Janet: Got a manager that we had for a year. We fired him. He tried to take over our channel. 

Spencer: He tried to take over your YouTube channel? 

Janet: It’s a crazy ride and it’s a fun one. It’s a lot of work sometimes, but it’s also fun. When I heard about that, it was like the angels sang, the clouds parted. So we actually got one. You know, this was a psychological boost. 

Spencer: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Creators Uncut, the show about YouTube, the business side of it, and all of the great advice that YouTubers have. Today I’m joined by Janet Thaeler from Clean Freak and Germaphobe. Janet, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here. 

Spencer: Yeah. So usually what we like to do is we like to have our viewers get to know the guests a little bit. So maybe tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, where you’re from, maybe what you like to do for fun, and kind of what your channel is about 

Janet: Sure. I live in Utah, just like you. We found out we’re both in Utah. There’s such a great community of YouTubers in Utah. I think it’s because we were bloggers. I was a blogger for a long time, a business blogger first, and then I did mattress reviews and blogged about mattresses and sleep. One of my favorite topics is sleep. It’s so important to our mental health. It’s so important to our physical health. It’s the foundation of everything and getting the right mattress really changed my life. And that’s what kind of led me to that. I’ve been an affiliate marketer, a digital marketer for over 15 years. I’ve worked at startups, agencies, all sorts of things. I really, the way that this kind of came about is I’m married to a clean freak. And he’s so OCD. I was like, I’m not going to spend my life trying to keep up with this. I’ve got to find a better, faster, easier way to clean. And I like technology. I’ve been tech startups and things. So I want to use technology in cleaning. So that was my huge motivation. And I really enjoy the emotional hit you get when things are clean and the satisfaction you get when something transforms. That’s what’s in it for me, the emotional hit of it. I’m also challenged by trying to find the best ways to do things and experiment and test things. And so it’s been fun to have that platform to do it and to hopefully inspire people to try new things and ways to clean faster and have a cleaner space. 

Spencer: Yeah, gotcha. That makes sense. I totally agree about a clean room. Like, I love the feeling when something is clean. I also like those videos. I can’t name anyone off the top of my head, but where it’s like a hoarder house or something and then they completely transform it, those are super satisfying. So I totally understand. Quick question about your digital marketing. So did you go to school for that? Or did you just find that as a passion? 

Janet: I went to school for conservation biology. And I was into environmental science and botany in particular. And, you know, there weren’t a lot of jobs. Instead, I took a job answering the phones at a startup that did websites for VW, Volkswagen and other big companies. And as I was answering the phones, I taught myself HTML and website stuff. 

Spencer: Oh nice.

Janet: And I just, you know, from there, I decided that that’s what I want to do. And I decided to start a blog about it because I was just learning it and I’m self taught. And so I was sharing what I was learning with other people really for my own benefit because search, there is a search bar in my blog and I could search things I learned. And I’m very much an experimenter. So even with that, I would learn about things and try them in real life and then keep doing that with affiliate marketing and different things and see if it works. And that’s how I kind of taught myself. And then I didn’t want it. I wanted to be a programmer. Do programming. It’s kind of hard. I wouldn’t say I would ever program where I realized that a lot of people are faster and better. than I am at it. And so I just, I heard about online marketing and search engine marketing and and I’m older. So it like it blew me away. I was like, wait, you have to market a website. You don’t just build a website. That was my boy and my friend, my really good friend at the time. We just bought ebooks and we just learned and talked about it and totally loved it. And that when I heard about that, it was like the angels singing the clouds parted. It was like my calling. I loved it so much. I can’t say I’m the best in the world at it, but I have so much passion for it. And that’s really what’s always driven me because I love being a mom. I have two kids and I love having freedom. I love passive income. I love making money while I sleep. Sleep so good for you and money doing it. That’s the best world. 

Spencer: Yeah.

Janet: So yeah, that was very luring. Plus when I was working for other people, I got small raises, you know, and they controlled that. And I made one year, I’ll talk about, I made our channel made over almost 400% more than the year before. My tax guy actually like contacted me and said, was this a mistake? It wasn’t. We just focused 

Spencer: Wow.

