“Every day,” I mumbled. My head ached, almost like I was hungover. It was always like that after I had a nightmare.
“She chats live with her audience a half-dozen times a day,” Penny elaborated. “But at least four or five times a week, we record, edit, and post longer, more elaborate videos.”
“Like when you unveil a new tech product?”
“It's called unboxing,” I grumbled. “But that’s not all we do.” I gave Penny a pleading look and she took over, explaining how we sometimes went to businesses to try out products, or how I sometimes showed how I used technology to streamline my life.
“And three times a week, viewers send their questions to Lila, and she answers them live on air,” Penny concluded.
Cole frowned. “Like an advice columnist?”
“Sort of like that,” I confirmed.
“Exactly like that,” Penny insisted. “Don’t you still write a monthly column for one of the tech websites?”
“Yes. And I write reviews for them, too.”
Cole shook his head. “And that earns you a living and lets you hire an assistant?”
“Yes.” God, my head hurt. But I was proud of the career I’d made and couldn’t resist telling them about it. “It’s all about the number of followers you have. The bigger your audience, the easier it is to monetize your content. Well… not exactlyeasy. But having a big audience makes it possible.”
“How many views do you usually get on your videos?” Penny asked the guys. She was doing a good job keeping things going, which was strange, because normally, I was the assertive one. Perhaps she sensed how rotten I felt right now.
“You’ll have to ask Gideon,” Brady said. “He’s the numbers guy. I get the sense that our audience is increasing, but not to the point that we’re making much money.”
“Yet,” Cole added. “But our real goal is to drum up business for the inn, not to make a fortune.”
I nearly snorted. If only they knew how few influencers were making a fortune from this kind of thing.
“The basic plan is that the videos lead to the classes. The classes—hopefully—lead to people booking stays here,” Brady said.
“Classes?” Penny asked.
“Yeah,” Brady said. “What we’ll do is we’ll make a few videos on a certain topic, like how to grill or how to repair drywall. Then we’ll offer an in-person class on the subject. Like a workshop.”
That was news to me. “There wasn’t any mention of classes on your website.”
“The inn’s website?” Cole asked. “No, we put the announcement at the end of our videos.”
“And only there?” Their lack of strategy was making the pounding in my head worse.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because no one’s going to see it there. Few people watch videos all the way through.”
“They do when it’s a how-to video. Otherwise, they’d never know how to finish the project,” Brady argued.
I cupped my forehead in my hands. “What do the metrics say?”
“Metrics?” Cole echoed.
God, these guys were amateurs. “You should be able to see exactly how long people watch your videos and at which point they stop watching.”
“Really?” Cole sounded skeptical.
“Can you show us how to find that info?” Brady asked.
“Sure,” I said. Clearly, it was the headache talking, because the last thing I wanted to do was to help my jailers.