Interview with the publisher who successfully uses cross-channel promotion

Admitad Academy has shared the article “Cross-channel promotion: how to run several channels at once” about what cross-channel promotion is, how to manage it and how to earn through it. Now it is time to show a real case. The Spanish Admitad publisher Ruben Baños owns a Website, a YouTube channel, a Telegram channel “Just Unboxing”, dedicated to gadget reviews. He has answered the questions about having several promotion channels and how he manages to successfully run them.

    From which platform have you started? YouTube or website?

      Based on gained experience, from which platform would you recommend to start?

—      I think there isn’t a perfect platform to start. You can succeed or fail on any platform. In my opinion, I prefer YouTube over blogs/websites because a lot of people look for Multimedia content before looking for articles, specifications, etc, so YouTube is a better platform to grow fast without so much knowledge about SEO.

      In your opinion, how should publishers choose the channel topic? Trends or hobbies? How did you choose your topic?

—      I think hobbies are a better topic for your YouTube channel. It’s important that you like what you do on YouTube so if you choose a topic just because it’s trending now, you will probably get bored in a few weeks or months and we also know that trends can disappear as fast as they appeared. But if you choose a topic you love and it’s really your hobby you can keep making content and improving it for years. You have to think that you need to work a lot on YouTube so it’s important to choose something you really love and your subscribers will notice your love about that you are talking about.

I decided to choose technology as my topic because I always loved technology and it’s something that I’m always interested in, investigating, studying, etc.

      Is it good to mix topics? For example, if we create a blog dedicated to gadgets and travel at the same time. Or is it better to focus on one subject? Have you ever tried mixing them?

—      I think it’s better to have one channel per topic unless the topics are so similar. For example, I do videos about similar topics: smartphones, gadgets, laptops, but all those products can be categorized as “technology” so it’s ok, but if you choose technology and travelling probably you will confuse your subscribers, because there are a lot of people interested in gadgets but not in travelling and vice versa, so probably the best choice is to separate channels for each topic. I had a channel about video games and I separated it from my tech channel.

      Why have you decided to keep going and taking up new channels?

—      Internet is constantly changing and you don’t know how it can evolve in the next few years, so it’s important to have your followers on more than 1 platform. In case one of the platforms is not used anymore (like happened to Google+, Vine, etc), you can keep monetizing your other platforms. For example, I’m now on Twitch, Telegram and Instagram, generating almost the 60% of my revenue while 3 years ago ALL my earnings came from Youtube (90%)/Website(10%).

      Does anyone help you to manage your accounts? Or do you do everything by yourself?

—      Everything is done by myself, all my social networks and channels are managed by me except for my website where I have some people writing news.

      How is better to start developing and promoting each channel? Are there any online services and have you used them?

—      I didn’t use any promoting service to grow my channels. I just started making content of high quality (or at least that’s what I tried) and I shared it on some forums, fortunately, it seems people liked it. Nowadays it is more difficult to grow YouTube channels than it was 6 years ago when I started. So now it’s important to make collaborations with other YouTubers or to do some giveaways to start growing your channels.

      How do you conduct cross-promotion of your channels? Is it effective? How many new users has it attracted?

—      Yes, it’s important to make a cross-promotion between all your platforms. I have been promoting my telegram and social networks on my Youtube channel every day. Some days I talk a little about telegram, so I introduce my telegram channel to my viewers. Some days I put some ads on my videos, for example text like this “follow me on my telegram channel to be aware about the best tech offers”, sometimes I post and fix a comment in the top of my “most viewed videos” writing: “remember you can also follow me on my social networks and telegram/twitch channel”. I also share my YouTube videos on my Telegram channel, that is easy to do automatically using IFFTT.

The number of users you attract from one channel to others is not an exact science. But if you have more than 100,000 subscribers on YouTube it’s easy to grow your telegram/twitch channels to a few thousand at least (4,000 / 5,000 or even more) just sharing it on video description, comments, etc.

      How do you estimate the efficiency of each channel?

—       I don’t really use any tool to estimate the efficiency of each channel. I just check the analytics of every channel and every month I know which channels are generating the most of my earnings. Right now YouTube, Telegram and Twitch are the best platforms for me, in this order.

      Where do your readers/viewers click on affiliate links? Which channel is the most profitable and effective? Which one is your favourite?

—      The highest conversion is always on YouTube because people can watch the review, then they can decide if the product is or not what they really need. They have lots of information in a review that use to convince people to buy the product. But the most profitable platform is Telegram because you don’t need to do reviews (it has lots of work to try, record, edit and publish every video to place maybe 1 affiliate link per video). In Telegram you just have to look for an offer and share it with your followers. So even having a really low conversion, you can share lots of affiliate links EVERY DAY, making it the most profitable platform right now in comparison with the time you need to dedicate to it. So Telegram is now my favourite.

      Which types of promotion work better in which channel? For example, product reviews on Telegram and product unpacking on YouTube. What about blog?

—      What works better on YouTube is comparisons and featured videos. For example a video saying only about the camera or the performance of a smartphone use to have much more views than reviews.

In Telegram I used to share my reviews, but the best way to monetize telegram is just to publish the offers with coupon discounts. People love offers and discounts, so they earn a lot just sharing the offer, discount and a short description of the product they’re buying.

Promotion on the blog is similar to YouTube, dedicated post to some features of any product works well to monetize the affiliate links.

      Which mistakes can publishers avoid from the beginning?

—      You need to be patient and persistent. Don’t give up as soon as it becomes difficult. You need to work a lot before you start making money through your channels. Small channels aren’t likely to make so much money, so you have to keep making something different and content of good quality to keep growing your channels. DON’T promote your channels only with giveaways: giveaways are a good way to grow a little your channel when you start, but you need to grow because of your quality and not only because you are doing giveaways. You need real active users participating in your channels or you will have thousands of users that are not really checking your channels or social networks.

      Could you, please, give some tips/lifehacks to our readers ?

—      Be patient, be persistent, do something original or different than other channels, study your analytics and understand what works better on your channel to keep doing that kind of content. There is no magic secret to succeed in the internet market, but if you work hard and smart you will be able to make this your full-time job.