Transcription
I don't ask if it'll go viral. I can figure out how to make it viral; that is an absurd thing to say. That's Jenny Hoyos, an 18-year-old YouTuber who is absolutely crushing shorts. She's done over 600 million views in the past year alone, averaging 10 million views per video. How does she do it?
I have analyzed thousands of shorts. I've analyzed all of MrBeast's shorts, all of Ryan Tran's shorts, and what I found was, in this episode, you'll learn how to make anything go viral. I think you can make a video about anything; it's just adding and how to create the perfect short. Every second counts on a short, like every single second. Whatever you say you're going to do, you end it right after you do it. The difference is in short-form content platforms; short-form content is not the same across platforms. I noticed that YouTube likes—and a hot take you might not be expecting—retention doesn't matter as much as people think it does.
You said this kind of aside, you said, "Well, I can make anything go viral, like if the idea is good, I can make I can make it go viral," which is an absurd thing to say, and I want to hear what that means to you. How do you how do you make anything go viral? It's just adding story and a Twist, especially with shorts, since like no one's actually having to click on your video. I think you can make a video about anything. You can make a video about paint drawing, and you can make make it entertaining if there's a story around it and if the viewer is invested.
What are your favorite ways to get people invested? How do you how do you make a story that people care about?
I think my content is very personality-based; I'd say so. For me, making it personal makes them invested. I'll give you an example. I actually did this in a long form in the video: I cooked for strangers to make money. Okay, very Baseline, why should they care? Well, my kitchen is broken, and I want to raise money for it by cooking and making money. You know, it's it's ironic, like I'm my kitchen's broken, so in order to fix it, I have to cook to make money. So I think that's what makes people invested, having like some sort of personal why or goal, and irony too is pretty funny.
I like that. I like that irony, juxtaposition. Jenny's the hero of the story.
Exactly. What makes a good short? When I think of good, it's very subjective, so there's no direct definition as to what makes a good short because everyone has different taste, but I can say what makes a good short to me.
Okay, let's hear that. To me, a good short is one that has a strong hook. As the way I like to explain it is, if it could be used as a title in a thumbnail on a long form and like it will still get clicks, then it'll work for a short, you know. So the hook needs to be very visual; you need to understand it without even listening to it, and it needs to be so simple, like so simply said, like you said, explain to a 5-year-old. So I think that's one of the key things, and then also just a story that just, you know, pushes you through, and not only do you watch to the end, but you rewatch it again. So that's what makes a good short to me.
Let's say that you are planning or want to create a new video. How do you start thinking about hooks or how do you generate hooks?
It's it's very funny because I like to I like to see shorts like as like, even though I don't do that many long forms, I like to see shorts as if I'm making like a long form. So like I will sketch like almost as if it's tied on thumbnails. So like I have my iPad, and I draw like what would I visually want it to look like? What are different ways if I was to put it together? What would that look like? So when I'm making a hook, I just like keep drawing and sketching or like even just imagining until something just clicks. So the first thing is the visual, easily. The first thing is the visual, and then I figure out how I'm going to accompany that visual and what I'm saying. I try to make it as concise as possible, and I'll put it in a readability checker and then make sure that it's actually like understandable to at least like fifth grade or under.
What's what's the readability checker that you use?
Uh, I don't I don't know. I don't pay for it. Readabilityformulas.com is the one I use. And you want to be fifth grade or under?
Fifth grade or under? Yeah. Have you have you played around with things that are uh older, quote-unquote, than that and seeing that that's the level that it should be at, or how did you arrive at fifth grade?
Yeah, so I have analyzed thousands of shorts, as you may know, so I've like scraped, you know, the scripts of a bunch of shorts, and and I've put it in this readability checker, and I've noticed that the most popular shorts, especially MrBeast, you know, MrBeast is one of the best shorts creators, and his is like in first grade level. So I just basically like, after scraping everything, that's when I realized like fifth grade and under is like about the range you want to be at.
Yeah, I think yeah, that's a simply foot. Yeah. How did you land on fifth grade? Was that the average of all of these?
I'm not going to lie, the readability can sometimes be off, but it was um it was just like at a range, cuz I I believe like like a for example is like slightly higher. I don't know the exact number in the top of my head, but I I just noticed that like a good in between as fifth grade. But I will say the problem with the readability is, especially like with content like mine, you can change the readability from fifth grade to like eighth grade by simply using the word "business," which is why I try to avoid things like that. Or if you use the word "finance," or if you use like, for example, "profit," instead of saying "profit," I just explain the definition of profit every time I talk about it.
