What Happened When We Hit Publish
Part 2 of the 30 Days series deep-dive: the official launch and why the real magic was community, not content. Plus: how a last-minute idea turned into $97K in pre-sales.
This is part of a series of extended posts updating my no-longer-available YouTube Book. For the first installment, click here. Here’s an index to the series in chronological order.
Last time I talked about kicking off the 30 Days of Yoga series which was a game-changer for our channel, today wraps up that storyline. Based on comments I received, I did want to clarify one thing: I'm not recommending that you do a 30 Day series for your channel. For us, it was the right thing at the right time. It boosted our watch time, our subscribers and our revenue. We did it for ten years before we wrapped it up. In that time, a LOT of 30 Day Yoga challenges have popped up on YouTube. It's great that we inspired people, but there's another takeaway that I'd love for you to consider.
The 30 Days series gave us a chance to change things up and create a "storyline" that people could connect with. Posting on a consistent schedule is still super-important. But after you've done it for a while, it becomes normal and your audience can take it for granted. You've gotta look for opportunities to give them something new or different to get excited about. If you can create an engaging "storyline" around something, it also gives them a reason to tell their friends. The friends learn about you and what you're doing and they now have a reason to check it out and ideally become a part of the ongoing project.
It's a programming "stunt." It's something different, ideally as an additional layer on top of what you're already doing.
Sometimes it’s valuable to take a step back and look for opportunities to do something slightly different. Something that creates excitement and buzz and stops people from taking your consistent hard work for granted. Ideally you find something that is unique to you and your work.
I'm going to be talking a lot about storylines and storytelling in future posts because I think this is a huge opportunity that can be overlooked when you're in the grind, creating content and hitting your deadlines.
Let's get into part 2 and wrap this up...
CTA #2 - The Downloadable Collection
Our original plan called for two strategic calls to action. The first was to sign up for the daily email. The second would be for a t-shirt (or some kind of physical merchandise) that would roll out near the completion of the series. We didn’t know exactly what we were going to do yet - or how.
However our bank account was at almost zero and we still needed to pay our videographer and a few other looming business expenses.
I noticed something in our support inbox. At first I didn’t think it was significant. I was wrong.
After the first announcement of the upcoming 30 Days series, we started to receive requests for a downloadable version. These started as a trickle but as we got closer to the holidays, the amount was growing.
I couldn’t figure out why there was so much interest. After all the whole thing would be on YouTube for free. But then I realized that due to the global nature of our community some of our international friends are in areas with limited internet connections. Others were going to be traveling for the holidays and didn’t want to rely on internet. For all of these people a downloadable version would be much easier and relieve anxiety about whether their connection was strong enough.
So we quickly put together a downloadable package on Gumroad and made it available for a “Pay What Feels Good” price. You could get (and download) the full series for as little as $1.
To make it a little more special, we created a private 30 Days of Yoga Facebook group for people who had purchased the Downloadable collection. The group was designed to last for just 30 Days - after which it would disappear.
Despite the last minute announcement, the Downloadable Collection was a big success. The average amount paid was $7. The highest amount paid was $1000.
Before the series even launched, we pre-sold 9,604 collections and brought in $97,953.84.
This was mind-blowing. We wouldn’t have even thought about doing this if our community hadn’t asked for it. We listened. And it paid off.
January 1 - The Launch
On January 1st, we kicked off the series by sending out the first email and publishing another vlog-style “Community Builder” video. This one wasn’t a yoga practice. That would start tomorrow.
We suspected that a lot of people would have trouble getting to their yoga mats on New Years morning (hangovers). So we took January 1st to welcome everyone to the series. This also gave us one more chance to remind people to sign up for the daily email. We did recommend an alternative video for people who were really ready to practice yoga that morning.
January 2 - The Videos
On January 2nd, the series officially launched. We now had over 30,000 people signed up for the daily email and ready to get started. The videos launched each day at 6:00 a.m. and we used Mailchimp’s Timewarp feature to try to get the emails to arrive at the same time.
The great thing about having people subscribed to the daily email, is that we could remind them that there was a new video each day. We used the email to push traffic right back to the YouTube channel.
The result: our daily views more than doubled. Our views increased from less than 50,000 views per day to over 100,000.
CTA #3 - Our First Merch Drop
As the series drew to a close, we released our first physical Yoga With Adriene merchandise: two t-shirts and a racerback tank. Once again, this was a response to requests from the community. Making a fulfilling physical merchandise felt like an exhausting amount of work and we weren’t confident they would even be profitable. Luckily, we teamed up with Amplifier who handled all the printing and fulfillment. They have my highest recommendation.
We used a Vlog to tell everybody about it. Once again, we kept the video low-key and natural and just told people that shirts were now available. We had been delivering massive amounts of great free content all month so we felt like we had earned a sales pitch.
The shirts sold like crazy and continue to be a key part of our business.
It was the perfect time to launch them.
After 30 Days
Throughout January, our community spread the word about #30DaysofYoga via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. We had new people signing up every day.
We turned the daily emails into an autoresponder sequence so people could start at any time. The work we did back in December 2014 continues to bring in new viewers, subscribers and customers on a daily basis, but now the entire process is automated.
The project was so successful we have repeated it with a new series every January since. As you can see by the chart below, we’ve experienced similar results each time we tried it. With each series we see a huge spike at the beginning of the year before things settle down to a higher average baseline than we had before.
In addition to turbo-charging the growth of our channel, 30 Days became the single most important project we created from 2015-2025.
It became about something much bigger than just increasing our numbers.
It became a way to bring together a global community of people to practice yoga together.
This project changed everything for us. In February when all the dust began to settle, we found ourselves (and our business) in an entirely new place.
Thank you! Excellent content!
Thanks Chris! This is very helpful.