What Authors Can Learn from Dale Roberts’ YouTube Playbook

Ferol Vernon (00:02.026)

Hello and welcome to the written word media pod. I am Ferol Vernon and today is a special episode. We’ve got a guest, a friend and somebody that I’m super excited to talk to today. have Dale Roberts of YouTube fame. So Dale, just to set this up for you, man, he has two YouTube channels, 120,000 subscribers, almost 7 million views.

and like so many other things on this bio, like I can barely get through it, but thanks for being on the program and welcome to the show.

Dale Roberts (00:32.522)

I’m super geeked up to be here, man. seems like, gosh, what was it? You and I met a few years ago, was it? Because it was still 20 books back then.

Ferol Vernon (00:39.143)

few years ago, yeah. I think so, yeah, back then. And then, you know, the one thing Dale and I have in common besides a lot of things is we’re early morning workout people. So I bump into Dale at the gym at five in the morning whenever we’re in the same place.

Dale Roberts (00:52.022)

Yep. I can’t, yeah, I can’t miss my workouts. I have to, because otherwise I’m grumpy. I’m there’s some people like, give me my caffeine, all right? And I won’t talk to you if you don’t. Like, no, me, I need my workouts, because otherwise I don’t function really well.

Ferol Vernon (01:00.861)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (01:06.812)

I’m exactly the same way. Gotta get exercise, gotta be first thing in the morning.

Dale Roberts (01:10.2)

Yep, for sure, for sure.

Ferol Vernon (01:12.073)

Cool, so Dale, for the viewers that don’t know you, have been sleeping under a rock, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are. you’re now this YouTube expert specifically on YouTube for authors. How did you get started and how did you pick YouTube as this channel that you wanted to be an expert in?

Dale Roberts (01:30.548)

It was 100 % accidental. Like this was not intended. And you the funny thing is, you you’re reading kind of off my bio and some people will say, he’s got the two channels. Believe it or not, I’ve actually got four fully monetized YouTube channels and I’m working on a fifth. Four. So not many people, it’s just the two is typically the ones that people focus on because it’s self-publishing related. yeah, it’s been the other two. One, I keep as a secret, but

Ferol Vernon (01:43.401)

four channels.

Ferol Vernon (01:52.861)

Sure. Well, what are the other two, man?

Ferol Vernon (01:58.537)

Okay, secret.

Dale Roberts (01:59.628)

The reason why I do the secret one is because I don’t want authors going over and ruining the recommendations because it’s completely different from like authorship and self-publishing. It’s not like I’m trying to hide things from you, but I’m trying to protect that brand because, right. And then the other one actually was a channel called Live Streaming Tech. I did it with my brother up till about a few years ago, but unfortunately his life got a little too hectic to keep things going and I wasn’t going to run a channel all on my own.

Ferol Vernon (02:09.425)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (02:14.717)

Yeah, they’re different brands.

Dale Roberts (02:29.23)

But it’s still fully monetized over there. And to what I understand, he’s still collecting some ad sense for that. But how I got into YouTube, gosh, it’s crazy. You will actually be the first actual interview for me to say this in. It’s actually been 10 years right now since I started YouTube. Right. Ten years. And that’s the main channel. That’s the one where you see over 100,000 subscribers there. I started in April 2016 only as a means to an end.

Ferol Vernon (02:46.322)

Wow, wow, it’s impressive.

Dale Roberts (02:58.528)

It wasn’t like I’m going to, you know, of course everybody always think I’m to go onto YouTube and I’m going to become the next viral sensation. You know, back then it was PewDiePie. These days it’s Mr. Beast. But I, I went in there briefly, just kind of trying to take care of an issue. So I got interviewed on two different YouTube channels that were devoted to self-publishing in January of 2016 because I had some breakout success with my, one of my fitness books.

And they were like, Hey, we want to share that with our viewers. And I was like, great, no problem. Well, the only issue was it brought in a lot of authors asking me questions via DMS and emails and, it got overwhelming. And I’m the type of person that I, I usually try to answer people. I’d like to be polite and I like to try to help people out. So I kept answering and answering, answering, answering until finally like April rolls along and I’m like, I’m still answering questions with some of these folks. I’m like, why don’t I just answer via video?

Ferol Vernon (03:43.205)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (03:57.388)

And then that way, next time someone asks that same question, I’ll just give them that link. And it worked out really well. Little did I know was that I would become hooked within one year. It was actually June of 2017 that I started to go, I like this. And I think inside me, I felt like I couldn’t be an author and a video creator.

Cause I was like, no, you can’t do two things at once. Like, so I was real, like I was trying to deny those feelings. Like I was trying to say, no, writing’s better. Like this, this is my thing. But eventually I was like, no, it’s okay for me to like to do both of these things. So June, 2017, if you go back, you’ll see a huge volume of videos because I think it was like 114 days straight that I did an upload every day. It was, just kept.

Ferol Vernon (04:39.516)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (04:50.119)

114 days straight, every day.