I did know this about you. I did not know that you analyze thousands of shorts by scraping the titles and the transcripts. Can you tell me more about that?
Yeah, so it's so funny because like basically the way I do it is, you know, when you go on to YouTube and you open up a short, it sends you like, even on desktop, it sends you to like this shorts page or whatever, but if you change the URL to like watch?v=, then the URL, then it will send you to like the actual YouTube page, and then you can just click "transcript," copy and paste that transcript, and then I just check the readability, but I also like check other things, you know. I just analyze why these shorts are working.
So interesting. So interesting. I I would love to hear anything else that comes to mind as you were looking at all this that started to help you pull together your own short strategy, because I did not realize that you had done all this research and pulled all this together. This gets me very very excited as the Creator Science Guy. I am super excited about this this research.
Yes, so I've also like deeply analyzed all of my videos, and I think that's where you learn the most. Everyone has different audiences, so what works for MrBeast might not work for me, right? So what I did is like I did my own little experiment, like when I knew I wanted to get into shorts, I told myself I was going to upload every day for as long as possible, and I think I only got like a week or two in. It didn't it I didn't I didn't get that far, but the goal was essentially to upload as much as possible. Quantity is what makes quality. When I was doing that quantity, I would analyze my retention graph, and this is just like one example I'll just pull out for you. So there was one video, after 5 days I got I think it was like 50,000 views in 5 days, right, which I on average I usually get like a million, so I was not happy with the performance, and I pulled up the retention graph, and I noticed on the last second it was a huge dip; it was 70%, 1 second later it was 45%, like a 25% drop in 1 second, and the retention was 83%. So what I did was I went to YouTube Studio, I trimmed off that 1 second. YouTube removed this feature by the way. YouTube, please bring it back, but just by removing that one second at the end, it went from 83% to 88%, and the video went flying. And that that's why like every second counts on a short, like every single second, because when you think about it, let's say you have a 30-second short, right? If you lose 1 second, that's already 97%. That's three percentages, you know. If you have lose two seconds, that's 6%. So when you think about it, I'm sure it's like you're not just losing one second, you're losing double or even triple because that one second accumulates to two or 3% of the video.
The takeaway here, I believe, is that you really want in a short high retention. Of course, we want high retention and everything, but I've heard some people talk about you really want people to sometimes loop and watch even into a repeat of the thing. Is that true?
Yes, yes, and I'll explain why. The average scroll-through rate, which is basically like on YouTube shorts, you can see what percentage who like what percentage of people viewed versus swiped away, and I like to call it scroll-through rate, but the average scroll-through rate is like 70%; you want to get that as high as possible. My personal scroll-through rate is like 85%, so my average scroll-through rate is 85%, but my average retention is 95.5%. If only 85% of people are watching it, how does the retention subtly get to 95%? It's because they're rewatching it. So to have that like 90-plus percent retention, which is like, in my opinion, the bare minimum like for a short uh blow up, you need them to watch it again.
So 90% is your benchmark; that's what you're looking for for retention for something that will have the the virality and reach that you're accustomed to at this point, for the most part?
Yes. I will say it depends on the amount of impressions because my videos average like 95% retention, but we're talking like that's on 10 million views, so that's like it's very difficult to do, right? So yeah. Okay, so you mentioned that with the hooks you think about the visual nature of it. Are you talking about the first frame of the actual video?
Yes, I'm talking about the first frame. I don't know how many shorts you've seen, so I'll try and to explain it. I I've seen more than one but less than you, so let's let's assume on the yeah, so I have this series where I remake fast food items for a dollar. Instead of like showing my face, I show the location; I show the front of the location because obviously like more people know the fast food location than they know me. The easiest way to describe like the video just visually is by showing the fast food item in front of the location. So usually it's so funny, I would have the logo in the middle, and then I'll put the food item here, and and then right in the middle I'll put like "$1 burrito," "$1 sandwich," "$1 Burger." So then it's like you perfectly see it; it's always perfectly aligned, and it really helps for watchability too because it's actually a playlist, and I get a lot of views from people like just like watching it down, and they they just know it's me every time they see that framing.
So interesting. Was this all trial and error, or did you model this this style of of framing and hook off of anyone in particular?