Janet: And invested in our channel that year and it paid back in a big way. And it’s so thrilling and exciting to see that kind of growth. It’s what fuels me. It’s my love language and I love getting paid. Just pay me and I’m like, thank you. Thank you. I love it. Like, pay me money I love it. It’s not more important than people have to distinguish that. I don’t worship money and I will do it ethically, but I love getting paid and I love making money. It’s so fun and it’s so, it’s another fulfilling thing. 

Spencer: Yeah, that’s awesome. So was clean freaking germaphobe your one and only channel that you’ve done or have you worked on other YouTube channels before this? 

Janet: I have a mattress review channel called Unboxed Mattress where I have a video that I rent and I did reviews for those, but I got kind of tired of how heavy they are to lift. 

Spencer: That makes sense.

Janet: I want to get them up to the first floor, the fourth floor and in an elevator and all that packing and moving heavy things. And it was doing really, really well for a while, not my YouTube. I was more focused on my website and the sales, but I make a few hundred dollars a month on that channel. It’s never grown. It’s not the same because reviews aren’t like people go to buy a mattress, they look at a review. They don’t usually come back and watch every video and it’s not as conducive to storytelling, which I really love. And so anyway, as this took off, I put less and less into Unboxed Mattress anyway, but it wasn’t compelling enough for me to do a channel over. So I just kind of did it more casually. 

Spencer: Gotcha. 

Janet: I actually loved to write. I actually started YouTube because bloggers that I knew, the only people that were making money, it had massive amounts of traffic. I have friends who are making millions, right? But I was never able to get that kind of traffic and the ads pay so little. But on YouTube, you don’t have to click on my affiliate link for me to make money and actually buy, leave YouTube to buy something. I don’t have to have massive quantities of people to make money at it. And so it’s so, I just thought, it’s also more intimate. And so I decided, I’ve got to get better at video because I was terrified. I thought everyone was going to say, you’re fat, you’re ugly, because someone did say in the beginning, I never forgot, they said, you would get more subscribers if you guys would clean with in bikinis. 

Spencer: Oh my goodness. 

Janet: I’m like, that’s not the kind of channel that we’re running here. Yeah. It was just kind of like, I was like, I’m going to show him, you know, kind of funny comment. 

Spencer: Yeah, YouTube comments are crazy sometimes. So I know a lot of people script out their videos. Some YouTubers just kind of go with the flow. So do you write for every video? 

Janet: I do research for most of them. Some of them I don’t need to because it’s just my experience. So my Dyson vacuum cleaner, that’s like a $500 vacuum cleaner, the battery went out and they don’t make a battery for that one anymore. And so I bought one on Tmoo, I think, or it was Amazon. And, you know, I want to do a video about that still to show, you know, that I could use a $30 or $40 battery instead of the $300 one that Dyson sells, but they don’t even sell anymore. And I tested it already, and I want to make a video about that. And I’m not going to script that out a lot. There’s key elements I want to include that I sometimes forget that I, you know, I’d like to have an outline. But other ones, I’ve researched extensively of all the methods I want to try, all the ingredients I need, key facts or, you know, things that I want to include. But I found if I read it on the teleprompter, it really isn’t that authentic and it’s kind of boring. And so Diana’s way better at that than I am. And so I often do not script. And if brands ask me to script things, I’m like, well, it just never works as well for me. I need to like be into it. And it’s hard for me to just try to read and have the energy and the passion come through if I’m reading something and trying to focus on the words as they’re scrolling. 

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Telepromptering is a skill. I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a video editor. That’s like my main job. And one of the clients that I do videos for is they have a scripted show. And they’ve gotten really good at making telepromptering entertaining. And it’s definitely a skill. That’s something you have to learn. I definitely couldn’t do it. So I totally understand where you’re coming from. So I’m curious, your channel is fairly large. And so I’m wondering, what did you do if there was anything specific to grow your channel to where it is now? Did you feel like you did something different from other YouTubers? Or did you kind of follow what everyone kind of does? Or what was your, I guess, secret ingredient to growing your YouTube channel? 