Dale Roberts (04:52.718)

114 days straight from like June and I think it went all the way into like October, November-ish. It was insane, yes. I would not recommend that to most people, but I learned really fast on how to produce videos efficiently. I also started to take a pulse on to what authors wanted to hear about and what they didn’t want to hear about. Because I would see what was performing well and I would double down on those ideas. When I would see…

what didn’t perform well, I go, okay, I’m not gonna try that again. Let’s go and try this instead. And so it was constant iteration process. And it wasn’t until I think I got to Vid Summit that year in 2017 that one of my friends was like, you know, you could probably lay off the gas, right? You’re gonna burn out. And I’m like, I was like, yeah. And literally like I made that decision right there. I was like, we’re gonna slow down and I’m gonna start to produce the videos. Cause I had enough information to get things going.

Ferol Vernon (05:39.835)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (05:50.222)

So like 2018 was when things really started to take off. And I think right around 2018, 2019 was when I hit, you know, the big milestone of 10,000 subscribers, which I guess that that is a quite the accomplishment because from what a lot of the experts will say is that I think 1 % of all YouTubers ever break to the 10,000 subscriber mark and then even less than 1 % reach 100,000 subscribers. But I got hooked.

Ferol Vernon (06:00.561)

Yeah, wow.

Ferol Vernon (06:14.15)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (06:19.51)

And it was one of those instances that it was so much fun and continues to be so much fun for me because it scratches a niche. Creatively, I like to put together videos. I like to figure out how can I deliver this in the best way possible that people can enjoy it from beginning to end. And of course, you know that means making the perfect video. There’s no such thing as the perfect video. Right. Exactly. And so I just literally just it makes me so excited to make videos because

Ferol Vernon (06:40.583)

There’s no such thing. Yeah, we were talking about that right before the show. Yeah.

Dale Roberts (06:49.134)

I can try to do better and do better and do better and do better. And it’s just, it’s so much fun. And one thing that I really love about it is I’m a writer. I write my scripts. Like, so the videos I’m putting out, 90 % of the time it’s fully scripted. So that way it really scratches that other creative itch of nonfiction writing for me. I like writing nonfiction. Been doing it for years now.

Ferol Vernon (07:09.712)

Yeah, you’re

You’re almost writing, you’re writing like a screenplay for yourself, right? Little short screenplays for every day.

Dale Roberts (07:17.198)

Yep, exactly. And it’s so funny because I get some people that will read my books and go, it sounds just like Dale. There’s good reason why. It’s because I’m essentially scripting an entire book, but instead we’re condensing it down to like 2,500 to 3,000 words for like a 10 to 15 minute video.

Ferol Vernon (07:26.329)

Yeah, because it is Dell.

Ferol Vernon (07:37.862)

Cool, so you mentioned you recorded every day for 114 days, which I’m like still wrapping my head around, but you said you wouldn’t recommend that, but a lot of people listening to this have probably started listening because they don’t have a presence on YouTube and they wanna get started. like from a mindset standpoint, let’s say I’m an author, I’ve written a few books, I’ve done essentially nothing on YouTube. Like how do I get started? What do I need to think about to sort of post that first video?

Dale Roberts (07:44.385)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (07:52.024)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (08:06.39)

Mmm. It’s knowing your audience much in the same way when you’re writing and publishing your books. You want to know who your reader is. Who’s your ideal readers? You have to kind of treat YouTube the same way that you would your self publishing business of Identify who your ideal viewer is. Hopefully it’s your ideal reader because that’s that’s where you want to you know, obviously bring them into your little universe, but identify that viewer now

You’re probably saying, OK, I don’t really know what that viewer wants. And that’s fine. So here’s a little bit of a hack here for everybody. They can use this one. Go and open up a separate YouTube profile, just a separate YouTube profile. Don’t worry about like setting up YouTube Studio. You don’t need to do anything. All you need to do is set up a separate profile in that profile. You’re going to open it on up on YouTube’s home page where you first land on it.

search up for something that is related to your niche. And then just stop. Look through the search volume. I want you to find specific videos that pick your interest. Like you’re looking at it and go, that looks cool. Or, that would resonate with my audience. Watch that video. Watch that video from beginning to end. If it’s good, like it. If it’s really good, give it a comment. If it’s stellar, subscribe to that channel. You’re gonna keep repeating this process. Do not watch.

any other videos it recommends unless it has something to do with that ideal viewer that you want to bring in. You’re going to take a break. Maybe every day. Just keep logging in. Check out a couple of videos. Bounce. And here’s the cool thing is YouTube’s algorithm. You’re training it and it’s going to start to serve you videos based on what they expect you to enjoy. And so now you’ve just essentially gotten YouTube to provide you the answers.

Ferol Vernon (09:55.002)

Hmm?

