Grow with the Flo: Recent Episodes

Florian Land

In this podcast I'm giving you tips, tricks and insights all around film-making, video editing, starting a youtube channel and being a freelance content creator.

I started this a few weeks ago as a 30 day-voice-memo-project on WhatsApp. Those voice-memos turned into the first 30 episodes of this podcast that are now here for you to you to listen to. I'll soon be starting to produce more episode on a regular basis for this podcast. Until then, enjoy the first 30 episodes!

033 - Explaining how I create Project Pitches and who I send it to

As promised the follow-up to the previous episode, today on #033 I want to explain to you my way of how I go about pitching new project ideas to companies, because as I said on the last one: It's on YOU to make it happen! Especially if nobody knows you yet. In this episode I explain how I chose potential clients and how I then write pitch emails using the same "recipe" to get in contact. For those of you who want to know more I highly suggest watching this video for some concrete examples: https://youtu.be/7H9dIiJkrpk

As always, hope it helps! 🤙😎

Over the last year of being a freelancer I learned one crucial thing that I want to share with all those of you, who are thinking about being self-employed as well and that is: Work doesn't come to you, you need to CHASE IT!

On today's episode #032 I want to tell you about how I had to learn that for myself, how it's worked for me (in some cases) to get projects from initiating them myself and how to deal with frustration when all you get are rejections. I also share a couple of thoughts on how you can pitch projects or ideas to companies and will talk more about that in another episode in a couple of days!

If you already know want to hear more about this topic then these two videos I made could be interesting:

https://youtu.be/p1ktDxFRjbQ

https://youtu.be/7H9dIiJkrpk

Hope this helps!

031 - In the last couple of weeks I've experimented a lot with daily uploading. First I made 4 weeks of podcasting creating one episode each day and then followed up with 7 days of uploading daily on Youtube. I really set those as challenges for myself to get into execution mode, drop all excuses, avoid procrastination and get a hold of perfectionism, because those for me are often the things that hold me back from creating more content.

Today I want to tell you a bit about my experiences of daily uploading, how it felt like for me and whether you should consider it for your situation. Spoiler: You most likely should, but let me explain ;) Hope you enjoy the episode and this helps you out!

030 - A bit over a month ago I started this as an experiment on WhatsApp simply to see if by sending out one voice memo per day talking about different topics I could help you every single day to go one step further on our shared journey of becoming freelancers, content creators, youtubers - however you wanna call it! I pretty quickly got to really enjoy doing this and actually found this entire podcasting thing to be a great addition to share more tips and insights with you even outside from youtube and in a simpler and quicker way.

So in this last episode of my 30-day-WhatsApp-broadcasting experiment I wanted to take a moment to reflect and summarize what I learned and also thank all those of you who joined over on WhatsApp and contributed by asking questions and sharing feedback. Thanks a lot! I hope you enjoyed this and maybe learned something new. You can already be curious to when I will soon then turn it into a regular public podcast for everyone to listen to!

029 - Procrastination is an issue that I often struggle with and I assume many of you do too! What catches me most is especially the sneaky kind of "productive procrastination" that makes us do other things that aren't as important but still makes us think we're getting ahead, like creating a podcast when you should upload more videos to your Youtube channel ;)

In my opinion this is one of the biggest things that holds many of us back from creating more content and putting it out there. So on this episode I want confess about my procrastination and talk about how I intend to beat it. Maybe you'll recognize yourself a little in that too and I can spark you to do something about it as well! 💪🏻

PS: There's also a guest with me on today's episode and the audio quality might just have gotten a little better 🤓 And btw this is the TED talk about procrastination we mentioned. Big recommendation!

027 - More and more I get asked by smaller youtubers if I could have a look on their channel and tell them what they are doing wrong. So messages are usually very similar and sound exactly like what I went through a year ago: Putting in massive effort week after week, video by video, but nothing ever seems to be going forward... A situation many of us trying to grow on social media know.

In this episode I'm taking a look and giving feedback on a smaller channel called "Complete Formula". See in the end I'm no expert myself, but having pursued this youtube thing full-time for over a year now and having tested and succesfully fixed a couple of things on my channel, I'll gladly share my thoughts to help all of you make a couple of small improvements that might make a massive difference.