Janet: So first of all, I remember when we were making $50 a month, and I was like, Oh, that’s cute. You know, I remember Diana’s husband saying, you don’t even make minimum wage, you guys are wasting your time. And I knew I was like, haha just wait, I knew that it would grow and make more money. And that’s how things work over time. So you have to put in the work up front and be consistent and getting content and trying to do better and learning. And that is, we just started out reviewing all sorts of things. And that was just practice. And at some point, we decided to focus in on cleaning. And we knew there was money there. There’s a lot of niches that don’t pay very well. And nobody really cares about. And so I think that’s really important. I don’t think that’s a huge secret, but it’s hard to do. It’s a lot easier to do it. And my other channel, not having a business partner, it’s hard to be consistent and keep doing it when nobody cares, right? So you have to have that drive. And cleaning was compelling enough to me to do those videos that I could keep doing it for. We are now on over seven years. We weren’t a cleaning channel the whole time, but that’s the thing I think that if you keep putting in the effort and you keep improving over time, some people faster than others, you make progress, you learn a lot, but we did invest a lot of money and time into it too. Not in the beginning. The beginning was just learning how to use a microphone, how to use a camera, how to talk on camera, all those skills. And they just seemed to come bit by bit. But what really accelerated our growth was getting a manager that we had regular meetings with, we checked in with, and also taking Darrell Eves course. It’s pretty expensive. I think when we took it, it was four or five thousand. I think it’s gone up.

Spencer: Oh wow.

Janet: But that was also like a college course on YouTube. It would be way too intense if you were a beginner. In fact, even it was a little too intense in the beginning. But there’s so much to learn and he keeps up on it. There’s people that out there making videos about how to do YouTube and it’s free. And that’s where I would start in the beginning. But yeah, we definitely invested time and money and learned the skills and made a lot of changes. One thing also is getting an editor. That just helped a lot because the editor could take off load that. We could focus more on the content and we had to learn to help the editor read our style and work together with that editor. But we had an editor for a couple of years, our favorite one. And so that really helped our growth too. 

Spencer: Oh, gotcha. I didn’t know that you had a video editor. That’s cool. 

Janet: Yeah, in the Philippines. 

Spencer: Oh, yeah. Gotcha. So I like how you mentioned that you didn’t quite put as much time and investment at the beginning. I definitely think it’s easier once you start to see a little bit more success as you go on it becomes more exciting, I guess. And so it becomes easier to put more and more time and effort into it. So.

Janet: I mean, when you don’t have comments and people like answer every comment, but we don’t have any comments. 

Spencer: Yeah.

Janet: I wanted to try things, but some features on YouTube only get unlocked when you get a certain size. It was just step by step building it. And it’s so exciting when you reach those milestones and you can start doing those things. There’s a lot of things I haven’t done still too that I want to do. But yeah, it’s a crazy ride and it’s a fun one. It’s a lot of work sometimes, but it’s also fun. 

Spencer: Yeah. I also wanted to ask, you mentioned briefly having a YouTube manager. I’ve never actually met anyone who’s had a YouTube manager, at least the YouTubers that I’ve talked to. So how did you know when to get a YouTube manager? Was it part of the Daryl Eves course? 

Janet: No, no. I think having the regular meetings that they had, so he gave a lesson, he unlocked a video, and then you had a Discord group. I think it’s changed right now. But anyway, you have that talk and they talking back and forth and meeting other YouTubers. I went to conferences and things like that. But the reason I wanted a manager is because I found coaching keeps you accountable and keeps you high level and thinking about strategically and also learning strategies and trying them with that support. And so we’ve got a manager that we had for a year. We fired him. He tried to take over our channel and he didn’t, part of his role was to get us products and also get us sponsors and he didn’t get one in the whole year. I used to do that and I got lots of products for free and at that point that’s what we were looking for. And I got some sponsors and we didn’t get any with him. He did help us get more organized and get into a good habits, but that was a crazy experience. But we got another one. 

Spencer: Wait, wait, wait, so if you don’t mind me asking, he tried to take over your YouTube channel, how did that happen? 

