, on TikTok:
I did set a TikTok account up during lockdown when everyone else did, and I got that to 10k followers pretty quickly. It just didn't…I really had to sit down and think: “What’s the biggest ROI on my time? What has the fastest audience growth but also what platforms lend themselves to converting viewers to customers?”
It was just YouTube and LinkedIn every time.
And we’re back full circle to the value of LinkedIn, where - as a reminder - Greg makes 70% of his revenue off 4.4% of his audience. While YouTube is his resume / portfolio, and his strategic pillar for building trust, LinkedIn is where he gets most of his leads. It’s where the entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and other potential clients - people with budget and a desire to learn - hang out. I personally think it’s the highest-impact platform per user.
Thanks for reading, see you Thursday!
My mission is to enable millions of people to benefit from the emergence of the Creator Economy. I believe that the more successful both Creators and the companies that serve Creators are, the better off humankind will be.
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Thanks for learning with me! Upcoming interviews include:
Jay Clouse - One of my favorite metacreators, Jay and his Creator Science business help aspiring creators go from amateur to professional. His approach to his stack is one that would make Jeff Bezos proud, so you’ll find the discussion valuable!
Bryce Adams - One of the top creators on OnlyFans, generating over $6M in annual revenue with a team of 20. Her story and approach is absolutely fascinating!
Tejas Hullur - Tejas is Gen Z’s metacreator, educating an emerging generation of entrepreneurial creative minds through his own journey. He tries to be a “non-regrettable view”, which I love, and there’s a more lot to learn from him!
If you have anything pressing you’d like to know from any of these creators, please email me at [email protected]. I can’t promise I’ll get every question answered, but I can promise that I will do my best to get the most relevant, interesting ones!
Thanks again for being part of this community. See you next week!
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