How To Grow A YouTube Channel From 0 Subs In 2024 (Full Course) transcript

Dear small YouTubers, if you're not getting views, there are eight things you need to do right now. And here's the big thing. See, my first YouTube channel took over a year and 65 different videos just to reach 150 subs. And those subs were about as active as my Tinder profile. But then I learned the eight-step method I'm about to show you. And in 6 weeks, I went from getting 15 subs a month to over 1,000 subs every single month.

And I want to let you in on the unsexy secret because I didn't become some sort of super YouTube genius in 6 weeks. The only difference between here and here, aside from not crying myself to sleep every night, was I started focusing 100% of my time on just eight things. And at this point, I've taught over a thousand different YouTubers in probably hundreds of different niches. And I've noticed that success doesn't require you to be super charismatic or lucky or rich.

What it does require is you rep prioritizing your time onto things that will get you the most results for the least amount of effort. For example, when Tom started focusing on these eight steps, he went from 57 subs to a full-time YouTuber in one year. When I taught Lewis, he went from 150 subs to a fully monetized channel in just 21 days while working a 50hour a week day job. And this is going to sound like an exaggeration, but genuinely, I've never found a channel who is doing all eight of these things and isn't getting millions of views.

So, if you want to blow up your channel, first step is to commit to this method. Watch this video as many times as it takes you to understand each step, then ruthlessly take action and just ignore everything else. So, let me just break it all down for you right now, starting with the eighth most important step. Oh, and to prove this method works throughout this video, I'm going to build out a channel right in front of you that applies all eight of these steps.

And at the end, we're going to try and take that channel from zero to 10,000 subscribers. So, let's get into the eighth step. So, in 2001, David Bales and Ted Olen published a book called Art and Fear, a title that accurately describes my relationship with art. But in that book, there was an art teacher who did a study. She had 50 students and she said, "Okay, guys, I'm going to split you and we'll do an experiment. So, 25 of you, you're over here.

Let's call you group A. And your goal is to make the perfect clay pot. Now, the other 25 of you, you're over here, group B. Now, group B, your goal is to take 50 lbs of clay and make as many clay pots as you can. Pretty simple. The students understand the task and they agree to run the experiment. So, they get to work. A month passes. Now, it's grading time. But when the teacher reviews all the clay pots, she discovers something so exciting it'll make your nose hairs curl.

See, in art, business, even YouTube, there's an everpresent quality versus quantity debate. In my experience, a channel that posts less often, but much higher quality, will usually beat out a channel that just spams out videos at a rapid rate. But when we look at this practically from the perspective of a brand new YouTuber, there's a paradox at play, which is perfectly illustrated by the experiment I was just telling you about.

Because when the art teacher inspected all of the clay pots from both group A and group B, she found that the most nearperfect clay pot did not come from group A, the group that was tasked with creating the perfect clay pot. Instead, the best pot came from the group whose goal it was to make as many clay pots as they could. Why? Well, because the quantity group made so many clay pots that they just got better and better and better at making them until they were creating near-perfect clay pots.

And I think this applies to YouTube. Quality does beat quantity. But the more videos you create, the more practice you get at creating content, the more things you can test. In other words, quality comes from quantity. And that's why upload frequency, how often you post videos, is the first of the only important eight steps you need to focus on if you don't want to get seven views on your next video. And let's be honest, we all know four of those views were you.

Now, as promised, throughout this video, I'm going to be building out a brand new channel that applies all of these steps. And then at the end, we're going to try and take it from zero to 10K subscribers. And so when it comes to my upload schedule for this channel, I'm going to try out two to three new videos every single week. Now, not everyone is able to post two to three videos a week. But if you're a small creator, the moral here is try to post frequently.

Most of my students find one to two times a week is a pretty good sweet spot. At minimum, you should be posting once every two weeks. And if you can't meet this level of frequency, either one, get creative and figure out a way to do it, or two, rethink your content and simplify it so you can post more frequently. But in the beginning, to sum up, unless you're already some sort of master content creator from like previous experiences, upload videos frequently.

But let's be real for a sec. You don't have to be the brightest cake on the candle to know that if I want to take a YouTube channel from 0 to 10,000 subscribers, I need to do a lot more than just churn out lots of videos. And that brings us to our next step. Now, I want you to imagine you're having a conversation with someone. Now, because you're a nerd, the conversation turns to YouTube and this person you're talking with suddenly asks you, "Who is your favorite YouTuber and why do you like them?" Now, I want you to think about that question.

