How Carolina Moore Grew Her YouTube Channel to Over 80K Followers
Haley Hatcher 
Carolina Moore is a quilter, product designer, businesswoman, and YouTube educator with over 80K followers, who has built a thriving brand.
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Summary:
Have you ever met someone who blends creativity, business savvy, and fearless innovation into one powerhouse of a career? Well, today’s guest does just that. Carolina Moore is a quilter, product designer, businesswoman, and YouTube educator with over 80K followers, who has built a thriving brand by turning creative ideas into real, sellable products—and she does it with a mix of strategic thinking and an unstoppable drive. When you tune in, you will learn how YouTube can help you create authentic connections with your audience, which can ultimately drive demand for your paid products and/or classes. Carolina also shares her journey of self-acceptance and growth as a content creator, discussing the challenges of being on camera and dealing with online criticism, which is something many of us could use support around! Whether you’re an aspiring video creator or you already have some skin in the game, this episode will help you embrace your own timeline and the mistakes/lessons learned along the way.
Topics:
Carolina’s journey from an in person teacher to a successful video creator and the different ways she uses video to grow her business and cultivate her brand/authority
Why YouTube is the better platform for discoverability, engagement, and evergreen content and why it pays to understand search engine optimization (SEO)
How YouTube can foster a community and create relationship with your subscribers which makes it easier for your audience to invest in your paid classes/products
The exact set up, equipment and process that Carolina uses to record and edit her YouTube videos but knowing it is okay to start small and grow in expertise and skill over time
Using YouTube’s back end analytics and other metrics to understand your failures (and successes) to increase audience retention
Episode Resources:
About Carolina:
Carolina is an award-winning quilter, a quilt pattern designer, and an inventor/product designer. She lives in San Diego with her husband, their two boys, dog and cat. Her YouTube channel has over 82k subscribers. Her videos include technique tutorials, product reviews, lives, and "story time" among others. She has developed products including lighted quilting rulers and many, many patterns. In 2019 she designed the Spot on Dot, which is a set of magnifying lenses to help see the lines on rulers better. You can find the Spot on Dot at quilt shops around the globe, and you can also buy the Spot on Dot in her online shop. Since then, she's invented other quilting tools including the Boxed Bag Template, Foundation Piecing Water Pen, and Cut Anywhere Tabs.
Connect with Carolina:
Click here to read a raw transcript of this episode
Lyric Kinard (00:02.872)
Hello friends, have you ever met someone who seems to have an unstoppable creative engine, someone who doesn't just dream up ideas, but actually turns them into real tangible successful products? Well, my guest today is that kind of powerhouse. Caroline Moore is a quilter, inventor, product designer, pattern maker, a YouTube educator, and just for fun, someone who went back to school to get her MBA after...
already running a thriving business because why not? Carolina has built an incredible career blending creativity with smart business strategy. She's a brilliant mind behind quilting tools like Spot-On Dot Magnifier and collaborated with big names like AccuQuilt, designing patterns that help quilters bring their visions to life with ease. But here's what I love most about Carolina. She's not just an inventor and designer, she's an
educator at heart, after my own heart. With over 81,000 subscribers on YouTube, she's mastered the art of using video as a way to teach, market, and connect with our audience. She's proof that you don't need a huge production team to create videos that make an impact. Today, we're talking about how she turned her ideas into sellable products and the power of YouTube as a marketing tool. So, grab a cuppa.
Get comfy? Let's dive in with the unstoppable, incredibly creative Carolina Moore. We are so pleased to have you here.
Carolina Moore (01:39.811)
Thanks for having me.
Lyric Kinard (01:41.71)
It's a pleasure and delight. I have enjoyed from afar for a long time watching your business, watching your career, watching all the things you do and meeting you in person and having the opportunity to chat with you now and then. I was so excited when you agreed to be on this podcast because you have so much valuable information to share with anybody who's a creative maker, designer,
anywhere in this craft art quilt industry who wants to or needs to create video. So can you give us a nutshell version of how you got into your business and what your business is?
Carolina Moore (02:27.779)
Ooh, so my business is, I'm a pattern designer and notion inventor. So I design the things that quilters use when they make quilts and bags. I also do the YouTube and I do books and other collaborations. And how I got into it was actually a very, very slow burn. I started, gosh, I started.
before I even had my youngest who was almost 13 now and
Started as a blogger craft blogging was very big at the time and so I had crafts and DIY kind of not quite lifestyle but more just crafts and DIY and definitely some sewing blog and I did it on the side while I was raising my two kids and When my kids needed more time I stepped away from the blog and when my kids needed less of my time I could put more into it and I did that very intentionally in that I was building a platform a base
of contacts, of information, of knowledge and of experience so that as my kids got older and they needed me less and less, that I could dive more and more deep into it. And that strategy turned out, served me really well because then later on when I had ideas or when I needed people or needed someone to reach out to have a question, I knew the people I was.
I wasn't starting at complete zero. So basically that was my goal, was that when I'm ready, like I'm doing all these things so that when I'm ready to truly start, I'm not starting at zero.
Lyric Kinard (04:04.694)
I love that you had a long range goal in mind, a plan, just bit by bit. didn't jump to the top of Mount Everest. You took step by step by step over years to get to the base of where you wanted to go.
Carolina Moore (04:17.741)
So most people do, it takes them years to, you may have discovered them yesterday, but there's a saying, it takes eight to 10 years to be an overnight success. And I found that to be super true. It really, takes a long time. Like that overnight success, it looks overnight to everyone else, but it is not truly overnight to the person who's been doing the work behind the scenes.
