How a 60-Second YouTube Short About Chingy Taught Me Everything About Monetizing Longform Content
Almost a year ago, I uploaded a quick one-minute YouTube short about Chingy and the scandal that knocked his career off the rails. No promotion. Just me talking. That one-minute clip quietly pulled in over 500,000 views — and netted me around $200. Chump change, right? But the real value wasn’t the money. It was the proof of concept.
Even now, that little clip gets 1,000+ views a month. So I asked myself — how do I turn this random spark into a full-on fire?
Here’s what I did.
From Throwaway Short to Business Series
I realized the topic wasn’t just entertainment — it was music business. And very few people talk about that intersection with any real experience. I do. So I created a new docuseries for my channel, starting with Sylvia Robinson, the queenpin behind Sugar Hill Records.
This wasn’t just content. It was positioning. A new lane:
The Business Behind Black Music.
Tools I Used (and How I Used Them)
I used Canva for visuals and some light animation. Ran the images through their AI filters to make them pop — gave it some movement, some energy.
Then came the voiceover.
I wrote the script using AI (because I’m not wasting hours anymore), but the voice?
That’s all me. I’m a professional broadcaster, so I recorded it clean from my desktop and synced it with the visuals.
The final edit?
Maybe 90 minutes total. And that’s including the tweaks.
How I Learned to Keep People Watching (and Why You Should Care)
Here’s where it got interesting.
YouTube let me add three ad breaks to the longer Sylvia Robinson doc. Never done that before. But after watching retention stats, I noticed a drop-off at 2:02. Dead spot.
What happened? I didn’t tease what was coming next. I didn’t hold the tension like TV does — you know how they cut to commercial right when things heat up? Same thing. So I re-edited the video and re-placed the commercial to hold people longer.
It worked.
The Strategy Moving Forward: Shorts as Teasers, Longform as Bank
Let’s be real. Shorts don’t pay. They barely cover a cup of gas station coffee.
But what they do is drive traffic to the longform video — the one with the ads, the real story, and the potential for voiceover work, speaking gigs, and recurring revenue.
I clipped 20 short teaser clips from the Sylvia Robinson doc to drip out over time. Each one ends with a call to watch the full story.
This is how you turn one minute into a movement.
Want the blueprint? I’m building it in public. Stick around.