What noteworthy characteristics and factors would you bring up to describe your favorite YouTuber and explain why you like them more than everyone else? Would you say they're just insanely good at what they do? Do they have a style of comedy that makes you laugh more than everyone else? Do they have a unique background or persona? Do they have a PhD in being authentic? Do they invest a lot into their videos? Do they teach stuff super quickly and concisely?

Or are they just the most unbelievably handsome, brilliant, and most of all, humble person you've ever seen? Whatever it is, when you describe your favorite YouTuber and explain why you like them, there are probably a few key factors that spring to your mind. But now, let's shift the spotlight for a minute and talk about your channel. What are the key factors that will make people watch your videos instead of everyone else's?

And comment this below. Because if you don't have any of these X factors, then chances are people will just keep watching your competitors, aka no subscribers for you. And that's why just like your favorite YouTuber, you want to establish unique, appealing X factors. And that's the seventh point on this majestic method. Now, I can't give you specific advice as to what your X factor should be because it needs to be authentic and unique to you.

But there's a technique that's helped me identify what my X factors might be. And that is to think about the qualities I have or aspire to have and the value I bring to my audience or aspire to bring to my audience. Then I want to take those things and exaggerate them. I want to take them to the next level until they become noteworthy enough that viewers would actually start noticing and appreciating them. And a good test for this is once you start getting some views, which you will get if you follow the steps later in this method, look for comments on your videos where people are actively noticing and appreciating your X factors.

Because if they're not noticeable enough that someone would notice them and take the time out of their day to leave a comment appreciating that thing, then your X factors aren't noteworthy enough. They don't really matter. So, for the channel we're building out, let's define some X factors. Now, this channel we're building is going to be a comedy channel because one time when I was seven, my mom told me I was funny. But there are lots of funny YouTubers, so I need a combination of X factors that will give people a reason to watch me instead of everyone else.

And quick side note, establishing X factors isn't just for comedy channels. It's important for every single channel on YouTube. I'm just using comedy as an example because I had to pick something. So, first X factor for me, maybe I want this channel to be as inclusive as possible. Maybe I can plant a flag and make sure everyone who comes to my channel knows that my videos are strictly familyfriendly so all ages can enjoy.

Now, in the videos, I intend on editing in a lot of clips and memes and sound effects to make them funnier. So, if I want to make this an X factor, I'm going to spend some time finding unique clips that most people don't know about or use. In other words, instead of just copying and pasting popular meme templates everyone's already seen, I'm actually going to create my own memes from scratch. And if I'm uploading two to three videos a week based on my research, which we'll get into more later, that's a lot more than my competitors are currently uploading in this space.

And so that in and of itself can also be an X factor because I'm adding a much larger volume of value to my audience and so they can come to my channel much more frequently to get new novel content compared to my competitors. Now, will all this be enough to get me from 0 to 10k subs on this channel? Well, we'll find out later. But on its own, I can say with 100% assurance it will not be. So that's why we need to talk about the next point on this method.

See, when I was younger, there was a particular YouTuber I used to love. He uploaded pretty frequently and he had a slapstick British sense of humor I found really funny. He was really chill, down to earth and he involved his family in his videos. He was like always pranking his parents and stuff which, you know, being a rebellious ratag teenager myself was something I found particularly amusing. And for a number of months, I remember religiously watching this person, but then something changed.

He put on this cool persona. He stopped making videos with his family. And if there was an Olympic event for the cringiest YouTube diss track ever produced, he would have brought home the gold. But seriously, I used to be able to come to his videos and get a certain type of experience. But then he became so unpredictable that when I clicked on one of his videos, sometimes I'd really enjoy it and other times I'd hate it.

And so I stopped clicking on his videos and eventually the algorithm stopped promoting them to me and many of his other viewers. And the lesson I took away from this story is if you're a YouTuber who's very inconsistent, it's going to confuse your viewers and the algorithm. They're not going to know what to expect from you. And so growing your channel is going to feel like headbutting a curb. That's why consistency is the next point on this method.

Now, you don't have to be the sharpest bulb in the shed to know that consistency is important on YouTube. Everyone talks about it. But something I was not aware of when I first started was there are far more elements to consistency than just posting videos consistently. For example, you want to keep your branding consistent, especially your thumbnail style. Ideally, you want people to be able to look at your thumbnail and instantly know it's a video from you, even without looking at your channel name.

Y'all see this And then there's tone. If you always have a very positive and upbeat outlook in your videos, then all of a sudden you start taking a very negative perspective on everything in your videos, it's just going to be confusing. Then there's production style. For example, if you have incredibly barebones, maybe like digital whiteboard style editing and then all of a sudden you switch to studio level talking head videos, you're going to piss people off.