Lyric Kinard (04:30.83)
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (04:44.782)
Absolutely. I for so long when I had all five kids at home got the, how do you do it all? Every time somebody talked to me, I'm like, I don't do it all. I do it maybe one thing at a time and every one thing I'm doing has three other things falling apart behind me that I can't get to at the moment, right? It is a long, slow, kind of just step-by-step process. But if you're stepping in the right direction, you're gonna get there eventually.
If you don't know where you're going, you might be walking in circles. So having that long range plan, even if you're not able to implement it on the schedule you think you should, is vital.
Carolina Moore (05:15.01)
baby
Carolina Moore (05:25.271)
Baby steps are still steps.
Lyric Kinard (05:27.914)
Every single step gets you there. Okay, so you have your business's things. You don't go teaching people at quilt guilds or creating on-demand classes per se. That might be part of your business, but you sell product. So how does video tie into that?
Let's start the kind of beginning, like how did you get into making videos? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Carolina Moore (05:58.564)
Well, and I'll... So it in a lot of different ways. Now, I did a lot of in-person, and I think that doing the in-person before doing the video was hugely valuable, and that's because when I do video now, I can imagine the people in front of me because I've had so many experiences where I've had these people in front of me, so I can answer the questions. I know what my audience is thinking because I've hung out with my audience enough times.
Lyric Kinard (06:09.912)
Great.
Carolina Moore (06:24.523)
that I say, I know what you're thinking, or, your next question probably is going to be, and it truly is, I know because I've been there and done the in person. So I think it's very valuable to do that in person and have that experience with your audience so that if you're doing video on your own and you don't have that audience there to ask the questions, that the video is still truly valuable.
So I have, I've pulled back from a lot of the in-person just because it's so time consuming and I can reach a bigger audience faster with video versus a 30 to even 100 % room at a guild. I can do video in that exact same amount of time, even less because I don't have any travel time to my studio, which is literally right over there. So I can go walk right over there, film a video, and I can reach thousands in less time than it would take me to reach 30 to 100 people.
And video is important and I use it in a couple different ways so one is to Build a name for myself a name for the brand so when someone sees Yeah, so so when someone sees my my name or my work that it's not the first time that they've seen it that I have a reputation for Knowing what I'm talking about for creating good things for
Lyric Kinard (07:27.606)
establishing your authority.
Carolina Moore (07:42.626)
working with them, I've established that relationship. So I have lots of videos that are just basic information. They're not necessarily about my products or about what I do. And then I have other videos that are specifically like launch videos or talking about my products. And in that way, I use YouTube as basically a social media platform. Like someone might create an Instagram post saying, look at my new pattern, or on Facebook say, look at my new pattern. I do a whole video saying, look at my new pattern.
and talking about that pattern and giving them the story behind it. Really similar to how you would do on Facebook or on Instagram. And then also I'll do videos that are just like fun. working on a project videos and I get to slip my products in there as well. I recently filmed a video on different kinds of ways to pin fabric.
Lots and lots of different ways that you can pin fabric and there are lots out there and maybe you don't know about these and maybe you don't know the difference and so it's a very informative video and oh guess what I also invented a pin called the purse handle pin and that of course is included in these pins. So while it's an informative video that I hope people get a lot of information out of it's also a bit of a promotional video because I'm talking about my own product in there as well.
Lyric Kinard (08:55.032)
Great.
There is such a huge difference between people seeing an ad or just seeing the product in a store or reading something about it than there is watching somebody do it on video.
Carolina Moore (09:13.513)
And I think that when you see products used, like there's a difference between definitely hanging up in the store and they're just seeing it used in a regular project. So my very first notion, you mentioned it in the intro was the spot on dot. it is done in collaboration with gypsy quilters. It's a gypsy quilter product and it's a set of magnifying lenses that you can put on your rulers to see the lines better.
So whenever I'm doing a video where I need to be able to see the lines on the ruler, I grab my spot on dots and I just use them. They're just a regular notion that I use when I'm sewing things up. And sometimes I'll mention, I use my spot on dots. And sometimes I'll just use them because it's just normal. And I'll get questions. What is that? What are those lenses? What are those dots? What are those things that you stuck on there in the comments? And the more comments you get, comments are great because that's all engagement. So.
Not mentioning them means I get more engagement and I get to answer them specifically and give them the link to go buy them or tell them to go buy them at their local quilt shop. So it gets more engagement and it's, Every time I use them, I see a spike in sales.
Lyric Kinard (10:25.33)
fantastic. Now you mentioned these are the same kind of videos that you would make that people are making for Facebook or Instagram or other social media. Why YouTube instead of just Instagram or social media?
Carolina Moore (10:40.339)
Great question. So YouTube is and has been for over a decade the second largest search engine in the world The largest search engine is Google and to be found on Google You basically just need to be anywhere on the internet and you can end up in a Google search And you know that because when you've searched Google you've gotten results from anywhere on the internet, right? However, YouTube isn't actually a search engine because the only way you can be found on YouTube is to be on YouTube So a Facebook post won't get me on the second largest search engine
A blog post won't get me on the second largest search engine. The only way to get on the second largest search engine in the world is to create YouTube videos. The other really cool thing that we don't talk about is that Facebook and Instagram and TikTok are all closed. They have...