It's entirely like trial and error at first. I started by I guess you can say stealing like stealing like an artist, cuz that's how to me I I believe that's how you learn. Sure, you obviously want to find your own style, but I started by like copying other people's hooks, and then I was looking at like which percentage is the highest. So I it sounds so funny, so like a a strategy, a technique, is like what would it sound like if this YouTuber made this video, and then I would make a bunch of hooks depending on that. So I'll have like a list of like the big 10, and then I'll just like, you know, have a bunch of different hooks, pick which one's my favorite, see the percentage, and then assess what's the best hook. Then I made my own twist into it.
After a quick break, Jenny walks me through her process for coming up with great ideas, so stick around. We'll be right back.
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What would you say is your proportion of like video ideas to videos you actually create?
Oh gosh, well, I have like, right now in a Google Doc, I have a list of a thousand ideas.
Crazy. And I'm only doing 10.
Crazy. So these are depends; these are a thousand ideas, not a thousand hooks, a thousand different video ideas that could each have multiple different hooks within them.
Yes. It's it's it's crazy.
Yeah. Where do they come from? How do you generate that many ideas?
Okay, there's a lot of ways. So one way is I just watch YouTube and then see what I personally, you know, like want to recreate and like twist, or it's like what video do I want to watch, or um, as funny as it sounds, I also use AI. AI has some pretty good ideas, but the best ideas, at least for me personally, they come from just living it and then thinking, "This is a video idea." So let me explain that. So one of my most popular videos is me making a garden. As funny as it sounds, cuz that sounds like it would get no views, yet it has like I think it has like 30 million views, like so that's a ton. There's so many ideas where something like this happened. One day I was eating Ratatouille because it's like one of my favorite foods, right? And I'm like, "I can't believe like it costs $20 to cook," and I'm like, "But can't I just make a garden and then have unlimited Ratatouille for like five bucks?" And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's a video idea." So I'm like, "Now I got to make a garden, and then I'm going to grow vegetables to have infinite Ratatouille because it's my favorite food." So like that's where the story came from. Or like another time, my grandma, it was so funny, she got like like I think it was like laundry detergent in the mail or whatever, like free laundry detergent, and I'm like, "How'd you get free laundry detergent? That's like 30 bucks." And she was like, "Oh, I called the company and I complained to them; I told them that they suck, and they sent me free laundry detergent." And I'm like, "That's a video; I got to do that." So it's like, you know, just things that I live, and then I'm like, "That needs to be a video." Those are my best ideas.
So how do you go from a thousand ideas to narrow it down to 10? What is the deciding factor of which videos make the cut?
Yeah, so I would say I narrow it I narrow it down to like like let's say we have 100 because 100's like an easier number to work with. So let's say we have 100 ideas; I'll narrow it down to like 25 to 50. That's usually just based on like the first thing I ask myself is, "Do I want to make it?" I don't ask if it'll go viral; I can figure out how to make it viral. If I really want to make it, so first I tell myself, "Do I actually want to make this? Is this actually logistically possible?" And then it's like, "Is the hook good? Is the mechanism good? Are people going to rewatch this?" Then that's when I look at like where's the virality aspect in this. Then I'll bring it down to 25. Then from there, I'll send it to um my video editor, who's also like he's just like he's really involved in the channel, so he's not just a video editor; he's also like a strategist because, you know, he's he he knows a lot about YouTube, and um I'll send it to him, and he'll bring my 25 to like 10, and he'll basically he'll go in and tell me like even further if it actually seems viral, if he thinks it's sharable. But for him, like he's really good at telling if if a concept is simple yet complex, if that makes sense.
Mhm. You mentioned a word a second ago; you said, "Is the mechanism good?" What do you you mean by mechanism?
If they're going to be pushed to the end. So like a good example is MrBeast; the red circle, like is it like "Last leave Circle wins $500,000"? The mechanism is the circle is constantly closing, so the viewer is watching till the end. So if if it was just like the circle wasn't closing, I don't know if anyone watch to the end; they'll just skip to the end, probably.
Interesting. What are some of the mechanisms that you've used?
I think this is the easiest one that anyone can apply; it's basically saying there's three steps or there's three things we need to do because it's very easy to follow, and you just showed the list of three, so now the viewer knows that oh, we're getting closer to the video, like they actually have a good expectation, which is probably one of the biggest things. I think that's I think that's why my videos like go viral; it's because people have a good expectation of what they're going to watch and what's actually going to be at the end.
