I Built a $1M SaaS Using YouTube

If any viewers is watching this and does

a video on YouTube for 45 days, if they

don't make at least $5,000, I'll just

PayPal you $500.

>> This is Vasco. He built an AI app that

in just 2 years went from 0 to $70,000 a

month.

>> Most our users come from YouTube.

>> But here's what's crazy about his story.

He did it all with YouTube. One video a

day, nothing fancy, no crazy tools, and

it worked.

>> The way in which you get people to buy

from you is if they know, like, and

trust you. Using a simple strategy,

Vasco turned YouTube videos into a

million-dollar business. And I brought

him onto the channel to break it all

down. In this video, we'll dive into his

YouTube strategy that generates $70,000

a month. How you can create money-making

assets that sell your product while you

sleep, and why YouTube beats every other

platform for building trust and getting

conversions. All right, this one's going

to be fun. Let's dive in. I'm Pat Walls,

and this is Starter Story. All right,

welcome Vasco to the channel. Tell me

about who you are, what you built, and

what's your story.

>> Hey, my name is Vasco. I built a

software company called Arvo. We scaled

it from zero to around 70K in MR fully

organic. And I think the most

interesting part about this is that we

leverage just one platform, which was

YouTube.

>> Before we get into this YouTube

playbook, which I think is amazing. I

think people watching this are going to

love it. I just want to understand what

your product does. What is Arvo? What

does it do? Who are the customers? So,

Arvo helps marketing agencies, business

owners do SEO a bit faster leveraging

AI. SEO tends to be a tedious process,

takes a lot a lot of time. We try to

shorten the time until where you can see

results. It starts from around $99 a

month. It goes all the way to almost

$700 a month. We do of course as a SAS

have charge. So, along the way, we have

a lot of clients, but at the moment, we

have around 600 paying clients.

>> That's amazing. This business is doing

basically a million dollars a year. How

do you find the idea for Arvo? How do

you get to this point? It was 2016 or

2015. I was just browsing YouTube and I

came across this guy called Alex Becker

and I saw a video from him where he was

making supposedly 10K a month doing rank

and rent SEO. And so I started doing

that. Bought my first domain, started

doing local SEO with rank and rent. Got

a couple of clients then got a bit tired

of dealing with clients. So I just took

my SEO services and started selling them

on Fiverr, Upwork and other

marketplaces. But then I noticed that

these marketplaces, they were missing a

lot of things that I wanted to see in my

own marketplace. And so I built my own

SEO marketplace called Vetted. We sold

it last year and the AI bubble was just

coming. When I sold Vetted, I knew that

I wanted to still build something in the

SEO space, but now applying AI to it.

And so we thought an AI writer could be

a good idea. So we built it. That's

basically the whole story of how Argo

came about.

>> Okay. Well, what I'm really excited and

why I really wanted to have you on the

channel, Vasco, is what you told me

about how you grew this business. I

think a lot of people watching might be

wondering how you built it, what the

product does. I think one of the coolest

things about what you did is how you

grew this business. So, can you give me

a breakdown of what the main growth

channel is for your SAS? Most our users

come from YouTube. The way in which you

get people to buy from you is if they

know, like, and trust you, right? And I

think the best way to have someone know,

like, and trust you is if they see your

face and they hear your voice for long

periods of time. All in all, I think

YouTube has everything you need to have

someone like, and trust you, and then

buy from. It's not to say that Tik Tok

doesn't work, blogging doesn't work,

Twitter, LinkedIn doesn't work. But I

think as in terms of a ratio to effort

to results, I think YouTube is the best

one.

>> Okay, that's amazing. This business was

grown purely with YouTube. But what I

really want to get from you, Vasco, is

the full playbook. Tell me exactly how

you went from zero to a million-dollar

business purely with YouTube.

>> So this was basically our playbook in

three core steps. First one is you have

to focus on producing money making

assets. I just produce a bunch of long

form content in basically three buckets.

First bucket again is evergreen. So a

video that I know that if I post today,

it will still keep on getting views a

year, two years from now. And we do have

those videos. I'll give you an example.