I'll call it a paywall because there isn't a better term for it. But you have to have a login. If I send you a TikTok link and you're not logged into your TikTok or you don't have a TikTok account, you can't watch that unless you create a TikTok account. YouTube, don't have, like, first of all, most people are already logged into their Google accounts because we all are.
But even if someone is anti-Google and doesn't have a Google account, they'll still be able to watch that video. YouTube hasn't created that login wall around their product, so it makes it very, very easily shareable. If anyone's ever shared a Facebook video with you or a Facebook link with you and said, this is so cool, you should see it, and you get, this content cannot be displayed at this time, it's because that was...
the privacy settings on that content are so that you can't see it because you're not friends with the person who shared it. That doesn't exist on YouTube. Everyone can see it on YouTube.
Lyric Kinard (12:21.452)
Right. Yeah, every public video on YouTube is up for the search engine. And the other thing I adore about YouTube compared to social media, social media, kind of, own your content. They can shut you down. They can change the algorithm and it's kind of random whether your people actually see anything you post or not. On YouTube, people are coming to look for something.
So if you know what problem that you are solving, what solution you have for your people, and you're able to use those terms in your title, in your description, basically good search engine optimization, they can find you. And they're looking specifically for you. It is such a much warmer audience, even though you feel you have your people in your community on social media.
the people who come to you on YouTube are actually needing what you have to offer.
Carolina Moore (13:22.925)
Well, every other social media platform highly, highly prioritizes recency. Like, have you ever had a Instagram, any piece of Instagram content that was six months old or older suddenly go viral? No. But it doesn't. Whereas I had, I did a bunch of videos in April, shorts and one of them in August went hugely viral and got over a million views.
Lyric Kinard (13:36.844)
because there was sudden interaction if it did. But no, you're right.
Lyric Kinard (13:52.398)
Good job!
Carolina Moore (13:54.206)
Months later and YouTube will do that YouTube will continue to play with and test and see who it needs to be sent to and who needs to see it their algorithm Isn't so highly dependent on recency. It's really highly dependent on who is a good fit for this content It's about delivering the right content to the right person regardless of time
Lyric Kinard (14:14.764)
And it's evergreen. My oldest YouTube videos in the teaching area are the very worst I've ever made. I sent my daughter off to school with the vintage sewing machine that was vintage when I got it growing up, right? An old Elnit TSP. she's like, I don't remember how to change the bobbin in this thing, mom. And this is way before anything, right? So I took a quick video saying, here's how you do it.
because YouTube was the only way at that time that I could get a video to her. And it's still up. I changed the thumbnail, I changed the title, I changed the description so that that ugly video, ugly video is solving a problem nobody else is solving on YouTube and people find it and it gets hundreds and hundreds of views every day still. And that thing is 15 years old.
Carolina Moore (15:14.007)
Yep. I have an ancient video of me teaching five beginner steps to free motion quilting. And I still get comments on it very regularly. People saying, thank you. I'm so excited. years and years old, probably eight years old. And it's still one of my best performing videos.
Lyric Kinard (15:33.74)
Evergreen content, it's magic. Again, it pays to understand the SEO, the search engine optimization, because when people put in the words to search for the thing they're looking for, your words need to match what they're searching for in order to come up. And then what happens when you search something on YouTube? You get a list of like the top five or six videos, and how do you choose which one?
That's where the visual comes in. If the visual looks like, that one will answer my question, then you're good. And the thing is you can change the thumbnails. You can mess with that over time.
Carolina Moore (16:14.753)
Yep, can, and YouTube has an option now that you can upload three different thumbnails and it'll do what's called A-B testing, which is where it tests the different thumbnails. And what's interesting is that they don't pick the thumbnail that gets clicked the most necessarily. They pick the thumbnail that behind those clicks is the longest watch time. And that's an interesting thing about YouTube is because they don't want to prioritize click bait.
Lyric Kinard (16:36.671)
Nice.
Carolina Moore (16:42.563)
So if I had a thumbnail that said, you click here, you get a million dollars. I might get a lot of clicks because people like, want a million dollars. That seems like a really low bar. Like I'll click on this for a million dollars. Sure. But the video is not giving the payoff. And you know, the beginning is ha ha gotcha. What we're actually going to talk about today. People are going to click away very quickly. I'm not going to get the watch time. And so that thumbnail will not perform. And so that won't win the AB test. They're looking at does this thumbnail.
identify what the information is that they're getting in this video. So that makes this the best thumbnail because it allows us to serve it to the right people.
Lyric Kinard (17:21.134)
Yeah, and their analytics when you look in studio behind the scenes are deep. I mean, you can go in and see who saw your video because it was recommended on some other entire place or who came from one of your other. It just is so interesting to look at the data and understand it to see how you can go forward. And I love that. I mean, you really understand this and are using it.
super effectively for your business.
Carolina Moore (17:56.814)
Sorry, there's an alarm. I have an alarm going off. I apologize. There's, I take classes on the analytics because also they are constantly adding analytics and understanding what is important to them and also what's important to me because one of the interesting things that I find is, I believe that the average YouTuber is a 12 year old boy. I don't really have specific data behind that, but I think we can.
Lyric Kinard (18:01.152)
No worries.
