⚡ Quick answerOversubscribed by Daniel Priestley gets 4.6/5 from me. How to build a business people queue for, instead of chasing every sale. Service providers, coaches and consultants stuck in feast-and-famine.
What is Oversubscribed about?
Priestley explains how to become oversubscribed: to have more demand than you can meet, so you set the terms, charge well and stop chasing work. It is about engineering demand rather than hoping for it.
Oversubscribed summary
Priestley's premise is that the healthiest position for any business is to be oversubscribed, with more people wanting what you offer than you can serve. Being oversubscribed lets you choose your clients, raise your prices and work without the constant anxiety of where the next job comes from.
He argues demand is not luck; it is engineered. The book explains how to build anticipation before a launch, cultivate a warm audience over time, and use signals of scarcity and popularity honestly so that when you do open your doors, people are ready to buy. He introduces the idea of a market being in balance, in your favour or against you, and how to tip it in your favour through relationships and timing.
It is practical and grounded in Priestley's own experience running events and businesses. For service providers who live feast to famine, it reframes the whole problem from finding customers to building demand you can then release.
Published in 2015, it became a popular playbook among coaches, consultants and event-based businesses. It is aimed at service providers who want reliable demand instead of chasing every sale.
The one idea worth the price: Build the demand before you need the sale. When more people want you than you can serve, everything else gets easier.
Key ideas and takeaways
Engineer demand. Demand is built deliberately, not left to luck.
Warm the audience. Cultivate relationships before you ever ask for a sale.
Honest scarcity. Real limits on your time or spots make people act.
Choose your clients. Being oversubscribed lets you pick, price and set terms.
My honest take
This is the best of Priestley's books for a service business, and it tackles the single most stressful part of self-employment: the feast-and-famine cycle. Instead of chasing customers when the pipeline runs dry, he shows you how to build steady demand so you are the one choosing.
The reframe is the valuable bit. Most people think their problem is finding clients. Priestley argues the real job is building an audience and anticipation over time, so that selling becomes releasing demand rather than hunting for it. For anyone who dreads the quiet months, that shift is worth a lot.
It sits naturally alongside Key Person of Influence, his other book on this list. That one is about becoming known in your field; this one is about turning that reputation into a queue of people ready to buy.
The honest caveat: Like his other work, it points towards Priestley's own programmes, and some examples suit event-based businesses best. The core principle of building demand applies to almost anyone.
Where it falls short
A promotional undertone towards the author's own programmes.
Examples lean towards launches and events, so steady-service businesses adapt the specifics.
How it compares
Key Person of Influence makes you known; Oversubscribed turns that into a queue of buyers. Read them together for Priestley's full approach to standing out and selling out.
Who should read it (and who should skip it)
Service providers, coaches and consultants stuck in feast-and-famine. Skip it if you already have steady, reliable demand.
Best format: Kindle or audio; it is brisk and readable either way.
How to actually use it if you are self-employed
Start building a warm audience now, before you next need sales.
Plan your next offer with a real, honest limit on places.
Track demand so you launch when interest is high, not when cash is low.
⚡ The 60-second recap
Aim to be oversubscribed, with demand beyond supply.
Build audience and anticipation before selling.
Use honest scarcity and choose your clients.
A book is a shortcut. A second pair of eyes is faster.
Twenty years self-employed, 500+ people coached. If you want help applying this to your own situation, book a free discovery call.
Having more demand than you can supply, so you can choose clients, raise prices and stop chasing work.
Is demand really something you can build?
Priestley argues yes, through relationships, anticipation and honest scarcity, rather than leaving it to luck.
Who is it best for?
Service providers, coaches and consultants who suffer from feast-and-famine income.
Should I read Key Person of Influence first?
Either order works. KPI is about becoming known; Oversubscribed is about converting that into demand.
Does it only work for launches?
Launches are the clearest example, but the demand-building principle applies to ongoing services too.
Final verdict
Oversubscribed earns 4.6/5. How to build a business people queue for, instead of chasing every sale. If it is the stage you are at, the cheapest way in is a free Audible trial or Kindle Unlimited.
Disclosure: Some links in this article are affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Star ratings are my own editorial scores.
When it comes to using services for commercial reasons—especially free services—there is often a lot of murky language and grey areas to wrap your head around. We’d like to be able to say that YouTube is different, but unfortunately, the waters here are just as muddy as everywhere else.