So when it comes to expectations, if you set expectations, do you find that then the the next step is completely following through on those expectations, or do you ever try to like subvert expectations for an element of surprise or something?
I try to follow those expectations, but then have a twist. For example, I gave my mom a $5 Mother's Day gift. The hook was, "My mom's never had a Mother's Day gift, so I'm going to change that and buy her the best present with $5." It was it was the why, making them care in the hook, "My mom's never had a Mother's Day gift, so I'm going to change that." Then the expectation is, so I'm going to surprise her with a gift for $5, and on screen I'm showing me giving her the gift, but you're going to see that till the end, so it's like it's the the cold open, and then we cut to the video. So the expectation is by the end of the video you're going to see me give her a gift, so then I follow through, make the gift, and then I surprise her. Now I gave them the expectation; I closed the loop that I'm going to surprise her with this gift, but the twist was she ended up dropping the gift; it broke, and then she's like, "You're the best daughter I've ever had." I'm like, "I'm your only one." Video ends. So it's like yeah, I I gave that expectation that I'm going to gift her, and then we just twisted it at the end.
How long would you say on average your shorts are?
Oh, I know exactly the answer because I've done the analysis.
Okay, what's the answer?
It's it's exactly 34 seconds because my most popular videos are exactly that length, so I try to make it exactly that length.
That was going to be my next question, was to say do is that now your your benchmark for what you're looking for in a video?
34 seconds? Yes, so yes, everyone's is different; everyone's got to analyze it like for their their own channel, and I think I've seen well I was in uh I was in Pat Galler's accelerator, and he showed some research that he had done to show like depending on your short length, this is the bar for retention you should be shooting for. So I'm guessing that 90% retention is also related to the average total length of your videos, whereas if it's shorter, maybe you need retention to be higher to achieve the same virality.
Exactly. Yes, correct. So for me, for my personal channel, like I said, like there's no specific number; I think everyone just has to check out their analytics, but for me, I noticed if a short is less than 30 seconds, it needs to it has to have over 100% retention or else it's not going to take off. So that's why I like to make it slightly longer, but too long is too long for my audience, since I do have a very young audience.
If you know that you want your videos to be about 34 seconds, I'm thinking if it's 34 seconds and you know that you want your last second retention to be really high, it seems like the payoff is like literally the last second. So now we got 34, 33 seconds to work with. You probably know how long your hook generally is, so maybe that's, you know, 3 seconds or 5 seconds, and you have this remainder of 28 to 30 seconds in the middle. Do you break that down into specific pieces of the mechanism, or is that just kind of whatever happens in the edit?
Yeah, so it's usually whatever happens in the edit, but what I do check is before I film the video, I will do a rough script, even if it's not even what happens in the video, like I'll just roughly, you know, do it, and I can just change it later. And from there, I'll have a sense of how long it is just from the word count, but I don't necessarily force it; I just let it free flow, like you said, in the edit, but I do have a rough idea of the word count and my hooks and foreshadowing. I always do that in every video; I do a hook, and then I foreshadow, which is two lines, and that is usually 3 seconds or less.
Foreshadowing, you're saying that's in that's in the voiceover, because I know you mentioned like that the example of your your mom's gift, when you see her grab the package, that's foreshadowing in a way, but that's completely visual. You're saying you dedicate some spoken time to foreshadowing as well?
Yes, I always have spoken time to foreshadowing; it like it doesn't matter what video idea it is, like like like let me just pull up like a random idea, like "I'm going to the beach," right? And then it's like, "Why would someone watch?" So that's the hook, "I'm going to the beach," and what's the foreshadowing? "I'm going to the beach, and I'm going to surprise someone with $100 at the end of the video." It could literally be with anything; it just needs to have some sort of expectation.
I want to keep going down this the structure rabbit hole a little bit more because I keep finding new layers; like I didn't know foreshadowing is part of your structure. So is there anything that comes after the hook and foreshadowing that is a structural part of every video?