Carolina Moore (18:25.603)
basically agree, the average YouTuber is a 12 year old boy and I also have a 12 year old boy in my house. I'm, and he watches a lot of YouTube videos and he has the time to do it. And so there's a lot of junk on YouTube that to me is junk, but appeals to his demographic. However, my audience is women age 62 and over, which
Lyric Kinard (18:31.382)
Yeah
Carolina Moore (18:52.707)
Is basically the exact opposite of a 12 year old boy like you can't get much more opposite of a 12 year old boy than a 65 year old female They might sing sit next to each other and watch videos on the couch And she might look over at what he's watching But she's not watching what he's watching and he's not watching what she's watching so when people say this is what works well on YouTube This is what you should be doing on YouTube They're doing that based on the aggregate of all of YouTube which includes a huge chunk of 12 year old boys that I don't care about so if
We're really excited about this thing on YouTube because it works really well. Cool. But does it work with my core audience? And I'm not saying that a 30 year old woman or a 28 year old woman wouldn't or even, you know, an 18 year old male wouldn't get anything out of my videos. It's just, that's not the core audience. so I, I need to know that it's going to work within my audience. When you understand the analytics of your videos, you can actually go look at how your videos are performing, who they're
going to what's working well and what isn't. And then adjust not based on what everybody says and what the hype is for what you should be doing on YouTube, but based on what's actually working on your channel.
Lyric Kinard (20:02.894)
Yeah, and it's video by video as well as channel-wide. Just, it's, I can't say enough high praise about YouTube's video analytics. So this is a good capsulation of why we should be on YouTube. Let's go back a little bit and here's another thing that I get constantly from educators. They are saying, why on earth would I put my stuff
on YouTube where people could get it for free. If they can get it there, they're not going to pay for an on-demand class or for me to get hired and come to teach wherever they are. I I have opinions. I'd love to hear yours.
Carolina Moore (20:47.469)
Sure. The reason that people take classes is because they want to learn that thing or because they want to learn from that person. There's also, honestly, there's a segment that's like, I don't have anything to do that day and I want to go hang out and do something interesting and this sounds fun enough. And I've never done that thing before and I don't know who that person is. definitely is, like there are other like sub segments, but the two biggest ones are.
Lyric Kinard (21:13.646)
Well, for sure.
Carolina Moore (21:15.895)
I wanna learn that thing or I wanna learn from that person. Those are two big reasons that someone takes a class. So if that thing, like one of my things right now is diamond quilts. I'm doing a lot with diamond quilts. have a ruler specifically for making diamond quilts. Not a ton of people make quilts with diamonds. that is, there's, before I can get them to want to make quilts with diamonds, I have to show them cool diamond quilts. I have to get them excited about the diamond as a shape.
And so that there's that work of like getting people excited about not just squares and triangles, but diamonds are really cool. So as I get them more interested in diamonds, they will be more interested in making diamond quilts. So getting people excited that your technique is even a thing. If no one's.
Lyric Kinard (22:03.234)
Yeah, exposing them to something they didn't even know was a thing is a really important thing to expose them to.
Carolina Moore (22:11.041)
And then the other thing is, the really cool thing about YouTube is that when I do YouTube videos, very often when people are watching my videos, they are watching them in their pajamas, on their couch or in their sewing room. I'm hanging out with them at their most comfortable. And so we become friends through YouTube and they feel like they know me and through the comments, I feel like I get to know them a little bit as well. And so when I am teaching a class,
And I get emails all the time saying, are you teaching a class? Can I come see a class? Will you come talk to the guild? I have people who want to come hang out with me because I hope I've made myself seem fun to hang out with and someone that would be fun in person. So those two big reasons of why would someone take this class, because they wanna make the thing or they wanna hang out with me, are hurdles that I can get over on YouTube and I can create that demand. And so instead of me,
having to pitch classes if I wanted to teach classes out in the world, people are coming to me asking, can you come teach this class? And that's amazing.
Lyric Kinard (23:16.334)
Absolutely. We listen to music on Spotify now often and it will just pop up music that sounds like other music I like or is related, right? But I've never heard of that band and I had no idea they existed, but I hear them enough and suddenly they're my favorite and if they are coming into concert, there's no way I would have even considered buying a ticket to their concert without first having heard them.
Carolina Moore (23:46.53)
And it also means you're writing a book. You're coming out with a new book. People are like, I want your book. They don't know what the book's about yet. I have a book coming out this fall. I've been teasing about it. I've been talking about it. I did a live where I was working on hand sewing the sleeves down on the backs of the quilts. People don't know what the book is about. They haven't seen the quilts in the book, but they're excited about the book. And so am I. I can't wait to share more about it with them.
So you build this, you build a community of people who want to hang out with you, who want to do the things with you.
Lyric Kinard (24:21.388)
It's so true. Many of the people who come in as new to being on camera to the Academy for Virtual Teaching have this huge mental block of, talking to a camera. And they're not. You are building so much more of an authentic connection with your community. You and I have both had the experience of going places in person.
and a complete stranger comes up and they're your best friend already because they absolutely feel like they know you because they've seen you on video. And if they saw you like a Hollywood star, all polished and professional and highly produced, I don't think it would be the same.
Carolina Moore (25:08.359)
Maybe we love Hollywood stars too and we feel like we know them. But I think that...
Lyric Kinard (25:11.072)
Yeah, but not like somebody who you sit around in your pajamas and watch YouTube videos and watch them make a mistake and say, they're a real person too, so I can actually approach them.
Carolina Moore (25:21.923)
When I look at that front-facing camera, and I'm looking, and like I am right now, I'm looking at my front-facing camera, and I'm looking right at you, what I am seeing is, and the best way to describe it is like a toilet paper tube, right? There's like a toilet paper tube right there, and I'm looking through that toilet paper tube, and on the other end of it, just like when we were kids, and we would hold up tubes, and our friend would be on the other end, on the other end of that toilet paper tube, or paper towel tube if it's longer, is my friend.
