Transcription
Small channels? If you're not getting views, there are six things you need to do right now. I know because when I first started, I posted 65 different videos over the course of an entire year, and my channel was about as dead as a doornail. At the end of that year, I only had 150 subscribers, which was incredibly frustrating. But then something clicked, and I went from getting 15 subscribers a month to 1,500 subscribers every single month in the space of just six weeks.
The only difference between then and now, aside from not crying myself to sleep every night, was I started focusing 100% of my efforts on just these six things. That experience taught me a really valuable lesson: success doesn't have to do with time, or effort, or money, or luck. It's more about where you allocate your time and resources. You want to obsessively prioritize the small handful of high-leverage tasks that get you 80% of the results for 20% of the effort. My hope is that the newly improved and updated method I want to share today will help you do that.
This might sound arrogant, but from the thousands of people I've worked with and multiple channels I've had, I've never come across a channel as doing all six of these things yet isn't getting at least a couple million views. So, if you want to blow up your channel, the first step is just commit to this method. Watch this video as many times as it takes you to fully internalize all these points, and then just take action on them. Ignore everything else; ignore the noise. Anyway, enough talk; let's get into this and start our breakdown on the sixth most important step.
I want to teach you about the power of this number: 77. See, there's a book called "Art and Fear," and in the book, there's a famous experiment. This teacher taught pottery; she had a class of multiple students, and she decided to split this class into two. She went to the first group and said, "Hey, your job by the end of the semester is to create the perfect clay pot. Got it?" And they're like, "Yep." Then she goes to the other group and says, "Your job is to create as many clay pots as possible by the end of the semester." So they go away; there's the quality group and the quantity group. Time passes; they work on their assignments; end of semester rolls around; they submit all their work.
What's really interesting is when the teacher is reviewing all of their clay pots, she finds that the best quality clay pot actually came from the group that was tasked with creating the high quantity of clay pots. How could this happen? Well, when you think about it, it actually makes sense. The way you get better at something is by practicing, and essentially the quantity group just created so many clay pots, got so much practice in, that eventually they were creating near-perfect clay pots. I think this is such an interesting analogy to apply to so many things in life, but also YouTube. See, on YouTube, I believe that quality does beat quantity, but quality comes from quantity. Ultimately, the more videos you create, the more practice you get making thumbnails, editing videos, talking to camera, and also the more opportunities you have to be discovered.
That brings us back to this number: 77. See, I did a study of over 4,470 YouTube channels with 1,000 subs. We looked at channels primarily posting long-form videos, and what I found was that, on average, these channels had posted 77 long-form videos. I.e., it takes an average of 77 long-form videos to reach your first 1,000 subscribers, which is an important milestone for most people because you need at least 1,000 to get monetized. We use both our common sense and look at the objective data here. Clearly, creating videos frequently is a very significant and important step to growing a new YouTube channel, and that's why it's the sixth most important step in this method.
On top of helping you become a better creator, though, the more videos you post, the more opportunities you have to be discovered. So, if you post, say, one video a month, by the end of a year you will have 12 videos—i.e., 12 opportunities to be discovered. If you post two videos a week, by the end of the year you're going to have 104 opportunities to be discovered, which is a hell of a lot more than 12. I think this is important because a lot of people think that channels just grow linearly—like there's a linear relationship between how many videos you post and how many views you get—but normally, in my experience, it doesn't work like that. You'll post a bunch of videos, and eventually one will hit and get significantly more views than the rest and feed all of your other videos.
Especially if you're a beginner, it might be hard to know which one of your videos is going to be that viral big hitter for you. And so, if you're only giving yourself 12 shots at that viral big hitter every year compared to, say, 104, statistically, it's going to take you longer to find that video that clicks and be successful. So, for me, when it comes to concrete advice, and I know there are edge cases here, but in general, as a small creator, I would recommend posting one to two times per week—that's long-form videos. At bare minimum, post one video every two weeks. As a Shorts creator, I would recommend, bare minimum, three Shorts a week, or ideally once every single day.