Janet: Yeah, so we had him as a manager and everything on the channel, right? And we had been talking about getting an operating agreement, getting our LLC and everything. And so I had gone on to the website where the documents were uploaded, our paper work wasn’t an LLC. And I kept talking to him about filing that company, that LLC paperwork and he just didn’t do it. It wasn’t going anywhere and one day I logged in and I saw that there was LLC paperwork and he had written his name in it. 

Spencer: Oh!

Janet: He was an owner of the channel according to that and I was furious and he also tried to have us sign away 20% of our whole channel, which is crazy because he didn’t deserve 20%. 

Spencer: Yeah.

Janet: And I wasn’t impressed with his work as far as like following up on things and it was almost like he became a slave driver. He wanted us to work harder and harder and harder. He got more and more stressful, but once I found that evidence, then I was like, that is it. We’ve got to get rid of this guy. He should have been honest and said, I want to put myself in the LLC and like, we have to approve it, right? You can’t just add yourself and then add the paperwork. That was crazy discovery. I was very shocked. 

Spencer: So after that experience, you got another YouTube manager, right? 

Janet: Yeah. 

Spencer: Was it harder to get another YouTube manager after that? Were you a lot more cautious or did you do like a full background check? 

Janet: No, because this guy didn’t want a percentage. He worked differently and my advice would be like, don’t get a manager, get a coach.

Spencer: Oh, ok.

Janet: Because manager will like do handle all these things for you. I know there are people like Cara Loren. I think she’s a lifestyle influencer and I asked her, she actually, her sister lived next door to me and one time she was visiting and it was kind of obnoxious. I felt kind of obnoxious asking her, but I actually like said, hey, I’m just curious about managers. Do you have a manager? Because she’s huge, right? And I don’t want to interrupt her privacy, but she did answer that question that she did and they were based in New York City. They were an agency that handled all of her brand deals and everything and the volume she was doing that made sense. But for a lot of people, it doesn’t and they were legit like with employees and, you know, office and everything. But no, I wasn’t scared because we went to flat fees. We didn’t do percentage of everything. 

Spencer: Oh, gotcha.

Janet: And so we just paid per month and first, you know, every week we had a session with him and then we applied what he taught us and then came back the next week. And so no, I had a good reputation. I didn’t feel like anything, but today I would get a coach and it’s kind of similar. He was kind of more of a coach style and that’s what I think. He even said, I don’t want to become a slave driver. I don’t want the incentive to try to push you. So I make more money, you know, that he could just, he knew how much he was going to make. So and I think we had him for about a year also. 

Spencer: Yeah. So you’d recommend a coach, someone who maybe like holds you accountable, but not someone who handles all of the brand deals. You kind of handle all of the brand deals yourself? 

Janet: Yeah I mean, there are people that I know that train someone to get brand deals for them and they pay that person a percentage plus a hourly rate. So they have a pitching rate where they pay them to pitch. So like, maybe it’s 10 or, I don’t know how much it is an hour, $20 an hour, $10 an hour somewhere and they’re on there. And then on top of it, when they land a brand deal, if she does it, then she also pays her a percentage of that brand deal. And so they have both the hybrid model, but she only focuses on brand deals. 

Spencer: Gotcha. 

Janet: You know, I think that with a coach or a manager, we should focus on direction strategy, improving the content, organizing things and getting in a habit of, like we didn’t ever have, we had meetings, but they’re kind of sloppy. But after we had these, these guys, we would like meet every single week for an hour to go over what’s working, what’s not working, what we want to focus on new things we’ve heard in the industry or saw that YouTube’s doing that we want to incorporate. And that didn’t happen so much in the beginning. We were just, you know, what should we make a video about and write in the script? And now we’re like, okay, you know, what are you working on? What’s your video for the week? And helping, you know, being more kind of an overview and being the CEO of our business more. 

Spencer: Cool. That’s a great insight. I haven’t talked to any YouTubers that have had a manager. I think that our viewers and listeners will find that very helpful to them.

Janet: I wish someone had told me. I wish I didn’t go into it so blindly. I thought what he was doing was normal. It took me awhile to figure it out. Huh. But I am glad for what we learned from that. 