Lyric Kinard (25:26.358)
Mm-hmm.
Lyric Kinard (25:33.326)
Mm-hmm.
Lyric Kinard (25:47.778)
Your people.
Carolina Moore (25:48.758)
And she's sitting on the sofa and she's on her, like maybe on her phone or on her iPad and she's watching this video or maybe she's at her sewing machine and she's watching this video. Maybe her hair is not done. Maybe she's in her pajamas. For some of our ladies, maybe her teeth aren't in. She's really at her most comfortable hanging out at her house. And I get to come in through the magic of the toilet paper tube and sit with her. And the toilet paper tube is because.
I'm not a kid anymore and it's not an actual toilet paper tube. Now it's a camera.
Lyric Kinard (26:18.926)
It's a camera, right? And I have the exact same thing except for I have like inside that camera box is a Lilliputian world of all these miniature tiny people and they're my people and they're right there and I'm talking to them. You know, it helps so much to understand and know your audience and know that that's really what you're doing is you're chatting, you're connecting, you're teaching, you are...
Carolina Moore (26:33.303)
Yeah!
Lyric Kinard (26:48.384)
authentically there with your people.
Yeah, it's all, I I feel like the camera makes an even more authentic connection than any other kind of advertising. And that's those stories about us, those, the realness of who we are and how you use your spot on dot in everyday normal creating. That is so much more of a base level visceral real connection.
with your audience and your customer than it is if you bought a magazine ad or anything like that,
Let's go, like you didn't always do video. How did you feel about first making videos and being on video? And how did you, let's get into like the tech, how it actually works for you and how you actually progress.
Carolina Moore (27:36.499)
No.
Carolina Moore (27:50.66)
So I've been married just over 18 years and 18 years ago I did not have a videographer at my wedding because I hated myself on video. I still don't love video but I've gotten more comfortable in my skin and as myself and like this is what I look like today. I have some bags under my eyes, you probably should have gone to bed a little earlier last night, know my forehead's a little shiny. That's just, you know, that is, that is. That's just who I am and.
So I've gotten more comfortable in my skin. My mouth also tends to like lean to one side because I edit all my own videos. So I notice these things about myself. There's certain words that I say that I don't like the way that I pronounce them. I'm definitely still very hard on myself when I do these things, but also it doesn't matter. Nobody else cares about any of the things that I just mentioned. They don't.
Lyric Kinard (28:39.544)
We are our own worst critics every time. And you're right, nobody else really cares about any of those things.
Carolina Moore (28:45.271)
Nobody cares. They don't. I do every now and then there'll be a troll and it's the thing about the trolls is that they're not your audience so who cares what they think. But every now and then I'll have a troll in the comments that'll say something that about my appearance. And I just, I mean I have teenagers so coming back at them for the things that they say is one of my, I don't know about favorite things to do because I don't love the troll comments but I like feeling a little clever.
when I come up with a witty answer. So there was one who said, like, you talk too much. And I responded with, my kids, you know, my kids say the same thing, because it's always fun to agree with them. Like, my kids say the same thing, but it's when they're stuck in a car with me and they don't have a choice. What's your excuse?
Lyric Kinard (29:33.934)
Yeah.
Carolina Moore (29:36.856)
Right? Someone comments about the bags in my eyes. that's like, yeah, a lot of people have been commenting about that lately. Maybe you should comment about my weight instead. No one's talked about that for a while. Right? If you show them that it doesn't bother that you, even if it does, like inside, of course I don't want someone saying that I look tired or that, but if you show, like, the bullies have the power when we give them the power, and if we choose not to give them the power, then they don't have the power, whether they know it or not.
Lyric Kinard (29:37.698)
Right?
Lyric Kinard (29:46.286)
Yeah
Lyric Kinard (30:01.08)
And you know the awesome thing about YouTube is you don't have to respond immediately, like you're not necessarily live. So you can take a while to think of the most biting comeback, or you can go to ChatGPT and say, somebody said this about something. How? Yeah, absolutely.
Carolina Moore (30:17.439)
Or you can just block them and not give them any of your head space. That's also, it's your channel. You're totally allowed. And with the ones that there are some, especially in live videos, when I do live videos, there are people who come in with some inappropriate things and they just get blocked immediately. No space, no nothing. Nope. Gone. We don't need that. My viewers don't need to be exposed to those comments. I don't need to be, you're done. You're out. You're, mean, you're, you're not a quilter. You're not this audience. You're gone. Easy.
Lyric Kinard (30:28.291)
Hmm.
Lyric Kinard (30:33.24)
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (30:41.602)
Don't think twice. Yeah.
Carolina Moore (30:47.565)
But anyway, so yeah, I still don't love myself on video. I got more comfortable with it because Google Plus, there was a social media platform for a little while that Google had, which was called Google Plus, and they had an option called Google Hangouts on Air, which is where you could go live, very similar to what we're doing right now, going live, and you could go live with other people as well, and it would stream directly to YouTube, and when you were done,
It would just live as a recorded video on YouTube and those videos are still there. haven't gone back and deleted them. All those hangouts on air are still there. So I didn't have to edit my own video that made it a lot more comfortable because the editing part was very uncomfortable for me. I was so critical of myself. and then over time I've just gotten better and gotten different equipment and better editing software and done it so much that
Yeah, you do it so much, you just, kind of get desensitized to it.