I do get messages—pushback from people—when I say that. Like, I had an animation creator once come to me and say, "Marcus, I post videos once every one or two months because I create in-depth animations; it takes me one to two months to create these animations, and without an expensive team, I wouldn't be able to ramp up my production any faster." I'm like, "Okay, that makes sense, but you're giving yourself six opportunities each year to be discovered because you can only put out about six videos a year. Unless you're incredibly certain that one of those six videos is bound to go viral, I don't like those odds." So what I recommended to him was be a bit more open-minded; think about other types of animation-related content you can create. Maybe it's behind-the-scenes videos showing how you're creating your in-depth animations; maybe it's tutorial videos showing how you create your animations; maybe you throw in animation challenges where you spend, you know, several hours to animate a certain story, and the purpose of it is a time-constraint challenge, so it can't possibly take you very long to create; maybe you find a way to create lower-effort animation videos to just focus on refining your storytelling. Then, when one of those low-effort animations blows up, then you put in the months to turn it into a high-production animation. Like, the options are endless, but you get the idea.
I really like the quote, "Stay true to the vision, but be open to how it plays out." Cool. This guy wants to be an animation creator, but maybe posting six times a year in the beginning is not the best way to get your channel off the ground. So be a bit more flexible with the type of content you create so you can be more frequent. Then, as you build up that experience and traction, then you can start focusing on quality over quantity. And so that brings us to our next point on the method. Let's do a thought experiment. I want you to think about your favorite YouTuber. Have you got them in mind?
So, for me, someone I'm enjoying watching is Alex Hormozi. Now, if you were to ask me, "Why do you like Alex Hormozi?" I could probably come up with a couple of reasons. See, the first one is he doesn't sell an online course, and so that I feel like increases my trust in him—that he's sharing unfiltered information because there is no paywall for his information to hide behind. He's also a philosopher; he doesn't just talk about business; he talks about life and psychology and how those things interact with business. And I could continue fan-girling over this beautiful bearded man, but you get the idea. The reason I share these things is I wanted to introduce you to a concept called "X factors"—these different points I just mentioned, some of Alex Hormozi's X factors—i.e., the unique blend of traits, skills, or characteristics that make him someone I want to watch over everyone else. Chances are, if you bring your favorite creator to the forefront of your mind, if I was to ask you, "Why do you like this person?" you'd probably come up with X factors.
And so now here's my question to you: What are your X factors as a YouTuber? Do you have a unique, standout quality or combination of qualities that give viewers a reason to choose you over watching one of your competitors? Now, if not, that's okay; you're just like me when I first started, but that's probably one of the reasons why you're not getting as many views or loyal followers as you would like. Now, finding your X factors can be challenging. I think everyone does it a different way, but what I can do is maybe share how I found mine. What I did was think about the unique traits I had and the value that I wanted to provide to my audience.
For example, an obvious one: my original gaming channel that I talked to you about earlier; it was a comedic channel; the goal was to make people laugh. And so a reason someone might want to follow my channel over someone else's channel is my channel is the funniest, right? So the value I wanted to bring was humor. Then, once I figured that out, I then consciously leaned into that and tried to exaggerate that. So, instead of just trying to be funny, I tried to be more hilarious than everyone else in my space. I thought about it as almost as like an objective statistic: like I wanted to have the highest laugh rate per minute of any YouTube video in my space. Another thing I wanted to do was be unique. See, there were a lot of channels out there that were just sort of repurposing very common memes, and so I decided to try and lean into that value, which I did by basically creating my own memes. I would find clips and photos that weren't really that popular but I found really funny and just invent memes to share in the videos—most of them pretty horrendous—but I think people started to appreciate that I added something new to the meme space. Another characteristic I had was I'm Australian, and for some reason British and American people see Australians as sort of like novel wild men who live in this upside-down country. And so basically I just played into that; I exaggerated the Australian qualities I have; used slang; talked a bit more bogan, etc., and that was something that people appreciated and found novel and set me apart.
So maybe something you could do is think about the value you want to bring on your channel and the characteristics you have, then pick out the ones that you think viewers would most care about, and then intentionally lean into those and exaggerate them. Because while developing X factors probably isn't going to help you get a lot more views—for example, like some of the other points later in this video will—but it is going to help you retain those viewers and turn those views into loyal subscribers when you do get them. Obviously, just putting out frequent videos and having X factors isn't going to be enough to be highly successful on YouTube, though, and so that brings us to the next point on the method.