This episode is a bit longer, but I hope this gives all of you some thoughts on how you could review and improve your channels!

Btw here you'll find the Channel "Complete Formula" that I've been reviewing in this episode.

028 - One of the most crucial things for any small and aspiring youtuber is to really think about and figure out who shall be the exact audience who shall see your videos and how they shall find you. This is where you should put the most effort into, not video quality, not cameras, not lighting. Traffic!! Because if you don't have traffic you'll have a dead channel and you will very quickly get frustrated and give up on your youtube dreams. All the other things you can figure out later, but this one is a MUST!!

So since I've been spending a lot of time in the last months analysing and researching this topic and that was what actually led me to the big jump my channel has done early this year, I figured it might be something you should know more about! So let's talk about that on this episode and I hope this triggers you to put more focus and attention to this super unsexy but highly important topic!

026 - When I decided to get into Youtube I was always wondering how much money was there to earn and where it came from. At that time most youtubers kept their earnings private. This very slowly starts to shift a little and I want to take part in bringing a little more transparency into it, so that you have a chance to know how much money you can roughly make with a Youtube channel and where it does come from.

So on this episode I want to show you my numbers and explain to you how it works, so that you get an idea of what you could expect for yourself. I also want to be 100% transparent that I have a financial interest making this episode, because in turn I will also post my affiliate links below that I thereotically make money off of in case you sign up through those. You'll find the links to all the services I use below and yes, I do endorse them because as you'll hear I make money off of that, but only because all those are services I'm using myself and pay with my own money. Hope the insights helped!

Epidemic Sound Music (Live-saver for any Youtuber, you can test 30 days for free): http://share.epidemicsound.com/flos-broadcast

Amazon business (US): https://amzn.to/2urcNkK

Amazon Business Europe (you get up to 50€ discount)

For Germany

For United Kingdom

For France

For Italy

For Spain

Tools for Youtube

Tubebuddy (I use the free version)

VidIQ (I use the pro plan)

025 - You wouldn't believe how often I get asked to review someone's videos. While I totally understand that would help I only have so much time in a day and can only do such reviews if it benefits not only one person but everyone else too. Sharing the feedback as voice memos here already seemed to help, however it still requires you to go to youtube first and watch the video there. So I thought how could I make this as easy for me to produce as a voice memo but still show it to you visually. What I came up with is a new format of recording myself while watching it and showing you my video feedback on IGTV.

This episode was a test for this format and you can watch the video feedback here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zofNpQoqEPtJ10pU3LC-pvohv93AZ7SK

And the video I am reviewing in this episode is by Michael from Germany and you can watch it here on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/Pm2R_UQsXz4

024 - Having a clear concept and strategy for your content and a plan on how you want to position yourself makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE for growing on social media. That's what I realized throughout last two years when I first uploaded pointless and rather unconnected videos that didn't get any traction whatsoever. The moment I started thinking about what the core message and story of my channel were supposed to be I was quickly able to figur out what kind of content I would have to produce and then came up with what has since helped me to grow from about 2.000 to now 13.000 subscribers.

To grow even further and take the next step I felt there needs to be a remake and improvement on that content strategy and in this episode I want to share my approach of how I create a content strategy for myself as so that you have this as an example of how you can try and achieve that for yourself and crush it in 2019 too! Really hope this helps you out.

023 - When I started on Youtube I watched a ton of videos from known experts and bigger youtubers and they all seemed to say one thing: You also have to have an Instagram and a Facebook page and post there all day every day so that you can drive external traffic and views, else you just won't get it started and your channel won't succeed!

I decided to go against that and focus on one platform first and only and that was Youtube. For me it has worked and in this episode I want to tell you how and why for myself I think it was the correct decision. Focusing on Youtube only made me progress there a lot quicker and not get overwhelmed and discouraged. Hope these thoughts help you to decide how you want to approach it!

022 - Working for free as a aspiring content creator is one of the most controverse topics. Some voices say: "you should never work for free, because you're time has value and if you start working for free you will never get paid!" Others say: "Working for free is the best thing you can do and if you really want to succeed you absolutely have to do it!"