Lyric Kinard (31:49.62)
You get better at doing a thing by doing the thing. I there's no other way. So the only way to get comfortable on camera is to be on camera.
Carolina Moore (31:53.666)
Yep.
Carolina Moore (31:59.32)
They say your first 100 videos are gonna be terrible. So when your first couple videos are terrible, you're doing it right.
Lyric Kinard (32:02.062)
Of course.
There you go. Absolutely. What equipment did you start with?
Carolina Moore (32:09.613)
So the hangouts on air were just with my camera on my laptop. And then because I was a blogger, I had a Canon T2i, which is a DSLR. And then as I would upgrade cameras, so in the beginning, I used one camera and one camera only when I was filming. I would make the whole project start to finish with the camera over my shoulder so that you could see my ironing pad, my cutting pad, and the sewing machine all at once.
Lyric Kinard (32:19.552)
Mm-hmm, right.
Carolina Moore (32:39.707)
And that was just the one camera for all the shots. And I would often film multiple videos in a row over the course of a day or two. And then on the third day, I would do my hair and makeup and look like a real human. And then I would set the camera up in front of me, facing me. And I would do all the intros and outros for all the videos that I had already completed in the last couple of days. And so I did it all with one camera. And then when I had two cameras, I basically did the same thing, but just had two angles as I was filming.
And then on the last day it would do the hair and makeup and do the intros and outros. And now I have a setup where I do three cameras simultaneously, one facing me, one overhead and one angle at the side. And I do the whole video all at once. I also have like a box to the side where I film what's called live to tape. So as I'm filming, I'm actually switching which camera is the live camera and all of it goes to one SD card as one continuous piece of information.
And that makes it easier for me to edit because when I go to edit, I don't have to pick which camera angles. Those have already been chosen as I was recording. And I'm just editing for content and for time.
Lyric Kinard (33:48.524)
Right. And this involves when you're filming on cameras instead of going live cable to your computer or using your phone, there's other equipment in between, right? So you have the camera, it sounds like you have a switcher, you have to record all of the things. So you have a card that then gets put on your computer that then you edit that then goes up to YouTube.
Carolina Moore (34:13.047)
Yep. Yep.
Lyric Kinard (34:17.134)
So you are at a much higher level than most beginners do, right? Especially from where you started.
Carolina Moore (34:21.869)
Well, then I started for sure. Yep. And like now I have dedicated space that that's my filming space. used to be that my filming space was my desk. So I'd have to clear off my desk before I got started. You grow like some people are very fortunate and have the means to be able to go buy a bunch of cameras and they have enough space. I live in San Diego. Space is a huge premium, right? So they have the space and the funds to be able to get great equipment.
Lyric Kinard (34:32.237)
Right.
Carolina Moore (34:51.393)
all at once, but you don't need to start like I started with the camera that I was already using for blogging.
Lyric Kinard (34:56.546)
Right? And you don't even need to aspire to go there. In my workspace, I have a camera holder that is out of the way. And for overhead, since I'm doing small things, you're on a big cutting board and everything. I can just clear off like a two foot space and pop in my camera, which is my phone most of the time, and just record it straight to there.
Carolina Moore (35:21.613)
So for all my short form content, it is my phone. All my short form content is just done on my phone and I have clamps or tripods or whatever, like in every single spot in my studio. So as I'm doing something, I just clamp the phone in, hit record, and I can record what I'm doing. And that's all short form content is done on my phone because it's the vertical content. And then all of, they call it VOD, video on demand, is horizontal. And that I shoot in the studio space on.
Lyric Kinard (35:42.712)
Mm-hmm.
Carolina Moore (35:51.62)
Um, they're now, well, they're out there and mirrorless. have Sony ZV-E10s. So I, I did a big upgrade last year.
Lyric Kinard (35:52.268)
with the big DSLRs.
Lyric Kinard (35:57.643)
nice. That's big tech.
Yep, that is big tech, which again, friends, you don't have to aspire to that. Start right where you are with the simplest easiest.
Carolina Moore (36:12.405)
Up until 18 months ago, I was still using that Canon T2i. And if you go research how old a Canon T2, I mean, that was over a 10-year-old camera that I was still using. It was still one of the three cameras that I was using. And it was a goal to upgrade, but that's a lot of money. And it's like, okay, when am I gonna be comfortable in the business spending this kind of money on upgraded cameras? And I bought the...
So the box that I bought was it's called a yellow box. And I chose that one because it doesn't have a monthly subscription. It was a one-time cost, but it was a thousand dollars to buy this box. So it was a big investment is the end of the year. said, okay, I'm going to, you know, it's tax write-off by the, by the yellow box. And that's going to make my editing life so much easier. And then it turned out that my Canon cameras did not communicate with the yellow box. And so I had on my list to upgrade my cameras, like over time, one at a time.
Lyric Kinard (36:51.394)
Just do it.
Lyric Kinard (37:00.812)
What the?
Carolina Moore (37:06.839)
But now it became a, if I want to use this editing box, I have to upgrade my cameras. So I just bit the bullet, bought all three at once, got them all set up. And it's not the way that I wanted to do it, but I don't regret doing it. It's made my life so much easier.
Lyric Kinard (37:21.346)
Right. And the thing is, you can make phenomenal videos with this, but people are still watching the videos that you made without all that equipment. Right? So it's not about... I think what I'm trying to say is never let lack of equipment hold you back. Your phone is enough to start with, and you have to start somewhere.