See, back in the day, there was a YouTuber I really liked; he had some X factors that drew me to him first. He was a very relatable character; I felt like I could resonate deeply with him. I won't share who he is because I'm about to talk about him, but take that with what you will. He also had this witty British sense of humor that I personally got addicted to. British. He made videos interacting with and pranking his family; he played all these unique games. Oh, and side note, I didn't spell "family" with two Ms; the lighting is just a bit weird, so yeah, don't worry about that. But anyway, I would religiously watch this guy's videos, but then one day it was like a shift. He stopped being relatable, and he tried to be like this cool persona. He stopped having the same sort of goofy British sense of humor; he stopped making videos with his family; he stopped playing those random games, and I ended up finding myself just being drawn to other creators because this old guy—I felt like I could go to his channel now and I didn't know whether I was going to like what I saw. I felt like I couldn't rely on or trust him to be the person I knew him to be.
Now you might have heard me say the word "consistent" there, and you've probably heard a lot of YouTube experts rave on about how consistency is important. For some reason, consistency has become this word that everyone just equates with frequency, which we talked about earlier, but they're two different things. Posting lots of videos is not being consistent; that's being frequent. Consistency is a different thing entirely, which we're going to talk about now, and it's incredibly important, sitting at number four on our method. Consistency involves you becoming a reliable, predictable person, but not in a boring way. It's about keeping things like your tone, your branding, your production style, your morals and values, and your topics consistent. For example, if one week you're using your phone to post long, unfiltered rant videos about how big corporations screw the general public, and then the next week you're using a $5,000 studio to create short, PR-friendly videos about lifting more people out of poverty, and then the next week you create a video that's just like a Minecraft let's play with no commentary—like it's not that any of those videos I just listed are necessarily bad and wouldn't perform well if you implemented some of the things we talk about later—but they're very inconsistent; they would attract a very divided audience.
One of the biggest problems with that, beyond the fact it's really hard to build loyal fans, is that the algorithm really all it does is follow viewers and see what they want and then just give them more of what they want. And if viewers come to your channel, click on one of your videos, enjoy it, then go to your channel and realize, "Oh, there aren't any more videos here that I'd like to watch," it's going to be really hard for the algorithm to build up a profile of who your target audience is—i.e., it's going to be hard for the algorithm to give you more views. This is especially important with the topic aspect of consistency. Every time you create a video, I want you to think about the Golden Rule, which essentially is a litmus test question you should ask yourself: "Am I certain that this video I'm creating will attract the kind of person who will want to watch all of my other recent videos?" If not, you're probably not being consistent enough.
Now, all this being said, caveat: I'm not saying you shouldn't experiment. As a small creator, you should experiment. Consistently doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result—Einstein had something to say about that. Me, for instance, I posted 65 different videos in my first year on YouTube, like I talked about earlier, but I posted about 15 different types of videos during that phase. Consistency might seem to be at odds with the concept of experimenting, but what you want to do, if you haven't found your lane yet, is be consistent in blocks. Do something consistently for four, five, six, seven, eight videos. When you feel like you've maxed out—like you've done everything you can with that type of content to get views, and you're doing it consistently and it's not working—do something different, and then consistently do that thing for a while until you've maxed it out and you feel like no more opportunity there, then do the next thing and the next thing until you find that thing, which if you do all the stuff in this video, you will find that thing, and then just double down on that; stay consistent on that. That's the kind of thing that took me from 15 subscribers a month to 1,500 subscribers every single month in the space of just six weeks.
I know that might sound sort of hypey; you're probably thinking, "Well, Marcus, it's more complicated than that." It is a little bit more complicated than that, while consistency—at least the way I've explained it—I think is very, very important, we need to go to do something else: the next point, which is something you've probably heard a million people say: Make a cool video; make better videos; make better videos. Everything you want as a creator comes from making the best videos possible; create great content. But what does this actually mean? Everyone says it, but what does it mean? I would simplify and define great content as content that retains viewers.
For example, if you go to your YouTube channel and you go like "Manage videos," then you hover over one of your videos and click on "Analytics," and you scroll down, what you'll see is this blue retention graph here. This graph essentially visualizes how long people watch your videos for. A graph that cuts off really short and goes really low means a lot of people are leaving your video—i.e., bad retention, AKA not good content. A graph that stabilizes and stays pretty high throughout the whole video—you're retaining people; good content. And what's really cool about these graphs is we can use them to figure out, firstly, whether our content is good, and secondly, based on the nature of how these graphs look, we can figure out what we need to do to improve. And I would say, at least as a beginner, there are three main things you want to focus on to get to the point where you're creating good content.