Let’s start with the simplest answer we can give. Yes, you can use YouTube videos for commercial purposes… sometimes. If you own the content and it conforms to YouTube’s community guidelines, there is nothing to stop you from uploading videos for commercial purposes. However, there is more than one way to use YouTube for commercial purposes, and that’s where things get less clear.
As with many things like copyright and licensing, there is a lot of this topic that falls under the umbrella of “technically no, practically yes”. That is, technically no you’re not allowed to do it, but practically you should be fine.
Don’t worry, we’ll walk through this in more detail, but before we do, please remember that this is a YouTube blog, not a legal one. Nothing here should be taken as legal advice, and you are ultimately responsible for your own decisions.
Uploading Videos for Commercial Purposes
The most straightforward use of YouTube videos for commercial purposes is the uploading of your own content that you have full rights to, and that is in full compliance with YouTube’s terms and guidelines. Examples of this might be uploading a promotional video for an online course, a showreel for your acting portfolio, or a walk-around video of a car you are selling.
In each of these cases, the video is technically being used for commercial purposes, however, it should be noted that complying with YouTube’s terms doesn’t just mean things like not having nudity or hateful language, it also means accepting YouTube’s presentation. Your video will almost certainly be shown alongside ads, and those ads might not always be to your tastes. This can be a real problem when dealing with branding, but that is the agreement you enter when you upload content to YouTube.
Embedding Videos for Commercial Purposes
Embedding videos is where things get a little more complicated, since YouTube’s own terms of service state that you cannot;
“use the Service to distribute unsolicited promotional or commercial content or other unwanted or mass solicitations (spam)”
The problem with this is that YouTube makes no real attempt to draw a line between spam and legitimate distribution, and the use of the word “unsolicited” is very vague. For example, if you embed a YouTube video on your blog, nobody could reasonably call it unsolicited, since people are coming to your blog to read your content, so the solicitation is implied.
But what about a forum post, or a Facebook comment?
The reality is that the vast majority of situations in which you would embed a YouTube video for commercial use will not get you in trouble with YouTube, but it is important to remember that vague language in the terms and conditions, particularly if your YouTube channel is a critical component in your income.
Playing YouTube Videos for Commercial Purposes
YouTube’s terms also state that the service is only for personal, non-commercial use, which rules out things like publicly screening videos. Publicly screening videos could include anything from showing a YouTube video at a speaking engagement to playing one at a party with paid entry.
There is no obvious legitimate path through YouTube’s terms to allow this use of YouTube content, however, there is a way around it. If you own the content, or if you can get permission from the owner of the content, you can cut out the middle man. As long as YouTube are not the rights holders of the content in question, their only issue would be you using YouTube to play the content, but if you’re not using their service, it’s nothing to do with them. That being said, it is against YouTube’s terms to download videos through unofficial means, so you could still be in breach of YouTube’s terms with this method. It is unclear how YouTube could ever effectively enforce this particular term, however.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you would be completely off the hook. If you used someone else’s content without their permission, they could still take issue with it, but that is the case for any use of content that you don’t own the rights to.
Additional Factors
It should also be noted that YouTube does not allow the use of any content on their site that is not a user submission. Again, we straddle the uncomfortable line between technically true and practically false here. Technically it would be against YouTube’s terms of service to include a screenshot of the YouTube website in a video that you are using commercially. Practically speaking, unless you are playing your commercial video during halftime at the Super Bowl, it’s unlikely anything will come of it.
User submissions—that is, videos uploaded by YouTubers—are covered by the usual terms and licenses, but everything else—such as artwork—is completely off-limits. That means not even for non-commercial use.
Summing Up
As with many things like copyright and licensing, there is a lot of this topic that falls under the umbrella of “technically no, practically yes”. That is, technically no you’re not allowed to do it, but practically you should be fine.
That being said, you are taking a risk if you go against that “technically”, no matter how unlikely it is. If you decide to do something that breaks the YouTube terms of service, you should be prepared for the possibility that you may be found out, and that YouTube may take action against you.
The only way to be completely safe when using YouTube videos for commercial purposes is to ensure you are the rights holder of the content in question, and that any screenings of the content that are not for personal use should use your own copy of media, not the YouTube platform. Remember, YouTube does not own your content once it is uploaded.
It’s also worth remembering that content you upload can be similarly used by other people. For example, an informative video about how to use your latest product could be hijacked by a competing firm.
It always pays to think through all of the implications.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.
4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube
I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.
I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.
That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.
5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