Spencer: Yeah. So in those meetings, uh, is that kind of where you came up with ideas for your videos or how did you kind of decide what videos to make and what videos not to make? 

Janet: Yeah. So, um, one thing is looking at what YouTube already values in your niche, um, and doing your version of it. So in ours, it was clean with me’s were huge. And so cleaning the house and like people can clean while they watch, you know, put out, it has music and sometimes some talking, but mostly it’s cleaning and music. Um, we could see that that was getting a lot of views and some are like, oh, we need to clean with me’s and the style of thumbnail that they use, the kind of what was really working and kind of piggybacking off the success because even having a similar title and thumbnail to something that’s been really, really successful, um, can help you because YouTube will often suggest it, you know, along with that video. And so, um, that was really interesting. I tried that a few times and it worked really well. I also liked doing original content and reviews of products that I really love and the things my burning questions. But I think that that’s a really, that’s the strategy that Darryl has. I think Darryl taught us and also are, we would look at things and see what’s doing well. We’d look at trends. Um, and that’s basically telling you, this is what YouTube people, this is what viewers want in your niche. They really love this. Like you said, the, um, the hoarder level cleaning is really popular. It’s super time consuming and expensive. And so, and that’s not something I could handle doing a lot of. 

Spencer: Yeah. That makes sense. 

Janet: Smells and the, it’s just overwhelming, but there’s money, a lot of money in it and there’s a lot of interest in it and people are watching it. But of course there’s competitors that coming in all the time, but he just taught Darryl taught you how to research and our, we would just just like look at what’s doing well. And also, like I said, new features like, um, when YouTube started like letting you tag products in your videos and making a commission and having it all be into YouTube. So I didn’t have to go apply for Targets affiliate program and Walmart’s affiliate program and Amazon’s, you know, well, Amazon isn’t in there, right? I don’t think it is. No. Um, but you could tag and it would show you your percent that you made. Um, and so you can choose and find all these products from different retailers and tag them and people don’t have, you don’t have to like go up and sign for a pro, a program, find the link. I mean, it just saves so much time. That was like my favorite YouTube invention. Um, that they came out with that. It was like a dream come true, but nobody was talking about it. Even all the big guys when it first came out, all, you know, the people that are talking about how to YouTube didn’t talk about it. And I was like, what is going on? This is like revolutionary. And so we make money that way. And I’m always looking for new revenue streams. That’s another thing that I would talk about with Diana is like, how can I heard of, you know, some, and our manager did this too. Some, um, you know, there’s this new thing that you should try, you know, and so we would, and we discussed, do we want to do that? And that having more income streams is really important. And I really.

Spencer: Yeah.

Janet: Yeah, that was something I would tell people to always look for ways to make money, not just from YouTube ads. 

Spencer: Yeah. So I’m curious about the affiliate thing. So is that just like in YouTube studio, you can just like browse products. 

Janet: So while you’re uploading your video, you can tag products that show in your video and in the back. 

Spencer: So as your upload, so do you like buy the product ahead of time? Or do you like, so that’s when you upload the video that’s when you have that product. 

Janet: If we’re vacuuming with the Dyson and we know which Dyson we have, um, I had a handheld, but Dyson, I had a stick, but Dyson, I had my favorite black and decker handheld vacuums, you know, whatever, Tynco or Tynoco, however you say it, like vacuum mops are my favorite thing ever. And we reviewed like tons of them. So they’re not all, always all there, but like we can usually tag the Tynoco. We can always find that and tag that. We can tag whatever we’re using in the video that we already have, or if it’s like, you know, what cleaning products are you using for your, for anything like the steam cleaner we use, you know, we’re going to tag that. Um, if we’re using Barkeeper’s friend, which is a great cleaner for different purposes, you know, it’s sold everywhere. And so we can just tag it. Um, but yeah, anything that’s in your video that you’re highlighting, um, then tag it if you can. Like when it came to the Dyson battery, I may not find that in YouTube. I mean, that’s pretty obscure and specific. Now when I put it in the description and, um, having done it myself, it’s very important that you get the right one. And I know about the battery now, like you want to get the one that comes with the little screws, because if you lose those, you’re screwed. Um, those little things, you know, but yeah, there’s a lot of, if you’re doing, if you have things in your video that are, you know, at any store, a Swiffer, for example, they’re all sorts of stores. So I could pick from, you know, Lowe’s Home Depot has them, Target has them, so many different brands have them. I can see what they offer. I can tag it right there. And then when I upload it, it previews that one when I’m talking about that product.

