The Youtube Playbook That Drove $1.5M Sales In 90 days

“No one wants to watch content from a brand’s Youtube channel.”

It sounds logical. But conventional wisdom leads to conventional outcomes.

Mini Katana, a brand selling Japanese swords, organically drove $1.5M in new product sales through their Youtube channel in 90 days. The brand founder, Issac shared on Twitter the strategy and tactics they used to achieve this seemingly inconceivable result.

Let’s study his playbook.

Go Long, Then Go Short

When a platform launches a new feature, there is bound to be a huge initiative for them to promote it. Use it to your advantage.

We’ve seen this with Instagram Reels and Twitter Threads, the same applies to Youtube Shorts.

Michael Silkand, who run TikTok and Youtube for My First Million, The Hustle, and Hubspot, also observed that Youtube Shorts drove the most subscription and had the highest follower conversion rate among platforms

Issac figured out that the trick to get Youtube to massively distribute your shorts is to upload long-form videos. Youtube likes it if you use all its features. In one year, Mini Katana’s Youtube channel now has 27 long-form videos and 551 shorts.

Issac’s formula:

• one long-form video a week
• at least 5–7 short-form videos a week — scaled to 3 videos/day

Yes, that’s right. As with any content strategy, consistency is key. Michael Silkand also mentioned that their views fall when they miss a daily upload.

You get punished for missing a day.

Create Engaging Content By Engaging In Your Audience’s Questions

The next question is — how to create engaging quality content for Youtube. Issac has several techniques.

• Educational content

Not every brand needs to go for funny and trendy content to go viral. In the long run, Issac says that educational content is what drives consistent engagement and what they would focus on.

• Community poll

Another feature Youtube heavily promotes is community polls.

Issac leverages this feature to interact with the existing community and also to scale the reach.

• Make videos in reply to comments

To engage their community, Mini Katana created tons of videos in reply to subscribers’ comments, which uses a similar strategy to our previous case study on using customer objections as ad hooks.

When your content speaks directly to your audience's questions, it will surely capture their attention.

Direct Conversion Through Community Posts

Unlike Instagram and TikTok, direct linking (and attribution) is easier on Youtube.

That’s how Issac discovered that the platform boosts sales even better than email and sms.

One of his tricks is to use community posts, which he calls billboards for free.

The beauty of community posts is they are not only shown to subscribers on their Youtube homepage. They are shown to others if they get enough traction with your followers. All for free.

Wrapping It Up Into Three Bullet Points

Issac’s playbook for $1.5M sales from organic Youtube videos in 90 days:

• Consistent uploads. 1 long-form video/week, at least 3–5 shorts/week, ideally 3 shorts/day.
• Create educational content. Use community polls and videos in reply to subscribers’ comments to drive engagement.
• Leverage community posts as billboards for free to scale reach.