I have a little bit of a mixed view on this but have myself done a lot of work for free to get the ball rolling. However I chose it strategically and I decided to offer it for free cause I saw the value in these projects elsewhere. In this episode I want to tell about how it worked out for me and I manage to slowly transition from working for free to being paid for making videos. Also I' addressing one big trap that many aspiring artists fall into and that is working for "Exposure".

In this episode I also mention two videos for you to look at. You'll find them here:

https://youtu.be/bgpaGVGKv9Y

https://youtu.be/MeVj-ASeGLs

Both videos got super valuable insights in this topic that are worth listening to. Hope that helps you to decide!

021 - Probably one of the most difficult parts of becoming a freelancer is figuring out how to appropriately prize your time and the services you can provide. The most common mistake everyone makes in the beginning is undervalueing yourself and not factoring all the costs that go into producing video content. It can be very tempting to go in low, because you feel like you don't have a lot of skill and experience yet, however there's a difference between going in "low" and "waaaay too low".

So in this episode I want to share with you my thoughts and experiences on pricing and also give you a couple of rough numbers as to how much I charged in the beginning. However I myself still have limited experience in this area so when I needed to figure it out for myself I researched through all youtube and compiled a playlist with the very best advice from experienced video creators. You'll find this playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvf8fX6FcGJZSDruF30UQPMMJ_Nk16ldG

020 - On the next round of video feedback on this episode I'm looking at a video that was intended to be a travel guide video about visiting croatia. Since making travel videos is probably the most common starting point for many filmmakers and youtubers I felt that sharing my feedback on this video could be particularly helpful for many of you. This video is a very good example of a good idea and an attempt to appear in youtube search results, which however from my point of view is very unlikely going to happen based on how the video was delivered in the end.

As always: I'm analysing those video here publicly so that many more than just the creator themselves can benefit and learn from this! I highly suggest you to watch the video beforehand and you can do that here: https://youtu.be/6T2sSRFnxTk

Hope the feedback and my thoughts on this video helps you to improve yours! Enjoy the episode.

019 - The next most important thing after the thumbnail to make people actually find and then click on your videos are the titles. After doing a lot of research on Youtube Search Engine Optimization in the end of 2018 I realized how much I had underestimated this topic before and how much room for improvement most of us have when it comes to finding good titles. Probably the most important thing there to remember: Without good titles you're massively missing out on one of the biggest traffic sources and that is search traffic. So need less to say, in this episode I wanna share with you my experiences as well as some tips and tricks on how to improve your titles so that you get more views on your videos! Hope this helps!

018 - Starting as a video creator in the beginning can be hard especially if you need to figure out how to make enough money! However the skills you already have or are developing right now can be really valuable for many other people out there especially those who are already creating content on a regular basis. For almost all bigger youtubers the first person they hire is an editor, simply because it eats so much time and can be super tedious and frustrating. So offering your time and effort to edit other creators' videos can be a really good thing to start out building your career as a video creator. At least that's how I started it about a year ago and up to this point editing videos for others has made about half of my freelance business. Aside from this I've gained so much practice and insights from this which in turn has made it that much easier to start my own channel. In this episode I explain how I did it and how and why I'd recommend you to try it as well!

017 - The fifth round of video feedback on this episode of the podcast. I make those episodes to give feedback to viewer videos when I feel that publicly sharing it could benefit a lot of you starting out with videographer or becoming a content creator on youtube.

This video is a very good example for the general trend of making cinematic travel videos and the classical mistakes many beginning content creators make when editing a video like this. So once again I highlight what I liked and didn't like about this video and give tips on how to improve it for the future, so that Juan from Colombia whose video I'm analysing here as well as you can benefit and learn from this! As always, I highly suggest you to watch the video before hand and you can do find that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiMstLyz0ow

Hope the feedback and my thoughts on this topics helps! Enjoy the episode.

016 - One of the biggest myths is that to grow on youtube or any other social media you need to do collabs and get shout-outs. I've analysed a whole lot of channels who this happened too and looked at how they grew through shout-outs and flatlined soon after. At the same time I also analysed a lot of channels that didn't get any or didn't even try to get shout-outs and how they eventually really took oof.

So on this episode I want to tell you my thoughts about shout-outs and collaborations, because I have a very clear opinion on this topic and that is that getting shout-outs before you've had to figure out your own content and what works for you will much rather harm than help you! Yes, you may get a quick boost and spike in followers, but after that you'll continue to create the content you've already been doing before and how well did that work after all? Hope these thoughts help you out!