Yes, there actually is. So it will usually be hook, which is really short, then I'll foreshadow what's going to be at the end, then I have to smoothly transition. So I used to have like a lot of breaks cuz you want to give people time to breathe, right, because
You don't want to be like, "I'm going to be doing this and this and this and this," the video's over. I didn't like they, they're not going to understand anything. So you want a pacing break without the pacing actually breaking. Let me explain what I mean by that. This I did this in my recent video, so it was like McDonald's banned this item, hook. So I'm gonna make it at home, then convince them to put it back on the menu. That's the foreshadow. And then at first I wrote, "Let's get started," but that breaks pace. So instead of saying, "Let's get started," I said, "So I cooked illegally." That, that just flows better. So I, I don't want to give like, cuz I already gave like two crucial pieces of detail, so if I give any more detail, they're just going to forget about that like, pracy recency. If you, I can get into that, so it's like they're going to forget what I just said. So we need a pacing break without the pacing actually breaking, if that makes sense.
Yeah, totally. Okay, let's keep going down this, this trail. Is there, is there more structural pieces past the transition? Usually it's just like problem solution or but therefore storytelling. Okay, tell me more about but therefore storytelling. Basically, but there, but therefore storytelling, simply put, is just lots of change in the story. So a story, stories can't be stories without change. For example, I went a walk, then it started raining, then I went back home. It was much more boring than if it was like, I went on a walk, but it started raining, therefore I started running back home, and I, I it was raining all over me, but good thing I had a handy umbrella while I was on my way back, therefore I got home. Like it's the exact same story, but it just sounds so much more intriguing when you have like but, and then, so, or but therefore.
I'm so glad that you're able to like whip up these examples on the fly. This is must be very stressful, the, the spots I'm putting you on, but you're just like, "I got it." Yeah. So if I'm thinking from an order of operation standpoint, I'm, I'm making some assumptions I'm realizing and I want to make sure I'm correct in them. It sounds like you have ideas first, then you narrow that down to a small number of ideas, and ultimately a video that you say, "Yes, this idea my editor and I have decided is a good one." Uh, you come up with versions of the hook, and then it seems like you, you start recording, and after recording you start editing, and then after editing comes the transcript for the voiceover. Did I get that right?
You were close. You were close. Like you said, ideas, then I find that one idea, then I'll write my hook, then I'll write the last line. So I always know the last line when I'm going to film, then I'll go back and then after the hook I figure out how I'm going to foreshadow that. I, I will always have the hook for, so I always have two lines, so it'll be like hook, foreshadow, end. Um, but in between it would be like, it depends on the video. Sometimes it will be a rough script, like we were saying, so I can have that structure in mind, or it will just be bullet points of things I want to touch on while I'm filming. Then I will film. Once I filmed, I will revisit the script again, revise it, finalize it, then it goes to edit. How do you write the last line without knowing what comes out in the filming? It's you'd like leave it in blank, so it would be like, for example, if I'm surprising someone with a gift, the last line would be then like, "It's so simple," then I surprised my mom, and, and then blank. So it's usually reaction, just to have a general idea.
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Okay. I was watching your videos this morning, and I, I was like, really, I, I took note of the fact that they all end very abruptly, but like not in a way where I'm like, "What happened?" It's, it's like, it's pleasing, but it is abrupt. And we already talked about how you, you kind of learned this, and you trimmed it off, but it is like, "And I surprised my mom, and you know, and then, and then her reaction," and then end. You mentioned a moment ago that the age of your audience is typically a little bit younger. How much do you think about who the audience is when you think of ideas? You know, because in my world, to step back a second, in my world a lot of times folks have like a very specific Avatar that they're creating for who's trying to achieve some sort of specific goal. I don't think that's the same in more of the entertainment space, so I'd love to hear to what level of detail you think about an audience member in your mind.
Yeah, that's everything. Avatar is everything. So for me, I will think of like specific people. So I will think of like me when I was younger. I'll think about like, these are my favorites to think about, by the way, my, my, my nieces are 10 years old, 10. I have two nieces that are seven and 10, and they just moved to America last year, so they barely understand English. And that's, that's who I want to speak to. It's, it's very tough because they might not be interested in the topic, but if I can make them interested, and especially if it makes sense to them as non-English speakers, then it's probably really good. So that's the way I see it. It's not necessarily thinking of like their, their dream, their desires, but more so how can you speak to them. I just, it just, I don't know if that makes sense, because it's like, it's, it's different.
