Hey everyone, welcome to another lesson from Navigation Trading. In this lesson I want to talk to you about inverse VIX ETFs. There is a lot of confusion around inverse ETFs in general, but I want to focus specifically on inverse ETFs related to the VIX because they are just a completely different animal. So let's take 30 seconds just to update you on the VIX in general. What is the VIX? It's a volatility index or sometimes called the fear index. It was initially conceptualized back in the late 80s, kind of around the 1987 crash as a way to index uncertainty or fear in the marketplace. And then in the early 90s they updated the VIX with the ticker VIX, which it holds today. And then starting in 2004 they started updating it daily and utilizing the same calculations and methodology that we see in the index today. A few things to know about the VIX is one, it's typically inversely correlated to SPX or the S&P 500 index. The VIX is priced based on options of the SPX and when the S&P 500 is going up, typically the VIX is going down and when the S&P 500 is going down and there's more uncertainty in the marketplace, many times you'll see a spike higher in VIX. Now you can't trade shares of VIX, it's an index just like SPX or RUT, however it does have options that are tradable and they're extremely liquid. Now the pricing of the VIX options are based on the price of the VIX futures. So just to recap, the price of the VIX is based on options of the SPX, but the price of the VIX options are based on the price of the underlying VIX futures contracts. If that sounds confusing, I know it is and that's exactly why we created an entire course all about trading the VIX, it's called how to trade the VIX with 92.3% accuracy and it provides all the details that are beyond the scope of this video. So now let's jump onto the platform and discuss the topic of this video which is inverse VIX ETFs. Here's a list of six different inverse VIX ETFs, ZIV, EXIV, VMIN, XIV, XIVH and SVXY. Now all of these inverse VIX ETFs are calculated a little bit differently so let's take a look at the platform and I'll show you exactly what I mean. Starting with ZIV, if you look up here, we're in the Thinkorswim trading platform, you can see that this one is managed by Credit Suisse and it's an ETN or Exchange Traded Note. Below is a price chart going back about a year and a half at the time of this recording at September 27th, 2018 and what you'll notice is that going back, if you look at all the way through 2016 and 2017 when the market was rallying, you could see implied volatility continued to contract, therefore an inverse VIX ETF did very well. In fact, there were hedge funds and multiple funds made up all around this strategy of simply selling volatility or buying inverse VIX ETFs. Until earlier this year, we saw in the first part of February, the market went down about 10 or 11% and the VIX exploded increasing about 115%. So look what happened to this inverse ETF, it had a high of $94 and within just a matter of days you can see it bottomed out at around $60. So lost nearly 30% of its value just in the matter of a couple weeks. One of the other things that we always want to be aware of is does the symbol have options and are they tradable? In the case of ZIV, ZIV doesn't even offer options to trade. As you know, at Navigation Trading, we're all about trading based on statistics and probabilities utilizing options to make those trades and in this case, ZIV doesn't even have any options. Let's take a look at the next one, EXIV. Again, EXIV has no options either and if you look at the volume of shares traded, we're talking about less than 500 shares traded in one day. If we go back and look at the same thing on ZIV, you've got about 3700 shares trading for the day which is very, very low. These are symbols that I wouldn't even touch with a 10 foot pole because they would just be difficult to get in and out of with very wide bid-ask spreads which eat directly into your profits. But let's take a look at the chart of EXIV and during that same period in early February, there was a high of 61 and it got down to under 30. So lost over 50% of its value in just a couple weeks and remember that's because this has an inverse correlation or an opposite correlation to the actual VIX. So when the market went down and the VIX exploded, this ETF declined significantly over 50%. Let's take a look at the next one, VMIN. If we take a look at the chart, what you'll notice here is that this had an even more magnificent drop, had a high of over $46 and then after the little blip in February, you can see that this one basically is non-existent anymore. Same thing with EXIV and this was the one that got the most press because it had the most dramatic drop. It was over $146 prior to that February drop and then it went down to under $6 at one point and Credit Suisse, who's the manager of this ETN, closed the door and shut it down completely. This one actually had substantial liquidity and was heavily traded, but in this case, people who are buying this and just playing that volatility selling game got hurt really bad and basically lost everything if they own shares of XIV and a very similar story with XIVH. In this case, it had a high of 82, dropped down to a little over $11. It hung around a little bit longer, but ended up getting shut down in June of 2018. Now, SVXY was the most liquid of all of these symbols and if we go to the trade tab in Thinker Swim, you