Carolina Moore (37:29.766)
yeah, 100%.
Carolina Moore (37:46.584)
Your first hundred videos are going to be bad. They are. So might as well do it on bad equipment while you're at it. And also you don't know what equipment you need until you're doing the things. I have people who want to know about my studio setup and that's great and that's fine. But I don't know how you film videos and what kind of videos you're going to want to make. You may need something much more expensive or you may need something a lot less. You don't know what you need until you start doing it and playing with it.
Lyric Kinard (38:11.49)
Right, absolutely. And there's so many things to consider that are unique to the craft and quilt and art world, the maker world. There are different camera angles, there are different things like, do you record something ahead of time if you've got paint all over your hands and you can't touch the buttons? Kind of things.
Carolina Moore (38:31.267)
One of the cool things that I've gotten to do is I've been invited to go film with other folks. So I've gone other places and filmed with them and gotten to see their setups. So this also wasn't created in a vacuum. It was created by going and doing hands-on experience. So not every place, but a couple different places that I filmed, they'll have a person who has a handheld camera that'll kind of like watch and be able to like zoom in and be able to go over shoulders.
But you need a second body to do that. And you need a second body that understands camera angles and what's important in order to do that. And so I would love that angle. I don't have access to that. That's not a thing. Maybe if you have a child or a parent or a spouse or a roommate, someone who likes doing these kinds of things and can help you out with that, then you can have that angle. I mean, everyone has some kind of limitation. And yep.
Lyric Kinard (39:24.206)
You do what you can with what you've got. And even if you do have a teenager in your house who is an aspiring videographer, they don't understand what actually is the important part unless you're telling them, okay, zoom in over here because they need to see this, not that pretty thing over there. It's such a learning process and it really is a fun journey, isn't it? I find...
Carolina Moore (39:36.055)
Maybe.
Carolina Moore (39:41.346)
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (39:51.692)
the process of learning how to make a video or what to put on a video and what works. If you think of the process as part of the really fun part, then it becomes the really fun part, because the disaster you just had can teach you a lot about what you need to do next or do differently or do better or whoa, maybe it wasn't a disaster, maybe...
that has taught me something that sparked a new idea for something I never thought I would have done.
Carolina Moore (40:24.023)
Well, mistakes are an opportunity to learn. if you can look at, like if I have a video that bombs, like I think it's gonna do well and it absolutely bombs, this is, when something does well, there's all kinds of reasons it could have done well. And when something bombs, again, there are all kinds of reasons, but there's data and analytics there. I can go look and I can try to figure out why did this not do well? What is different about this video?
versus other videos that I think this didn't do well. I I also analyze my successes and say, okay, why do I think this video did so well so I can repeat that? But there's a lot of data in something just failing.
Lyric Kinard (41:02.062)
In YouTube, you can watch where people dropped off watching, the exact minute, the exact second. So you can see what happened in that video at that moment and go, that's where I lost their interest. That's where the topic switch that they weren't interested in or the data really teaches you what your audience needs.
Carolina Moore (41:06.615)
Yep. Yep.
Carolina Moore (41:23.767)
Yeah, it's their attention graph. And the interesting thing about it is that the data is the data and you can look at it and you can be mad at it and you can hate it. You're allowed to do all those things. You're allowed to ignore it if you want, but at your own peril, right? You have this information and if you want to say, well, they were wrong. They should have kept watching. It was going to get good. Okay. But they didn't and they weren't going to. for whatever reason, I didn't give them what they needed to keep watching. And I can get mad at them for leaving.
Lyric Kinard (41:31.31)
You
Carolina Moore (41:52.868)
But if I continue on the path, this same path, they will continue to leave at that moment every single time, which means that very, very cool. I now have the information that I need to change. Okay. They hate it when I do this. I was looking at a retention graph recently. Um, I did a video last year, or I guess it was last month on my six fails of 2024, my top six fails of 2024, which is a really fun video to do.
And I was looking at the retention graph for it and I saw where the retention completely died on this video. And I thought, they waited until I shared number six and after number six, they were like, Matt, she's done, gone. That was not the case. The big dip on this retention graph was actually when I started a very long Midwest goodbye on my video.
Like clearly it was over, but I hadn't like given into being over yet. And I was kind of like, you should like and subscribe and yada, yada, yada. did like a big midway and people like they left very quickly as they saw the video was over, but Caroline's still talking, but we're not interested anymore. And so that is information to me of if I want to keep my retention up and YouTube does look at retention. So I definitely want to keep my retention up. I need to stop with the Midwest goodbyes.
Lyric Kinard (43:09.688)
Yep, done. See ya, bye. Do you have a formula that you, a general content, I do this and then this and then this, no matter what the actual subject is for the videos you use, which granted will not work for everybody, but do you have one in your head that you kind of follow, like hook, introduction, content?
Carolina Moore (43:33.24)
No, I mean, I think it's really natural. It's introduce what you're going to do. You don't want a long, like, hi friends, it's been so long since I saw you. First of all, you don't know that anyone's seeing this in order. Like, you don't need to, I'm so sorry I've been gone, no one knows, and they don't care. And they're watching this three years from now. They really don't know and don't care. You wanna get into the meat of the video very quickly. YouTube looks at retention in the first 30 seconds, and that also is gonna determine
Lyric Kinard (43:43.244)
Hmm get right to the thing
Carolina Moore (44:02.307)
how they distribute your video. they, do you want to really get into showing that you're going to pay off the reason that they clicked on this video in the first 30 seconds because otherwise people will leave. So I start with a quick introduction. There are lots of people who say that you shouldn't do an introduction. That doesn't matter because people don't care who you are, which is valid. However, we talked about early on, one of my goals in doing YouTube is to get them to know me and who I am.