Spencer: Gotcha.

Janet: You know, even the other container I’m using, Easy Off, right? Easy Off, Scune Free, this exact one. And they don’t have to go and look in the description and they have a little picture of it. Yeah. 

Spencer: Yeah. That is a, that’s a great feature it sounds like. So I’ve never done affiliate marketing, so I was just curious. 

Janet: It’s the easiest way to do it. It’s kind of a lot of learning curve for people. I’ve been doing a long time, but that, that’s just all you need to do is learn how to tag the products, you know, and you have to qualify. You have to have your, you know, your watch hours and everything to, to be monetized and everything. You have to have so many, you know, you have to like unlock that feature. But once you do, it’s the best. 

Spencer: Yeah. Switching gears back to more on the, I guess, YouTube side of things. Was there a moment in your YouTube channel or a milestone or a video where you’re like, oh yeah, we finally made it. 

Janet: This, I remember one of our managers saying like, you’re going to get a silver play button and we were both like, are you sure? We don’t believe it. Like that seems so far away and impossible. So when we actually got one, you know, this was just like a big psychological boost. So that to me was like, we actually did it. And we, we actually, we filmed a video about it. We never posted it, but we were so excited to get that. And I love that YouTube does that. It just, it’s like that milestone you reach and you’re like, wow. But for me, cause I love money. It was when we started making enough that we could make a full time, we made a full time living, you know, and we started making more money. And that was so exciting. And I think that was the best, the most crazy thing. I never thought that would happen either. I really didn’t believe that I could make the most that I ever made in my whole life on YouTube. And that was the me and her. So I was making, you know, not the whole amount. 

Spencer: Yeah. 

Janet: So she quit her job and, you know, I had done that a long time ago. And so that was really fun. And that’s like, oh, wow, we’re actually making good money. This is fun. 

Spencer: Yeah. So do you know how long it was from when you started your channel to when you got that silver play button? 

Janet: I think it was three or four years.

Spencer: Do you think it was like, did it escalate a lot in that like last year before you got the play button? 

Janet: So we, I was like, we’re going to invest and we’re going to like really, like we had never really put money into making videos besides our editor. So we started experimenting and doing things. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t, but the things that worked really well. We diversified our income a lot with adding Amazon influencers, which was new and was crazy successful. Yeah. So we were always, we’re always looking for ways to expand and innovate. And we started putting, you know, like we did this series and we paid cleaners to help us. And that was like a new thing. I experimented with different things. So it was, yeah, we, that was like a huge turning point. It was scary to do, to put that much money into it. I know Mr. Beast is like the extreme opposite, right? He, so much into his business, you know, back into YouTube’s or his videos again and again and again and look where he’s at. We, we were very cautious about that. Took a while to do that. But that really was important in our growth is to like, to actually buy products to review. Sometimes I like that because the brand isn’t telling you what to do. And some people are like, we want an eight minute video on the sponge. Well, I don’t think I’m that entertaining that I can talk about your product for eight minutes. That’s a long video. It’s much better to incorporate it into what we’re doing and talk about it in other ways. But I, yeah, we, we had bought some of our own vacuum mops. We also had brands send us vacuum mops. I think, like I said, I think we’ve reviewed seven or eight different kinds, different ones. And it’s fun to see the innovation of things. But yeah, I think that was a big turning point where we started to take those risks and invest. We invested first to learn, then we started investing in the actual, you know, making videos and doing things that costs that we invested more into. 