Also, your X factors. For example, if one of your X factors is you have a lot of edgy jokes in your videos and then all of a sudden you start making very politically correct videos, it's going to be weird. And then there's value. So if you have a very right-wing perspective in most of your videos and in other videos you take a very contradicting left-wing perspective, the right-wingers are going to get pissed at your woke videos and the lefties are going to get pissed at your conservative videos, i.e. no one likes you.

Now it's important to know here these are categories I'm talking about, not prescriptions. I'm not saying that you can't succeed on YouTube with right-wing or left-wing style content. You definitely can, but you can't succeed if you're trying to be both. You need to pick a lane and be consistent within that lane. Now, there is a huge caveat here, and that is obviously if you're trying to test and innovate with new things, you're going to have to be inconsistent every once in a while, but when you're innovating, try to follow these rules.

First, do it infrequently. For example, Instagram shows the user an ad in their feed after every five photos. And I found this to be a good rule of thumb with YouTube as well. If you test a new type of content every four to five videos, that's fine. But if you're much more inconsistent than that, the small amount of viewers you do get will vanish faster than a chocolate bar at a Weight Watchers meeting. And the next rule is only test one major new variable at a time.

So for example, if I want to test shifting my production style from super amateurish to super professional, I should try to keep all the other variables, my tone, my branding, my X factors, etc. the exact same as in my previous videos. So with the channel we're building out throughout this video, to get from 0 to 10K subs as quickly as possible, I'm just going to be as consistent as I can across all these different elements we've just talked about, which should give me the best chance of building an audience and getting more views.

But there's one thing I didn't mention here that is so important to keep consistent that if you don't keep it consistent, it will ruin your entire channel. YouTube is highly competitive. One of the biggest problems small YouTubers have is if viewers are spending all of their time watching large YouTubers videos and those viewers are very satisfied with those large YouTubers videos, then the vast majority of those viewers aren't going to have any free time left over to explore your content.

In other words, YouTube is incredibly competitive and most of the views go to a very small handful of massive channels that have all of the resources and already have established audiences. And this issue of competition will probably cause your channel to fail if you don't do the thing I'm about to show you. M. See, let's think about sports for a minute. Sports, especially at the elite level, are incredibly competitive.

Clubs like the APL's Manchester United and the NBA's Chicago Bulls, literally spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to stay competitive with other teams. But here's the thing. Manchester United don't have to worry about competition from the Chicago Bulls. Why? Well, obviously because Manchester United has Harry McGuire. But seriously, while they are both elite sporting teams, they're not directly competing against one another.

Hardcore fans of the Bulls probably don't care about United and vice versa because while they're both sporting teams, they're in separate categories. And the same applies to YouTube. To be competing with a large YouTuber, you need to be creating the same type of content as them. So your job is to find a category aka niche where there aren't a huge amount of YouTubers consistently uploading content there. So you actually have the real estate and ability to get views.

And it's the next point on this method. But this is all well and good as like a conceptual theory. How do we actually apply this practically? Well, in my YouTube course, I literally have multiple hours of training on this exact topic because niching correctly can be a bit complicated. But let me give you the two big things my students focus on. First, when evaluating a potential niche for your channel, you want to look at the supply and demand.

Supply is the amount of good videos being produced in a niche. For example, if there are loads of big channels regularly posting how to make money online videos, then you could say the make money online niche has a high level of supply. Demand is the viewers who want to watch those types of videos. So, for example, if there are a lot of viewers who watch videos about how to make money online, then you could say the niche also has high demand.

So, as a small channel to be hyper successful, you usually want low supply and high demand within the same niche. For example, the make money online niche has high demand. Yay. But there's also high supply. Boo. On the other hand, we could get more specific and look at a subniche like how to make money on Twitter. After serving them for so many years, they do that to me. Sorry, you're outdated. You're just an In this case, there are no big channels making these kinds of videos, so supply is low.

Yay. But there also don't seem to be many people looking for videos on how to make money with Twitter, aka demand is low, but go yourself. Now, when it comes to supply, usually you don't want more than five large creators with X factor similar to you, who are pumping out lots of highquality content. At the same time, the niche needs to be large enough that there are hundreds of thousands or ideally millions of viewers, aka demand, who actually want to watch that type of content.

And so in a moment when we continue building out the strategy for the channel we're going to try and take from zero to 10K in this video, I'll give you an example of a good niche that has low supply and high demand. But before we can do that, we need to talk about the second aspect of this equation, which is picking a niche gives you more love from the YouTube algorithm. So let's imagine that we're trying to grow a brand new fitness channel.

