How I come up with YouTube video ideas
A short story of how my wife solved my biggest struggle - coming up with ideas for YouTube videos to promote my Excel add-in, Minty Tools.
My YouTube channel has been around for 7 years. For about 6 of those, I had no particular niche in mind. I made arts and crafts videos, travel vlogs, and the occasional Excel tutorial.
In fact, to this day, my most successful video is my Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel tutorial, which has amassed over 100,000 views. With my average video getting 200-300 views, this is a massive outlier. I've been trying to replicate it, but to no avail.
Over the years, I've had periods where I struggled a lot with consistency and figuring out what videos to create. Especially when the pandemic hit, and my travel vlogs were no more, I had stretches of 3-4 months without a single video upload.
This all changed in December last year. I decided to take my channel more seriously and settled on a weekly upload cadence. I even included it in my New Year's resolutions for 2024.
In terms of a niche, I am still figuring it out. I am really into Excel (it's my daily job, and liking it comes with the territory), but I am also passionate about no-code development and automation. So, I've been juggling those two for the last 6-7 months. It's been going okay for now, and growth is a bit better, but nothing to write home about. Although to be fair, it appears I am doing just that :D
I've successfully published one video each week so far this year. As I also published my 2 paid courses on YouTube, I've actually uploaded even more.
Anyway, with this new cadence, I had to figure out how to come up with video ideas every week. For no-code and automation, it's been pretty easy. I experiment with different tools and build personal projects all the time, so I can always make videos and tutorials around those.
For Excel, I struggled a lot and jumped all over the place. I tried creating videos about problems I face in my work, but those were mainly too specific and niche. For some time, I leaned more into the no-code and automation topics. However, I needed more Excel content to promote the Excel add-in I am publishing.
I spent quite some time trying to figure out a strategy for consistently coming up with Excel video ideas. The solution was so simple that I felt kind of embarrassed for not seeing it myself. Yep, it's actually my wife who came up with the perfect strategy.
I was whining to her about being unable to come up with ideas, and she looked at me and said, 'Your add-in has more than 30 tools, right? That's at least 30 video ideas if you ask me.'
This is the perfect strategy. Let me explain. Each of my add-in features aims to save time for the user by automating repetitive mundane tasks. I am following a simple formula for my future videos.
Explain the value of doing a specific thing in Excel
Show how to do it manually with Excel’s in-built tools & features
Show how to do it with a macro (optional)
Show how to do it with a single click with my add-in
I love this approach we came up with. I am teaching how to do something in Excel, so I am still providing value. But at the same time, I am promoting my add-in at the end of the video. That way, some people can learn a specific thing, while others might decide they want to check out Minty Tools (my Excel add-in) and see if it can help them save time in their daily work.
I am also using this as an opportunity to thoroughly test all features and validate their usefulness for myself once again. Granted, some features are much more helpful than others, but I believe that overall, my add-in can really save time for those who work in FP&A and financial modeling.
So, I am publishing it soon. Fingers crossed.😅
You can check it out at MintyTools.com. If not yet, it should be out pretty soon.
I was trying to figure out some takeaway that I could share at the end, but honestly, I just wanted to share how I went from having no ideas to already having filed 6 weeks in advance. Maybe the takeaway is that whenever you get stuck, ask someone for an outside perspective. My wife knows nothing about creating content for YouTube, but she had an awesome idea in seconds. I guess it's true that sometimes we don't see the forest for the trees.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and extra brownie points to those of you who share the newsletter with a friend.
Till next week,
Dobri 🍃