Spencer: Yeah. I do think it’s important to note that it is important to invest, but not everyone can be a Mr. Beast. Like not everyone can invest 100% of the money back into it. Cause, you know, at some point, hopefully YouTube is your full time job and you got to be cautious. And I think that you guys went about it very smart by investing a little bit. And I think it paid off. Yeah. So I’ve got one final question for you to kind of wrap things up. And we ask this to all of our guests on the show, um, but it’s all about like YouTube myth busting. So is there anything about the YouTube platform that you experienced as a YouTuber that you think is true or false? Um, you know, like for example, some people say quantity over quality when it comes to videos, some people say quality over quantity. Um, subscribers isn’t the most important metric to view a channel. Is there anything like that that you think is true or false about YouTube from your experience? 

Janet: Yeah. Um, I don’t think just making videos is going to make you money. 

Spencer: Oh yeah. 

Janet: You have to be strategic about it. There’s so much competition. There’s so much more than when we started. There’s always more competition. And the, the, um, what quality that you’re competing against keeps going up. And some people, I don’t know if you’ve seen this and comments are like, just keep going. You’ll get there to a certain degree. That’s in the beginning. That’s might be true that you just need to keep practicing and doing it, but at a certain point, if you’re not growing growth is, is life. Like I cannot do something that doesn’t grow. It is depressing to me. If I’m going to put my heart and soul and try to learn something, it’s got to grow. So at a certain point, if it’s growing, you know, it’s not just that’s what you need. You can’t just keep making videos if it’s not working and you’re not making more money and your channel’s not growing. Don’t encourage. I hate it when people, I see that like just keep going. I’m like, you, it’s obvious you’ve been doing regular videos for two years now. And you kind of still flat line. There is something wrong. Fix it or get out of YouTube. Like what a waste of your time. I cannot abide that. It just really bothers me as my personality. I don’t understand how people keep trying when it’s not working. If it’s not working, get out or learn to grow because growth is the funnest part of it. Why would you do it? If you’re, I’ve been doing YouTube forever and they might have different goals than me. They may not care about money. That’s okay. They can do it for lots of different reasons, but if you care about money and you’re not making it, something is wrong. It’s not like you don’t need a cheerleader and people to say, you can do it. Just believe in yourself. No, you need more knowledge. You need more skills. You need to change. 

Spencer: That’s great. I think that’s great advice. So, uh, is there any other advice that you would give to our viewers or listeners? 

Janet: I kind of hit on it already. We did niche down and in the beginning, we went really broad because again, I was just trying to learn this whole thing. This is a new thing. But what our number one video was for a long time that was making us the most money was how to clean a pee off a mattress. I was reviewing mattresses. That is something that like mattresses are expensive, right? And nobody wants to see a big pee stain on it. And that happens a lot. If you have little kids at wet the bed, you know, they’re pets, people’s pets, whatever. That was the clue to the new niche is cause I had an interest in cleaning cause I wanted to do it better. And I love, I like having things clean, but it was, I didn’t, I wasn’t bad at cleaning. I just wanted to get better at it. Um, so it compelled me and also it was, it had some money in it. But yeah, that, that was a clue is that that our number one video was how to clean a mattress. And we’re like, since that’s our number one video, maybe we should niche down and we rebranded completely. We used to be called two moms review, just these two moms reviewing random stuff was fun. We got our kids and we did all sorts of different things. Um, but, but once we niched down and found a niche that like we focused on cleaning, that was a big turning point. So, you know, what is really doing well on your channel? If you don’t have a good focus, is that something that can grow? Is that something that has a good size audience? Is that something you want to do? I mean, a lot of people talk about that, but I don’t regret how we started being very general and just trying all sorts of things cause it taught like eventually had the clue to the future. And it was actually, um, kind of a risk. It felt like a big risk to rebrand. And then we rebranded again because our, our logo looks dirty and we were a cleaning channel. It was like full of dirt and that’s kind of funny. And then I’m like, why did we do that? So we rebranded, we didn’t rebrand to clean, we rebranded to clean freak and germaphobe. Um, but we also like updated our logo and everything, which helped us do better and looked more clean and professional and that made us feel more official too. So yeah, that’s, that’s what I would say is that that’s very important to invest in your brand because that’s what you’ve got over everyone else. Um, there’s a lot of like competition. Like I said, you’ve got to have something to give that they are not getting from the other people, even if you do the same things, you’re never going to be the same because your personality, your perspective, your unique skills and everything that you bring to it, that’s what makes it, you know, different. And that’s your brand and the way it looks and everything. And we could even do better at that. You know, I think that would be the next evolution is like really, um, adding the brand elements and then that’s what we were trying to do. The phrases you say and, and making those like deliberate and the kind of colors you use in your thumbnails and you know, the way you do your ends and your style. We have a brand, but it could be tightened, you know, so that’s important to me too. 