So what you want to do is post a lot of videos that are all highly related and are going to be watched by the same type of people. And I'll show you an example in a moment because that will help the algorithm gradually build up a profile on your channel. And the algorithm is going to get better and better at promoting your videos to the right people, people who are actually going to want to click on and watch your video, and that means a hell of a lot more views for you.

So, let's pick a niche for the channel we're building in this video that could help us get to 10K. Now, as mentioned, I want this channel to be a comedy channel. In fact, let's play YouTube on hard mode. We're going to make this channel a comedy gaming channel. And obviously, there are already loads of funny gaming YouTubers. So, to start off with, we're going to go down a few levels deeper where I can actually get discovered.

So, I'm a Star Wars fan, so maybe we can make this channel a funny Star Wars gaming channel. Now, at this level, I've cut out a lot of my competition because most large gaming YouTubers aren't playing Star Wars games. Translation supply is lowish. But on the other hand, there are lots of Star Wars gamers, and this niche is targeted enough that every time I create a funny Star Wars gaming video, it's going to attract the kind of person who is very likely to be interested in all the other funny Star Wars gaming videos on my channel. meaning the algorithm is going to be working with me, not against me.

But if you really want to get more views than a wannabe Instagrammer's page, then you also need to do this next thing. See, YouTube is a system and at a very high level, most systems work like this. So, you have an input, you have a process, and you have an output. An input is the initial fuel. It's the thing we provide to the system in the first place in order to get some kind of result. The process is the thing that happens to our input when we feed it into the system.

And then the output is the thing our input is transformed into as a result of going through this process. So for example, if I put in a one and we have a bad process, we'll get out a zero. Now if you put in a one and you have a decent process, you might get a one out. Now if we have a really good process that 2xes our output, we might put in a one. Something happens here and we end up with a two. But what does this all have to do with growing a channel from zero?

Well, most channels operate like this. They create and post videos and they get views. End of story. But some magic can happen when you start feeding your output back into your input. For example, if we put in a one and we have a good process, and the rest of this video is going to teach you how to make a good process for your channel, and then we get out a two. And unlike most people, we then take this two and we loop it back into our input.

Our input becomes a three. It goes through our 2x process and becomes a six. Now, we take that output and we loop it back into our input. Now, we're inputting a 9. That 9 gets 2xed and we end up with an 18, etc., etc. And this is pretty hypothetical, but let me actually show you what this looks like on YouTube. See, this channel you're looking at right now has a 1.6 returning viewer average. That means that if I put out a new video and attracts 100 unique views, my overall channel will actually end up with60 new views overall.

And this is great because one, I get more views, but two, YouTube loves it when viewers spend lots of time on the platform. The more time viewers spend on YouTube, the more ads they'll encounter on average and the more money YouTube makes. And that's why increasing your session time is the next step on this method. So, how can you create a feedback loop that will increase your session time and blow up your views? Well, first, you need a welloiled process.

If you put in a one and you get out a zero, you have nothing to loop back into your input. But that's okay because the rest of the steps in this video will help you optimize your process. So assuming you have a good process, the next thing you want to do is try to link your videos together. And there are two main ways to do this. First, you have the video idea itself. So let's say your niche is custom building computers and you have a popular video titled How to Build Your First Computer Beginner's Guide.

What we could do is think about other topics that would interest firsttime computer builders. For example, a lot of these beginner builders are probably on a tight budget. So, we could create a video like five secret websites to save 50% on computer parts because there's a high likelihood that viewers of this video would also want to click on and watch this video. And then we could build out our feedback loop even further by making another video like eight mistakes that cost firsttime computer builders thousands.

And then another one like don't build your first computer before watching this video, etc., etc. Now, the second aspect here is you can physically link your videos together, which makes it easy for people to binge them. So, for example, the channel we're building out throughout this video is a funny Star Wars gaming channel. And what I'm going to do is at the end of all my videos, I have these clickable elements called end screens that link to other videos on my channel.

I'm also going to create an optimized playlist that once a viewer is in them, they just end up binging a whole bunch of my videos. And I'm also going to put links to my videos all over my videos, my mailing list, my website, my social media, whatever it is. So, whenever someone enters my ecosystem, it's as likely as possible they'll find another one of my videos and start binging their lives away. But even if I'm doing all of these things to maximize my session time feedback loop, it's not going to be enough to help me take this channel from 0 to 10,000 subscribers.