Dale Roberts (09:59.714)

Many people like wanna know like, how do you do so well what you do? It’s because I just get YouTube to tell me what to do. I literally just go in, separate profile, I open it up, I watch the videos, I consume it, and then it starts to recommend. And the longer that you go into that profile and view stuff, the better those recommendations get because YouTube’s algorithm loves watch time. And if you’re watching for longer periods of time, it’s gonna start to suggest additional content that’s related to it.

Ferol Vernon (10:00.651)

Interesting.

Ferol Vernon (10:27.798)

Interesting. Okay. And so let’s say I write thriller, right? And I do, I do what you say. I go in there and I start seeing thriller videos. Now, now I want to go make a video for my channel, right? As an author. And I see some stuff that I like. Am I copying those videos? Am I taking inspiration from them? Like what, what should I do now that I have this like curated feed of stuff that’s like, okay, this is what I think my readers will like.

Dale Roberts (10:52.77)

Yeah, definitely do not copy and don’t use anybody’s content as your own. That’s that’s first and foremost. I think hopefully a lot of authors understand that. Again, we got to kind of draw those parallels between publishing books and publishing videos. We don’t want to be taking people’s books and publishing them, you know, without their permission. So the same thing would go for for video. What you’re going to want to do is pay attention to what they’re saying, how they’re saying and.

Ferol Vernon (11:05.945)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (11:09.976)

Course not.

Dale Roberts (11:22.446)

how long the videos are, what are the comments saying right there, and you’re going to adapt a lot of those things you’re gonna pick up along the way into what you’re going to do or what you are currently doing. Because it’s not about, me steal what this person’s doing over here. It’s more about what are they doing right that I can go ahead and incorporate into my current video production flow.

Ferol Vernon (11:24.525)

Hmm. Interesting. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (11:46.428)

Right? Yeah, it’s kind of finding inspiration that’s gonna work for your readers, right? And so, let’s say, and this is again, I’m asking for a friend. Let’s say I have no videos on my channel and I wanna make my first video and I just went through this whole process. What are some concrete things you can talk about? Because when I meet authors at conferences, I talk to them, one of the things is like, I’m not sure what to say. I can write in my world, in my characters.

and do a great job there. But when people ask me to like make a video, like what do I make that video about? So like, what are some concrete examples that an author could take where like, like what could my first video be?

Dale Roberts (12:26.136)

What I would say is the very first thing, if you’re going to go and launch a channel, I would recommend that if you have nothing at all, seed out what you’re going to go ahead and publish. When I say seed out, that means like get three to six videos that you launch at the same time. So that way you’ve got enough content for video or for people to watch and consume. If you find that that’s too much, again, three videos is probably more than sufficient. I say if you can have about a dozen,

Ferol Vernon (12:42.861)

Got it.

Dale Roberts (12:55.918)

in the wings, so have six fully produced and then have it to where you can release one video per week over the next six weeks as well on top of that, that would help out. But if that’s a little too much, again, I’m a little bit more aggressive about how I approach YouTube. what is that video gonna look like? Again, you’re gonna find that inside that research that I was sharing with you, but a variety of ideas can kind of pop off. So for instance, like if you’re a fiction author,

Ferol Vernon (13:11.48)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (13:23.886)

There are quite a few fiction authors, and I’m sure non-fiction authors can probably do this as well, where they will actually publish their audiobooks on YouTube in their full form. Not just like one chapter to one video. There are some people that do it. The people that are doing the long-form audiobooks are seeing great results. And I actually know someone who’s actually monetized two separate YouTube channels just using an audiobook. And yeah, that’s nice. And a lot of people are going to go, well, hang on a second.

Ferol Vernon (13:35.276)

Wow.

Ferol Vernon (13:49.643)

Interesting.

Dale Roberts (13:53.656)

I’m gonna put my audio book on there. People are gonna listen to it for free and I’m not gonna get paid for it. Yeah, that is true. However, when you get your channel fully monetized, then you can start putting ads on it and put in what we call mid roll ads, which means ads are gonna pop in between each one of the chapters I would recommend. After a chapter is done, put an ad roll in there. So that way you’re gonna get paid for any time someone’s listening to your audio book. Now in the event that you’re like, I don’t like that when people interrupt me right in the middle things.

Ferol Vernon (14:11.138)

Sure.

Dale Roberts (14:23.246)

Cool. You do you however you want to, but I would still recommend get a pre-roll and a post-roll ad. That means a video that’s gonna have a ad at the beginning and one at the end. It’s not too intrusive and people are going to, I mean, they’re gonna sit there grin and bear it and you’re gonna hopefully get some type of revenue. So there is the audio book way of things. Some people say, should I do a chapter with each video? I say, go full.

Ferol Vernon (14:25.686)

Right.

Dale Roberts (14:49.718)

and then break each one of those chapters up with timestamps inside your description. There are other ways. So for instance, right now it’s on tap. In the next couple of months, I anticipate I’ll be launching a channel for sci-fi horror readers. And so my thought is, and I did this same process, opened up a separate profile, did a lot of deep research. And so I’ve got about a dozen different ideas. I already got two scripts fully written out. And one of the ways that I’m identifying those readers

is I’m starting to what we kind of call like trend hack, if you will. So let’s say for instance, that Stephen King’s the novella, The Mist, it’s been made into obviously the novella, it was made into a TV series and it was made into a movie. And so there’s going to be a beautiful cross section, three different types of people that are gonna be paying attention to this. You’ve got the movie goers, you got the TV goers and you got the readers. And so I’m gonna sit here and compare each one of those three things.