First, you need to stimulate people; you need to create a video that actually engages them. And there are multiple different ways to do this. If you're creating an entertainment-type video like MrBeast, or for example, my old channel, the way I stimulated people was with lots of editing: fast-paced edits, sound effects, memes, jokes, and content that was genuinely good. Like, if I was creating a funny moments video, the moments actually needed to be funny. But not every video has to be like that; you can have very bare-bones, laid-back style videos that are still very intellectually and emotionally stimulating to people. Maybe you're talking about topics that are incredibly relatable to them, or maybe you're telling a story that keeps them stimulated even in the low-energy parts because people want to know how that story ends. Now, the signs of you not stimulating or engaging people properly throughout your videos is usually your graph will be a steady gradual decline; not many people will make it to the very end of your video. Now, in saying that, it's impossible to retain everyone for an entire video, but some of the best content on YouTube—objectively in terms of retention, like MrBeast—will retain up to 80% of people throughout the entire video. And so that's something you really want to think about and optimize.
The second thing is eliminating friction points. So you might see a graph that's not too bad, but there are certain moments where a large amount of people dip; they leave, and the rest of your video might be good, but there's these high-friction obstacles that are just triggering people and causing them to leave in droves. An example of one for me in this video you're watching right now is right about here. And you see how this kind of like flattens out, and there's that point there at 2:14 where I then lose like 2% of my audience in the space of 15 seconds. Which 2% might not sound like a lot, but when we're talking like 30,000 people have watched this, that is a number of people, which I will put on screen for you. So clearly something happened at this moment that caused friction that made people leave the video—boom. And these things can be super trivial. For example, something I've noticed is whenever I say the word "money" or "invest," people are like, "Oh, no, I would never invest in myself or my YouTube channel," they leave the video. Or another one: I had a student who was creating like anime content once, and he had this face cam, and funnily enough, whenever he showed his face on screen, people left the video. He wasn't like an ugly guy or anything, but for whatever reason, when they saw his face, people dipped. And so we got him to stop showing his face, especially so early on in the video, and his retention improved by like 10 or 20%—i.e., remember, retention means good content.
And then the third thing you want to think about is whether your content is dissatisfying people. So we've all been there; we've watched a video...
All the way to the end and regretted our decision to have watched that video. And it's not a great feeling. Sometimes it makes us want to leave YouTube entirely, which is probably good for us, to be honest. At the very least, it makes us not want to watch videos from that creator anymore.
Like, think about those videos where you get click-baited into thinking something's going to happen. You watch the whole video, and that thing never happens. So it's possible to have a video that seems like higher retention, but at the end, everyone leaves and feels very dissatisfied.
And then this one is a little bit harder to figure out. Sometimes you can figure out, with dislikes or negative comments, if you're getting a lot of them; that can be a sign. Also, if you're getting a lot of views and like high retention on your videos but no one sticks around, that's another sign. But most of us, I think, if we're really honest with our content, we're able to kind of get a gauge of whether or not people will be satisfied with the video they watched.
All this being said, so you've got three things to focus on. Sure, there's like a gazillion things you can talk about that will increase your attention, but if you just focus on these three, this will get you to the point that your content will be good enough to start getting tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of views.
Oh, and for those of you who don't have like any data, you have no retention graphs to look at, or they're very spiky because you haven't got many views, what you can do is look at your competitors' videos. Figure out how they're structuring their videos, what they say, how long it takes them to say it, what their audience comment and timestamp in their videos—I.E., showing you like, hey, people appreciate these moments—and use that information to help calibrate your videos so they're the perfect combination of stimulating, frictionless, and satisfying.
But that leads us to the obvious question, which is: if we're not getting views on our videos, how do we get people to actually watch them in the first place? Well, that brings us to the next point on the method, because this will sound—thank you, Captain Obvious—but if you're not getting clicks, you're not getting views. You don't have the opportunity to even retain people in the first place. So something you can do is go to your analytics of every video, then come across to read reach, and in reach, it's going to show you how many people the algorithms actually pushed your video out to.
Cuz a lot of you guys are like, "Oh, the algorithm isn't sharing my video." Now, one problem you could be having is something we'll talk about in the final point in this video. And if you're doing that thing, which I'm going to keep all nebulous and mysterious so you watch my video all the way to the end, you will be getting some impressions. And impressions is showing you that the algorithm is actually promoting your video. What I see with a lot of creators is they get some impressions, but not many of those impressions actually click on their videos. Why is that? Well, it's because your packaging isn't clickable enough—like the packaging of this video.