Because if I don't do this next thing, this whole process just breaks and becomes irrelevant. Imagine you click on a new video from a channel you've never seen before, and all of a sudden, you're greeted with this. After a cringy 10-second intro, you realize the video is super pixelated because it's being filmed in 480p. You also notice massive black bars on the screen because clearly this creator has rendered his video using the dumb preset.

There are massive silences between cuts and his audio sounds so bad Vincent Van Go would have cut off his other ear. And he takes approximately three business days to get to the point. Normal rail, minecart, whatever kind of item. Well, this is actually my first ever YouTube video. And rightfully so. Most people who clicked on it vanish faster than a fart in the wind. And not only does you clicking away hurt my session time because no one gets to the end of my videos and I can't get them into a feedback loop, but it also sends very negative signals to the YouTube algorithm.

Basically, if a viewer clicks off in the first 5 seconds, they're subcommunicating to the algorithm, hey, this video is the biggest piece of dog And so, the algorithm is going to be less likely to promote my future videos to those viewers and to other people who have similar viewing habits to these viewers because it's going to assume that those other people won't like my videos either. And that leaves you with a channel that's about as alive as a graveyard empty.

And that's why the next point on this method is create great videos. I know it's not a secret. Everyone says you need to make great videos to succeed on YouTube, but not many people actually break down what that means. There are two main concepts I think that encapsulate most great content on YouTube. First, great content is engaging. Now, when we hear the word engaging, we might think likes, comments, shares, and those things are definitely part of it.

But the most important engagement you can get is a viewer who actually engages with your video itself by watching it all the way to the end. Now, realistically, it's impossible to get all of your viewers to watch all of your videos all the way to the end. Even Mr. Beast can't do that. But the longer you can get people to watch you for, the more favorably the YouTube gods will look upon your content and the more views you will get.

Now, if you go to your YouTube studio and then you come down to content, you click on the analytics of one of your videos and you scroll down, you will see a retention graph like this. This graph visually represents how long viewers are watching your videos for. If you see a graph that looks like this, it means that lots of people are clicking off your video. Boo. In a perfect world, you want your retention to look more like this, where lots of viewers are staying on your videos for a long period of time.

And so, if your retention graphs look like Angel Falls, which most of mine did in the beginning, let's be honest, there are two things you can do. First, stimulate. So, you can edit your videos to be as stimulating as possible to keep your viewers engaged. Add on-screen movement. Add patent interrupts. Say or do interesting things, make them laugh. The other thing you can do is structure your content in a way or tell a story that hooks a viewer in and gives them a reason to want to watch that video all the way to the end.

For example, a video about the top 10 tips to improve your bookkeeping might contain some good information. But if a viewer leaves that video on tip six, it's not really a big loss for them. They've just got 60% of the value from that video instead of a potential 100%. On the other hand, a video about the five-step bookkeeping method used by billionaires will be more likely to keep people watching because it's a method.

And as a method, all of the steps rely on one another. And so, if a viewer leaves the video at step three, the information they've gained so far is completely useless cuz they don't know what the final two steps are. So, they need to watch the video all the way to the end to get any value at all. And another thing you can do is just tell a story. It's been scientifically proven that only psychopaths leave a good movie halfway through watching it.

And most normal people can't bear to do that because our minds crave closure. We have to see how it ends. And if you integrate stories within your YouTube videos, you'll be taking advantage of the same principle. But the thing truly great videos all do is they go beyond engagement. They're not just engaging, they're also satisfying. See, it's possible for a video to be very engaging, but then not be satisfying. So those viewers who watched it all the way to the end regret having watched the video.

And so here's what I'm going to try and do to take this Star Wars funny gaming channel we've been building out from 0 to 10k subs. First, obviously, we're going to make sure the videos are as engaging as possible by making them stimulating. I'm going to add lots of funny effects and memes. I'm going to use overlays. I'm going to use punchins and punch outs and zooms to keep people visually engaged, etc., etc. Now, next, these types of videos are hard to add a story to since they're just compilations.

So, I'm going to lean into structure. So, for the first 2/3, I'm going to order my clips from the funniest to the least funniest. That's going to make it most likely that I'll engage people quickly and hook them into my video. But then, at the beginning of the final third, right around the time when a lot of viewers are probably starting to feel fatigued or bored with the video, I'm going to change up the structure and we're going to go from least funny to most funny.

And I'll do that because if every clip in the final third of my video is better than the one that came before it, it's going to like subtly create FOMO. Maybe viewers at that point in the video starting to get bored and thinking of leaving, but the clip they're watching right now is just so much better than the last clip that they're going to stay for a bit longer. And then the next clip after that is even better and so they want to stay for that one.

