I'm a Christian who's long thought that there must be a better use of money to fulfill the Lord's Great Commission than for example, paying thousands to upgrade the church's landscaping. In early 2022 I created a Youtube channel with a handful of short videos explaining how to become a Christian, along with some other Bible basics (@biblehowtos). To be clear at the outset, this isn't a promotion for what I'm doing. It's a call to consider doing the same thing as a church, youth group, company or even as an individual.
It didn't take long to learn that I needed to pay to promote the videos. I set up a simple Google Ads “pay per click” video ad campaign using my own money. My videos are in English, so I initially targeted the United States and Canada. I also chose a few other parameters, trying to steer the ads to the most promising crowd. I set up the ad campaign to play for a month, committing ten dollars per day: five dollars each for what I considered to be my best two videos. You can do any amount you'd like.
I thought that first month went pretty well. My $300 - (ten dollars per day times thirty days) - bought 5,375 views. Those viewers watched an average of 2 minutes each, totaling 50.6 hours of total view-time. Still, I went back to Google with an open mind to do even better in month two. That's when thing's suddenly got way more interesting!
As I was staring at the Google setup screen, the Lord's words, "...go ye into ALL the world..." went through my mind. Yes, there's actually a choice on Google Ads for “ALL WORLD” when deciding where the videos will play, so I checked it. Then I applied the same idea to each of the demographic choices. That is, I removed anything that restricts or tells Google what to do. I clicked on submit, and went to bed.
What a surprise when I learned what those changes did! Here are the results for month #2 using the same two best videos spending the same $5 per day times two times 30 days. Remember those 5375 views? Month two totalled 48,757 views...almost ten times as many views for the same money! Those numbers varied each month – in fact over the following year they actually went up without any budget increase! The screen shot at the top of this page shows my Youtube channel's stats repeating those same inputs each month: The total hit over one million views, and my $300 per month worked out to .0035 of a dollar per view! At a fairly constant watch time of about two minutes per view, that totals 35.9 THOUSAND HOURS of total watch time!
My gifting is as a teacher. You may be a musician or youth pastor or something else in the Kingdom of God. If you're someone who finds YouTube difficult, then I'll bet you've got young people in your church who don't find it difficult. Imagine the impact that a project like this can have on their lives as producers of evangelical media with results like this!
Speaking of results, you may ask, “Yes, but how many people actually respond to these videos? Did any actually become Christians?” Frankly, I don't think about that. We're called to sow and water. God takes care of the increase. Think of the day when he asks you what you've done with the talents he gave you. Don't do it to promote your church. Nobody cares about your local church in India and the Philippines. Those are the two largest countries for both number of views and watch-time, by the way (see below).
Youtube is essential to this, and they of course are all about videos. You can create ads with Google Ads that are text rather than videos, but I don't see how they could ever be as effective.
Fiver and Upwork are popular freelancer platforms, and there are others.
Great question. Many years ago I had over two thousand hours of experience with Adobe's Premiere Pro. If you're not already experienced with the program, don't go there. Davinci is similar, and it's free, but the learning curve is just too steep on both programs -- even for these kinds of videos. You can shoot video, but mine consist of a series of still images with a voiceover. I tried both Pictory and Invideo because they use AI to create a "slideshow" type video using still images from your script. Unfortunately the quality was poor with both. I finally landed on Canva and have been happy there. Canva does other things than videos, and the challenge for me was wading through all those other things to find out how to even do a video. You have to persist, but it's easy to use once you get the hang of it. Canva has a free version, and their paid version is a little over a hundred dollars per year. And no, I'm not an affiliate for Canva or any other program. If you're doing your own voiceovers, I recommend Audacity. If you're using AI for your voiceovers for some reason, Elevenlabs is my choice. I'm in my seventies now, and my voice is starting to go. I strongly recommend using a human voice though. Maybe you can create the script and someone you know can record the voiceover.
I've wondered about that. I've thought it might be because there's no money-making aspect to the ads. There aren't any affiliate marketing links, and the channel can't be monetized with Youtube, as the views are being paid for. I've thought too that it might be because without any parameters at all, they can use the videos with all audiences, including markets in parts of the world that don't draw a lot of advertisers. It feels almost like they're grateful to have something to play in these countries. In the Kingdom of God of course, we don't differentiate between qualities of viewers. On the other side of it, I've wondered why viewers click on an ad and listen to an average of two minutes of it. A hunger for the gospel of course, but also English is a valuable skill in the world. Maybe they're using Youtube for practice with English skills so they can get better jobs. Again, why would we care. I'm thrilled to have anyone hear gospel messages for any reason. Let each viewer play them over and over again for all I care. It's all in God's hands.
There is no "supercheap plan" anywhere that I've found on Google Ads. All I can say is to not try to monetize it at all. Don't try to limit Google as to where and how it's shown. Be sure to select "all world" if you see it, and do a test run for a month or so to see how it goes. You're in control of how much you spend and the max amount that you want to pay per click: Try ".01" per click, along with however much or little you want to spend per day. It's also a good idea to make a quality video on an interesting topic. Youtube rewards content that provides a good user experience. Your results will be your best indicator on that. The video on our home page, along with one or two others like it, generated the results you see on the two screenshots you see on this page.
I welcome your questions, but I'm not looking for paid work if that's what you mean. YouTube is your best resource for any technical instruction. Expect to be frustrated by Google Ads, because I've found that it's not very user-friendly. They'd like you to turn the decisions over to them when inputting the parameters, but I recommend that you not do that. Early in the process you tell them what kind of ads you want to run. You want to choose "video ad", and ads that are "without a goal". Resist their attempt to guide you into letting them manage your ads. That may sound like a contradiction, but it's not. Be firm in telling them that you're not interested in great results. Tell them to just play them anywhere they want as many times as they'd like. I recently set up a new ad campaign and the actual price paid per click seems consistent at .003 per view.