We have a video on the best AI SEO

writer. The second bucket is news

relevant type videos that get a lot of

views in the first two or three days and

then die out. These are basically a new

Google update comes out. This is good to

get a bunch of subs and a bunch of new

eyeballs onto your channel which then

you can funnel into your products or

services. Then the third is just sort of

viral like Mr. Beast like videos but

applied to software which is quite hard

to do. Then we just do that over and

over again. The issue with that is that

I'm just one so I'm sort of capped as to

how many videos I can do. And so I say

this to say that this goes into the

second part of the strategy which was

how can I multiply myself? And so what I

did then was I created a bunch of

YouTube channels. Vasco SEO tips, Tim

SEO guru, SEO news, whatever. I had all

these channels we owned. And so then I

had to find creators because my goal was

to have all channels and post a creator

in each one of those channels. The wrong

way to go about finding creators is

going and finding creators because

they're very expensive and they have a

big ego. And so what I did was let me

find people who I think can become

creators. So I went on Upwork and I

skimmed through people's profiles who

for example had a video. Having a video

on your Upwork profile tells me that

you're sort of comfortable in front of

the camera. So I went and went after

those guys. And so all in all, I had all

these channels and I paid people per

performance and I paid people per uh per

video. On top of that, why not expand to

other languages? So we found Portuguese

creators, we found Spanish ones just

like Mr. Vist does with these channels.

After you've done step one and two, you

want to focus on the third step, which

is scaling and expanding with paid ads.

Most of your videos graphs will look

like this. They go up, get views, and

then they stagnate and get no more

views. And so what I've noticed was that

when we were getting views, we were

getting sales. And then when the views

stagnated, we stopped getting sales. I

didn't felt like recording the same

video over and over again just to get

those initial views. And I think that's

where paid ads came in. So on YouTube,

you can run what's called infeed ads.

These ads appear in um two places. First

one is on on your YouTube homepage. And

then when you're watching a video, it

shows up on the right hand sidebar. So

they look like organic pieces of

content. I took the videos who performed

well, who got views, got sales, and then

stagnated and I paid YouTube for infeed

ads. The issue with YouTube and YouTube

ads as well is that it's very hard to

track. To track YouTube organic, what

we've done is three things. First one

again is have a dedicated UTM in each

video. If maybe 1% of people click the

links in the description, you know that

they came from that video. Something

else we did to increase the tracking

accuracy was have a dedicated coupon in

each video. I would say something like,

"Hey guys, if you want to check out

arvogar.com and by the way, if you want

a coupon code, just click the little

chat bubble at the bottom and ask the

guys from support saying, "Hey, Vasco

told me I can get a coupon code. I came

from this video. Give me a coupon code."

And third thing, if you go on to arbor

right now, if you sign up, we have like

a welcome questioner where if you select

you came from YouTube, a bunch of our

channels faces pop up. So, you can

choose which creator you came from. When

I mentioned about scaling with paid ads,

you have to be careful because you never

know if you're not promoting a video

that's not bringing in many sales. Two

extra tips on CTAs. before I was doing

the call to action at the end of the

video and that doesn't make any sense

because most people don't watch all the

way through. So just the simple fact of

moving the CTA towards the beginning and

the middle of the video just increased

our numbers of of signups by by a lot.

Second thing is don't just make generic

call to actions like uh yeah just go

check out the website. What we've been

doing is we create specific call to

actions. So we make them sort of

interactive not just a generic one and

prompting them to do an action inside of

the site. That's it. I think your

strategy is really smart. You built this

awesome tool and then you use YouTube to

grow the business. But it still reminds

me, you can't make YouTube videos about

a product that doesn't exist. If you

watching this don't have something built

yet, all the content strategy in the

world won't help you. And this is

exactly why we launched Starter Story

Build. It's our flagship program where

you will learn how to build and launch

your project using AI coding tools in

just a couple weeks. You'll get access

to our build experts. You'll join

thousands of other builders and you'll

learn our complete framework for

building and shipping apps. Once you

have something built, then you can go

start creating YouTube videos just like

Basco did. So, if you're ready to build,

just head to the first link in the

description to check out Starter Story

Build. All right, Vasco, let's get to

the next question. I would love if you

could actually show me a real example

from your YouTube channels for your

business. Can you show me a YouTube

video that kind of changed your

business?