And then the next one after that is even better. And so they just stay for that one. And before you know it, these viewers are reinvigorated and they feel like they have to keep watching to the end cuz the video just keeps getting better and better. It's the same principle and way that a movie keeps you watching by gradually building up to the conflict until reaching the final climax. That should take care of the engagement side of this equation.

Now, to make my videos satisfying, basically, I just have to make sure the video is actually funny. They clicked for a funny Star Wars gaming video. And so, even though it's normal that some clips might be funnier than others, overall everything needs to be hilarious so they don't regret clicking on the video. And by combining these elements, we're going to end up with great videos that will hopefully take this channel from 0 to 10k subs.

But now you might be saying, "Well, Marcus, making great videos is all well and good, but no matter how great my videos are, nobody's there to see them. I have no views." That's a very good point because if we take a step back, if you don't have views in the first place, you're not going to have the opportunity to engage and satisfy viewers, let alone get them caught up in a session time generating feedback loop. So, how do we get views?

Well, in its simplest form, a view is someone clicking on your video. So, we just need to get more people to click on our videos. So if we come to our analytics and let's do this on a really small channel. If we come to the analytics of this video and we come across to impressions here, we can see this video doesn't have very many views and a lot of people who don't understand YouTube will think that that the video doesn't have views because the YouTube algorithm is not promoting it.

But if we have a look at this stat, this is our impressions. This counts how many times our video has been seen by someone on YouTube. Not viewed, but just seen like on the homepage or on the search page or something like that. You can see this video has a lot more impressions than it does views. And this is what's happening to a lot of small YouTubers. They think they're getting no exposure, but usually the video is being promoted, aka getting impressions, but nobody's clicking on it.

Now, quick side note, even if you actually are one of the few people who is getting zero impressions, following all the steps in this video, I promise you, will change that. And so, all you need to do now is get those impressions to click on your videos and will have views. So, how do we do that? Well, quick story. The other day I was hanging out with some friends in Sydney and it was very late and we got hungry and the only place open was this dark dingy servo down the road.

So we go visit this weird servo and we walk in and to my delight there was an entire shelf full of 2minute noodles. Loads of them stacked top to bottom. The thing was I didn't immediately recognize any of the brands. So the first thing I did was I quickly scanned the entire shelf until the packaging from one of them jumped out at me. If the packaging jumped out, I inspected it a little bit more thoroughly, had a look what flavor it was, how large it was, how much it costs, and if I wasn't impressed, then I went back to scanning, and eventually I picked the one that had packaging that jumped out at me, and that was the most reasonable and appetizing deal.

And bear in mind, all of this happened in the space of seconds. And on YouTube, viewers go through a similar process. On the homepage or search page, they scroll through videos until one of them catches their eye, just like I did with the 2-minute noodle shelf. The only difference is packaging on YouTube looks more like this, your title and thumbnail. So, without a good title and thumbnail, you won't get clicks and views.

And that's why eye-catching packaging is the next step on this method. So, let's look at how to create good packaging. First, titles. First, we want them to be short or at the very least the beginning of the title should hook our viewers without needing to read the entire title. The reason for this is particularly because on mobile, a lot of titles get truncated. they get cut off and so a lot of viewers can't read past the first 25 30 characters and so if you're not able to hook people with just this section a lot of those mobile viewers won't click.

Now the other thing you want to do with your titles is to either be intriguing or add value. For example, when you read this title you kind of have to click like it's curiosityinducing. You want to see what happens or the other thing you can do is add value. For example, if I want to learn how to cook too many noodles, then this title, even though it's not super hypy, is probably going to get me to click. And it's a similar thing when it comes to thumbnails.

First, you want your thumbnails to be simple. If your thumbnail is so noisy, it's very hard for people to tell what's actually going on. If their eyes don't have a particular place to rest, then they're probably just going to skim over your packaging. And then the other two things to think about is be intriguing or add value. Tease something in your thumbnail that's going to catch people's interest or show very specifically the type of value this video is going to provide to them.

Now, you've probably heard all of this advice before, but something I don't hear people talking enough about is how your title and thumbnail should work together to create one holistic package. For example, if you read this title, you're probably pretty confused until you see the thumbnail. It's the same thing with this title. Until you see the title and thumbnail together, you probably don't get it. Now, obviously, these are extreme examples here, but the principle is think of your tiles and thumbnails as a combo that combine to make your packaging.