can see these are penny-wide bid-ask spreads if you're buying and selling the underlying symbol. You've got volume that's not great, but it's over 490,000 shares traded and SVXY actually has somewhat tradable options. These are not options that personally I would trade because the open interest on these strikes is under 100 contracts and if you look at the bid-ask spread, you're looking at 212, 235, I mean that's just a wide, wide bid-ask spread. But let's take a look at what happened to SVXY during that February period. It was at over $557 and dropped down into the 50s, losing nearly 90% of its value. One thing SVXY has done since is prior to that February decline in the market, SVXY was not only inverse, but it was also a leveraged ETF, meaning it was tracking the opposite play of the VIX and it was doing it at a 2X level, so it was overly leveraged. Since the February decline in the market they have changed up their calculation and now their inverse exposure is at .5 or half that of the VIX as opposed to 2X that of the VIX. So as you can see, these are extremely dangerous products to be trading and if for some reason you still want to dabble in these and you still want to trade them, here are the main concerns that you want to be aware of going in. Liquidity, you've got to see what kind of volume and open interest they are trading at whether you're buying and selling the actual shares or if there are tradable options on those symbols that you're trading. The other thing to keep in mind is that as you saw, some of those symbols that we were looking at were not necessarily ETFs but they're what are called ETNs or exchange traded notes. The difference is an ETF tracks an underlying index or an ETF, however an ETN is an exchange traded note that is issued by a financial institution like Credit Suisse. So if you're investing in an exchange traded note, you want to be comfortable with the issuer of that note because if they go out of business then you have liability or exposure because you're invested in that note that was issued by that specific bank. Now what's the likelihood of a company like Credit Suisse going out of business? I would say very small but remember back in 2008, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, these were staples on Wall Street and they no longer exist. Anyone who had exchange traded notes issued by them had potential exposure and suffered losses that were unrelated to the actual directional price of the underlying symbol. And lastly, you need to understand leverage. Remember what I said about SVXY, previous to the February decline in the market, they were 2X leveraged of the VIX symbol. After the fact, they changed that to be .5 exposure inversely related to the VIX. If you don't understand this exposure and you don't understand the underlying management of these ETFs or ETNs, you could be exposed to risk that you're not aware of. Make sure you understand the management and leverage of the underlying symbol that you're trading. So what's the alternative if you want to have that specific exposure? If you want to be short VIX, if you want to be short volatility, what else can you do? Well, here's a couple of options. One, you could be long SPX related stocks or ETFs. Remember, the VIX and SPX are inversely correlated. So if your assumption is that volatility is going to contract, then you must also assume that the S&P 500 or related market stocks or ETFs will be going up. So you could simply get long SPX related stocks and ETFs. You could buy SPY, you could buy Apple, you could buy Amazon. There are dozens and dozens of stocks and ETFs that are highly correlated to the S&P 500. Or as we detail in our course, how to trade the VIX with 92.3% accuracy, one of the strategies that we teach is how to use options to trade short positions on VIX related ETFs. Both of these solutions are much better alternatives to trading inverse VIX ETFs. Remember, as successful traders, we never want to put ourselves in a position of potentially getting knocked out of the game. Our goal at Navigation Trading is to always continue to hit doubles and singles and limit your risk exposure so you can continue to trade successfully over the long term. I hope this lesson has helped you get a better understanding of inverse VIX ETFs. If you have any questions, you can always contact us anytime. Happy trading!


On August 14th, 2023, I hit 500K subs on YouTube. And I really thought about this video hard and I came up with eight points that I think are the most important things that made all the difference for me. And if you're missing any of these eight points, it could be the missing link to you actually blowing up on YouTube. So this is gonna be more of a candid video. I'm gonna be going over some strategies and tactics that I've used and I'm just gonna be giving you my opinion. So if you appreciate videos like this, let me know by gently tapping that like button and let's jump into it. So the first thing that I recommend is creating a personal brand. And the reason I recommend this is because I had five failed YouTube channels before I created a personal brand. And that was the channel that I was able to easily grow. So I had a channel on RuneScape, like way back in the day. I had another channel on self development. I had another channel on study skills. I had another channel on pharmacy related stuff because I'm a pharmacist. And then finally I started a channel where I made one minute videos on just random topics because I was inspired by Nasdaily. And all of those channels failed. And I think the biggest reason that they failed is because I didn't have a personal brand. The name of the niche was in the channel every single time. And so for one, if I ever got bored of a subject or if I ever wanted to start talking about something else, I wasn't able to do that because it wouldn't make sense with the channel name.  