Now, the main aspects of your packaging are your title and thumbnail. A million people are talking about how important your title and thumbnail are because they are actually important. Yes, it's cliché, but it is cliché because it's a truism. But what I want to do in this video is give you two things I don't hear many people talk about that I think are really important to creating good packaging and titles and thumbnails.
So the first one is: your title and thumbnail need to collaborate with one another. So, for example, if you see this thumbnail, you have no idea what this video is about. When you see the title though, you're like, "That all makes sense." Why? This is just like a yellow thumbnail. Or let's say you see this thumbnail, you're like, "Okay, what's going on?" Then you see the title, and you're like, "That makes sense now." Now, obviously, these are exaggerated examples to illustrate a point, but what I see a lot of small creators doing is essentially treating their title and thumbnails as separate entities. Often they'll have the exact same text that is in their title in the thumbnail of their video. You're just wasting all this screen real estate. Think about your title and thumbnail as a team; they work together in collaboration to win the click.
For example, on the first gaming channel I had—which I apparently talk about relentlessly—I would have, you know, like, "Fall Guys funny moments" or "Spider-Man funny moments" in the title, but then in the thumbnail I would show a funny screenshot or moment from the video, which might seem kind of obvious now that I say it, but you'd be surprised how many of my competitors at the time would have like "funny moments" in their title and then just put "funny moments" in their thumbnail text.
Now, the other thing you want to think about is psychology. Essentially, you want to think about the deeper meaning, like the narrative tension behind your thumbnail—like, not just what are the physical, visible elements on screen, but what story or meaning do they have? For example, on my first channel, I had a thumbnail that performed really well for me. For those of you who don't know Star Wars, essentially Obi-Wan—this guy—is stabbing Anakin—this guy—who is his apprentice. Now, this thumbnail would not have got clicks if Obi-Wan was just like stabbing a random guy. But because he's stabbing—impaling—that doesn't make it better, does it? Violating? No, that's not better either. Killing. But because he's killing Anakin, his…it adds narrative tension; it adds a story. And so, even though this thumbnail breaks some best practices in terms of it's a bit grainy, it's a little bit hard to see, it performed extremely well for me. And not every thumbnail is going to have like a story as deep as this in it, but I would highly encourage you to think about the meanings and implications and things that are being sub-communicated through the images or overlays or texts that you choose in your thumbnails, and you'll unlock a whole new world of clickability.
And if you can nail these two things, plus all the obvious things everyone talks about—like, make sure you stand out and make sure you don't lose 79 words in your thumbnail, make sure you use contrasting colors—and I'm roasting myself there because I've said those things in multiple videos, cuz it's true, but everyone says it though—if you can do that, I can guarantee you your videos will start getting views. If—if you don't do the other things I talk about—you'll be surprised at how many more views you get. There's a reason this point is so high on the method; it's actually above "create good content." If I had to pick one thing, creating good packaging is going to result in you getting more views than even just creating good content, which is crazy. So make sure you get this right.
But everything we've talked about today is going to be a complete waste of time without the final point on this method. We left the best till last. So one of my favorite analogies for life, but also YouTube, is: you cannot polish a turd. Think about a movie, for example. A movie can have the best actors, the highest budget, best editors, best directors, amazing marketing, but if the plot of the movie sucks or the movie is about an objectively boring topic, none of the experts will be able to save it. You could have the best thumbnail designer, best editor, everything perfect, but you'll fail if you have an uninteresting video idea, which is the final, most important point on our method.
Now, I didn't really understand what an interesting video idea was initially because it sounds like a nebulous term. So let's break this one down. So first, let's look at the "idea" part. A video idea on YouTube is—essentially, the way I define it anyway—is the combination of your topic and format. So topic is essentially: if you ask yourself, "What is this video about?" The answer to that question will be the topic. So, for example, in this video about how to tie your shoe, the topic is tying your shoe. Now, format is about how the video is presented or structured. And essentially, you can derive the format of a video by basically making yourself describe that video without mentioning the topic. So if I was trying to describe this video without using the topic—the topic is tying your shoe, so I can't say that—so I'd have to say it's a how-to tutorial.
Let's do a couple more examples on my old channel, cuz I love talking about myself. "Star Wars Battlefront"—that is the topic of the video; the format of the video is a funny moments compilation. Well, how about this video: "I survived 24 hours of military training." The topic is military training; the format is 24-hour survival challenge. Okay, so now we're going to ask what a video idea is; what makes a video idea interesting? Well, the easiest way to deconstruct that is to figure out what makes a video uninteresting. And I would say there's three really big points. The first one is: it's boring. Like, whatever is being shared in this video is not novel, unique, or stream enough to actually deserve any level of attention. If I was to make a video about what I ate for lunch today, nobody cares. If I was to make a video about who is Marcus Jones, nobody cares. Trust me, I've done that experiment.