And I'm emphasizing this because I see so many people waste space by repeating the same thing in their title and thumbnail. For example, if you have a video about exploring an abandoned factory and in your title you have text that says exploring an abandoned factory and in your thumbnail you have text that says exploring an abandoned factory, you've doubled up. You've wasted real estate. Instead, you would probably get better results if you did something more like this.

Or here's another example. If you have a video about how to change the oil filter in your car and then the thumbnail has text that is how to change the oil filter in your car, same mistake. You're doubling up. Add more interesting text into your thumbnail like it takes 2 minutes or fastest method or beginner method or something that actually adds a new angle to your thumbnail and makes your packaging overall even more enticing.

So, with all this being said, when I'm creating the strategy for this Star Wars gaming channel, here's how we're going to package the videos. Now, I could experiment with a few different methods, but to start off with, I'm probably going to have value in the title and then tease an intriguing moment in the thumbnail. For example, I might structure my title like Star Wars Battlefront funny moments # one because they're going to be episodes.

And then instead of just having Star Wars Battlefront funny moments in my thumbnail, I'm going to tease the funniest moment or glitch from the video in a very visual way. This thumbnail from a graphical design perspective is kind of ugly, but psychologically it does the job it needs to do. And that's the most important thing. But to give you the number one way to create enticing packaging, we need to reveal the final step and complete this method.

See, in 1976, a man named Jeffrey Stokes published a book called Star Making Machinery. It follows artists, musicians, engineers, technicians, all the creative people involved in making a typical rock album. And this little known book contains the first citation in the Oxford dictionary of this metaphor. You can't polish a turd. Now, despite the fact that Mythbusters prove this wrong, that's one sexy poop. It's a great metaphor nonetheless because the dictionary defines it as seeking to improve something which is inherently or unalterably unpleasant or of poor quality.

It's kind of like a movie plot. A movie can have the best actors, best marketing, best directors, but if the core plot itself is not objectively interesting, hey yo, what the In almost all scenarios, the movie is going to perform worse than my first 65 YouTube videos. For example, which video would you rather click on? I asked one woman out on a date or I asked out a 100 woman to get over my fear of rejection. Which video would you rather click on?

Big TNT explosion or world's largest explosion? Would you rather click on a video that is every that's what she said ever in the office or actually never mind. It's impossible to get more interesting than this. That's what she said. But you get my point, right? Notice the niche, packaging, branding for all these examples I gave are almost exactly the same. The only difference here is the idea. Moral of the story on YouTube, you can be the most creative editor, you can be the most technically brilliant designer, but if your video idea is inherently not interesting or useful to viewers, translation, you're polishing a turd, there's almost nothing you can do to make your video get views.

And that's why having a great video idea is the next step on this method. So, how does one come up with great video ideas? Well, there are three main buckets I think about. First, trending ideas. Pulling this off correctly is a lot harder than most people think. And that's why I talk about it in terms of surfing because surfing gives us a good analogy. Creating a YouTube video that catches a trend involves being in the right place at the right time.

For example, fidget spinners. If you'd posted a video about fidget spinners back here, you'd be too early. There's no wave of attention and your video will just be dead in the water. On the other hand, if you'd posted a video over here, the wave has already peaked. It's breaking. You're probably going to get pummeled and caught up in all the messy whitewash. But if you caught the wave and posted a fidget spinner video somewhere in this vicinity, so the wave's rising up and it's large enough to propel you forward, but it's not so large that it's seconds away from breaking and becoming incredibly messy and saturated, then you probably would have done very well.

Probably the most famous example of this is the I recreated every single set from Squid Game in real. Obviously, it's a great video in and of itself, but if it didn't harness the trend and hype around Squid Games, the video probably wouldn't have got near the amount of views it did. The next category of viral video idea is noteworthy. It's a video that's really unique or sparks a high amount of interest or curiosity in a viewer, even if it's not based around something that's currently trending.

The Ryan Tran Penny series is a great example of this. Obviously, he uses trends to his advantage at times. But if you're the first one to come with a video like this, it's just so interesting that regardless of when it's posted, people have to click on it to see what happened. And one of the easiest models to create types of videos like this is to just be as extreme as you can. Can you be the least in the world? Can you be the shortest in the world?

Can you be the largest in the world? Can you be the fastest in the world? Can you be the slowest in the world? Can you be the hardest in the world? That's what she said. Now, the last type of video idea is searchable videos. These videos usually tend to just solve a specific type of problem. And they get the majority of their views from people actively going to YouTube and searching for them. So, think like how-to videos.