Spencer: I think every YouTuber, you know, there’s always room for improvement, but I definitely agree with what you said about narrowing in your brand and your niche. Um, you know, you can’t do everything on your channel. That’s just not how, you know, viewers watch YouTube. Like they, they go to a specific channel for a specific thing. And so I definitely agree with what you said about, uh, finding a niche and sticking to a brand. So thank you for that advice. 

Janet: And now one more thing in the beginning, I really relied on search engine traffic because YouTube’s the number two search engine owned by the number one search engine. So that was really important. How to phrase your titles and put those words in the descriptions and do the keyword of research to figure out what people are searching for and using those terms. Cause that brought us a lot of, that was our number one referral source. In the beginning, we didn’t have an audience. We built one through a search engine. 

Spencer: So most of your traffic was through like searching on YouTube? 

Janet: So yeah, I was really, I researched the words. Should I say, um, Dawn Powerwash or Dawn Platinum Powerwash, you know, I looked at different, um, ways people term different things that we’re talking about in the video. And I tried to use those terms. Um, but you know, the main terms and like putting clean and cleaning into titles and things. So it, it like we teach YouTube that that’s our niche. That’s what we’re talking about. I think I’m stronger in that area than suggested videos. I have, um, videos that I’ve done really well and suggested too. And that’s actually better than search engine. But in the beginning, search engine was what we relied on. And that’s what I would think. Look, look at the term. And even if you had just see the ones again that are really popular that you can kind of mirror a bit while you learn, um, that that’s helpful. 

Spencer: Yeah. That got me thinking, uh, kind of a tangent, but do you use like, uh, so when you upload a video, there’s like the description and all these boxes you can check. Do you use like tags? Cause I’ve heard some people say that like tags don’t do anything. Do you use tags? 

Janet: Yeah I still do. Because, uh, I think we use like TubeBuddy, for example, will tell you which tags are like important. I don’t do it. We don’t do it every time. And as you get bigger, I think it’s less important. But in the beginning, I max that out. Now it’s not as much and maybe different variations of same things and stuff, but I don’t, it’s not as important. That’s what they’ve said, but I still think it has some influence. And so yeah, um, in the beginning, I think sometimes there’s like, took the, the text of the video and put it in the description, like the whole thing or a lot of it. I haven’t done that for a long time, but, but I do, I still do it some.

Spencer: Yeah, yeah, cool.Well, thank you, Janet, for being on the show. Really appreciate it. So your channel is clean, freak and germaphobe. Is there any other platforms or social media is that if our listeners wanted to follow you or your channel, uh, where they could go? 

Janet: That’s a funny question. Cause most people would be like, Oh yeah, follow us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram and stuff, but we do have a Facebook following. We actually had an agency that we were going to work with to, to manage our, our Facebook. It didn’t work out. Um, we had all these problems with Facebook. So we kind of abandoned it and we have a website, cleanfreakandgermaphobe.com, but we are so YouTube centric and we, that would be another thing is hiring people to do the others. And we have, we have a spin off channel. It was just reviews that we had someone else manage for us for a while. Um, but yeah, we, we didn’t, I feel like the money and our, besides Amazon influencers, um, which you wouldn’t just find us cause that’s a little different, but you can follow us on that. Um, I think it’s in every description of any recent videos. Um, but yeah, we are just very YouTube centric. It’s kind of funny. We don’t have that many followers on other platforms, maybe a few hundred, even TikTok. We are there though, just not actively there. 

Spencer: Gotcha. Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Janet for being on the show. Really appreciate it. And thanks to all of our watchers and listeners for checking out this episode. And if you’re interested in getting help with any content creation or video editing, make sure to check us out at creatorluxe.com.