Your channel should be able to change with you. It should be like a living breathing thing that can evolve as you evolve. And that's what you can do with a personal brand. It's very easy for you to try out different things and tell something works for you. You basically just throw stuff against the wall and tell something sticks. Like imagine if you asked somebody at 18 years old to choose the career that they're gonna do for the rest of their life. How many of those people do you think would have good outcomes? Most of them would either fail or they would hate the career that they're in. And it's the same thing with a channel. Your chances of actually enjoying the niche that you're in if you pick one right at the very beginning are very low. And on this channel, when I started out I was talking about Mark Cuban's investments. I made videos reviewing products that I'd used. I made videos on cryptocurrencies. I made videos on my experience with grant writing. I made videos on how to save money, how to invest. And finally, I started making videos on college degrees and careers and that's what really took off. Then when that took off, when I threw that against the wall and it actually stuck, that's what I ran with. And your chances of success are gonna be much higher if you have a personal brand where you can pivot if the niche isn't working out or if you just don't enjoy making those types of videos anymore. Now, if you think about it, what is the real reason that people watch YouTube? Because if you've studied anything about business you know that the way you start a business is by solving problems. So what problem is YouTube solving for people? And the truth is the problem that YouTube is solving is people are bored and lonely. That is why they watch YouTube. Think about it. So when you make a personal brand you're giving a lot of value because people feel like they're connecting with you. And it's almost like they're talking with a friend on a subject that they're interested in. And it's especially good if this person that they're listening to had the same problems that they're currently having, have some of the same passions that they have or are an expert in something that they're interested in. And you have to have insanely high production quality and video quality in general if you're not showing your face if you're not doing a personal brand. It's just so much easier to connect with people and grow if you have a personal brand because people know, like and trust you. They feel like you're their friend and they feel like they know you which is a phenomenon called parasocial relationships which is kind of weird but also interesting. Personal brands also make it easier to sell stuff. People are tired of buying from big soulless corporations. People want to buy stuff from other people.  And this is why millions of people are able to make a full-time income off of the creator economy. Personal brands also make it easier to switch niches. Like imagine if I first started this channel and I named the channel Grant Writing Sidekick because that was one of the first videos that I made. I probably would have gotten really tired of it and given up after a few videos. So as you evolve, the topics can evolve as well when you have a personal brand. You can also build a company off of your personal brand and then sell it. An example of this is Doug DeMiro. He built the company BidsAndCars.com and then he sold it for over $80 million. And I think the most important thing of all is a personal brand gives you a moat. And a moat when you're talking about business is basically a way to protect your product. Like what sets your product apart from other products? And the truth is, it's your personal brand. No one else can ever be like you. No one else can ever have your interests. Only you can be you. And if someone else tries to copy you, they're just going to be a cheap, rip-off version of you. Now when it comes to naming, you don't actually have to use your real name. For instance, a personal brand could be Mr. Beast or Meet Kevin, or you could also use a pseudonym like Tom Nash does. And he's very open about using this pseudonym. He basically does it just because he doesn't want people to be able to like dox him and contact him in real life. But it's still a personal brand at the end of the day. And if you have kind of a strange name, like Gary Vaynerchuk, that's hard to pronounce, you can call yourself Gary Vee.  I have a name that everyone gets wrong, which is Shane Humison. And that's why I just call myself Shane Hummus. So yeah, can't recommend highly enough choosing a personal brand, especially for your first channel.  It's gonna be a lot harder to grow, but if you have the skills, you can do it. But you're just putting yourself at a massive disadvantage if you're not doing that for your first channel. By the way, guys, to celebrate getting 500K subscribers, I am going to be doing a workshop where I basically reveal all of my YouTube secrets and really go in depth on it. That workshop will be exactly 72 hours after this video is posted. So you can see when that workshop is by looking down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. I tried to make it as affordable as possible.  