And while they don't blow up anywhere near as fast, they tend to more evergreen. Now, these videos don't have to be that extreme. Think about this. If you really want to learn how to cook the perfect venison pot roast and a video like this one comes up in that moment, that video is extremely objectively interesting to you. So, if you want to win this category of video idea, you need to make sure the video you're creating is very direct and clear in how it's going to solve your audience's problem.

You're basically just reverse engineering exactly what it is people are searching for. Now, this one also comes down to supply and demand, like we talked about in the niching section, because especially on the search page, people aren't going to scroll very far before selecting a video. So, if there's too much supply, your video is not going to get views. But, it can be a great type of video idea and you get hundreds of thousands of views if you find the right search terms.

But before we come up with some viral ideas for our funny Star Wars gaming channel, let's review what we've done so far. To be successful on YouTube, you want to post frequently. For the channel we've built out, we've decided to post two to three videos a week to learn as much as we can about our niche and have as many opportunities to be discovered as possible. You want to pick X factors. We've picked X factors to intentionally focus on and exaggerate that will give people a strong reason to watch us instead of other creators.

You want to be consistent. I'm going to be as consistent as I can across all these key areas and more. And when I do experiment with something drastically new, I'm only going to experiment with one variable at a time. You're also going to niche down. I've gone from creating funny videos to creating funny Star Wars gaming videos. And to make sure I can actually compete, I've looked at the supply and demand of this niche, and it's all looking good.

We want to increase our session time. I've designed my channel in a way to create feedback loops, meaning on average, every viewer I attract will watch more than one of my videos. And we're also going to create great videos. I've put in the work to make sure my videos are both engaging and satisfying by making them stimulating, structuring them right, and making them actually funny so they deliver on my viewers expectations.

I'm going to package my videos in an eye-catching way. I've put a lot of effort into my titles and thumbnails to have the best chance of winning the click. I've kept my packaging short, simple, enticing, and added value. And last, but not least, I'm coming up with objectively interesting viral video ideas, which is the last and most important step we just went over. And the two types of video ideas I'm going to focus on are one, funny moments compilations inspired by the TV show Funniest Home Videos.

So, I'm going to get my audience to submit their clips to me. And then I'm going to pick the best ones, stitch them together, and add funny sound effects, voiceovers, music overlays, and memes. And at the end, I might have a section just like the funniest home Videos TV show where people can vote for their favorite clip. And the highest voted clip of the season will win some sort of prize. But also another style of video idea within my niche that I'm going to create will be funny trailers for Star Wars video games.

I'll use my sense of humor and creative editing and post parodies of them. And not only will these ideas hopefully be objectively noteworthy, but they'll help me catch trends. And this completes my strategy for this channel. But theory is all well and good. The question you're all wondering right now is, can we actually take this strategy built out using the exact method I've shown you in this video and take a channel from 0 to 10,000 subscribers?

Well, I've got something I'm pretty excited to tell you. Because normally this is the part of the video where the creator is like, "Well, subscribe to my channel and check back in 3 months to see my progress update." I hate that But that's why I'm excited to tell you guys that it's actually not the first time I've built this. In fact, the strategy you see in front of you is the exact same strategy I used on a gaming channel I started a while back.

And so, because I've already launched that channel, I can just show you exactly how it worked. First year, absolute fail. To be honest, I was probably doing about 50 to 70% of the things on this list. But if you don't do everything together, usually everything else breaks. and that's why I was getting no results. Then I started applying the method about here and 90 days later I have 3,000 subscribers and it kept growing steadily getting a few thousand new subscribers a month until we hit our 10,000 subscriber goal in June.

And don't get me wrong, 10K is very very good. But we didn't stop there. I stayed consistent and the channel which is called Silky by the way if you want to look it up, kept on growing until we reached nearly 60,000 subscribers, 20 million views and at its peak it was making more money than I was making from my real day job. And I don't share this to brag. I share this to show you what's possible if you follow the method in this video.

Even though Silky was created a while ago, this exact same method works today works for any channel I've used to personally create and monetize four separate YouTube channels which have gained nearly 250,000 subscribers and 50 million views. And every one of my students who's properly and consistently applied this process have had massive successes, too. So, please work through this video, implement all of the steps, and watch the traffic start flooding in faster than the Sydney CBD at rush hour, which is a ton of traffic.

Trust me. But if you're feeling overwhelmed even after watching this video multiple times, click on the playlist on screen. I've grouped together all of my best videos that dive deeper into the different aspects of each of the steps I've talked about today. It's basically the kind of thing you'd get in a paid YouTube course. And I know because I've done all of them, but it's all free. So, check out the playlist and I expect you to send me a photo of your silver YouTube play button once you're