So when it comes to coming up with an interesting video idea, and you need a format that's also somewhat interesting—and by the way, interest can be relative to what it is people who would want to watch your video are looking for—so, for example, a how-to video, it might not seem interesting, but if no one else has already made a video teaching you how to tie your shoe, to people who want to learn how to tie their shoes, that video is now incredibly interesting and worthwhile of attention. And we'll talk more about that in a sec.
The second aspect of interesting is timing. So let's use video games as an analogy, cuz I've been talking about my old gaming channel. Let's say you're a gaming YouTuber; a new update comes out in the game that you play. If you cover that new update the day it releases, chances are that video is going to be a lot more interesting than if you made the exact same video six months later. Why? Because six months later, everyone already knows basically everything there is to know about that new update, cuz it's been out for ages. And so, even though it might seem like the exact same video, the interest factor is no longer there. Essentially, we're talking about trends here. You need to get on the trend early; if you're too late, there is no unsatisfied interest.
And then the last aspect I think about a lot is supply and demand. Some people talk about this as TAM. Let's continue with our video game analogy. Let's say you're making videos for a game that was released 10 years ago and is basically dead; there are no players of this game. If you made a video on it, chances are you're not going to get views because the demand for that video, the amount of people who want to watch it, is so minuscule. On the other hand, though, if you were to take a topic or type of video that has had a lot of demand—say, like a Minecraft Let's Play—you would also need to think about the amount of supply—like, how many other people are making Minecraft Let's Play videos? A metric ton of them. And so, while there is a lot of demand for Minecraft Let's Play style content, there's also a huge amount of supply for that content. So unless you can add something very unique and novel to that sphere, the supply is outstripping the demand. So, in other words, topics or formats with no demand equals not interesting, and topics and formats with really high demand but much higher supply also means not interesting because the demand—that interest—has already been satisfied; there's none for you to claim. This is probably the most complicated aspect of YouTube; it took me years to like understand this, but if you get this right, this is the most important and number one factor of YouTube success, in my opinion.
So before I go over how to find interesting video ideas, let's do a few examples. So which of these two videos would you rather click on? Thumbnails are very similar; titles are almost identical, but the formats are different. A whole story-driven video of you approaching one girl to get over your fear of rejection is not that interesting; it's been done a million times. On the other hand, a compilation format of you approaching 100 girls—that's interesting; that is worth multiple millions of views. How about this video: "The world's largest explosion"? Is a much more extreme topic than just "a big explosion," and so obviously that one's going to get more views. Or how about this one: "Easiest way to make $10 a month on TikTok"? Obviously, you're going to click on this one because the demand for people wanting to learn how to make $10 a month from TikTok is just so low; like, no one cares. So just notice how like the packaging and all the editing and everything else could be exactly the same, but just by having a more interesting video idea, the video's just a completely different ball game.
But before we go over how to find these ideas, I want to quickly recap everything we went over today. First, you want to upload videos frequently; the more videos you post, the more opportunities you have to be discovered, but also to practice and develop your skills as a creator. Second, you need to cultivate impactful X factors that will set you out from the crowd and make people want to come back, watch your videos, and become loyal fans. Third, be consistent—so as not to divide your audience, but also more importantly to help train the algorithm on who your audience is so it can more easily send you views. Fourth, create great content—I.E., content that stimulates them enough to retain them, doesn't have annoying friction points that cause them to leave, and also leaves them feeling satisfied with their decision to have watched that video by the end. You also want to create attention-grabbing packaging—I.E., titles and thumbnails—so you can actually win clicks and have the opportunity to impress people with your content. And last, but not least, you need to become a master of developing highly interesting video ideas, because without that, you're polishing a turd, and everything else falls in a heap.
And now I'm going to risk severely dissatisfying you right now because I have been recording this video for an hour and 21 minutes. Yes, this video will end up being much shorter than that, but apparently I can't string a sentence together. So what I'm going to do is link a video up on screen where I walk you step-by-step through an actual case study of how I would go about finding viral videos. And this is actually almost the same as the method I used to blow up a brand new channel from zero to almost 6,000 subscribers with just one video. So click that video on screen; I'll see you there. Thanks so much for watching.