Ferol Vernon (15:45.025)

Hmm.

Dale Roberts (15:48.078)

and talk about each one of those things. So I’m bringing in these readers as a reader myself. I’m approaching it in that aspect of here’s some of the things that I enjoy. Another way to kind of attack this is also recommendations. So for instance, I have 10 of the best mind melting like sci-fi horror books. I can’t remember the exact title, but I took 10 titles that I really thoroughly enjoyed. And here’s the beauty of it baked with them that of course, you

I’m gonna put myself in the list, you know, naturally, or I at least give myself an honorable mention, but I’m also getting into where we’re talking about sci-fi horror. We’re nerding out. My viewers are like, this is great. And I go ahead and say, hey, by the way, I’m also a sci-fi horror writer as well. And you can check out my content over here. In fact, you can get a sample chapter when you join my email newsletter, blah, blah, blah, yakety-shmackety. Get somebody on our email newsletter, hopefully a new subscriber, and then we start to build from there.

Ferol Vernon (16:19.445)

Course.

Dale Roberts (16:44.648)

What a lot of authors unfortunately think they have to do is talk about the craft of writing. They think they have to be a Dale. They think they have to be a Joanna Penn. They think they have to be a David Gogran. You don’t have to do that. You can literally be a reader because chances are likely if you’re a writer, you’re probably a reader as well. And so be a reader. So that’s probably another way to attack this.

Ferol Vernon (16:52.404)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ferol Vernon (17:07.136)

Of

Dale Roberts (17:12.224)

In the event that you do want to be a Michael La Ron or a Dale L. Roberts or a Joanna Penn or all those other things, that’s totally fine. Just understand that growth is going to be so much slower, especially since, let’s say, Farrell, that you’re publishing Romanticie books. But then you have a channel that’s devoted to teaching people how to self-publish with written word media. We’ll just throw that one out there. There’s not going to be that much of an overlap because

Ferol Vernon (17:34.591)

Right.

Ferol Vernon (17:38.91)

Right?

Dale Roberts (17:39.874)

There’s expectations from this audience and expectations from this audience and very little bit crosses over. So it’s just fair warning. And the reason why I bring this up is for all I learned this one the hard way is I should have built a channel for fitness because I was a fitness author back then. But sadly, I mean, here we are. It’s OK. No regrets. But just just so you know that when you’re putting that YouTube channel, you want to make sure that’s lining up with your reader.

Ferol Vernon (17:56.139)

Right. Yeah.

Dale Roberts (18:09.25)

because otherwise you’re just creating another job rather than creating some type of content marketing machine that YouTube should be.

Ferol Vernon (18:15.264)

That’s the help, right? So you mentioned something you should have done. What are some other mistakes that you see authors who are dipping their toe in YouTube, getting started with this YouTube world? What are the common things that you see that are mistakes that authors can avoid?

Dale Roberts (18:30.904)

Consistency, that’s the biggest thing. If you are not consistent, YouTube will give it and will take it away. It is brutal. In fact, I can share with you right now. Over the last year, I’ve just been tied up with just this 12 book series, trying to put it out and then got the Kickstarter going and everything’s just been crazy. And the problem was the consistency of my videos dropped down significantly.

And I felt that in huge ways, less views, less watch time, less ad sense from the ads. And it sucked. as soon as I went back to being consistent, guess what happened? YouTube went ahead and rewarded me with more traffic. Heck, I just put out a video last week that just plowed through all the videos that I did over the last year. It was like 13,000 views within one week. And I’m like, okay.

Ferol Vernon (19:25.599)

Crazy. Yeah.

Dale Roberts (19:26.572)

This is more like it. Yeah, it’s just, you have to be consistent. And I want to make sure that we get this one straight here. Don’t just show up to show up. In other words, don’t just turn on the video camera and put out a garbage video that people aren’t going to watch. It’s better to be consistent with quality than to be consistent with absolute garbage. You don’t wanna just be shooting. For instance, I see so many of the authors that will do this where…

They do this old school vlog type thing and they’re just they got their thing and they’re

Ferol Vernon (19:57.866)

Yeah, like they’re talking about their pets and their personal life and stuff like that.

Dale Roberts (20:02.048)

Yep. It’s it and it’s unless you have a super devoted following They don’t care about those things. All they care about is what connects the two of you together What is a compelling reason and your dog and how it got its nails trip this trim this past week That’s not gonna cut it. So you have to be a lot more deliberate about delivering the goods to them and be consistent That’s the biggest thing. I see so many people they’re like, I don’t know what it is and I go overnight

Ferol Vernon (20:10.207)

Ahem.