015 - More than a fancy camera or expensive lenses, good lighting has the biggest on making your videos look professional! I've recently received a lot of positive feedback on the lighting of my reaction videos on Youtube so in today's episode I want to explain to you exactly how I achieve and what kind of lights I use. Spoiler: They are super affordable and cost me less than 60$ in total. It's way more in knowing what actually to with it than buying the most expensive light.

I hope my tips help you out and give you a couple of ideas on how to improve your lighting especially on if you're on a budget. In the episode I mention that I've shown a couple of clips available to look at on my WhatsApp status back when I initially published this podcast. You can find them here.

014 - Another round of video feedback on this episode of the podcast. I make those to give feedback to viewer videos when I feel that publicly sharing it could benefit a lot of you starting out with videographer or becoming a freelance filmmaker. This is a very good example for this as the clip I'm reviewing in this episode is a short promotional social media clip that was produced for a tattoo artist. These tips of clips are perfect to start getting paid gigs as a video creator / filmmaker and so I hope my feedback/review on this could help you to use it as an example and land your first paid video projects.

As always, I highly suggest you to watch the video before hand and you can do that here on video: https://vimeo.com/322448106

Hope the feedback and my thoughts on this topics helps! Enjoy.

013 - For many creators after a while of creating similar content the point comes where you would like to change things up, try new content or completely switch the topic you're talking about. Especially when you've already started building up an audience this can be quite difficult though, simply because your viewers are used to what you used to create for them and expect to see that now too! So transitioning your content can be a very tricky thing, but is very important for you to continue being motivated and excited about your own content.

In this podcast I want to share with you my thoughts on this topic and give a couple of tips on when and how to do it. Also I want to address a couple of scenarios in which you might think it could become a problem to transition, but it actually really isn't and it's just in your head! Hope this helps!

012 - Thumbnails can make or break your videos. Having a good preview of what value your video will deliver to the viewer and making it super enticing to click on you can very likely 2x or 3x the amount of clicks you get on your videos which then in turn might trigger the youtube algorithm to start promoting your videos. So in short: Thumbnails are one of the most important elements on Youtube and many creators put hours upon hours into their video and then rush out a thumbnail as a freeze-frame taken from the video. But this is the most disserving thing you can do to yourself!!

So in this episode I want to share with you my experiences and recommendations after one year of making youtube content and having tested out a lot of different kinds of thumbnails. Hope this helps!

Btw I also mentioned I seperately wanted to show a couple of examples. You find the clips I recorded to this here.

011 - In this episode I wanna share with you a video I found on Youtube that I thought is massively valuable for everyone starting to grow a channel. In this video Jeven Dovey (260k subs) interviews 5 other Youtubers (all around 50k subs and above) about the biggest mistakes they made in the beginning and watching this video I found myself in so many of them too! Throughout the video they are giving great tips on how you starting out with this as well can avoid those mistakes and do it better than them to grow faster!

In this episode I summarize the points that I found most interesting and here's the link to the full video which I highly recommend you to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOpJdHiIwhQ

010 - For most of us starting out creating content on youtube or other platforms one of the first questions is: Should I focus on making the best quality I can produce and put out less or should I rather put out as much content I can but maybe not in the best quality? So the quality vs. quantity question. I have a very clear opinion on this and want to explain how I approached this as I had to overcome this problem myself too and still have. I especially want to address one very common misunderstanding and that is difference between "production quality" and "content quality". Hope this helps those of you who are struggling with this problem!

009 - Giving feedback on viewer videos and reviewing them to give suggestions for improvement is the thing I am being asked for the most. Every couple of days I'm reviewing one of the many videos being sent in to me and share the feedback publicly for all of you to learn from what others are doing well or not so well

In this broadcast episode I'm reviewing a vlog video by Artemas from Isral. You can find and watch the full video here and take a look to understand all my feedback. It probably makes sense to watch this before listening to the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xsripk2GNk

I hope these kind of thoughts are useful to you, I will soon start a regular series of reviewing videos from subscribers on either Instagram or Youtube, so that you can not only listen to but also see it.