So I tried to just cram everything into that workshop and make it super affordable so that anybody watching this can afford it. It will be a live Zoom class with me. You will literally be on Zoom with me. You'll get to talk to me, ask me questions. And of course I'll give you guys a presentation on everything I've learned about being successful on YouTube. So like I said, if you want to check that out, it'll be down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. Make sure you check the date and time down there as well. And I hope to see you there. Number two is choosing a niche. So this kind of goes hand in hand with the personal brand thing, but basically you are the niche. This is something that Dan Ko says a lot and I have to completely agree with him. And if you're worried about not picking a specific enough niche because you don't think you're gonna be able to make enough money, just look at the channel Wes Watson. This guy is a convicted felon that spent 10 years in prison. And he just started his channel talking about his prison experiences, like talking about prison gangs and riots and all kinds of things like that. And he now makes $2 million a month selling fitness, mindset and make money online type products. So if you're worried about being too specific with your niche, it's probably not as big of a problem as you think it is. Now you do want to talk about things that are either unique to you, things that are problems that you were able to overcome in your past, things that you're passionate about or things that you are very good at. So make a list of all of those, at least 10 for each of those things that I mentioned. And then start making videos about those topics. Throw stuff against the wall and tell something sticks. And you might find that there's certain topics that you really enjoy talking about a lot more than other topics. And so even if the videos aren't doing that well, that's okay, you can keep talking about those topics and eventually you'll get one that takes off. But I really want to emphasize here, treating your YouTube channel like a business. And like I mentioned before, in business you make money from painful problems. So make sure that you're solving painful problems that other people have. When life gives you lemons, turn it into lemonade. You want to think of the problems that you've had in your past as a gift. Figure out how to solve the problem yourself and then help other people solve the problem too. So for me, a huge problem that I had, and I know a ton of other people out there also have this, was choosing my career. I felt like I was forced into the education meat grinder and forced to take out a ton of student loans in order to get a decent job. And I was really frustrated about that. So I started making videos about the things I did right, the mistakes that I made, the problems that I overcame, and what I've learned.  Number three, this is another thing you want to think about which is your viewer avatar. This is the ideal person that you want to be watching your videos, subscribing to your content and eventually buying your products.  There are tons of other people out there that are having these same exact problems that you're having right now. And they're also similar to you and therefore they can relate to you. So think of problems you've had in the past that you've solved or made better and then teach other people how to solve those problems too. And you can talk about your wins and your losses. So if you made certain mistakes, that's completely fine. You want to be transparent about that. And you want to tell stories about how you felt at the time and your experiences and people are going to relate to those. So like I said before, I was incredibly frustrated with how the education system works here in the US where you're basically forced to take out a ton of student loans if you're poor. And I felt like I really didn't have any other options at the time. Now there's a lot more options, but back then I felt like I really didn't have any. So as someone who came from a poor background, I felt like I was forced to get a super expensive college degree just to be able to get a good job. So I talked about things that I did right and also things that I did wrong. And it's not just me. This is something that YouTuber Hamza does really well too. He talks about the struggles that he had in his life. He's extremely vulnerable about stuff, like the emotions that he was feeling at the time. And honestly, he's way better at doing that than I am. That's why I'm kind of suggesting these other channels because I don't think I'm the best at doing just about anything except for maybe college degrees and careers. So he started talking about fitness, personal development, learning, et cetera, and just made content on what he'd learned, the mistakes that he'd made, et cetera. All right, so next, number four, let's talk about how to find good video ideas. So after choosing your niche, figuring out who your target demographic is, your ideal viewer avatar, this is probably the most important thing. This is more important than thumbnails, more important than titles, more important than making good videos. The video idea is so unbelievably important. It's basically everything. So how do you come up with good video ideas? Well, I came up with this thing called the icon method. This is based off of legendary investor Carl Icon and how he evaluates companies that he's thinking about buying. So basically what Carl Icon would do is he would look at companies that are making a lot of money, despite not being ran well, right?   