Dale Roberts (20:30.754)

Look at their channel, they have like five videos over last three years. I’m like, well, there’s your problem. You you were literally just dropping a pebble into an ocean. If you really want to be good at this, you need to be very deliberate instead of just dropping a pebble, build that thing up into a boulder and then drop it in.

Ferol Vernon (20:48.351)

Got it. Okay. I want to move on to something that’s like, you know, very curious to me. Obviously over the last few years, we’ve seen TikTok, Instagram reels, like every social platform, including YouTube has this like vertical video, right? YouTube it’s called shorts. It’s everywhere, right? It’s like every, every platform has got this thing. And, but then there’s also the traditional horizontal YouTube videos that I like when I want to like fix my sink. Like that’s what I like, you know, go into YouTube and I’m like, how do I do XYZ? And that’s the video I watch.

Dale Roberts (21:02.797)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (21:18.11)

So like, how do you see these two different forms, like the vertical video, the shorts versus, you know, the longer form horizontal video? Like, how do we think about those two things?

Dale Roberts (21:29.592)

Well, I’m gonna add one additional one on top of that one. Because in the video creator space, there actually is three types of mediums that we can do. There is the long form landscape view, if you will. That’s what everybody’s used to as far as that’s what YouTube’s done for so many years. And then we have the vertical shorts. Those are nice. You can do upwards of three minutes at a time on those videos. And they’re also, they have their own delivery.

how they’re being done, which we call the short shelf. So meaning when someone gets into the shorts and they’re just scrolling through like it is TikTok or whatnot, that is what’s called the short shelf. And then there’s live form video. Live forms is weighted completely different and YouTube, when you can really, really get going on live on YouTube, things really take off. That’s one of the avenues that has helped me the most in my growth was because I was doing.

live videos every week so people would show up and there was that just that sense of community. So that’s one thing with live video. You want to build a stronger community and the people that subscribe to you want to connect in some meaningful way, live stream. Really, really good. So good.

Ferol Vernon (22:39.646)

And when you say live video, just to clarify for the audience, you mean like you click record and like in real time, people are watching you on the other end on their screen and it’s not prerecorded, right? Okay, got it. And is that the vertical form or the horizontal form or it’s both? Okay.

Dale Roberts (22:51.336)

Exactly. Right.

Dale Roberts (22:57.396)

You can do both. Yes. And actually they just announced not too long ago that you could multi-stream in the landscape and portrait mode. So that way you can do. I have yet to test that out. It’ll be fun and exciting to kind of see, especially since with the live shorts, it seems like they’re prioritizing traffic and sending people over towards that direction, the people that are tapping into that. if you’re listening to this and it’s still 2026, tap into live video, especially on shorts, because it might be very, very beneficial to you.

But yeah, you got the long form, you got the short form and the live. Having a good balance of all three is a good idea because then you’re going to find out what do you excel at? What’s the thing that’s requiring the least amount of work that brings in the greatest amount of results? And the reason why I bring this up is it’s not realistic for everybody to go and live stream. It’s not realistic for everybody to go and do a long form video. But I would say the thing that will really help out is test them all out.

See which ones that works best for you. These work, what works best for me may not work for you and vice versa. So try them out and get a good mixture of those things. Cause you’re be bringing in different audience types based on that. Now, shorts one, this is exciting. I actually stumped my contact at YouTube. So I’ve got a rep over at YouTube. She has monthly meetups and I came in, I discovered something and I go through and I’m doing the short shelf. I’m just slipping through it and.

one point or another, I one of my images for my community post show up there. You’re probably going, okay, hang on, let’s walk this back here, Dale. So this is what’s called posts on your YouTube landing page. And in there, you can do text-based posts, you can do polls, you can do image-based polls, you can do quizzes, and you can also do images, whether that is just a flat image like a JPEG or a GIF.

That right there was the thing that I noticed was one of my images showed up in short shelf. I’m going, wait, what? So I don’t have to record a short form video to show up in the short shelf. So I reached out to her and asked her about that and she goes, yes, we’re currently testing that right now. Are you enjoying it? I was like, yeah, I just want to know what’s the growth like on that? Because right now they don’t have anything as far as the metrics goes as to

Ferol Vernon (25:13.03)

Hmm.

Dale Roberts (25:21.134)

how many subscribers that brings in. But I will say that globally speaking, when I look at the analytics, I’m seeing new subscribers coming in from this particular method. So as an example, so it’s a little less nebulous. Let’s say I like doing writing prompts, because my audience is authors. So what I will do is I’ll just generate an image. I’ll put it there and say write a one story or a one sentence story of this image, something along that lines. And then I’ll go ahead and answer that. And the cool thing is,

Ferol Vernon (25:31.118)

Interesting.