>> Yeah, sure. I guess this is the very

first one where I realized the power of

YouTube which again this was posted I

think 2 years ago. It's a video on how

to make a Wikipedia page. It's a very

bad tutorial but still till this day it

gets 1.2 million impressions. I think

around 300 views every single day. 65%

of traffic comes from YouTube search.

How to create a Wikipedia page, how to

make a Wikipedia page. 20% of the

traffic comes from Google search. Not

only does a video rank on YouTube, it

also ranks on Google. And I can go on to

the LLM type of things because nowadays

we see a bunch of our videos being

recommended in these LLMs. So if I can

give any tips is to yes build out these

evergreen videos. Granted though it's

very important to know that mix up these

evergreen ones with sharing case

studies, sharing news, just produce

valuable content and know that there's

some chance that those videos can become

evergreen in the long run.

>> Okay, thanks for sharing those real

examples. My next question for you for

anyone watching this that wants to do

this YouTube thing to build a business

through YouTube content, what would be

your advice on how to get started if

you're getting started right now in

2025?

>> I think as cliche as it sounds, like

with anything, you have to be consistent

and do a lot of volume. I think Alexis

said this, it's very difficult that you

do something a lot of times for a long

period of time and you don't see

success. So for YouTube, what I advise

is, okay, just post a video every single

day for 45 days. Most people will watch

this and won't do it. The rest of the

people will try to do it and will stop

after a week. Maybe like one or two

people out of all them will actually do

it. And those who do it will actually

see success. If any viewers watching

this and does a video on YouTube for 45

days, if they don't make at least

$5,000, I'll just PayPal you $500. By

the way, don't think that you need to

have these very polished videos, right?

all our videos that got this from

literally zero to 70k MR just myself in

my basement recording just a micro board

like a whiteboard going over valuable

stuff. Well, on that note, I think

that's cool. You know, starting small,

just using Loom. What are the tools that

you use and would recommend other people

to use if they want to be recording

every day, creating lots of content on

YouTube.

>> You don't need much. You need Loom. Get

the premium version so you can record in

HD. You need Myro. That's the whiteboard

I use. Then you need some sort of way to

edit the videos. I use Camtasia. I think

you should put more work and more effort

into the hardware than the software.

Have a good mic, have a good uh camera,

and have good lighting. So, a regular

running light or mic. I use this Sure

SM7B. That's it. Don't over complicate

it. I think the hardest part is getting

going.

>> Okay, cool. I mean, that's a nice stack.

Last question that we have for everyone

who comes on starter story. If you could

go back in time, stand on young Vasco's

shoulder when you were just getting

started out or for anyone who's watching

this that wants to do what you did,

build a million-dollar SAS, what would

be your advice? I think it's very

important to know that this is very

hard. This is very difficult. The best

piece of advice I can give you is that

to increase your chances of succeeding,

is you have to work very hard. I did 20

to 30 minute videos every single day for

almost a year. Who's willing to do that?

To be in the 1%, you have to be willing

to do what the other 99% of people

aren't willing to do.

>> There are no shortcuts. I believe that.

Thanks for coming on, Vasco. I love the

business that you built. Thanks for

sharing this whole YouTube thing,

sharing those YouTube videos that you've

created. I think people are going to

love this. If you enjoyed this video and

you're watching this, let me know if you

want to have Vasco back on and we can go

deeper into the YouTube playbook. So,

put a comment down there if you want to

see that. We can do it. Otherwise,

thanks for coming on, Vasco, and we'll

see you soon.

>> Cheers.

>> All right. I want to thank Vasco again

for coming on to the channel. I'm a huge

fan of YouTube, obviously, and I think

his YouTube strategy is genius. So,

congrats on the success, Vasco. But I do

have to remind you, if you're watching

this, that all of this still starts by

building something. Without a product,

you'll have nothing to promote. And

that's why we launched Starter Story

Build. We'll help you build and ship

your idea faster than ever before. And

in just a few weeks, you'll have a full

working app ready to share with the

world. So, if you're interested, head to

the first link in the description to

check out Starter Story Build. All

right, that's it for this episode. Thank

you guys for watching. We'll see you in

the next one. Peace.