It, it makes sense. It's interesting for me to hear because I just don't speak to folks on the more entertainment side of the Creator world as often. So actually, I'm just coming at it from natural curiosity to hear how you do think about it. I would imagine at the level of views you're getting, tens of millions on these, on these videos, it's a broad spectrum of people who are looking at this, so who you, who do you choose as the core of? Yes, people outside of this type of person, maybe it's my nieces will watch this, but I'm making it for this person in particular. I didn't know if you had that specificity or not. Like I said, I do and I don't. So it's in the sense of like, I, it's mainly like my younger self, which is like kind of weird because I can't actually, my younger self can't actually watch it, but that's like the way I think of it, if that makes sense.
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Can we talk a little bit about Instagram Reels and TikTok and how you think about those? Because a lot of times people think short-form vertical video, it's the same everywhere, choose wherever you're leading and then just post it to all three, and it's clear that your, your YouTube is, is much bigger than the other two platforms, and those other platforms are much bigger than mine, so that's not any judgment on you, but I'm curious what you're hearing or what you're experiencing in terms of how this does or does not translate. Hey, real quick before they respond, I want to let you know that there are bonus audio-only episodes of Creator Science that air every Tuesday when we don't publish a video. Episodes like number 156 where I talk with my editor Connor about our first year on YouTube, or number 37 with Oli Abdal. If that's interesting, just search for Creator Science wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, back to the show.
Yeah, so short-form content is not the same across platforms, and I know this because I used to do very well on TikTok before I was doing well on YouTube. In fact, when I had like a thousand subscribers on YouTube, I had like 70k on TikTok, so I was doing much better, and I was averaging like a million views per TikTok. What was crazy is I remember at this, at this point I was posting to all three platforms, but TikTok was getting all the views. YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels were getting like none of it. Were you thinking about one of those platforms as like your lead platform at that time? It was definitely TikTok. So you're thinking, "I'm making this video for TikTok. I'm also posting to Reels, and I'm also pointing posting Shorts." Correct? But it wasn't edited on the TikTok app, like it would still be filmed, you know, like professionally, and then edited it, and then posting on TikTok. The same video that would get 1 million views on TikTok would get 1,000 views on YouTube Shorts, and I was like, "Okay, let me switch a strategy." CU I got banned on TikTok, like for a short period of time. I'm like, "Let me focus on YouTube," and then the opposite happened. I started averaging 1 million views on YouTube and then a thousand on TikTok. I'm like, "This is really strange. Like these platforms definitely want different content." And what I found, YouTube likes definitely a slower, more mature, you know, it's a more mature audience, so they want like a slower pace, more story. So those would be like the 34-second tick, uh, 34-second shorts that I'm making right now. TikTok, on the other hand, did not like, did not like videos over 30 seconds. It liked 10 to 20-second videos that were just like dense with information, not that many jokes, just like, you know, just, just scrollable. They're just trying to scroll as much as possible, versus Instagram Reels was also slightly more mature, but because they have that mute feature, a lot of those videos would be very visual and would have like subtitles in every second and would have like a lot of sharability since it's very, it's, it's very easy to share on Instagram.
How do you think about long form now? Is it something that you aspire to do more of? How does it play into the Jenny Hoyo Universe? Yes, the Jenny Hoyo Universe sounds like the MCU, but yeah, I, I really want to get into long form. I want to become established there, basically. What I did to shorts is exactly what I'm doing to long form. I have been studying long forms for the past year, learning as much as I can, analyzing everything, and now it's just time to execute. So the goal is to pull off what I did on shorts on long form, and then just, you know, upload a, upload a a good amount between them. I'm never going to quit shorts. It's just going to be a good balance between the two. What is long form represent to you that it's a priority? You know, you're so good at shorts, you're, you're like at the top of the mountain there. Why is long form something that's calling to you? You know, I think, I mean, it's a lot of reasons. I feel it's kind of tough saying it, but I think that they, simply put, I don't see that much more growth for me in shorts. Like sure, I can start averaging like a 100 million views, but it's like the real growth and fun is going to come from learning long form. CU it's all about the journey, you know, it's like, um, it sounds so bad to say, but I feel like I've already achieved my goal for like, for shorts, you know, and it's like, I, I want to, you know, challenge myself again. I just don't feel like I'm challenging myself with shorts. This is a guess in short.