Dale Roberts (25:49.986)

That’s showing up on the short shelf. People are able to like it. They’re able to comment on it. And I see some really good growth on that one. It’s just, I don’t know how much on each one of those posts. And I would recommend to you, Farrell, for sure, the fact that you guys are such a huge information resource. Tap into quizzes and polls. Quizzes and polls, people love to answer. That’s the greatest thing. And of course, the images as well. Now, a lot of authors are gonna hear this and go, wait, so…

Ferol Vernon (25:53.564)

Hmm.

Ferol Vernon (26:00.86)

Got it.

Ferol Vernon (26:06.213)

Yeah.

Hmm, interesting,

Dale Roberts (26:17.41)

could just go ahead promote my book on my post and it’s going to pop up on short shelf. Yeah. But also remember this, that not too many people are going to engage in a post that’s strictly just self promo. Try to figure a way to back into it. You know how I said, you know, I’m going to do a video about 10 mind melting, like sci-fi horror books, you know, and I slipped mine in there. Try to slip it in there, but don’t force it in a way that it just feels, I don’t know, forced. That’s the best way to put it.

Ferol Vernon (26:19.813)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (26:45.858)

But yeah, there’s so much that you can play with on each of these three mediums. But I think the most important thing is that YouTube’s continuing to iterate and improve what they have. And the prime example is that they’re starting to get it to where they’re bringing those posts over into YouTube shorts.

Ferol Vernon (27:01.232)

Yeah, it really feels like they’re starting to build almost a community platform more than just a video platform, which is really kind of a cool thing. I hadn’t heard that before. So that’s breaking news, folks. That’s exciting. All right, so if I’m an author, I’ve taken your advice, I’ve got a few videos planned out, maybe I’ve got them published. How much help do I need? Like there’s metadata, there’s thumbnails, there’s all this stuff.

Dale Roberts (27:12.876)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (27:26.075)

Is this something that I can listen to Dale, I can do some Google searches, I can figure this out on my own, or is this the kind of thing where you’re better off getting a little bit help to get started?

Dale Roberts (27:36.65)

If you’re not patient, you definitely are going to need to hire out. If you’re not patient. When I first started out, it was 100 % me, all me. Nowadays, I can hire a video editor and I can hire a graphic design person to do my thumbnails. So I’m at that position in my life. But if in the event that you’re finding that you’re going into your YouTube journey, you do not have the discretionary expense, do not spend money there. Like just work with what you have.

Ferol Vernon (27:43.758)

Mm-hmm.

Ferol Vernon (28:01.755)

Yeah. Got it.

Dale Roberts (28:04.022)

Work with the tools that you have until you can monetize that avenue. As soon as you hit YouTube Partner Program or you’re making affiliate sales through some of your videos, then just reinvest that back into it. So I have a ton of equipment. Like I have a few cameras. I have a good microphone set up, actually a couple of microphones. There’s a number of things. This has taken over a decade for me to build this whole thing out. I don’t expect for anybody to do that. Do it one piece at a time. And there’s

Free software out there between the likes of DaVinci Resolve and CapCut. Those two are free. They’re widely used. iMovie, another one that’s actually where I got my start was iMovie and Windows Maker. Windows Movie Maker. Yeah. Yeah, it’s dating me at this point.

Ferol Vernon (28:43.323)

Yeah.

I remember that. you mentioned, that’s okay. I’m with you there. So you mentioned gear, right? And this is something like we all watch podcasts, we watch YouTube videos and there’s the person with the crazy, the fancy headphones and the top tier mic. And like, I’ll be honest with you, everybody, like I did the same thing. Like I went out there and I was like, I can’t be a podcaster until I bought this like $250 microphone. But like, what is the like…

one piece of gear, like let’s say, you know, there’s lighting, there’s your video camera, there’s your microphone. Let’s assume I’m an author listening to this. I don’t have the budget to spend all that stuff and get a professional studio set up. What’s the one thing I should spend a little bit of money on and focus on?

Dale Roberts (29:30.446)

Well, use all the resources that you have at your disposal. I will tell you that if you have a fairly modern smartphone, you’ve got the right type of video creating software. Like there’s enough in there that you can record and the onboard mic is more than sufficient. What I would say is focus on lighting first. You can have a complete garbage video camera and you can take that garbage video camera and punch it up by just having additional light. Now you don’t need to go and buy expensive.

like lights to do this. So you can first of all start with ambient light. So any outdoor light have it lighting you up from the front. Do not put it behind you because otherwise it’s going to just completely wash you out and people won’t be able to see your face unless that’s you want to go for creepy author. That’s fine then go ahead and do that. But get that video that that that light source in front of you. So that way it’s people were able to see you better. The next thing I would say is you would think I would say go get a better video camera. No.

Ferol Vernon (30:13.236)

Hahaha!

Dale Roberts (30:26.894)

I would say invest in the microphone. A good USB microphone will go a long ways. And I’m talking like USB microphones can cost as little as $15 to as much as a hundred bucks. You can get more if you want to. If you want me to give you a specific recommendation, Yeti has a line of inexpensive USB microphones available. I think it might be the Snowball. My wife has one of those, but look into Yeti. Yeti’s got a pretty good product there.

