The YouTube Masterclass Course Review: Is it Worth it?

I’ve been a long-time fan of online courses for a while now. I’ve bought language learning, writing, design and even YouTube courses. Not all of them were worth it, and I wouldn’t buy some of them again, but there are others that I’ve found really helpful, and the YouTube Masterclass from Phil, Mike and Lauren is one of those.

Their lessons on YouTube marketing are the most valuable thing you will learn. For me, this part wasn’t new at all; they teach you some principles I applied as a marketer myself to take VloggerPro.com from 0 to 120,000+ visits monthly. I’ve seen why applying these marketing principles truly work, so I can only recommend these lessons to all vloggers that visit this page on a daily basis.

Still, this course doesn’t only teach you about the marketing techniques you should apply to your channel, but it also gives you —although basic— tips on edition, design and how to record your videos to a competitive level. All this in a practical way, as it will take you behind cameras and give you exercises to apply. But these lessons are more than enough to give your YouTube channel a more professional look from the start.

The course has lessons on consistency, planification, being authentic, design and marketing divided in 105 short videos —shorter than 10 minutes each— for a total length of 6.5 hours. Mike, Lauren and Phil grouped these videos in 16 sections, each one with its own main subject that cover each of the aspects I’ve already spoken about.

The course has over 55,000 students enrolled, so I was really curious to try it out.

Here’s my review on one of the most complete YouTube courses I’ve seen.

Who Are Lauren, Mike and Phil?

Mike and Lauren are a young couple that own a successful YouTube channel. Their main subject is personal finance, and what makes their channel interesting is that they do everything possible to save most of their income to retire by Mike’s the early age of 31. As of April 27th, 2018, their channel has 135,000 subscribers.

Phil has as completely different story. He loves teaching and that’s his main frame of work. He owns a YouTube channel he uses mainly to promote his courses. His YouTube channel has 38,672 subscribers but he has more than 200,000 students enrolled in his courses in other platforms like Udemy.

The three are vloggers that use YouTube to scale their own businesses, besides making money from the platform itself. This is how most YouTubers make most of their living, and you will learn how they do it in this course.

They’ve been doing this for a few years now and now exactly what it takes to start a channel from scratch. They were never famous people and didn’t have any kind of especial help from others. They just started recording videos with a good plan in mind. Their success is not something out of luck; it took them research and a lot of work to discover what made people click on their videos again and again.

What I Liked the Most About the YouTube Masterclass

The first thing I should mention is that the course is divided in videos that teach you what you need to do, and videos that SHOW you how to apply that knowledge. It doesn’t just stay in boring “theoretical” lessons. The fact that it’s divided in small clips each one aimed at specific concepts makes it a lot more easy to follow.

For me, the 6.5 hours passed by really quickly thanks to this system. I couldn’t believe I had seen all the videos when I completed the course. This made me realize how entertaining and engaging their videos are —especially Mike and Lauren’s.

If they can entertain me so well while TEACHING ME something, I can totally imagine why their channels have so much success (and believe me, I have bought courses that I didn’t complete because I was getting so bored, even when the content was helpful; I even quit an Engineer career although I was one of the best of my class because of pure boredom).

On the other hand, Phil’s videos are a lot slower, which isn’t the best thing for me, so I used Udemy’s option to increase speed for these lessons to a pace I was more comfortable with. But I get that some people will like his way of explaining things slower. Still, his videos have some of the most important lessons.

One of the reasons why this course has so many good reviews is that they actually care to listen to their students. You can tell them at any time what you would want them to improve. They will actually ask you to tell them after some lessons.

Quick Walkthrough of What You’ll Get

The course begins teaching you briefly how to interact with the Udemy platform tells you about what you’re going to learn and gives you a few tips to start applying the lessons right away.

Mike and Lauren will introduce themselves and tell you what kind of channel they have, how they started and how it was possible to grow their channel into a full-time income.

They tell you why you don’t have to “go viral” in order to have a successful, growing channel. They never went viral, like most successful channels.

Section 2, lecture 9 called “Quality vs. Quantity” is one of the most important lessons you will learn. There are actually situations where the amount of videos is a lot more important than their quality, and vice versa. This is something that you probably haven’t realized yet, but it is one of the key things into growing a successful vlogging channel.

Some lessons will teach you one principle first and then show you exactly how some of the most popular channels and videos on YouTube that are applying it. This is one of the most interesting things I found in this course. You can actually see the same patterns repeated in each of the most successful channels, which makes you realize there are some very specific things all successful channels have.

You’ll learn things that aren’t as obvious to the eye, like why aiming at getting more viewers is actually better than having subscribers, at least in this platform.

Even though they do a quick 3:53 minutes tutorial on how to make good thumbnails, they don’t go deep on how exactly to design them. They just show you the principles you should apply. They recommend hiring a designer, which is something you will want to do if you have money to invest for a long time. However, if you want to make really good, original thumbnails in 10 minutes by your own and save yourself recurrent designing costs, I recommend you check this step-by-step YouTube thumbnail course. This will save you a lot of money in the long run, since hiring a designer isn’t exactly cheap and it’s something most people won’t be able to afford in the beginning.

Finally, if you want to make money on YouTube, this course has some important lessons to teach you. Most people think that most famous vloggers make most of their money by simply posting videos. The reality is that you don’t need to focus so much on adsense revenues, but rather diversify yourself. You will get a surprise when you find out that you don’t need a Hugh Mungus (sounds familiar?) amount of views to make good money on this platform.

Things They Should Improve

I’d probably want them to include more details in some of their lessons. Still, I get that it’s important in to say things with the fewest amount of words possible. They are really good at wrapping things up. I’m just a bit of a detail junkie and would like to see exactly what they’re talking about. A lot of things that seem important, they just give a quick mention (this happens especially in the editing and designing sections).

I think it’s a really basic course. It isn’t really that useful to people that already know a bit about what works and what doesn’t work on YouTube. It is definitely a course for newbies, so I wouldn’t recommend it to people that are already well informed.

Still, the amount of knowledge any YouTuber can get from this course is excellent for the price. The basic principles you will learn are by themselves worth the money. But, there are also a lot of little bonuses that make it even better. For example, you will get templates to give your channel a more professional look right away (subscribe buttons, watermarks, banners, etc); and even things like step-by-step guides on personalizing your dashboard and adding annotations to your videos.

This course truly is a goldmine if you want to be successful in YouTube. You might, of course, achieve success without taking this course, but with it you will at least be certain that you’re going in the right direction.