Yeah, no, it's valid. Your, your reasons are your reasons. They're totally valid. I was, I was, I was wondering if it had anything to do with like, is a relationship to the audience different in long form? I'm sure there's more money in long form, and I was wondering if those were part of the decision, or if it was just a, you know, "Time to climb a new Mountain" type situation. I will say, as ironic as it sounds, money is not the reason why. Like when I first like started my entrepreneurship journey, I was like, "Money is everything," right? But then when I, I started YouTube, I realized like it doesn't matter how much I'm making, like I'm just doing this, so money, like it's crazy as funny as it sounds, because my content is all about money, I don't even care how much I'm making. It's funny as it sounds. It's weird how it works, but yeah, is yeah, the, yeah, it's just I think, I think there is a better relationship with the viewer. I feel like it's just, it's just more, it's more, it's more personal, you know, like you guys are spending more time together.
For sure. I think it is like a time spent situation. Like I feel like we really build trust as a function of time spent, and the more spent time you spend with somebody, like the more of a relationship you build. Relationships are built on trust. Curious if you think that your shorts audience will transition into long form, or if you're thinking about, you know, the audience themselves the same, like, are these long-form videos also going to be for your 10-year-old nieces? It's, it's a different audience, you know. It's really funny, I want to tell this story because I thought it was absolutely hilarious, and it's just going to open up like, because to me it was, it was huge. I had a little cousin, uh, visit my house. It was the first time I ever met her because she was also from another country, and she, she's like seven years old. She came to my house, first thing she said, "I'm cousins with a famous YouTuber." It was so funny. Then the second thing she said, she was like telling me how like she loves my shorts, and she was like, "You know what you should check out?" I was like, "I was on YouTube and I noticed like they have these like horizontal videos that are like shorts, but just like long," and I was like, "That's crazy. That's crazy." That type of thing breaks my mind. It's like, it's like the videos where it's like, "We ask, listen to," and it's like, "Insert band from my childhood here," and like, "This is bad." Exactly. It was one of those moments where it realized it opened it, it was like that, those are really two different audiences, cuz there's some people who probably don't even know long forms are a thing, and vice versa, some people that don't even know shorts are a thing. Then there's the people that know both, so I know I'm going to get, you know, I'm not going to get all of my audience. I have had some audience transition, but yeah, that's where I'm at.
And you think that's a, is that a YouTube thing, or is that an audience preference thing? I think it's an audience preference thing for sure. Yeah, I think YouTube's doing, like, as funny as it sounds, because I feel like a lot of shorts creators, like, "Oh, I feel so bad saying this, CU I'm not one of them, but I'm calling them out," like there's shorts creators who have like a million subscribers and then they don't even get like a thousand views on a long form, and then they're like, "It's YouTube's fault." Yeah, but like in reality, it's like their fault, you know, like, um, I average like 10 million views on shorts, and then long forms I'm averaging like 50k views, you know, so it's like I think they're doing a pretty good job at like transitioning them, just obviously not everyone's going to transition. All right, last question, which I love to ask people, is there anything that you believe to be true, and we can relate it to YouTube or shorts, but you don't yet have data to support?
Oh, there's, there's a couple. I'm trying to think what I should, I think I got a good one. I'm going to say two, okay, because I'm, there's two that are really good bonus. I think sharability really matters, but I haven't done enough like analysis on that yet, but I'm sure I can do my own analysis. It's, it's very tough because there's a lot of factors to that that come into play, because, you know, I could argue this video has a lot of shares, that's why I blew up, but then I could also just argue that the retention was high, so do you really know? I, I don't know. So that, that's my hunch. I think sharability really does help, although I will say like one of my shorts, it has like such high shares, it has like, what was it like, the shares to view ratio, it's 20%, which is extremely high. That seems very high, and the scroll through rate is like 92%, which is insane, and it's probably because the shares are, are that high. And then my second hunch is that retention doesn't matter as much as people think it does. Say more. It's very interesting because I have a lot of friends, like, who will send me their retention graphs or like their data, their analytics, and there's people like within like a similar amount of impressions as me, like their retention will be so much higher than mine. Like there's friends, like they would have like a 40-second short that has like 100k views and over 100% retention, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this video is going to get like 10 million views," and like it's, it's not even niche either, but then it never, it never does that. But then for me, like, yeah, like for me, what's crazy is like, you know, I, I've had a short before where I had like 70% retention on the first 100k views, which is like really bad, like really, really bad for shorts, and it still got like 10 million views because it was like all returning viewers, you know, so it's like I just have a hunch that like, you know, like I don't know, I don't know what it is, what, what how they're measuring it. It's just viewer satisfaction. It can't, it can't just be retention, you know. [Music]