They're just emailing each other and not actually getting any real work done. And he would identify those companies as ones that are great to buy because he had business skills and he knew he could fix them. And if they're already making money despite the fact that they're not being run well, the reason for that is because people really have a burning desire for whatever product that company is selling. And it's the same exact thing for YouTube videos. I look for YouTube videos that have bad thumbnails, bad titles, bad quality. And despite all of those things, they're doing very well. So a lot of the time I will look for a YouTube video from a channel that's smaller, maybe less than 50,000 subscribers that has at least 100,000 views. And it's doing very well despite the fact that it doesn't have a very good title, thumbnail, intro, or overall video quality. When I see a video like that, I know the real reason people are watching is because of the idea of the video. There is a burning desire in the market for somebody to talk about this idea and not enough people are doing it. And therefore you can make a pretty low quality video and still do well. Then I will take that same idea, I will turn it into a title that is good, a thumbnail that's good, I'll make an intro that's good, and then I'll make a video that's good as well. And then I know that it's much, much more likely to do well with the YouTube algorithm. So the way you find this is by looking at the biggest keywords in your niche or things that you're interested in, typing those in on YouTube, and then just scrolling down through the videos. You can also download the free vidIQ plugin, which will automatically tell you how many subscribers people have. So you don't have to actually click on their profile to see that. And so if you see a video that has 500,000 views and they only have like 25K subscribers, that would be a pretty good candidate. Then you want to look at the title and thumbnail and ask yourself, is this good? Now this does take some experience, you need to actually know your stuff here. So you got to get good at making titles and thumbnails. And then if the title and thumbnail aren't very good, you click on the video and you just watch the intro. That's all I do. I do not watch the entire video. I only watch the first 30 seconds to one minute. And I'm able to judge based off of that 30 seconds to one minute, whether it's a quality video or not based on how good the intro is and how good the overall video quality and editing is. And if it's really bad across the board, that would probably be a very good candidate for a video that I would make. Another way that I use the icon method outside of YouTube is I'll find a topic that's extremely popular on a different platform like Reddit, TikTok or Amazon Books. And then I'll look on YouTube and see if that topic has blown up yet. And in many cases, if the topic hasn't blown up, that will be a great opportunity for you to go in and make a video on that topic. So for instance, a few years ago, there was this huge thing on Reddit about Monk Mode. This was a really big deal. Like tons and tons of people were talking about it on Reddit and it hadn't quite gotten to YouTube yet, but then people started making videos on it and it got millions and millions of views. So that's a perfect example of using this same method except you're using it outside of YouTube. Now, my first ever banger video was a video called The Most Useless Degrees. And I used the icon method to find this video. I was basically searching around at different degree related videos. And I found this video about this guy. It didn't even have a thumbnail. It had a pretty mediocre title. I think it was the most worthless majors and it was in all caps. And then I clicked on the video and it looked like he had recorded it with a potato. It had terrible audio. The focus was bad. The lighting was bad. He had no scripting, no editing. It was just him ranting to a camera for like 15 minutes. And this video was from a channel that had about 10,000 subscribers and it had over 500,000 views. And so I made that video and it did okay at first but then after a little bit of time, it blew up. And now it has over three million views. All right, so number five is going to be creating great titles and thumbnails. And I would have to make like an entire YouTube channel about this because it is a pretty deep topic but titles and thumbnails are so, so important. I would argue that the title and the thumbnail is probably more important than the video itself. And I know that's kind of silly but if you think about it, this is pretty normal in the modern world. Usually the marketing for a product is more important than the product itself. The packaging of the product makes all the difference because if it doesn't have good packaging or good marketing, nobody is going to buy it. So even if you have a good product, nobody's ever going to get to experience that. And it's the same thing with YouTube videos. It's kind of silly but thumbnails and titles are everything. So I'm just gonna talk about a few