Ferol Vernon (30:55.226)

Got it, but like focus on lighting and inexpensive microphone and start there.

Dale Roberts (31:01.39)

Yeah, exactly. You don’t want to overdo it because everything that you can have is at your disposal. A great example would be an old supporter of my channel, Walter Wyburn. He made 100,000 subscribers within one year and he used a video camera that was 360p. Now, the most standard videos today has a minimum 720p resolution.

A lot of them are 1080p, like I will do a lot of my videos in 1080p and some people go 4k or even larger. He did 360p and we’re talking, it’s like flip phone quality. But here’s the thing, he built a massive following that was okay with that because it’s not necessarily about how great the video is, it’s how you connect with the viewers. He connected with the viewers in the right way. And it was funny, he asked me at some point or another, because he had in his background, seen like this fancy DSLR cannon.

camera. It’s honest. I’m like, dude, do you have a freaking Canon DSLR in the background? He’s like, yeah, should I use it? Don’t take advice from me, man. I’m like, you’ve been doing great. I can’t like I’m like, obviously, they’d be crazy. He’s just all of a sudden changes. People are gonna be like, oh, you’ve changed Walter. It would see you know, the Canon DSLR. But you know, it was funny. So all that to say this, that Walter’s story illustrates the fact that doesn’t need to be perfect. Just do it.

Ferol Vernon (32:07.417)

Yeah, you’re crushing it. Yeah.

Dale Roberts (32:26.646)

And when I say quality, doesn’t necessarily mean like you have to have 4K resolution or you have to have great ASMR like audio, you know, for each one of your videos. It’s not about that. Focus on that message and about connecting with your viewers and then upgrade as time goes on, because eventually people are going to go along with you on the journey. And I know there’s a number of people that probably remember when I was doing 720p, you know, videos and leaving in all the

Bloopers and mess-ups and mistakes and it was unpolished, but you know what they grew along with me over the years,

Ferol Vernon (33:03.928)

That’s awesome. Yeah, so like you mentioned over the years, like it’s taken a long time for you to get here and you’ve learned a lot, which, you know, I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with us, but what is, how has YouTube changed? Like, let’s just focus on the last like year or two, like what are the most common things you’ve seen or the most interesting trends you’ve seen where YouTube has changed recently?

Dale Roberts (33:25.676)

I think obviously I’m going to state the obvious here. Obviously going to state the obvious there. That’s great. That was good. Redundant. The proliferation of AI content. But don’t allow that to make you feel like you don’t stand a chance because now more than ever YouTube really wants to spotlight and showcase true creators, people that are great about their craft, about being willing to be on camera and such. Yeah.

If you want to do AI content, that’s totally fine. I’m not going to make an argument for or against that. That’s totally fine. But there’s been the proliferation of AI content, which means that it has lowered that barrier of entry that more people are actually able to come in. Of course, this makes it a bit more competitive. So in that regard, I always think I’m not worried about my job because I know that I will outperform anybody that’s going to be able to do an AI video.

because they will take 10 videos and pump them out and hope for the best. I can take one video and shoot it out and it’s gonna kill. So it’s just knowing where you’re strongest at.

Ferol Vernon (34:31.836)

Do you think that there is a premium, and this is a genuine question I don’t have the answer for, do you feel like there’s a premium on authenticity these days that like, you because the AI content stuff, sure, everybody sees that on YouTube, you’re looking for something and it’s kind of junk and like, I think it’s pretty common, everybody’s had that experience. But then, you know, then I watched Dale and I’m like, I know Dale, I trust Dale, right? And I trust Dale because when I watch those videos, I…

Dale Roberts (34:52.366)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (34:59.372)

like what you say is true and I’d like you have the authority. And so, you my question is, do you think that there’s a premium on authenticity or do you think that that’s just sort of the new price for getting started and putting yourself above the AI slot?

Dale Roberts (35:13.742)

Mmm.

I feel like I’m gonna be super biased just because of the fact that I just don’t enjoy AI generated videos. This is just not my thing. I’ve seen them, it’s great, it’s fantastic for whoever it is, but it’s not quite my taste. But yeah, I think that authenticity is rewarded. I think that when people can see the whites of your eyes, they can start to build a deeper connection with you. Hopefully not in a creepy way, but you know, to where they can actually…

Ferol Vernon (35:23.35)

Yeah. Yep.

Ferol Vernon (35:29.335)

Mm-hmm.

Dale Roberts (35:44.562)

resonate with you as opposed to maybe some stilted, you know, digital narration that’s put over top of some choppy looking blurry video that they’ve generated really fast through Nano Banana or something like that. You know, it’s just, yeah, I think if you can step out and it’s going to require some bravery for some introverts out there, I will tell you this like, Ferol, don’t know if you know this about me. I’m a raging introvert. Like a lot of people are like, how are you on video an introvert?