And so if I lose some people because they don't want to watch my content because I took the time to introduce myself, then they were not the people that I was trying to reach anyway. And I'm okay with that. I can get mad at them and be like, you should have stayed. It was a good video, but you know, that's fine. So I start with a very quick introduction of, Hey friends, it's Carolina Moore. I'm your favorite sewing and quilting YouTuber. And today we are going to, and I tell them what we're going to do. And then we get right into it. Often it's talk about materials.
they need to have on hand, what pattern, and then actually making the thing. If steps are repeated over and over again, like let's say I'm doing a binding video. People really want to see how to do the corner of a binding. And so I show, I make sure that I show them how to do a corner. There are four corners.
Nobody needs to see it four times because if they need to see it four times, they'll rewind it and watch it again. They'll rewind it and watch it again. And sometimes I've gotten people saying, why do people only show the corner once in a video? And I answer because you can rewind it and watch it again. But if you show the same thing over and over again, you're going to lose the audience. They're going to go because I don't need to see it. Or they're going to just like, this is fast forward through the video. And if you look at your videos and you see a lot of spikes in those retention graphs, it's because people are fast forwarding to the part that they want fast forwarding to the part they want. That's great information.
You could then take that video, edit it to just the parts that they want, and remove all those in-between bits, and you would have a much stronger video. they're giving, YouTube is giving you that data, your audience is giving you that data. So get through the meat of what we're doing, and then the payoff at the end of look, here it is. I've...
Lyric Kinard (46:13.912)
Do you have a call to action in there in some or most? And do you put it in the middle or at the end or in the description?
Carolina Moore (46:22.979)
So you're going to lose a significant portion of your audience by the end. So if there's a significant call to action, you don't want to have it at the very, very end. You want to talk about it throughout the video and in the middle of the video. And also people don't necessarily watch your video from start to finish. They might fast forward through it. There's also chapter markers within YouTube. So if you're showing a lot of things, like I'm showing how to put together a bag, I'm going to be showing how to put in the hardware. I'm going to show how to add the handles.
I'm going to show how to turn it right side out and maybe someone just wants to see how to turn it right side out. They're going to skip to that. So if there was an important call to action of any kind, they won't have seen it if it was either at the beginning or at the end. there's also, if you get too repetitive on things, people are like, she's just being salesy. She's just like, she's like, buy my pattern, buy my pattern, buy my pattern the whole time. So you have to find that, that place where you're not
Lyric Kinard (47:00.035)
would miss it.
Lyric Kinard (47:18.38)
You don't leave it out, but it needs to be in there naturally.
Carolina Moore (47:21.827)
Yeah, you're not being obnoxious to your audience, but also and you're serving them well, but also you're getting what you need out of it because a YouTube video is content that it costs you to make even if because your time is not free because your time, there's an opportunity cost to your time. You could have spent that time doing anything else, which includes sitting on the couch and watching Netflix, which has value, right? That's relaxation. Relaxation has value.
So there's an opportunity cost to your time. It cost you to make that video. And there's no guarantee that you're going to be paid any money by YouTube. You have to actually get to a certain point of views. And it's like a subscriber view. Mm-hmm.
Lyric Kinard (48:08.248)
Yeah, fuse in watch time and it's watch time and subscribers before they'll let you monetize it. Know what you're doing is leading them to your product, to your courses, to your business, otherwise. So you do need the call to action, but work it in naturally. And I think everything you said was really, really good. Carolina, this has been incredibly valuable and you've been so generous.
Carolina Moore (48:34.947)
Thank you.
Lyric Kinard (48:37.1)
with your knowledge and your time. I have one funny question to ask you at the end. What is the strangest thing in your studio right now?
Carolina Moore (48:45.577)
Me?
Lyric Kinard (48:47.006)
Hahahaha!
Lyric Kinard (48:51.523)
answer! I love it! Everything else is totally normal.
Carolina Moore (48:52.323)
you
Carolina Moore (48:56.899)
So in December I had some friends who were here and my friend Amanda from San Diego so and was here to film some advent content with me and she was just looking around and looking around and looking around and looking around and she said I feel like I could be in here for like a week and still not see everything It's a real it's a working studio Yeah, I mean even behind me I cleaned up. This is actually cleaned up a little bit, but like this is this is working studio
Lyric Kinard (49:14.542)
There's so many things. Yeah, as that's what we do.
Lyric Kinard (49:26.464)
Absolutely. Carolina, thank you for being with us today. I really appreciate your time. And where can people find you?
Carolina Moore (49:33.731)
So you can find me in pretty much all the places with just my name, carolina Moore with two O's, M-O-O-R-E. So I'm on YouTube, I'm on Instagram. I'm not active on TikTok anymore, but you're welcome to go see my old TikToks. I'm on Facebook and I have a blog called alwaysexpectmore.com. And then my shop is carolinamorepatterns.com.
Lyric Kinard (49:55.086)
Well, people go check her out because she's amazing. Go learn from her YouTube videos. Learn the things she's teaching, but learn how she's doing her amazing videos. Take a look and see how real and lovely and just a generous soul that you are, Carolina. Thank you. Have a lovely day.
Carolina Moore (50:13.202)
thank you.
Categories: : Podcast