things I've noticed and a few mistakes I've seen beginners making over and over again. So the first thing about the thumbnail specifically is it needs to be simple. One thing I see beginners do over and over again is just putting lots and lots of stuff in the thumbnail because if they think, oh, if I put more effort into the thumbnail, it's gonna do better. Absolutely not. Simple thumbnails almost always perform better than complicated thumbnails that have like five or six different colors and they have like 10 different people on the thumbnail and they have a bunch of different types of fonts and they have like 20 words. Those thumbnails do not perform well. And a lot of the time people who are not experienced with YouTube will look at the thumbnails from successful YouTube channels. And the first thing they think is, wow, this thumbnail is so basic. I could do way better than that. But they don't realize is the reason the thumbnail did so good is because it's so basic. Now, one thing with personal brands that I highly recommend is to show a large picture of yourself in the thumbnail. Like your face, your body should be taking up at least one third of the thumbnail. And the closer in it is on your face, the better because you want people to be able to see the whites of your eyes because that attracts the eye. So just take some photos of yourself with your iPhone, maybe touch them up with AI apps. And then you can use Canva completely free in order to make these thumbnails at first. Later on, when you get more advanced, I recommend using Photoshop. And when you wanna get really advanced, there's a product called Luminar.ai. I believe it's called Skylum. Now they change the name for whatever reason. And it's also referred to as Luminarneo. But yeah, this app is incredibly good for making thumbnails pop. And I know a lot of the top YouTubers use it. Another thing is to keep the text to a minimum. We're talking three to four words max and honestly, one to two is preferred. The less words, the better. Sometimes I'll say three to four words max and the person will put four words. When I say three to four words max, I mean four words maximum. That does not mean put four words. That means you put the least amount of words as possible but four words max. And you want these words to be big and visible. I recommend using white text. White text is the best. I've split tested this hundreds of times and white text almost always wins. The second best is usually yellow text. And then if you're talking about something that's kind of good and bad, you can use red and green text. Oh, and if you're wondering how I split test thumbnails, I use TubeBuddy to split test them but it's definitely not necessary especially when you're just beginning. Another tip is to include some kind of number in the thumbnail to make it pop. For some reason, numbers attract the eyes more than words do. Another thing I want to mention is do not copy the thumbnail style of someone else who is in your niche. That's a terrible idea because that's basically their branding and you're gonna be a cheap rip-off version of them. Instead, if you're gonna copy a thumbnail style, do it from someone who is outside of your niche so you're not directly competing with them. Another pro tip is when you're making the thumbnail, make it really, really small on your screen because most people are going to be watching from their phones. So it's going to be very small and you wanna make sure that you can still see the whites of your eyes and you can still read the text on the thumbnail. Another pro tip is to make sure that people know what your video is about just from the thumbnail alone. That's right. They should be able to know, generally speaking, what your video is about just by looking at your thumbnail. They should not have to read the title to tell what the video is about. Now that doesn't mean you give up the answer to what you're talking about in the video. So if you're talking about top five YouTube tips, you don't wanna put the top five tips on your thumbnail, but you wanna make it clear that the video is about YouTube tips and YouTube in general. And then another tip about the thumbnail is just to make sure that it has good composition and it's kinda hard to tell if it has good composition when it's really big on your screen. So make it very tiny so that you can kinda tell. So for instance, if there's a lot of blank space in the top left, there should also be a lot of blank space in the bottom right. I think I'm not sure if my hands are in the right place, but yeah. And it's kinda hard to explain composition, but just go look at all the best YouTubers out there and just see sort of how their thumbnails look and then compare those to other YouTubers who are successful and then your thumbnails and you'll probably notice some things in common. And then when it comes to titles, you definitely want to make the title and the thumbnail together. The title and the thumbnail should never be made separately. Always make them together. And the reason for this is for one, you never want to repeat what you say in your title in the thumbnail. This is a cardinal sin of YouTube. Never, ever, ever repeat the title in the thumbnail. I see this all the time with newbies where the title would be like top five investments and then on the thumbnail, it's also top five investments. Do not do that. The purpose of the thumbnail is to get the person to look at the title and the