008 - When you start a Youtube Channel chances are you're gonna put a lot of time into it and will barely get any views. That can be absolutely frustrating! On this broadcast I'm sharing my thoughts on this viewer question because this is a topic that I have struggled with massively in the beginning and I guess many of you do too. I'm sharing a couple of tips that have helped me shift my mindset and then helped me being okay with not getting any views in the beginning but led me to keeping the patience and persistence up to get through. For me eventually it started paying off about 10 months into making Youtube videos. I hope the tips in this episode help you achieve it too!

007 - Having a professionally made intro or a logo in your Youtube videos can make them look higher quality, so many starters ask me whether they too need one or think they cannot start before they have that. In this episode I wanna tell you my thoughts on this and why I still don't have either a logo or an intro and so far don't see the need for it. Also I give you a couple of thoughts and tips on how else you can achieve proper branding of your videos, because after all that's the main purpose of something like an intro or logo in my opinion. Have a listen!

006 - The question about which language to choose when starting to make youtube video is one that I get asked so frequently and the decision is not always easy. Many of us are not native speakers and english is our second language. And while it does often give you the chance to reach a much bigger audience for some people it might still be the right decision to make videos or online content in general in their mother language. In this podcast episode I wanna discuss this topic, give you tips on how to decide and explain why I decided to go for English as a native German speaker. Hope this helps!

005 - Giving feedback on viewer videos and reviewing them to give suggestions for improvement is the thing I am being asked for the most. While I don't have the time to watch and respond to every single one, I sometimes pick and choose some videos to review and give public feedback on so that not only the person making it, but also everyone else out there can learn from this, because most mistakes beginner filmmakers/youtubers make are very similar.

In this broadcast episode I'm reviewing a cinematic travel video by Gesi from Spain. You can find and watch the full video here and take a look to understand all my feedback. It probably makes sense to watch this before listening to the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr8DA9-gUIQ

I hope these kind of thoughts are useful to you, I will soon start a regular series of reviewing videos from subscribers on either Instagram or Youtube

004 - Video editing is one of the most time-consuming parts of creating online content. On this episode of the podcast I wanna tell you about three very important ways you need to know how to speed up your workflow and how I've been using that to drastically cut down my editing times. Those three ways are using 1. keyboard shortcuts, 2. editing presets and 3. project file templates. Listen to the podcast to get to know more!

In the episode I mentioned that I've shown a couple of short videos as explanations on my WhatsApp status. In those I explain a couple of my favorite keyboard shortcuts and show how I'm using templates for video project files. If you're interested, you can watch those clips here.

003 - One questions I get asked quite frequently and that is: "I wanna start a channel BUT I am shy and not good in front of camera: How can I overcome that?” And I totally understand that, because I myself have been struggling with this exact problem massively when last year I started my travel vlogging series on youtube. I wasn't confident at all putting myself on camera, running a round with a gorilla pod as a vlogging rig and it felt absolutely weird. It still does to this day btw! But as with most things in life it's about practice and slowly getting used to it. In this episode no. 3 of the podcast I explain my approach and give you tips on how you can overcome camera-shyness.

002 - Giving feedback on viewer videos and reviewing them to give suggestions for improvement is probably the thing I am being asked for the most. While I don't have the time to watch and respond to every single one, I sometimes pick and choose some videos to review and give public feedback on so that not only the person making it, but also everyone else out there can learn from this, because most mistakes beginner filmmakers/youtubers make are very similar.

In this broadcast episode I'm reviewing a travel video from Cedric from Germany. You can find and watch the full video here and take a look to understand all my feedback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80wJgPAxL6g

I hope these kind of thoughts are useful to you, I will soon start a regular series of reviewing videos from subscribers on either Instagram or Youtube

001 - In the first episode of my new podcast I want to give you a short introduction why I decided to start this and how I want to help you with the content I am publishing here. The quick summary is: the first 30 episodes were part of a one month phase with about 160 people on WhatsApp where I shared daily voice memos on topics related to filmmaking, video editing and starting a youtube channel - so pretty much all the topics I also talk about on Youtube. All those episodes are now ready for you to listen to!

As soon as I've published all of those I will continue making short like 4-10 minute episodes that shall help or inspire you on your way of starting with youtube, videographer or becoming a freelancer. Hope it helps!