Ferol Vernon (36:12.217)

Ha

Dale Roberts (36:14.498)

because I just, one, it is a really weird, like I don’t understand it myself, how I’m introvert, but the thing is I can just shut that off when a video camera comes on. And then I, back to introvert mode as soon as it’s set. So, but yeah.

Ferol Vernon (36:23.647)

Yep. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (36:30.583)

So you’re living proof that like the introverts can succeed on YouTube. Yeah.

Dale Roberts (36:34.7)

They can, they can. It’s wild because I’ve met so many YouTube video content creators over the years and gotten to know some of them and a lot are introverted. A lot of them are very, very like reserved. They’re the of people that just want to blend into the wall and not be any type of a burden. And I’m like, wow. So yeah, there is a number of them out there, but you you also have some other ones that, you know, they’re extroverted a hundred percent. I’m not saying all YouTubes are introverts. So.

Ferol Vernon (36:45.015)

Interesting.

Ferol Vernon (37:03.454)

Yeah. So, you bring up an interesting concept around introvert, extrovert, kind of like this identity thing. And identity in our industry is a really interesting concept, right? Because a lot of authors write under a name that’s not even their name. And a lot of authors write, have two or three pen names, right? And a really common case that I’ve talked to, and you kind of alluded to this earlier is, I have this pen name, I have that pen name, and then I have this pen name that I don’t talk about. And so…

Dale Roberts (37:03.625)

just so that we’re clear on that.

Dale Roberts (37:29.291)

Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (37:32.242)

If I’m an author and I write under a pen name and I want to do YouTube, like how does that fit together? that possible? I, if I’m showing my face, can I actually, you know, be two people at once if I’m writing under two different names?

Dale Roberts (37:47.746)

You could be two people at once. One very easy solution to this would be faceless videos. I know I said people are gonna trust you more from the whites of your eyes, but in the event that you don’t feel comfortable on camera or for that matter, you don’t want to out yourself, there’s always that. But I wanna push something a little bit more recent that came out. know, Freedom McFadden, right? Well, you probably don’t know her personally, I’m sure. Freedom McFadden is essentially like the poster child for successful self-publishing with a mixture of trad pubs.

Ferol Vernon (38:08.448)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (38:15.25)

And it was actually about a couple of weeks ago that I found out that she used, she was wearing a wig this whole time and glasses that there’s no glasses or whatever. She’s been keeping her identity hidden for all these years and was finally like, surprise, I’m a doctor actually. And this is my actual real name. So this woman has been doing it for years. Now, granted, I don’t know if she’s got a YouTube channel or anything else like that, but there’s always just that approach in which you can pretty much put on a wig, put on some glasses.

Ferol Vernon (38:26.633)

wow.

Ferol Vernon (38:31.83)

Yeah.

Dale Roberts (38:44.118)

and see if you can kind of make it work that way. That’s not something that’s tickling your fancy. totally understand. Faceless videos still do okay. I think that as long as you are still coming with your own natural voice that will bring people in, more likely bring them in. You’re just going to increase that likelihood of connecting with viewers so much faster if you’re on the video itself. Not a deal breaker, but it’s certainly going to make life a lot harder if you’re not putting yourself on camera.

Ferol Vernon (38:49.728)

Sure, yeah.

Got it.

Dale Roberts (39:11.892)

And you always have the freedom McFadden approach. You can always just put on a disguise and hope for the best.

Ferol Vernon (39:17.91)

Pull out that Halloween bin from the attic, right? And make your own persona. Yeah, that’s awesome. All right, so Dale, thanks for sharing like all of your amazing, amazing knowledge with us on YouTube. It’s been a pleasure. As we kind of close here, what’s like one tip? If somebody’s been listening to this and they’re like, I want to do YouTube, what’s one piece of advice you can give them that would get them started on their way to being a successful author on YouTube?

Dale Roberts (39:22.862)

There you go. Yep. Yep. For sure.

Dale Roberts (39:49.016)

Despite all the information I’ve given you so far, one thing I would say is just do it. Just do it. Don’t wait for permission. Don’t wait for it to be perfect. Just go and do it. And you’re gonna have some crappy videos. Heck, you’re gonna probably have 100 crappy videos. But as long as you continue to improve, iterate, and adapt as you go along, you’re gonna crush it here.

Ferol Vernon (40:13.077)

That’s awesome. I love that. for our listeners, we did an episode only on courage, like a couple, a couple. So, know, check that out. And I think this is, that’s a great way to end the show, right? Have the courage, take the Nike approach, just do it and start recording. Dale, if the listeners want to hear a little bit more about you, where do they find out like about Dale and what he’s got going on?

Dale Roberts (40:34.348)

Super easy. can find Dale L. Roberts just about anywhere on YouTube, or you can go to SelfPublishingWithDale.com. Again, that’s SelfPublishingWithDale.com. It has all the stuff, including my podcast, my videos, my blog, my sub stack and all that stuff.

Ferol Vernon (40:49.885)

Amazing. All right, well, thanks again for joining us and authors keep writing, keep recording, and we’ll talk to you later.