purpose of the title is to get the person to click on the video. Then another thing I should mention with the icon method is when you find videos using the icon method, never, ever, ever copy their title or thumbnail. This is a massive mistake that people make. They'll find a video that's doing really well and they'll just copy the title in the thumbnail. Do not do that because when you do it, you are going to be competing directly against that video that already has hundreds of thousands of views. And of course it's going to beat you because of social proof. Which video are you gonna click on? The one that has 10 views or the one that has 100,000 views? Of course, you're gonna click on the one that has 100,000. But when it comes to these Carl icon videos, the one thing you do want to potentially copy is the keyword in the title. So you either wanna copy that keyword or you want to find a synonym for that keyword. So in my case, for instance, he talked about college majors, I used degrees. You can also use the YouTube search bar to come up with really good titles as well. Try to put the keyword as close to the front of the title as possible because that's gonna be more SEO friendly. And then try to make the title as intriguing as possible. Try to give it some flair, a little bit of drama, a little bit of emotion. So for instance, the most useless degrees dot, dot, dot, you might notice that everything except for the very first letter is not capitalized. Whereas on a lot of my videos, I capitalize every word. I did that for a reason because I was kind of going for a certain emotion with that title. Like I'm sort of just so disgusted with these degrees that I don't even want to capitalize the words. So like I said, there's a lot to titles and thumbnails. Maybe I'll make an entire video on them at some point if you guys would like. Next, number six, you want to obviously make great content. So think about this almost like a product as well. You have to have good marketing, good packaging in order to sell the product in the first place. But if it's a crappy product, people are gonna refund it, people are not going to buy the product again, people are gonna tell their friends it's a terrible product and then eventually it will fail. So the product itself, AKA your content has to be good. And when it comes to creating educational content, specifically, all educational content is basically a listicle. Books are listicles, courses are listicles, tutorials are listicles, they're just a step-by-step listicle. This video is a listicle. How to videos are listicles. Even on podcasts, they usually have a list of topics that they're gonna talk about, which means that podcasts are also listicles. So when you're thinking about making a video on a topic, basically just think about what are the most important things to talk about when it comes to this topic. Then make a list of those things and talk about them. And if you're somebody who already has experience on the topic, you're very passionate about the topic or you're very good at it, you should be able to talk about it off the top of your head for the most part. But it definitely does help to have kind of like a bullet point style list under the listicles of things to talk about. Now there are basically two different types of listicles. The first one that I was talking about is experienced style listicles. This is where you talk about topics that you either have experience on, you're very good at or you're very passionate about. It's basically talking about ideas. The other type of listicle is a fact-based listicle. Now this one is a little bit more difficult to make and it requires a lot more research and it's a little bit harder to write the scripts for. But it's also much easier to hire someone else to write those scripts for you because you're not talking about your own experiences, you're talking about facts. So a lot of the videos that I do are fact-based listicles. So for instance, the 21 highest paying work from home jobs, that is a fact-based listicle. I talk about different data that I collected from across the internet and sure I do give my opinion here and there, but for the most part it's just data and facts that I'm talking about. I'm just gathering and collecting a lot of the different best resources from across the internet and presenting it to someone. So those are two great ways to make good educational content and of course there's a lot more to it than this. Again, this is one where I could probably do an entire series of videos on how to do it, let me know if you'd like that. And another way to make sure your content is good is to include metaphors, analogies, stories and anecdotes. These are ways that you really breathe life into your content. You talk about your own experiences for instance, or you talk about the experiences of other people. You give metaphors and analogies to explain complex subjects. You might also reference books or other educational channels or other just really good resources. This is how you really breathe life into your content and make it really good. And remember what I said about your ideal audience avatar being you from a few years ago? You should literally pretend like you're talking to yourself from a few years ago. Like that is literally what I do. I pretend like I'm talking to a younger version of myself and you're trying to convince them that what you're saying is right. Like imagine if you went back into 2012, 2013 and you were trying to convince yourself to buy Bitcoin, right? That's the kind of conviction that you wanna have when you're talking to the younger version of yourself. Like you know because you saw that Bitcoin went up like 1000X but the younger version of yourself is gonna be really skeptical of that so you have to convince them. And that's another way that you can be really charismatic and make better content. Number seven I wanna talk about is volume negates luck. And really I'm not so sure that there is even such a thing as luck. There are probabilities and everything in life is a probability. So let's say for instance that you were trying to get better at baseball and so was your friend. Now your friend tries to get better by watching videos on YouTube about baseball, reading books about how to swing a bat, studying how other people swing a bat and he does that for three months before he actually swings the bat.  Now you might also be watching a little bit of content here and there but you're putting the reps in. Who do you think is going to be better at hitting the ball and swinging the bat after three months? Of course, the person who's putting the reps in and swinging the bat is going to be better. And it's the same thing with YouTube. I see this all the time where people will think about some video they're gonna make for like three months.  And then when it fails, they get really discouraged because it took them three months to make that video. And this is exactly what happened to me when I was first starting YouTube. So when I first started YouTube with this channel, I had kind of like an accountability buddy who was also starting YouTube at the same time. And he took three months to make his first video. By that time, I'd already made well over 10 videos. And by the time I made my 10th video, because of the fact that I'd put the reps in, that 10th video was better than his first video, even though he put way more effort into it than I did. And the truth is, right now, if you've never made YouTube videos, you're probably like level zero out of 100 when it comes to skills. Maybe if you've made videos before you're level like 10 or 20 out of 100. The only way you're gonna get up to a level like 80 out of 100, where you're gonna consistently be able to make really good videos is by putting the reps in. You have to make videos to get good at making videos. It's that simple. And going back to the baseball analogy, every time you make a video, you're kind of trying to hit a home run. You're trying to get it to where it gets 100,000 views plus. The greatest baseball hitter of all time, arguably, is Barry Bonds. And he only hit the ball 29% of the time, right? That was his batting average. That means 70% of the time he missed. And a much greater percentage of the time he didn't hit a home run. So if you're trying to hit a home run on YouTube by just making one video that takes three months at a time, even if you are highly skilled, your chances of hitting a home run are extremely low. So if you're not highly skilled, it makes more sense to just make more video. Because like I said before, the number one reason that videos go off, the number one reason why they go viral is the idea, not all of the other stuff. So you just wanna make as many videos as possible to put in those reps and also give yourself more chances to succeed. So the solution here is volume and consistency. And volume negates luck. So if you have like a 5% chance of a video popping off with you just kind of doing your best and just making sure that you're consistently uploading versus a 10% chance of it popping off if you spend three months on it, it makes much more sense for you to just make 10 of the 5% chance videos than one of the videos where you have a 10% chance. I hope that makes sense. A little bit of math there, a little bit of probability, but yeah, volume and consistency. Number eight, keep doing what works. So you're throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall, you're seeing what sticks. When something finally does stick, keep doing what is working. Double down on that for an extended period of time. So for me, the thing that really stuck at first was talking about college degrees. I kept doing that for like a year and a half, two years. Then later on, I started talking more about alternative education and careers. I kept doing that for a while. And then now I'm kind of at the point where I talk about remote jobs as well as talking about side hustles. So you can easily pivot later on. It's not a problem at all. But once you find something that works, make sure you double down on that and do that thing a lot. I put a lot in this video, but like I said, I am going to be doing a workshop where I go really deep on these concepts and go over a bunch of other stuff and also give you guys a bunch of really good resources. And that will be exactly 72 hours after this video posts. So check the date down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. And you can click on that as well if you're interested in attending the workshop. It will be a live Zoom session with me. I will be there. You'll get to talk to me, ask me questions, et cetera. So hope to meet you there. That would be awesome. And if you haven't checked it out already, go ahead and check out my video on the 21 highest paying work from home jobs since I mentioned that earlier in the video. And you can look at that by clicking right here.